Men and Masculinities

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Boys as Sexy Bodies: Picturing Young Men's Sexual Embodiment at

School
Louisa Allen
Men and Masculinities 2013 16: 347
DOI: 10.1177/1097184X13497205

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Article
Men and Masculinities
16(3) 347-365
ª The Author(s) 2013
Boys as Sexy Bodies: Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Picturing Young Men’s DOI: 10.1177/1097184X13497205
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Sexual Embodiment
at School

Louisa Allen1

Abstract
How might we understand young men’s sexual embodiment at school? This article is
concerned with the body as a site for the intersection of masculinities and sexualities
at school. In a bid to contribute to existing narrative analyses of young men’s sex-
ualities in educational contexts, this research employs visual methods in order to
‘‘picture’’ these intersections. Findings are drawn from an exploratory study in two
secondary schools, where photo diaries and photo elicitation were undertaken
with twenty-two students aged sixteen to eighteen years. It is argued that, the
idea of boys as ‘‘sexy bodies,’’ that is, bodies that are experienced and viewed
as sexual, is missing. This omission occurs in two ways; as a focus for school-
based research and as an understanding of young men’s schooled experience.
Through an analysis of enfleshed bodies captured by photo methods, the ways
in which male sexuality is corporeally manifested as active, desiring, heteronorma-
tive and ‘‘sexy’’ are explored.

Keywords
sexualities, education, bodies, visual methods, masculinities

1
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Corresponding Author:
Louisa Allen, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Epsom Campus, Private Bag 92601, Symonds
Street, Auckland, New Zealand.
Email: le.allen@auckland.ac.nz

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348 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

Boys’ sexual bodies are both everywhere, and nowhere at school. This claim tailors
Epstein and Johnson’s (1998) notion of ‘‘sexuality as everywhere and nowhere’’ in
educational settings to young men’s sexual embodiment. Epstein and Johnson’s
intention was to reveal the ways in which sexuality is pervasive in the everyday
exchanges of peer culture and staffroom talk, yet simultaneously denied and
highly regulated in these schooling contexts. By sharpening this focus to the way
sexuality intersects with masculinity and the body, I suggest that sexuality as both
everywhere and nowhere takes a particular gendered configuration in relation to young
men’s bodies. The aim of this article is to illuminate this situation through an exploration
of how young men’s sexual embodiment is ‘‘pictured’’ via photo diaries at school.
The existing literature points to some nuanced reasons as to why boys’ bodies are
rendered everywhere and nowhere at school. There is some consensus among edu-
cational researchers of the corporeal, that young people’s bodies are marginalized as
objects of investigation in educational contexts (Hauge and Haavind 2011). Paechter
(2006) argues this is a consequence of the mind/body split within enlightenment
thought that saturates these institutions. While bodies are not ignored, schools’ main
work is deemed that of intellectual pursuits. This hierarchy is reflected in the way
priority is given to subjects aligned with the mind such as ‘‘physics’’ and ‘‘maths,’’
while those associated with the body such as ‘‘physical education’’ and ‘‘sexuality
education’’ are accorded secondary status. Such marginalization is evidenced in the
allocation of curriculum space to these subjects and their material and teacher
resourcing (Alldred and David 2007). For schools, the bodies of students represent
a conundrum whereby their materiality renders them irrefutably present, yet their
importance to the work of schooling (i.e., the training of the mind) is deemed per-
ipheral. This dilemma is echoed in the foci of educational research where the bodies
of students are sidelined for issues deemed more pressing like ‘‘academic achieve-
ment.’’ There have been subsequent calls for researchers ‘‘working in gender and
education to take much more account of the specificities of children’s bodies in
order to develop understandings of embodied subjectivity’’ (Paechter 2006, 121).
What this article attempts is to foreground the bodies of young men at secondary
school. It does so by drawing specific attention to the role of the body as a site of
intersection for masculinities and sexualities in this context.
Partly because of the effacement of student bodies in the everyday work of
schools, we know little from research about the way young men embody sexuality.
Existing work on young men’s bodies at school tends to give prominence to gender
rather than sexuality (see later discussion in this section for examples). This ten-
dency occurs despite the fact that gender and sexuality are intimately interrelated.
An understanding demonstrated in Butler’s notion of the heterosexual matrix
where one’s gender is seen to preempt sexual attraction (Butler 1990). Building
on previous work around the sociology of the body (Turner 2000; Shilling
1993), studies that focus on gender and the body at school reveal the way the phys-
ical body is intimately connected to masculine performances (Skelton 2001; Con-
nell 2005; Martino 1999; Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003). As further delineated

