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The ambiguity of ‘new’ masculinities: Zayn Malik and disordered eating

Conversations concerning gender ideals, gender roles and equality have been revitalized in the public sphere following the rise of the #MeToo movement, and increased scrutiny is directed towards the behaviours, attitudes and values associated with men and masculinity. In the following, I attempt to explicate the ambiguous gendered meanings afforded by Zayn Malik’s multiply constructed persona in context of the current cultural moment in which masculinity appears in a state of flux. By drawing on the theorisation of hybrid masculinities (Bridges and Pascoe 2018), I focus in particular on Zayn’s openness about disordered eating in relation to narratives concerning ‘new’ masculinities. Because celebrity displays of identity are central to the cultural debates that shape social norms (Marshall and Redmond 2016, p. 2), it is imperative to ascertain how gender politics play out in the pop culture that serves as the backdrop to our daily lives. After leaving the boy band One Direction in 2015, Zayn established himself as one of pop music’s most celebrated solo artists. He has been praised by the mainstream media as contributing to ‘changing how we think about masculinity’ (BBC 2016; see also RixStanding 2018). Most notably, he is one of few male celebrities who have spoken openly about contending with disordered eating, thus broaching one of the most persistent taboos in the masculine domain. Zayn stated straightforwardly in his autobiography that ‘I was suffering from an eating disorder’ (Malik 2016, p. 171). Even though the term ‘eating disorder’ covers a broad variety of practices with complex symptoms and roots, such practices have overwhelmingly been treated more simplistically in public discourse and the media as a ‘women’s illness’ (O’Hara and Smith 2007). Accordingly, men living with eating disorders are stigmatized (Strother et al. 2012), the ‘feminine illness’ posing a threat to their masculinities. Zayn’s disclosure of his disordered eating was met with overwhelmingly positive reactions in the mainstream media, which lauded him as ‘emotionally evolved’ (Eyre 2017) and contributing to changing views of the connection between eating disorders and masculinity (Blay 2016). Indeed, Zayn’s openness about this issue is taken to validate narratives of ‘new’ masculinities’ potential for ushering in positive social change, a notion that appears increasingly compelling in the post#MeToo media and celebrity discourse. The term ‘new man’ has been associated with ‘softer’ configurations of masculinity (see Messerschmidt andMessner 2018, p. 48), often includingdisplays of emotion and vulnerability,