Kitchen sink erotica: Working-class lads, nudity, aspiration and spectatorship in modern British culture and fashion photography

Abstract

This article examines the subject and visual representation of the English working-class lad as both an identification figure for young, modern-day fashion aficionados and a fantasy figure to a predominantly gay audience. It pays special attention to the character’s clothed and naked body, and its performance down the runway; in recent fashion editorials and British-made gay porn. The article investigates how mostly male British artists view and promote working-class male imagery and specifically how fashion photography of the past two decades frames, produces and articulates stories about social class and class difference in the context of masculinity and nudity, and what do these stories tell us about contemporary models of success, failure, struggle and aspiration in multiracial, present day Britain. By linking the current fashion industry’s fascination with working-class imagery with a similar cultural trend in 1960s Britain, the research aims to establish that today’s fashion image makers share similar tendencies with British Social Realist writers and filmmakers in romanticizing the working class, while sticking to a similar, fabricated aesthetic. This enduring fascination for working-class heroes and all things ‘street’ could become problematic when contextualized with industries and commercial ventures such as fashion, and the promotion of clothing and advertising.