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Allen 349

in the conceptual discussion below, the body is a site for the constitution of mas-
culinities, ‘‘ . . . . . . . where masculinities are enacted and practiced, but also in a
sense ‘worn’ as embodied manifestations of one’s self-worth and social position-
ing’’ (McCaughtry and Tischler 2010, 188). These ideas are captured in Swain’s
(2003) research with ten- to eleven-year-old boys in three coeducational junior
schools in England. Swain reveals how boys construct identities using their bodies
variously as a symbol of social worth to ‘‘become somebody.’’
Another field of research around masculinities and the body at school is located
within physical education and sports studies (Kehler and Atkinson 2010). Broadly,
these researchers are concerned with the ways masculinities are constituted through
a particular display of embodiment within physical education and sport. The space
of physical education is conceptualized as regulating and rewarding the display of
embodied masculinity that privileges muscularity, endurance, speed, and competive-
ness engendering a physical capital that has social currency (Gorley, Holroyd, and
Kirk 2003). Within existing research, ‘‘writing around the body and masculinity are
almost exclusively framed in terms of the functional—as opposed to aesthetic pur-
poses, in the production of a fit, sporty male body’’ (Norman 2011, 434). Interest in
boys’ bodies is generally utilitarian, in terms of their fitness, whether they are healthy,
getting the right nutrition, or more recently the ‘‘obesity epidemic’’ (Gard 2010).
Attention is focused on what boys’ bodies can do, are doing, and with what effect for
the constitution of masculinities as dominant or marginalized (Davison 2000). On
those occasions when boys’ bodies are treated as aesthetic, this is framed within con-
cerns around ‘‘healthy’’ body image (Travis et al. 2010). Some researchers in this field
refer peripherally to male sexuality through their rendering of physical education as a
heteronormative space (Sykes 2011; Clarke 2006; Hemphill and Symons 2009;
Larsson, Redelius, and Fagrell 2011; Hauge and Haavind 2011). However, what male
sexual embodiment might (aesthetically) look like, that is, how it is rendered on/through
the body, particularly as depicted by young people themselves, is not explored.
Further work exists around the intersection of sexuality and masculinities at
school via an exploration of the constitution of heterosexual masculinities (Renold
2005; Kehily 2001; Paechter 2006; Epstein et al. 2001; Pascoe 2007). This research
has revealed heterosexuality as a resource through which masculinities are consti-
tuted. For instance, it is through the display of heterosexual desire, such as indicating
sexual interest in females by recounting heterosexualized stories (Kehily and Nayak
1997) or by ‘‘collecting’’ girlfriends (Renold 2007) that an appropriate masculinity
is consolidated. The emphasis in such studies has been gender (i.e., masculinity) and
the way sexuality and the body are implicated in its constitution. What I propose in
this article is a foregrounding of the body as sexual and an understanding of the
enactment of this in ways that are deemed masculinized. A further contribution of
the current discussion is to ‘‘picture’’ these intersections. Insights in existing work
are gleaned largely through narrative and ethnographic fieldwork. As set out below,
the current study employs visual methods in order to materialize (Butler 1993)
young men’s bodies.

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350 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

