Sheilas, wogs and metrosexuals: masculinity, ethnicity and Australian soccer

Abstract

This study utilizes metrosexuality and soccer as two important and interconnected texts to illuminate how new forms of consumption have altered understandings of ethnicity and masculinity. It argues that soccer’s recent rise in popularity in Australia and the rise of the metrosexual are both related to new forms of postmodern consumerism that are significantly influenced by the shift from multiculturalism to cosmopolitanism. This argument is applied to the Australian context in order to explore the complex processes of the de‐ethnicization of soccer in the 1990s and its lingering effects as Australia moves to become recognized as a major player on the world scene, both on and off the pitch.