Attitude Representation of Masculinity

The construction and representation of masculinity on the Attiude.co.uk website is very vital, as the website aims to target a male LGBTQ audience. This is done through a variety of written and technical codes on the online site. One article which constructs this idea of masculinity is this article about Alec Baldwin. The article discusses his history against the LGBTQ community, and his attitude towards them. However, the article is heavily framed against his views and critiques his ideas. This is evident in the headline of the article, where Attitude label Baldwin as a "toxic little queen". This bit of humour used in the headline of the article critiques Baldwin's views, on a traditional society, and the ideas of what masculinity actually is itself. Whilst this also diminishes him, positioning the audience to see him in a ironic way know. Furthermore, this humorous tone is then further reinforced in the declarative sentence "previously made headlines for remarks about our community that are very bald indeed". The use of the adjective "bald" is used to play on Baldwin's own name, replacing the "o" in the qualitative adjective "bold" when describing Baldwin's views on the LGBTQ community. The article compiles numerous quotes from Baldwin himself, where he critiques the LGBTQ community, as it shows the hypocrisies of his views in some very ironic statements. Such as in the interrogative “You’re on your knees in that photo What’s up with that, Garrett?”, which seems very unnecessary to the issues which he is attempting to raise, as he has taken a photo completely out of the context of which it was take.

Overall, Attitude provides its audience with a very progressive representation of masculinity, as we see articles breaking down and subverting these stereotypes of masculinity. One article which is evident of this being an article about Ncuti Gatwa. There are multiple articles featuring Gatwa as well as him being the model for their 30 year anniversary issue, which i think highlights how Attitude may be positioning him as a role model for other men to look up to, as he openly expresses his own beliefs and expresses himself. These articles clearly challenge these stereotypes of masculinity, which can be seen allow in the images of the articles. In these images, we see Gatwa's costume which clearly challenges ideas of what men should wear, as we see him wearing latex, which isn't typically associated with masculinity. Furthermore, these articles are also used to raise awareness on numerous topics such as mental health, LGBTQ pride and racism. These issues are breakdown these stereotypes specifically of men and being masculine is to be stoic. Whereas, in these articles Gatwa shows lots of compassion and awareness of current issues that LGBTQ men are faced with. However, it may construct the idea of what the idea body is for men to have to be masculine. Moreover, Attitude heavily rely on this idea of a shared conceptual road map, in order to rely information to its audience. One example of this relating back to the construction and representation of men and masculinity, is in this article about Ncuti. This article relies on the audience's extratextual knowledge of who he is, and why he is so important in representing this story, and it uses this to construct this idea of masculinity and the idea of what a man should look like.