The idea of boys as ‘‘sexy bodies,’’ that is bodies that are experienced and
viewed as sexual, is a significant omission in the extant literature. This situation
may seem surprising, given what some commentators have coined the increasing
sexualization of male bodies in popular culture. Gill, Henwood, and McLean
(2005) argue the last ten years has seen a significant rise in the visibility of the
male body in the media and popular culture. This phenomenon has resulted in, ‘‘the
emergence of a new kind of representational practice. . . . depicting male bodies in
idealized and eroticised fashions, coded in ways that give permission for them to
be looked at and desired’’ (Gill, Henwood, and McLean 2005, 38). The current
research is not interested in participating in this ‘‘sexualization of boys,’’ but rather
notes that this attention to young men as ‘‘sexy bodies’’ has not seeped into school-
based analyses.
One possible reason for this lies in the risk-adverse nature of schooling which
largely seeks to deny the sexual. Boys’ bodies as ‘‘sexy’’ are not part of what we
understand schooled bodies to be. It has been argued that the preferred student sub-
ject is ‘‘non-sexual’’ (Allen 2007). Students who outwardly display sexuality are
seen to embody characteristics deemed antithetical to academic success. For
instance, Nash (2001) notes that teachers thought girls who were sexually active
would not achieve as academically well as their counterparts who were not. To focus
attention on boys as sexual and their bodies as a manifestation of this is to disturb
this ‘‘ideal’’ of the ‘‘non-sexual’’ student. This concentration also clashes with the
perceived focus of schooling which is academic not physical pursuits, and therefore
is rendered unimportant for research attention. Additionally, in the risk-adverse con-
text of schooling where students are constituted as vulnerable to the sexually preda-
tory nature of ‘‘suspect’’ adults, a focus on boys’ sexual embodiment can also be
rendered ‘‘perverse’’ (Jones 2001; Cavanagh 2007).
Another reason for the lack of attention to young men’s bodies as sexual at school
maybe the way it disrupts normative understandings of gender. Often references to
young men’s sexuality sideline the body as simply a container for an active male
sexual subjectivity. Masculinity is performed in these instances when young men
constitute identities as ‘‘studs’’ and ‘‘players’’ who are always ‘‘up for’’ sex (Farvid
and Braun 2006). In such cases, young men are the ones who desire, rather than the
ones who are desired. To deploy ‘‘boys as sexy bodies,’’ positions boys’ bodies as
the desired object of another’s gaze—a corporeal position traditionally occupied
by the feminine. Indeed, the word ‘‘sexy,’’ is also gendered as conventionally
applied to women. It is employed here because it emphasizes the sexual over gender
and captures the embodied sense of to feel and be perceived to look ‘‘sexual.’’ Such a
disruption to the normative gender order may not be palatable to some because of its
associations with femininity and the shift in gendered power relations this implies
(Hirst 2012). In the current study, images of boy’s bodies deemed to be ‘‘hot’’
(i.e., sexually desirable, ‘‘sexy’’) were taken by female photo diarists. I argue these
images shed light on a male sexual embodiment that is qualitatively different from
boys’ bodies as heterosexually predatory.

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Allen 351

Conceptualizing Intersections: Masculinities, Sexualities, Bodies at School

Drawing on Butler (1990, 33), masculinity is a set of repeated acts which over time
congeal to form the appearance of ‘‘substance, a natural sort of being.’’ Masculi-
nities are diverse, in that they are performed differently across historical moments
and cultural locations as well as within any temporal and cultural context. While sig-
nificant diversity in the enactment of masculinities exists, these ‘‘performances’’
(Butler 1990) occur within a highly regulatory and socially established frame. Power
intersects these performances so that some ways of being masculine become hege-
monic (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Hegemonic masculinity is not a fixed
character type, ‘‘. . . . it is rather, the masculinity that occupies the hegemonic posi-
tion in a given pattern of gender relations, a position always contestable’’ and muta-
ble (Robinson 2005, 22). This hierarchy of masculinities establishes relations of
dominance, subordination, and alliance that are played out between men so that
some forms are socially rewarded with status and power, while others are margin-
alized and subject to ridicule, abuse, and violence.
Sexuality, and specifically heterosexuality, is a key site by which masculinities
are constituted, negotiated, and resisted (Richardson 2010). Within a poststructural
framework (Foucault 1976), sexuality is not an individual characteristic, biological
or natural. Instead, as Epstein, O’Flynn, and Telford (2003) write,

Sexual cultures and sexual meanings are constructed through a range of discursive
practices across social institutions including schools. Thus, when we talk about ‘sexu-
ality’ we are talking about a whole assemblage of heterogeneous practices, techniques,
habits, dispositions, forms of training and so on that govern things like dating and codes
of dress in particular situations. (p. 3)

The assemblage of heterogeneous practices that constitute heterosexuality within

schools are deployed by young men in order to consolidate masculine identity.
Hegemonic masculinities have been closely linked to normative heterosexuality
(Richardson 2010), so that masculinity is performatively and relationally constituted
through ‘‘doing heterosexuality’’ (Butler 1990). Several studies have revealed that
‘‘becoming and being [hetero]sexually active was perceived as a marker of social
inclusion and belonging, and an important way of establishing one’s popularity and
credibility with peers’’ (Richardson 2010, 743). Due to the relational nature of gen-
der (Connell 1987), dominant masculinities are also constituted through border con-
structions between and/or disidentifications from homosexuality and femininity. In
order to display a coherent heterosexual masculinity, young men may engage in
practices that ‘‘other’’ femininity and/or are homophobic (Nayak and Kehily
1996). Within the hierarchy of masculinities, those who resist the centering of het-
erosexuality are relegated to the ‘‘normative fringes’’ (Kehler 2007, 262).
The physical body is intimately connected to gendered performances (Kehler,
Davison, and Blye 2005) and as this article argues, also sexuality. Some researchers
claim that there is an increasing tendency for young men to define themselves

