“Lumbersexual” recently entered our cultural lexicon. What it means exactly is still being negotiated. At a basic level, it’s an identity category that relies on a set of stereotypes about regionally specific and classed masculinities. Lumbersexuals are probably best recognized by a set of hirsute bodies and grooming habits. Their attire, bodies, and comportment are presumed to cite stereotypes of lumberjacks in the cultural imaginary. However, combined with the overall cultural portrayal of the lumbersexual, this stereotype set fundamentally creates an aesthetic with a particular subset of men that idealizes a cold weather, rugged, large, hard-bodied, bewhiskered configuration of masculinity.
Similar to hipster masculinity, “lumbersexual” is a classification largely reserved for young, straight, white, and arguably class-privileged men. While some position lumbersexuals as the antithesis of the metrosexual, others understand lumbersexuals as within a spectrum of identity options made available by metrosexuality. Urbandicionary.com defines the lumbersexual as “a sexy man who dresses in denim, leather, and flannel, and has a ruggedly sensual beard.”
One of the key signifiers of the “lumbersexual,” however, is that he is not, in fact, a lumberjack. Like the hipster, the lumbersexual is less of an identity men claim and more of one used to describe them (perhaps, against their wishes). It’s used to mock young, straight, white men for participating in a kind of identity work. Gearjunkie.com describes the identity this way:
Whether the roots of the lumbersexual are a cultural shift toward environmentalism, rebellion against the grind of 9-5 office jobs, or simply recognition that outdoor gear is just more comfortable, functional and durable, the lumbersexual is on the rise (here).
Many aspects of masculinity are “comfortable.” And, men don’t need outdoor gear and lumberjack attire to be comfortable. Lumbersexual has less to do with comfort and more to do with masculinity. It is a practice of masculinization. It’s part of a collection of practices associated with “hybrid masculinities”—categories and identity work practices made available to young, white, heterosexual men that allow them to collect masculine status they might otherwise see themselves (or be seen by others) as lacking. Hybridization offers young, straight, class-privileged white men an avenue to negotiate, compensate, and attempt to control meanings attached to their identities as men. Hybrid configurations of masculinity, like the lumbersexual, accomplish two things at once. They enable young, straight, class-privileged, white men to discursively distance themselves from what they might perceive as something akin to the stigma of privilege. They simultaneously offer a way out of the “emptiness” a great deal of scholarship has discussed as associated with racially, sexually, class-privileged identities (see here, here, and here).
The lumbersexual highlights a series of rival binaries associated with masculinities: rural vs. urban, rugged vs. refined, tidy vs. unkempt. But the lumbersexual is so compelling precisely because, rather than “choosing sides,” this identity attempts to delicately walk the line between these binaries. It’s “delicate” precisely because this is a heteromasculine configuration—falling too far toward one side or the other could call him into question. But, a lumbersexual isn’t a lumberjack just like a metrosexual isn’t gay. Their identity work attempts to establish a connection with identities to which they have no authentic claim by flirting with stereotypes surrounding sets of interests and aesthetics associated with various marginalized and subordinated groups of men. Yet, these collections are largely mythologies. The bristly woodsmen they are ostensibly parroting were, in fact, created for precisely this purpose. As Willa Brown writes,
The archetypal lumberjack—the Paul Bunyanesque hipster naturalist—was an invention of urban journalists and advertisers. He was created not as a portrait of real working-class life, but as a model for middle-class urban men to aspire to, a cure for chronic neurasthenics. He came to life not in the forests of Minnesota, but in the pages of magazines (here).
Perhaps less obviously, however, the lumbersexual is also coopting elements of sexual minority subcultures. If we look through queer lenses we might suggest that lumbersexuals are more similar to metrosexuals than they may acknowledge as many elements of “lumberjack” identities are already connected with configurations of lesbian and gay identities. For instance, lumbersexuals share a lot of common ground with “bear masculinity” (a subculture of gay men defined by larger bodies with lots of hair) and some rural configurations of lesbian identity. Arguably, whether someone is a “bear” or a “lumbersexual” may solely be a question of sexual identity. After all, bear culture emerged to celebrate a queer masculinity, creating symbolic distance from stereotypes of gay masculinities as feminine or effeminate. Lumbersexuals could be read as a similar move in response to metrosexuality.
