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2023.02.13

The Work of a Male Fashion Model (Masafumi Monden)

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Flipping through a fashion magazine, picking out the latest fashion items. Even if you buy the same item that you think would work, you look somewhat awkward in the mirror. What's different between the model in the magazine and yourself? The models are indeed a class apart.
Quite a few people must have had this experience. A profession that elegantly wears the latest fashion items and becomes the object of people's admiration: that's what can be said about fashion models. Nowadays, singers and entertainers are also making a splash as fashion models.
However, when did fashion models start to exist? Was being a fashion model always a coveted profession? With such questions in mind, I had a conversation with Masafumi Monden of the University of Sydney, who is researching male fashion models.
PROFILE
Masafumi Monden
Masafumi Monden

Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the Faculty of Language and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney. Completed a doctoral program at the University of Technology Sydney. Postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Design, University of Technology Sydney, and lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia before assuming his current post in 2022. His research field includes popular fashion and visual culture in modern Japanese history, leading to numerous papers on manga, ballet, music videos, advertising culture, and figure skating. His major publications include "Japanese Fashion Cultures: Dress and Gender in Contemporary Japan" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

First, please tell us about your research so far.
My specialty is Japanese popular culture. I study how gender, society, and history are reflected in fashion, magazines, music videos, movies, and so on.

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