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352 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

through the body ‘‘in the wake of social and economic changes which have eroded
or displaced work as a source of identity, particularly for working class-men’’
(Henwood, Gill, and McLean 1999 cited in Gill, Henwood, and Mclean, 2005,
39). Like discourses of heterosexuality, the body is a resource through which young
men ‘‘carve out’’ their masculinities. Connell (1987, 84) explains this relationship
between bodies and masculinities as ‘‘The physical sense of maleness is not a simple
thing. It involves size and shape, habits of posture and movement, particular skills
and the lack of others, the image of one’s own body, the way it is presented to other
people and the ways they respond to it, the way it operates at work and in sexual
relations.’’ As a signifier of masculinity, the presentation and use of body signal
appropriate masculinity (or not). For instance, how a young man fashions his body
through gestures and behaviors is pivotal to successfully achieving masculine iden-
tity or being labeled ‘‘gay’’ (Nayak and Kehily 1996). In this way, bodies have the
power to confer or deny masculine privilege.
Schools are a site which shape how the intersections of masculinities, sexua-
lities, and bodies are played out. Within the sociology of education, schools are
sites for the production of sexual identities through a plethora of everyday social
practices and structures (Mac an Ghaill 1994; Epstein and Johnson 1998;
Epstein, O’Flynn, and Telford 2003). Some of these practices have already been
outlined in the introductory sections, where schools communicate a preference
for a nonsexual student subject and generally sideline pupil bodies in favor of
the mind. Another important aspect of the culture of schooling which shapes
how young men experience sexual embodiment is that it is deemed a heteronor-
mative space. Warner explains heteronormativity as, ‘‘organizing all patterns of
thought, awareness, and belief around the presumption of a universal hetero-
sexual desire, behaviour and identity’’ (Warner 1993, xxi–xxv). Educational
researchers have found schools are marked by a cultural landscape in which het-
erosexuality ‘‘acts as the norm within schools and the focal point around which
other sexual behaviours are located’’ (Nayak and Kehily 1996, 224). It is against
this backdrop, that young men experience their sexual embodiment and which
shapes its articulation.

Methodological Matters
Findings are drawn from a small-scale and exploratory study concerned with under-
standing how meanings of sexuality are produced at school. A sample of twenty-two
students aged sixteen to eighteen were recruited from two North Island schools, Fern
College (decile 4–6) and Kowhai College (decile 10, school names are pseudo-
nyms). In New Zealand, ‘‘decile rankings’’ are allocated by the Ministry of Educa-
tion and indicate the extent to which a school draws its students from low
socioeconomic communities, with decile 1 schools containing the highest proportion
of these students and decile 10 the lowest (verbatim Ministry of Education 2009). In
total, twelve participants self-identified as European, six Maori, two Pasifika, and

