"Den bedste udgave af dig selv": En kulturanalytisk undersøgelse af kosmetisk modificeret maskulinitet i to nationale kontekster

This dissertation presents a cultural analysis of two important cultural developments: a growing number of men are using cosmetic surgery or cosmetic treatments to enhance their appearances, and the male body is gaining cultural visibility as cosmetically enhanced. The dissertation focuses on the Danish context and includes Argentina as a comparative dimension and a secondary national context. The main part of the study frames these developments based on the Danish advertising and media, in which men are increasingly portrayed or portray themselves as cosmetically enhanced, as well as on the numbers from the Danish market for cosmetic procedures. This allows for a nuanced understanding of how national regulations in private healthcare services, the market competition and cultural preferences and values shape the national market for cosmetic procedures. The dissertation has an anthological format: research articles A and B analyze empirical cases from the Danish context, article C analyzes an empirical case from Argentina.
Research on cosmetic surgery has traditionally understood the field as a highly gendered, and as one, which has primarily affected women. Therefore, few studies on this topic have centered on men's experiences. This dissertation contributes new knowledge to the understudied phenomenon of men’s cosmetic body work. In this context, I examine how non-invasive cosmetic treatments, as a recent addition to cosmetic surgery, are beginning to play a central role in the market for cosmetic procedures. I examine how these treatments are 'masculinized' and marketed to men, as well as how men, who use these treatments, experience their effects. I also explore how digital media is entangled in the practices in this field by analyzing how cosmetic clinics increasingly use websites and social media to communicate with current and future consumers. I also discuss how digital media create and circulate norms concerning the body and its appearance, which leads to an increase in vulnerability among some young men.

The dissertation enters the discussion on masculinity and masculine embodiment and examines the cultural schisma that currently seems to exist between the male body and cosmetic medicine. Whereas the traditional forms of masculinity reject concerns over physical appearance, as well as body practices that are coded as feminine, the current biomedicalization paradigm contains the imperative to be the best version of yourself calling on men to take responsibility for their appearance, health, and aging. 
Drawing on masculinity theory, I discuss which cultural power relations are made visible in the rising number of men who cosmetically enhance their bodies. Is it an erosion of traditional forms of masculinity, which holds a liberating capacity and allows men to cultivate the bodily aesthetics they want? Or does the emergence of the market for men's cosmetic medicine signal that men are increasingly caught in the dogmas and logics of the consumer culture, and can masculinity persist as a privileged norm identity when it is enhanced cosmetically?
The dissertation consists of three research articles that examine these questions in three empirical case studies. The case studies are based on both visual and online materials from digital media and qualitative research interviews. I draw on explorative and interdisciplinary approaches from the fields of Cultural Studies and Visual Culture. I engage with posthumanist and poststructuralist feminist theory and apply three broad analytical perspectives. Through the analytical term Somatechnics, I explore how techne and technologies are co-constitutive to gendered identities and, hence, masculinity, and to how cultural norms and imaginaries are inscribed in and negotiated through the use of cosmetic medical technologies. I use Sara Ahmed’s conceptualization of affective economies to show how emotions circulate culturally in relation to men's cosmetic medicine, and how the attractive appearance is produced as a masculine 'happy object'. I also use Jamie Hakim's thesis of neoliberalism’s feminizing axiomatic to show how the cosmetically enhanced male body can be understood as part of a social-economic condition, in which modifying and digitally mediating the body, emerges as a strategy to navigate a precarious social context. The Deleuzian concept of assemblage helps to connect these three analytical perspectives and frame my understanding of masculine identity as a dynamic and non-essential phenomenon, which emerges through its entanglement with different technologies, discourses, and affects. 

Article A
‘Men don’t do Botox, they do Brotox’ – emerging configurations of masculinity in the marketing of cosmetic treatments online

In my first research article, I explore how masculinity and masculine embodiment is negotiated in the online marketing of men´s cosmetic treatments, and how the male body is portrayed as susceptible to cosmetic enhancement. With inspiration from the Somatechnical framework, I analyse the websites of three leading Danish cosmetic skincare clinics; Aglaia-klinikken, N´age and DermoCosmetic, and their content ‘especially for men’. I argue that masculinity in the online marketing of men´s cosmetic treatments is negotiated and produced as ambiguous, configuring between emergent and hegemonic forms (Inhorn and Wentzell 2011). I draw on relevant theories of masculinity, to show how masculinity is framed as both effeminophobic and hegemonic, as well as inclusive and neoliberal (Sedgwick 1991, Connell 1995, Anderson 2009, Hakim 2019). I continue to argue that masculinity emerges around three prevalent connection points in the marketing: anger, career and the masculine face. I discuss the generative and disciplining trajectories of these configurations and the possibilities of (un)becoming they entail for men as they continue to engage with emerging medical technologies for body work.

Article B
” Today it is all right to care about your looks as a guy” - Cosmetically modified masculinity between possibilities and pressures
Co-author Karen Hvidtfeldt

In my second article, which builds on qualitative interviews with Danish men aged 27-63 who regularly use cosmetic treatments, I explore the experiences and understandings that arise through this cosmetic body work in relation to masculinity, appearance, and aging. I use affect theory to frame my analysis of the men’s narrative accounts and point out that the interviewees experience both an increasing normalization of cosmetic treatments for men and feel happy about their cosmetically modified appearances. At the same time, they also experience an increasing pressure on men to handle appearance and aging appropriately, and several of the interviewees described feeling addicted to the cosmetic treatments. I argue, that while the use of cosmetic treatments is thus embedded in ambiguity, the treatments form part of an active negotiation of social norms, body ideals and age prejudices that the interviewees encounter in their everyday lives. The article contributes with knowledge about the use of cosmetic treatments in the Danish context, and through my analysis, I highlight the ‘natural’ as a strong and characterizing ideal for correct and respectable self-presentation in Denmark.

Article C
“Father of four, husband, triathlete” Assembling the male cosmetic surgeon in micro cultures of aesthetic health on Instagram

In my third article, I present a study of emerging and fast-growing practices of marketing cosmetic surgery on the social media platform Instagram by analyzing a corpus of fifteen Instagram profiles managed by Argentine cosmetic surgeons. I engage with the notion that cosmetic surgery, a field inscribed in a strong gendered binary, has historically consisted of male cosmetic surgeons and female patients, and has relied upon the cultural and mediatized visibility of the female body. In this interpretation the cosmetic surgeon has appeared as a professional and anonymous man. Through an analysis based on assemblage theory, I argue that, as male cosmetic surgeons become visible as protagonists of self-branding narratives on Instagram, gendered relationships of visibility and power in cosmetic surgery are re-opened for negotiation. I show how traditional notions of masculinity are transformed as the cosmetic surgeons perform affective, relational, and semiotic labor, and I argue that the roles of the cosmetic surgeon and the cosmetic surgery patient are collapsed, as various surgeons demonstrate the cosmetic procedures, they are offering, on their own bodies. I consider the implication for cosmetic surgeons and their patients, as the ability to project a successful self-image on Instagram becomes a key skill for clinic promotion in the competitive Argentine context where some cosmetic surgeons are becoming ‘Instafamous’ while others struggle to perform in the neoliberal setting of digital work-culture.