Lumbersexual masculinity is certainly an illustration that certain groups of young, straight, class-privileged, white men are playing with gender. In the process, however, systems of power and inequality are probably better understood as obscured than challenged. Like the phrase “no homo,” hybrid configurations of masculinity afford young straight men new kinds of flexibility in identities and practice, but don’t challenge relations of power and inequality in any meaningful way.
Cross-posted at Feminist Reflections, Pacific Standard. and Inequality by (Interior) Design. Image borrowed from here.
D’Lane R. Compton, PhD is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Orleans. Tristan Bridges is a sociologist at the College at Brockport (SUNY). You can follow them on twitter at @drcompton and @tristanbphd.
The authors would like to thank the Orange Couch of NOLA, Urban Outfitters, the rural (&) queer community, and Andrea Herrera for suggesting we tackle this piece. Additional thanks to C.J. Pascoe and Lisa Wade for advanced reading and comments.
Comments 52
Dan Ruth — January 12, 2015
Every fashion decision contains hidden values. I am a white, heterosexual, privileged, upper-Midwestern urban male. Who happens to wear a lot of flannel (including a beloved Stormy Kromer cap). Sure, my style choices don't challenge systems of power and privilege. But I strive to live in a way that my actions do.
Wearing flannel and buying in to a "lumbersexual" ethos does, in a small way, help me define myself as someone who grew up in a rural context, who values simplicity and the outdoors, but who also recognizes my power, privilege, and my responsibility to fight to change the systems that give me that power and privilege. It's an identity that continues to be shaped by my background, my education, my relationships, and my environment.
dumbpunk101 — January 13, 2015
I can definitely see the rational behind the conclusions in this article....but lets not forget there are people who just wear whatever the hell they want. By this definition I could easily be seen as lumbersexual most days. The reality is I wear what I feel like, when I want, aside from some formal occasions. Sometimes it's possible to over analyze something that's just a "fuck it, I'll throw this on today" situation :)
mimimur — January 13, 2015
You might even say that they expand options of being for hegemonic men at the expensive of minorities. No doubt, most will be insulted if mistaken for bears, or treat it as a joke, and the "no homo" serves to emphasize same sex attraction as unacceptable. On top of that, coopting codes of gay culture is going to end up making the codes straight. I'm not an expert on race and class, but I suspect the same effect is found there. Prices for blue collar clothing should climb, at least.
J — January 13, 2015
I especially agree with the point that lumbersexual masculinity allows men to navigate binaries. One point that is neglected is the origin of this type of fashion, which is Nordic. Norway and Sweden especially have been touted as socially superior on a number of aspects, especially their challenging of traditional roles for men. Could the lumbersexual phenomenon be an example of exoticizing the North? Culturally emulating it?
Fe — January 13, 2015
How for real is this thing in the first place? I mean, how much of it is just someone coming up with a cute term and throwing it around like it's actually a thing. When I first heard of it, it sounded like a joke and afterwards like a joke people didn't get and thought it was a thing.
Alan — January 13, 2015
The "article" reeks of insecurity. The author tries to put himself at a place of authority through an overwhelming confidence in his own intellect--which is founded upon his own imagination.
I quote: "Similar to hipster masculinity, “lumbersexual” is a classification largely reserved for young, straight, white, and arguably class-privileged men. While some position lumbersexuals as the antithesis of the metrosexual, others understand lumbersexuals as within a spectrum of identity options made available by metrosexuality. Urbandicionary.com defines the lumbersexual as “a sexy man who dresses in denim, leather, and flannel, and has a ruggedly sensual beard.”" This paragraph, or the whole article for that matter cites zero evidence except for urban dictionary, which speaks volumes to his lack of academic standards.
This is nothing more than drivel. It's nothing more than the uninformed musings of an individual proud to participate in the self-reinforcing, circular, and cyclical enterprise that is post-modernism in the humanities in academia.
This is faith based thinking at its worst.
This is a dangerous article because naive pseudo intellectuals will eat this garbage up and repeat it--proudly--and they will reject even the inclination of criticism.