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Allen 353

two from African countries. Participation was voluntary and as is common in sexu-
ality research more females (18) than males (4) participated.
My aim was to explore the ways sexual meanings and identities are unofficially
constituted at school. While in previous research (see Allen 2005) I focused on the
ways meanings about sexuality are officially produced through for instance, the
school curriculum, this project was concerned with spaces in which meanings
are generated unofficially, for example, during break periods, in the locker room.
Bodies form a site for the constitution of unofficial meanings because of their mar-
ginalization within the work of schooling. One of the aims of the research was to
examine how bodies are implicated in the generation of sexual meanings which form
part of a school’s ‘‘sexual culture.’’
The materiality of the body means that its enfleshment is not easily captured
through traditional spoken or written text-based methods like interviews or surveys.
A method that made bodies physically visible and that could access their form,
movement, and placement was needed. Subsequently, a combination of photo dia-
ries and photo elicitation were employed, because they promised to illuminate the
mundane corporeality of classrooms. As other researchers have noted, photo meth-
ods have the ability to capture ‘‘ . . . . . . real, flesh and blood life’’ (Becker cited in
Rose 2007, 238). In keeping with the project’s framing within a critical youth studies
perspective (Kehily 2001) in which young people’s interests and agency are cen-
tered, an autophotographic approach was adopted. This meant students rather than
the researcher wielded the camera, in order to maintain greater control over what
images were shot and how. Attempting research that focuses on student sexual
embodiment at school and utilizes cameras to do this is a unique approach which
generated considerable anxiety from others. These feelings were in evidence during
the ethics approval process and largely accounted for the seven months it took to
attain approval (Allen 2009).
The photo diary method involved distributing a 24 exposure disposable camera to
students for seven days. Students were briefed to take photos of moments when they
recognized something ‘‘sexual’’ occurring, as these constituted moments in which
sexual meanings are produced. Once participants returned their cameras, I developed
the films for discussion of images during the photo-elicitation interview. Interviews
were held in vacated teaching rooms and offices and were approximately an hour in
duration. Discussion commenced with participants selecting half a dozen photo-
graphs they ‘‘liked best’’ and wanted to talk about. The notion of ‘‘liked best’’ was
offered by the researcher as deliberately vague in accordance with the methodologi-
cal aim of allowing young people to set the terms of our discussion as far as possible.
The aim was for participants to interpret ‘‘liked best’’ however they wanted in order
to determine and explore moments they deemed significant in establishing the sexual
cultures of schooling. The sexual embodiment of young men featured large in young
people’s photo diaries and interviews and discussion below is structured around key
images and themes which emerged from these. A detailed description of the complex
process of photo analysis undertaken in the project can be found in Allen (2011).

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354 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

Figure 1. What happens on the road trip.

Young Men’s Sexual Embodiment of Desire

A stark example of young men’s sexual embodiment is captured in a photo that
shows a male student sitting straight on to the camera (Figure 1). The image is shot
from the shoulders down and focuses on his T-shirt which bears the words, ‘‘What
happens on the Road Trip, stays on the . . . . ’’ The phrase references a popular aphor-
ism, whereby when a music band tours, its members are free to engage in sexual
activities that are not mentioned when they return home. The photo was taken by
Madison who cropped out the young man’s face, in accordance with ethics commit-
tee regulations to maintain subjects’ anonymity. During her interview, she gave the
following explanation for why she took the photo:

Madison: Oh here we go, this [pointing to the picture] this is a boy and his
sexuality is expressed on his T-shirt.
Louisa: Okay, what does the T-shirt say?
Madison: It says, ‘‘What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip’’
which is a reference to probably sexual activities with random
chicks and getting really drunk and ‘‘blah blah blah,’’ all those boy
things that they do on road trips.
Louisa: Has there been any school trips where that kind of stuff would hap-
pen do you think?
Madison: Oh yeah, not at school camps but these boys go on road trips all the
time and they always have stories to tell so I think that shirt pretty
much says, ‘‘I get laid on road trips.’’
Louisa: And he’s wearing it because . . . . . . ?

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Allen 355

Madison: He wants everyone to know that he gets laid so that’s why I took
that picture because boys are sort of like, even though they’re like
‘‘I don’t care what people think, I’m just me and blah-blah-blah,’’
but really they’re pretty, yeah ‘‘I’m a man I can get laid any day
I want.’’ So that shirt pretty much says it to me. (Madison, eighteen
years, Pakeha, Kowhai College)

The young man pictured did not sign up as a participant in the research, so it is not
possible to gage his own reasons for wearing this T-shirt. However, his own purpose
maybe superfluous, given the body offers a site of contesting discourses, so that it is
read by others as offering particular sexual meanings regardless of a subject’s inten-
tions. In this analysis, I do not aim to uncover ‘‘true’’ intentions or meanings about
young men’s sexual embodiment, but to understand those which circulate and might
hold currency within the sexual cultures of schooling.
Sartorial address illuminates the intersections between clothing and subjectiv-
ity. That is, how one fashions the body becomes a practice through which the
individual can fashion a self (Finkelstein, cited in Swain 2002, 66). Swain
(2003, 307) explains the mechanisms by which this fashioning occurs; ‘‘The body
is sign-bearing and sign-wearing and also a producer of signs, and the clothes that
we choose to wear make a highly visible statement of how we wish to present
ourselves to the world; who we think we are, or who we would like to be.’’
Opportunities to deploy clothes in this way are often diminished in schools due
to compulsory uniforms. However, the male student pictured is a senior in the last
year of secondary school, a status marked by the wearing of ‘‘mufti’’ (regular
clothes). For this student, the ability to deploy clothes as a symbolic marker of
identity is arguably increased.
Madison reads this young man’s sartorial address in alignment with hegemonic
discourses of male heterosexuality. As indicated above, displays of heterosexual
activity are valorized and frequently spoken about in terms of conquest and pres-
tige in order to consolidate masculinity (Kehily 2001). The T-shirt slogan encap-
sulates several characteristics associated with hegemonic heterosexual
masculinities; active desire, sexual conquest, ‘‘playing the field.’’ Madison inter-
prets the wearing of this T-shirt as a direct reflection of hegemonic masculine
identity that conveys, ‘‘I’m a man I can get laid any day I want.’’ The display
of this activity forms part of what it means to be an intelligible male subject, a
point Madison notes when she says, ‘‘He wants everyone to know that he gets
laid.’’ This performance of sexual embodiment (regardless of the subject’s inten-
tions) articulates with dominant discourses of masculinity as sexually desiring and
active in a normative depiction of heterogendered relations. In this instance, active
male sexual desire is literally written on the body.
There were other images across photo diaries in both schools which drew on
discursive repertoires of young men as sexually desiring in embodied ways.
These photos typically showed young men as bearers of a sexual look, as in

