Caring masculinities and the politics of feminist representation in the Portuguese media

TL;DR

This paper examines how TV ads in Portugal portray caring masculinities and how these representations can both challenge and reinforce traditional gender norms.

Contribution

The study introduces a nuanced analysis of how media representations of caring masculinities can both challenge and co-opt feminist ideals.

Findings

Some TV ads present alternative models of masculinity through care and emotional availability.

Other ads reinforce heterosexual, middle-class norms, limiting the transformative potential of caring masculinities.

Media representations of caring masculinities can both challenge and stabilize patriarchal structures.

Abstract

In recent decades, the focus on masculinities as a means to sustain or challenge patriarchy has gained significant attention. Concepts such as “hegemonic masculinity”, which embodies the legitimation of patriarchy, and “toxic masculinities”, which encompasses its socially destructive dimensions, have been central to this debate. More recently, “caring masculinities”, have emerged as a potential entry point—not without challenges or ambivalences—for deconstructing patriarchy and the gender-based violence that it perpetuates. The construction and validation of patriarchy have always been closely tied to representations of traditional ideals of masculinity and femininity. Similarly, dismantling patriarchy and gender-based violence is intrinsically connected to representations that foster and uphold gender equality. Given their capacity to create and validate specific representations, media text play a crucial role in shaping, challenging, and reinforcing gender norms and roles. By producing powerful, mobilizing gendered scripts and narratives, media can serve as a transformative tool for either maintaining or disrupting established gender hierarchies. This article focuses on TV advertisements in Portugal to analyze the portrayal of “caring masculinities” and explore how these representations challenge traditional ideals of masculinity. From a collection of 1,602 videos corresponding to TV advertisements for the ten most promoted brands on Portuguese TV in 2015, 247 ads were selected for their alignment with themes of fatherhood, domestic work, and caregiving. Using quantitative content analysis to examine this final corpus of 1,602 videos, this article explores how caring masculinities are represented and negotiated, and discusses how the presence of caring masculinities and their practices, which tend to showcase alternative models of “being a man”, challenge or coopt notions of hegemonic and toxic masculinities—cornerstones of patriarchy and gender-based violence. While some ads present alternative models of masculinity associated with care, emotional availability, and non-violence, others reframe care in ways that reinforce heterosexual, middle-class, and consumerist norms, thereby limiting their transformative potential. The article concludes that media representations of caring masculinities tend to hold both emancipatory possibilities and significant constraints in the sense that while they can challenge aspects of hegemonic and toxic masculinities by legitimising care-oriented practices, they may also co-opt feminist and equality discourses in ways that ultimately stabilise patriarchal structures.