Men, Masculinity, and Fashion in Early 20th-Century Puerto Rico

This paper explores fashion, consumption and modernity in Puerto Rico during the first three decades of the 20th century. The paper argues that the Puerto Ricans debated conflicting conceptions of modernity and expressed their concerns and fears about its impact, especially on gender notions, through fashion texts and images. Most of those texts, images, and discussions revolved around women, their behavior, and even their physical body. The study explores that the men were definitely interpellated by fashion discourses, for example, Puerto Rican men were advised to be well-groomed, sensible, gentle, and have good manners, while, at the same time, they were urged to be careful, to avoid too much refinement, too much finesse etc. Evidently, there are clashing representations of masculinity, to distinguish fashionability of the modern day Puerto Rican man, as well as the promotion of consumption as the way to become a modern man. The paper also discusses the “great male renunciation” in the Puerto Rican context.