“Sensitive and Real Macho All at the Same Time”

Abstract

What is the place of romance in young men's lives? Do young men enact a romantic masculinity? This article examines young men's experience of romance and what investments they have in romantic identity. Drawing on a New Zealand—based sample of seventeen-to nineteen-year-olds, the author investigates the way in which romantic masculinity is evoked during seventeen focus-group discussions. The article explores whether romantic masculinity offers a new form of masculinity in New Zealand and to what extent it departs from hegemonic practices of “hard” masculinity. Its potential as a nonhegemonic form of masculinity that challenges oppressive heterosexual relations is also analyzed. It is argued that the particular expression of romantic masculinity evidenced in this research no longer constitutes a subordinate form of masculinity in New Zealand. Instead, “doing romance” is theorized as being reconfigured within the operation of hegemonic masculinity in a way that highlights the flexibility and stability of these practices of power.