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356 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

Figure 2. Showing a picture of his girlfriend to his mates.

Figure 2, where three young men gather around a cell phone. This shot was
taken by Ashby from Fern College who explained it demonstrated a ‘‘common’’
practice at his school that involved guys ‘‘show[ing] each other their girlfriends
and stuff’’ (seventeen years, Pacific Island). The young man in the middle holds
the phone up for his friends to view his girlfriend’s photo. In order to protect the
subjects’ anonymity and in line with ethics committee regulations, faces have been
warped so some details of this picture are lost. For instance, the image reveals the way
male sexuality is embodied through corporeal positioning. The young men lean into
each other, faces close to the phone in a display of sexual interest and male bonding.
This corporeal behavior echoes in pictured form, Flood’s (2008) findings around the
way bonds between men shape their sexual relations with women. Also apparent from
the image (but obscured by warping) is the pride-filled expression of the young man
who holds the phone and smiles of pleasure on the faces of his friends. The photo enables
us to literally see how sexuality is embodied in the stance and expressions of its subjects.
Young men are seen to corporeally bear ‘‘the male gaze’’ (Mulvey 1989) in a perfor-
mance of active male heterosexual desire.

Sexy Bodies: Boys as Desired

In another set of photos the emphasis is on young men as desired, rather than
desiring. These images were taken by young women and involved shots of cur-
rent boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, or male students deemed ‘‘hot.’’ Crystal took
several of these photos; one of her ex-boyfriend Hugh (Figure 3) and another
of Carl (Figure 4), whose popularity she explained, meant girls ‘‘flocked’’ to

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Allen 357

Figure 3. Hugh—Crystal’s ex-boyfriend.

Figure 4. Carl the boy to whom girls ‘‘flock.’’

him. In order to illustrate that Carl was an object of desire for girls at school,
Crystal recounted this ‘‘ugly duckling’’ story of his rise to ‘‘hot’’ status:

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358 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

This is Carl in the [brand name] top. He’s quite a cool story actually. I remember him in
Year 9 and he used to be, he was always tall but he used to be chubby and he was so
adorable and everyone was like, he’s such a nice guy but you know he was not one of
the people you would be attracted to, or I wasn’t back in those days and then he started
boxing and he got so muscly and so like amazing, he’s so fit and all these girls just flock
to him and it’s so weird because I still see him like this chubby dude and this cute little
chubby Year 8 dude and all these girls are like ‘Oh Carl is so hot’. (Seventeen years,
Kowhai College, European)