It's pathetically ironic that the author postures himself as a man of the people, or rather 'in tune' and wise to the clothing choices of complete strangers, yet creates what are almost paranoid conspiracies about facial hair, when to do so would require him to be in a position of authority...
It seems like there giving PhDs away for free in today's empty and masturbatorial humanities departments.
John — January 14, 2015
That whole bit about straight guys wearing plaid appropriating gay culture made me lose my shit.
I get it. Women who wear makeup are appropriating drag queen and femme culture. The homosexual community is the cradle of culture.
cebow — January 14, 2015
"He's a lumberjack and he's ok, I sleep all night and I work all day." I had no idea how sociologically aware Monty Python was with this song.
jingles — January 15, 2015
this was an interesting analysis until the paragraph on how "many aspects of masculinity are comfortable" that doesn't list them (though it seems "young, straight, class-privileged, white men" is important enough to repeat again and again and again and again), and then contradicts itself saying this identity helps with "emptiness".
what is missed is that it is a very positive expression in a culture where being a straight white man is constantly called into question. the lumbersexual is straight but not homophobic (no "no homo"), class-privledged (perhaps) and white (mostly) but not uncaring (a socially aware libertarian), and male but not sexist. nick offerman performs/embodies this, the confident, secure, accepting, fun, adventurous, and kind male, manufactured i think insofar as it's polished but otherwise as natural as one can be in our world of dumb but cruel marxists and corporate oligarchy.
wolfspider — January 18, 2015
This is a joke, right? Plaid has been worn by men of all ages and races for decades. It's timeless. Beards even more so. I thought fabricated hogwash went out of style in academia sometime around 1998. I guess not.
Wait! Could that be a lumbersexual in your voir dire impanelment? « The Jury Room — January 23, 2015
[…] to Sociological Images blog, the definition of the lumbersexual continues to […]
Henry — January 25, 2015
"Lumbersexuals", as a sartorial trend, remind me of the heady mid 70s, when gay men 'appropriated' the ironclad looks of blue collar masculinity, both as ironic comment on heterosexual norms of masculinity, and because the implied ruggedness was (and is) frankly HOT. Short hair, beards, naturally hairy chests exposed in flannel working shirts, and toned arses in tight work pants are a sexy look that cuts across age and class divides. It does express a physicality and a power which are worthy of celebration. It's interesting that many Transgender males and Lesbians adopt this and related male-identified looks in order to signify gender and gendered disposition.
There is a catalogue of reasons why this kind of arched maleness is encoded in clothing, and why the code periodically returns as a non-utilitarian trend within street fashions. Often, fashion is adopted unthinkingly, as just a short cut to acceptance within a group. The Lumbersexual look can be read as a reassertion of masculine values, in the face of the alleged crisis in masculinity. And it can be read an effect of the Internet, given the latter's tendency to be a gateway for the development of cultural memes, and also to monetise this affect.
Me, I'm just going to enjoy the beards and the chest hair, the plaid shirts, work pants and boots, while I can. I found the Metrosexual look incredibly precious and unsexy, and somewhat offensive in its disingenuousness. On one level, it appeared to pander to big business, with its emphasis on cut and conservative colours, and disciplined bodies. On another, it seemed to try to erase secondary sexual characteristics of the male, with its insistence on upper body depilation, eyebrow shaping, and the clean shaven face. Metrosexuality was defiantly about Big Finance and middle class success. Even if the Lumbersexual is just striking another kind of pose, at least it's one that speaks of the blue collar male, a type fast becoming an museum exhibit.
