Norman Rockwell and the Fashioning of American Masculinity

Abstract

Cultural historians of the United States tend to discuss the locus of middle-class masculinity from the late nineteenth century on as increasingly situated in bodily strength and fortitude. Norman Rockwell's humorous illustrations of the figures of the sissy and the fop from early in this century have rarely been taken seriously as cultural texts, yet they offer a point of access for the consideration of an overlooked contemporary manliness fashioned through men's dress. This sartorial masculinity—a conduit for codes of class, race, sexuality, and nationality—endowed even the most lithesome figure with manhood through mass-produced consumer goods.