Both images of Carl and Hugh have a portraiture feel, in which they ‘‘pose’’ for
the camera, positioning themselves to be looked at. Hugh achieves this effect by the
casual placement of his arm behind his head, while Carl slips both hands noncha-
lantly in his front pockets. This deportment and the way Crystal presented these
images as either examples of young men she had once desired (Hugh), or, that others
desired (Carl), constitute these young men as desirable/desired. Capitalizing on the
so-called new sexualization of young men, Crystal is positioned via the camera as
actively desiring a male sexual subject (or at least is the bearer of the gaze; Allen
2013). This positioning disrupts normative perceptions of young men as the only
legitimate desirers and positions male sexuality in a qualitatively different way.
The form of male sexual embodiment in Carl and Hugh’s photos is not a position-
ing accessible to all young men and must be achieved through a series of corporeal
enactments. These two young men exude a confidence consistent with their display
of physical characteristics associated with white, middle-class hegemonic masculi-
nity at their school. This masculinity is exemplified by expensive brand-name cloth-
ing as seen in the (now warped) writing on Carl’s T-shirt and commercial insignia on
Hugh’s shirt pocket. Both young men also exhibit an athletic corporeality, through
Hugh’s toned body and Carl’s muscled arms emphasized by his singlet top. This cor-
poreal athleticism is reinforced by Crystal’s interview explanation of how Carl
boxes and plays rugby while Hugh is on the school hockey team. Due to their access
to a certain form of high status ‘‘corporeal capital’’ (Shilling 1993) derived from
material (i.e., bodily and financial) resources, these young men can ‘‘cash in’’ on the
symbolic economy of what is deemed sexually ‘‘desirable.’’ How they choose to
dress and sculpt their bodies through physical activity is not a masculine given, but
a specifically located performance.
In the literature explored above, these embodiments are read as constitutive of
‘‘masculinity.’’ Precedence is given to young men doing masculinity first, via het-
erosexuality. The utilization of photo methods, however, gives this interpretation
a different emphasis, one which intensifies the sexual. This focus is partly achieved
because photos capture flesh. Picturing these young men’s sexual embodiment
enables us to see how portrayals of hegemonic masculinities are conflated with what
is deemed ‘‘sexy.’’ What Crystal equates with ‘‘hot’’ is the corporeal manifestation
of characteristics of hegemonic masculinities, that is, muscularity, athleticism,
strength, and a sartorial address that requires financial resources. In a reversal of the

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Allen 359

Figure 5. Boys hugging.

idea that heterosexuality makes (i.e., is a resource for) hegemonic masculinity, hege-
monic masculinities make the man sexual. In this instance, photo methods shed fur-
ther light on the way masculinities, and sexualities are inextricably related and how
gender has held a privileged position in this dyad.

Young Men’s Heteronormative Sexual Embodiment

A final photo I want to explore in terms of young men’s sexual embodiment involves
two young men pictured in an embrace (Figure 5). Both stand facing the camera
smiling and hold each other tightly with arms intertwined round their shoulders and
waists. One of the boys has lifted his leg and wrapped it round the front of the other
boy. The photo has a ‘‘staged’’ feel in the way arms and legs are intertwined in exag-
gerated fashion. Debra who took the photo offered the following explanation of it:

Louisa: So what’s happening in this photo?

Debra: They were just showing what good friends they were and how secure
they were about their sexuality.
Louisa: So are they kind of having a laugh? Do guys, are they sort of tactile
like that around the place or not?
Debra: No they’re not. You see guys occasionally hug and stuff but not like
girls. Girls link arms or sometimes hold hands and stuff but guys
wouldn’t, so they’re just showing that they can, they’re guys and
they’re still close friends.

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360 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

Louisa: Is it particular groups of guys, like you said before that some guys
hug. In what instances would they hug, like when would a hug occur?
Debra: I don’t know. I guess it happens with all groups of guys, like those
gangster guys they shake hands and then they do that little hug thing
and then you get the Emo and Goth guys and they just hug anyway
and so I think all guys sort of have a hug now and then, like rugby
players when they win a game they have a hug. (Seventeen years,
Kowhai College, European)