Cosmopolitan Masculinities and Gender Omnivorousness: Transformations in Gender and Inequality* | Inequality by (Interior) Design — January 29, 2015
[…] I argued earlier in my post on hipster masculinity and my post with D’Lane Compton on the rise of the “lumbersexual,” men who occupy positions of incredible privilege (young, middle- and upper-class, able-bodied, […]
Pas op voor de timmerseksueel | L i n d a D u i t s — January 30, 2015
[…] Hybride beren De woeste mannenman kennen we ook in de gayscene. Veel van de overpeinzers van timmerseksualiteit wijzen daarom op de overeenkomsten met bears. Twee Amerikaanse sociologen betoogden deze week dat de timmerseksueel gaat over hybride mannelijkheid. Als lumbersexual zouden jonge, witte heteromannen mannelijke status verkrijgen die hen normaliter ontzegd wordt. De timmerseksueel kan zich bovendien onttrekken aan het stigma van witte privilege. Ze schrijven op The Society Pages: […]
Lumberjack — February 3, 2015
This article is absurd! Drs. Copton and Bridges should take their smart PhD minds and apply them elsewhere. The "lumbersexuals" of the world dress like they do because they saw or picked it up somewhere and decided to dress like that, plain and simple. This is an entirely over-analyzed piece with no substance.
And what is with the repetition, and therefore assertion, that the "lumbersexual identity" is only "made available" (as if there's some all-controlling god of what clothes people can wear and how they groom themselves) to "young, straight, class-priveleged, white men" ? Maybe the authors see these types of men as most likely to choose to look "lumbersexual", but come on, let's not over-impute some privilege to a look just because a privileged group tends to take it up (although notably, no statistics are presented to back up the assertion). There's no guardian of the lumbersexuals in society, and anyone and their mother could dress like it if they wanted to.
And then there's the last sentence...sigh. "While people who eat lucky charms have both grains and marshmallows, let's not kid ourselves: the grain to marshmellow power relationship is not challenged in any meaningful way."
Again, this article is absurd!
William P. Homans — February 3, 2015
I am a retired truck driver, but I have also (sometimes concurrently) have been a lumberjack. In my life I felled, milled, and transported lumber for a couple of periods totaling about 7 years. It's hard, dangerous work, especially the sawmilling.
My left shoulder is only partially usable because of certain extreme motions I had to make behind the edger to keep up with the sawyer, throwing lumber, even railroad crossties, over my shoulder and running with it to slap it down on the pile and get back to the edger for the next cut.
I have only 95% of my right third finger, where the 52-inch main saw nipped the top off while I was the offbearer (the guy who catches the lumber off the big saw and either runs it down the line to the "green chain", the fellows who catch the waste products and the crossties and put them in their locations for pickup).
My other (left) third finger's joints have both been crushed in that job on the sawmill team, and I suffer the extra arthritis from those injuries today. I can no longer bowl, doctor's orders, because of these hurts (I am lefthanded). I'm happy to still be able to play guitar (again, lefthanded), though with as much discomfort as the ibuprofen does not suppress.
These urban, white and privileged (as the author of this article repeatedly calls them) lumbersexuals wouldn't have dreamed of taking my place on the line, or chucking dozens of 150-pound posts per day onto the post truck after felling them (cutting the trees down and trimming the branches off). The regular use of a chainsaw is a physically debilitating practice in itself, even if you don't get a sudden kickback and have the saw bite into your face, as happened to one of my sawmill buddies (the plastic surgery was extensive, and mostly successful, though one eye is out of place).
Most of my colleagues at the mill and in the woods WERE white, some Native Americans, but no one could possibly call working in lumber a privileged occupation. How ironic.
I'm also a lifelong practicing bisexual man (not a "bear", I'm built athletic rather than paunchy). I'm undoubtedly what the gay parlance calls "butch," which is related to macho, but doesn't have anything to do with dominating women, or other men. It's an appearance thing. For the record, gay attraction has more to do with appearance-- EVEN more than heterosexual attraction-- than with brains or talent or emotional sensitivity.
I've met one or two of these lumberyard posers (both hetero and homo), and they have the appearance down, but then when they open their mouths, it's instantly clear that they would struggle to keep up with the lumber the Bossman would run at us. Even us tough actual lumbermen struggled to do it.
Other lumberjacks, real or fake, are decidedly not my type!
Coming from where I do, having done the work I've done, this is a culturally, sociologically informative, but in the end, humorous article by two professors who themselves wouldn't dream of actually doing the work.
