Article Critic: Fashioning Masculinity among Young New Zealand Men: Young Men, Shopping For Clothes and Social Identity

The conceptual model of the article is the construction of social identity and masculinity in society. The research paper has various hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that there is a trend towards more young men purchasing fashion products. The second implied hypothesis is that young men prioritize the consumption of fashion products rather than just using them as a tradition. The third hypothesis is that the young men are conscious about the image they present to others in the form of their fashion choices.

The research is timely because it addresses a trend that is present in the recent generations of young people. The findings are relevant to the modern world because they relate to a population segment comprising a significant proportion of the country’s demographics. The results are also applicable as they show how society’s changing definition of masculinity has affected the social identity of young men. The research paper is relevant to the determination of self-identity and clothing choices of young men. The scope of the study is the identity that the young men want to portray to the society as an influence on their fashion choices. The research contributes knowledge on how young men construct their identity and masculinity and how it is changing with time and with fashion trends.

The argument that the author advances is convincing because the research findings support it. The author argues that women are not the only ones who use fashion choices as a tool for communicating their femininity, but that men use fashion to express their masculinity. The results show that more men are adopting fashionable trends. The men are conscious about their clothing and are careful not to exceed limits that may undermine their masculinity. Clothing made the young men confident, thus showing its effect on self-identity. The young men have adopted fashion trends as an indicator of their masculinity to enable them to gain acceptance in the society.

The review of the existing literature on the topic because the author uses material that considers various aspects of the research topic. The literature review considers the construction of masculinity in the society, comparison with females, plastic surgery among men, identity and consumption of fashion products and relation to the emotional wellbeing of the person. Some of the terms are well defined as is the case with masculinity at the beginning of the first paragraph of the review of literature. Other terms are however not defined including social inclusion.

The article does not directly identify the hypothesis that are to be analyzed. The article describes the results of the study before identifying the hypothesis that will be investigated. The hypothesis are thus phrased ambiguously, proving the researcher with too much freedom with regard to the research questions that are to be answered. Consequently, it is impossible to accept or reject the hypothesis due to the absence of any explicitly stated hypothesis.

The article does not identify the research questions that motivated the researcher to conduct the study. The hypothesis can only be extracted from the results that have been obtained. The research questions are thus not clearly stated and require a person reading the article to extract the questions from the results obtained. The absence of clear and specific research questions make it difficult to understand the objectives that are to be met by the research paper. Research questions can only be derived from the reported results.

 
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