Ironic Discourse: Evasive Masculinity in British Men's Lifestyle Magazines

Abstract

This article takes as its textual focus the U.K. men’s lifestyle magazine and explores the notion that irony is strategically employed in the partial constitution (and evasion) of a specific masculine identity. It is frequently claimed that irony is a prominent feature of the postmodern condition, with its slippery ability to disclaim allegiances to particularpolitical or critical positions; within the men’s lifestyle magazine, we can see how irony functions both to give voice to reactionary and antifeminist sentiments and to continually destabilize the notion of a coherent and visible masculinity. The article focuses on both irony as a trope and irony as a mode of existence in the pursuit of describing the ambiguity inherent in magazine masculinity, and it engages with close textual and linguistic analysis of a magazine feature and an interview.