Connecticutf - Peaches and Hot Sauce — February 3, 2015
[…] doing, the landbridge, womyn, New Amsterdam, 10-20-life, 5 generation picture, go to hell pants, lumbersexuals, salt of the earth, The Quad, Georgia […]
Michael Wooten — February 3, 2015
How are these two authors not people that just going around judging other people? I have a large beard... and I dress nice. Am I "lumbersexual"? No. I'm a guy that likes wearing a beard and that dresses professionally. This whole article is made up BS. In fact, it plays reinforces the stereotypes around masculinity and homosexuality because it makes accusations about people based on the author's own perceived judgements and accusations about what those things mean when actually the people they are pointing at and making accusations about that don't have any inclinations dealing with anything having to do with those things.
Cosmopolitan Masculinities and Gender Omnivorousness: Transformations in Gender and Inequality* | — February 4, 2015
[…] I argued earlier in my post on hipster masculinity and my post with D’Lane Compton on the rise of the “lumbersexual,” men who occupy positions of incredible privilege (young, middle- and upper-class, able-bodied, […]
Antonio Maturo — February 4, 2015
Lumbersexuals are hipsters who do not read books
Krap Sinclair — February 7, 2015
Interesting article on gender play. So, much to unpack.
The article states, "Their [straight, class-privileged, white men] identity
work attempts to establish a connection with identities to which they
have no authentic claim by flirting with stereotypes surrounding sets of
interests and aesthetics associated with various marginalized and
subordinated groups of men. Yet, these collections are largely
mythologies. The bristly woodsmen they are ostensibly parroting were, in
fact, created for precisely this purpose."
It's telling that masculinity can only identify with various
marginalized group identities (lumberjacks, "rebels without a cause,"
punk rockers, etc.) in its effort to conceptualize itself. This may be
because masculinity at its core has always been a marginalized concept,
populated by marginalized persons. The masculine was exiled and hurled
out into the public sphere, away from the core, the center, the hearth,
the powercenter. And in this space of undifferentiated (and thus
unindividualized) "publicness" a core, individual being cannot form, and
in its attempts to conceptualize itself as an individual, it can only
identify with other marginalized group identities, which these too are
core-less. Such that masculinity, after being exiled away from the
private sphere, can only perpetuate its own marginalized-self, it can
only conceptualize itself as a self-that-is-no-self, i.e. nothing, an
empty vessel that can only be intentionalized by another, that can only
be GIVEN purpose, rather than create purpose for itself. Historical,
the masculine is an empty vessel, a vehicle for (and of) a CAUSE other
than itself, i.e. the masculine has always been an Effect of a Cause.
The cause was the private, the effect was the public.
juanr1214 — February 7, 2015
"But, a lumbersexual isn’t a lumberjack just like a metrosexual isn’t gay." Thank you for clarifying that for me. I assumed the guy serving me an espresso also felled trees on the weekend.
DonPhil — February 7, 2015
The photo betrays this piece. No one experienced with an axe carries it next to his head, let alone holding it by the pommel. These two PhDs. may be too young to have ever encountered Monty Python's Lumberjack Song.
Robert Darby — February 9, 2015
As always, the gays have led the way in fashion trends. The "lumbersexuals" look exactly like butch-striving American gay men back in the 1980s. Such short memories people have these days!
TFL — December 27, 2015
Hmm. You left out the cultural appropriation of marginalized, mainly rural North American blue-collar men by "lumbersexuals." Who, incidentally, prefer the term "loggers" to "lumberjacks." And who dress like "loggersexuals," and "truckersexuals" and "constructionsexuals" and "minersexuals" not so much for fashion as because loose dungarees, flannels and hoodies, and "corks" boots are a) practical, b) warm, a) available in decidedly non-trendy discount and factory-seconds stores with names like Yard Birds, SeaMart, Hammers, and (more recently) WalMart but most important, d) very cheap.
Affordability being particularly important for the kind of people who aren't college or even high-school graduates and have to work in outdoor trades. (Hint: a working flannel shirt in Aberdeen, Washington or Tupper Lake, New York may cost less than the sales tax on an Abercrombie & Fitch version in Seattle or New York.)
Finally, I'd be careful about presuming that "authentic" loggers, truckers, fishermen, and ranch hands -- and by extension the attire appropriated by city "lumbersexuals" -- are more intrinsically or "authentically" straight than any other demographic.
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