Hard looks: Masculinities, spectatorship and contemporary consumption

Why start with this invocation of a 50-second television and cinema advertisement that ran in the UK from Boxing Day 1985 through until the Autumn of 1986? The advert is important to the story this book sets out to tell for a number of reasons. First, it brings together a particular and distinctive set of codings of masculinity that occupy a central place in the book as a whole. The foregrounding of the surface of the body is central to "Launderette's" representation of masculinity. Through the choice of camera shots, an intensity is produced in the framing of the masculine body in the advert. As Nick Kamen, the model, undresses a series of looks are formally established that bring the viewer's eye close up to his face, chest, arms, thighs and bottom. A fragmentation of his body is produced in these shots that undercuts the more established codes of aggression and power associated with masculine display. The revealed torso and Kamen's features combine to allow the display of both developed (but not too hard) muscularity and a marked softness and sensuality connoted through his soft lips, eyes and skin-tone.