Dressing masculinities

Muted colours, aesthetic citizenship and nation-building in Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Bibliographic Data

ID4772901
AuthorsYang Zhao (0000-0003-4913-8505, The University of Queensland, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume28
Issue1
Pages84-99
Publication date2024-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13621025.2024.2348869
OpenAlexW4397047047
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited39

This article explores the sartorial practices of Uzbek men across diverse urban contexts in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, highlighting the significance of muted colours as a discursive site for asserting aesthetic citizenship. Drawing on thirteen months of fieldwork, this article depicts how the dressed bodies of working-class young men are intertwined with notions of hegemonic masculinity and Uzbekness. It also analyses how nation-building narratives give rise to gendered sartorial norms and forms of self-discipline, bolstered by everyday dress regulations. I argue that working-class young men’s preference for muted colours, rooted in the Soviet aesthetic’s prioritization of practicality and simplicity, serves as a somatic means of de-beautification, which allows them both to distance themselves from ‘foreign’ fashion and consolidate masculine subjectivities. Thus, embodied sartorial practices become a gendered stance against supposedly zararli (harmful) foreign ideologies and an assertion of aesthetic citizenship against a background of an ongoing surge of gendered nationalism in Uzbekistan

Aesthetics · Art · Citizenship · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Soviet and Russian History

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