Over the last several years, more and more men's lifestyle magazines, offering self-help and bodily discipline articles, have become available. According to some observers, this generation of “new magazines” reflects a trend toward men's changing gender relations and bodily and self-identities; according to others, these magazines stabilize the traditional relationship between hegemonic and subordinated masculinities. Either way, the male body seems to be at the core of a concern (and a gaze) centered on a consumerist use and representation. The male body is a desirable and desiring one, concerned with health, fitness, and beauty, which define an “embodied masculine lifestyle.”

Not only are masculinities and male bodies socially constructed and imagined (the media—including men's lifestyle magazines—being one of the primary factors in that construction, with daily ...