1.1 2.1 2.2 'Justin Bieber Sounds Girlie': Young People's Celebrity Talk and Contemporary Masculinities by Kim Allen, Laura Harvey and Heather Mendick University of Leeds; University of Surrey; Brunel University Sociological Research Online, 20 (3), 12 <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/12.html> DOI: 10.5153/sro.3738 Received: 2 Apr 2015 | Accepted: 29 Jun 2015 | Published: 31 Aug 2015 Abstract In this article, we explore the ways that contemporary young masculinities are performed and regulated through young people's relationship with celebrity. We address the relative paucity of work on young men's engagements with popular culture. Drawing on qualitative data from group interviews with 148 young people (aged 14-17) in England, we identify 'celebrity talk' as a site in which gender identities are governed, negotiated and resisted. Specifically we argue that celebrity as a space of imagination can bring to the study of masculinities a focus on their affective and collective mobilisation. Unpicking young men's and women's talk about Canadian pop star Justin Bieber and British boyband One Direction, we show how disgust and humour operate as discursive-affective practices which open up and close down certain meanings and identities. We conclude that while there have been shifts in the ways that masculinities are performed and regulated, hierarchies of masculinities anchored through hegemonic masculinity remain significant. Keywords: Affect, Celebrity, Youth, Masculinity, Sexuality, Gender Introduction Studies of young women's engagement with music, magazines and celebrity demonstrate that popular culture constructs and regulates gender but also that girls actively use these texts to make sense of their identities (Allen 2011; Duits 2010; Jackson et al. 2013; Read 2011; Walkerdine 1997). These studies have focused on the 'doing' of femininities within and through the popular. Yet scholars have paid remarkably little attention either to young men's engagements with popular culture or to popular constructions of young masculinities. In this paper, we take our lead from research that has begun to reveal the complex ways that popular culture informs both young women's and young men's identities; and how it is central to the construction of femininities and masculinities (Allen & Mendick 2013; Buckingham & Bragg 2004; Cann 2014; Nayak & Kehily 2008). Specifically we show that celebrity as a space of imagination can bring to the study of young masculinities a focus on their affective and collective mobilisation. Using data from 24 group interviews with 148 young people aged 14-17 in England, we attend to the role of disgust and humour in performances of masculinities and the ways that gendered identities are governed, negotiated and resisted. To begin, we elaborate our social constructionist approach to gender. Doing masculinities: fighting, fucking, football and frolicking puppies Our social constructionist approach to gender builds on a body of masculinities research in sociology and discursive psychology which views masculinities as plural, situated, shifting and always infused by power relations (for example, Barnes 2012; Connell 1995; Frosh et al. 2002; Mac an Ghaill 1994). Masculinities (and femininities) are produced through discourses. A discursive approach sees talk as collective meanings and social practices, not transparent reflections of inner attitudes or outer realities ( MacLure 2003; Potter & Wetherell 1987). These studies understand men's and boy's gender identities as shaped by normative discourses which are socially, culturally and historically specific. They also define masculinities as places in gender relations which are not exclusively occupied by men (Connell & Messershcmidt 2005; Halberstam 1998; Mendick 2006). We use Connell's (1995) framework of a hierarchy of multiple masculinities. Hegemonic masculinity 'embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women' (Connell 1995: 77). While http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/12.html 1 01/09/2015