#BringBackManlyMen : Representations of masculinities in responses to Sam Smith’s and Harry Styles’ bent masculinities on Twitter.

In this thesis, I analyse the representations of masculinities in replies to Sam Smith’s and Harry Styles’ bent masculinities on Twitter. My thesis is grounded in masculinity theory, mainly that of R.W. Connell (2005) and Judith Butler’s (1990) theory on gender performativity. The two questions that guide my research are 1) What makes a male-bodied individual (un)masculine? and 2) How does masculinity intersect with other (identity) categories? To answer these questions, I coded the material which resulted in three main themes: disgust, nostalgia and (queer) joy, each of which is discussed in a separate chapter. The first chapter on disgust exposes, through applying Sara Ahmed’s (2004) concept stickiness on the material, how masculinity intersects with sexuality, identity, age and corporeality. This shows that heterosexuality lies at the core of masculinity. This is further developed in the second chapter on nostalgia, as the comments in this chapter highlight the role of the heterosexual male-bodied individual in upholding a prosperous society. A key concept here is restorative nostalgia (Boym 2001), which helps expose two main narratives in the comments: conspiracy theories and the need to return to origins. The third chapter on (queer) joy accentuates what was concluded before: masculinity is strongly entwined with heterosexuality, as Styles is deemed a queerbaiter because of his apparent heterosexuality. Smith, on the other hand, is praised as a queer icon. This points out another element: queer seems to be separate from masculinity and an essentialist identity. The main conclusion of the thesis, then, is that masculinity intersects with many different categories and that when masculinity is bent, heterosexuality lies at the core of masculinity. Furthermore, all these comments are explained to be an attempt to defend hegemonic masculinity (Connell 2005).