Debra explains what this photo reveals about young men’s sexuality is that those
pictured are ‘‘secure’’ in their (implied) heterosexual identities. This statement
articulates with the heteronormative context of schooling within which ‘‘young men
must try to display a coherent heterosexual masculinity through ritualized practices
that centre on ‘othering’ femininity and homophobia’’ (Kehler 2007, 262). Hunter, one
of the young male high school students in Kehler’s (2007, 269) US-based research,
sheds further light on this hug’s significance. He explains that at his school, ‘‘there are
some people [i.e. males] you just don’t give hugs to unless it is a total joke, but there
are also people that I can really give a hug and mean it.’’ Hugs signify either ‘‘femi-
ninity’’ (only girls show real affection for each other this way) or ‘‘homosexuality’’
(because two men touching is deemed sexual). Both femininity and homosexuality
must be repudiated in the constitution of hegemonic masculinity. In hugging each
other for the camera and risking this association with femininity and homosexuality,
Debra explains these young men display a secure heterosexual identity.
Although Debra presents this as a ‘‘real’’ and meaningful hug by the young men
pictured, their deportment and facial expressions can be read otherwise. There is a
farcical element to this image in the exaggerated arm and leg placement of these
young men. Similarly, their smiling facial expression could as easily be read as
smirks. Kehler (2007, 269) reminds us that ‘‘if done jokingly then hugs are permis-
sible’’ and so while purporting to be a genuine hug of friendship, its ‘‘humorous’’
elements serve to deny homosexuality and reinstate the centrality of heterosexuality.
Debra’s narrative alone does not reveal these nuances. It is only through the pictur-
ing of this hug, and analysis of young men’s deportment, that such a reading is pos-
sible. What this interpretation exposes is the way heteronormativity is corporeally
manifest in the sexual embodiment of young men at school.
Something else this photo highlights in terms of understanding young men’s sex-
ual embodiment is an absence of its homosexual portrayal in photo diaries. In young
women’s photo diaries, same-gender attraction was represented variously. One
method was via a picture of two young women who were ‘‘out’’ as lesbians engaged
in a hug that conveyed their genuine attraction for each other. There were no equiv-
alent photos of sexual embodiment involving young men. This may be a conse-
quence of fewer male photo diarists. It could also be a reflection of what is
documented as more frequent displays of homophobia at school from young men
(Nayak and Kehily 1997).

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Allen 361

Concluding Thoughts
There is a rich literature which traces the intersections of masculinities and sexua-
lities at school and a burgeoning one which examines the body as a site for the con-
stitution of gender. This work speaks to the criticism that corporeality is largely
ignored in understanding students’ gendered experiences of schooling. What the cur-
rent article has endeavored is to merge these foci in order to explore the body as a
site for the constitution of masculinities and sexualities at school.
The emphasis in this article has also been qualitatively different. The current discus-
sion foregrounds sexualities and corporeality, to tease out their relationship with mas-
culinities in nuanced form. In this vein, the article suggests that the conventional
ordering of heterosexuality as a conduit for the constitution of masculinities underplays
the way normative gender constitutes heterosexualities. Through a concentration on
flesh, via visual methods, it is possible to literally see that characteristics of hege-
monic masculinity are equated with what is deemed sexual. This view of male sex-
ual embodiment is made possible when young men become the object of desire,
rather than the ones who desire, as normative gender relations dictate. Looking
at male sexual embodiment from the position of (in this case, ‘‘female’’) ‘‘other,’’
these dimensions of masculinities are revealed.
The irrefutable physical presence of young people’s bodies presents a management
problem for schools as they are deemed only peripheral to education’s intellectual
purpose. This situation means young men’s bodies are deemed to be everywhere and
nowhere at school, a paradox that has a particular configuration for masculinities. For
instance, the idea that young men might be ‘‘sexy bodies’’ at school is a particular invi-
sibility because of the associations this has with femininity and the way young people
are often denied as sexual subjects. In a disruption of this discourse, the current study
has endeavored to highlight some ways young men embody the sexual at school. That
is, the way the sexual is experienced and lived through/in/on the body of young men.
Findings indicate that young men are deemed ‘‘sexy’’ bodies by some young women
in these contexts. Also in evidence are more conventional manifestations of male
sexuality in the form of heteronormative and actively desiring sexual embodiments.
What is different about the portrayal of these active sexual embodiments in this
article is that they are ‘‘pictured.’’ Visual methods have been employed in order to
capture the corporeal expression of young men’s sexualities. In the past, research
has relied heavily on narrative analysis in a way that disembodies sexualities, or at
best, renders the body a container for masculine subjectivity. What photos allow is
a study of enfleshment, that is, bodily form, and also their deportment including
how they are positioned and interact with other objects/subjects. Analyzing such
detail enables an understanding of how sexuality is corporeally manifested and its
particular gendered configuration for young men. Photo methods are by no means
perfect, but they allow a view of male sexual embodiment that sheds light on a
‘‘fleshier’’ side to young men’s sexuality one that schools and existing research has
tended to ignore.

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362 Men and Masculinities 16(3)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was funded by University
of Auckland Vice Chancellor’s Early Career Excellence Award.

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Author Biography
Louisa Allen is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of Auck-
land. Her research interests lie in the areas of gender, sexualities, and schooling and innova-
tive research methodologies that seek to engage hard to reach research populations. She has
written three books in these fields, the latest of which is entitled Young People and Sexuality
Education: Rethinking Key Debates by Palgrave Macmillan.

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