Materialising masculinity : men and interior design

This paper investigates men's engagements with interior design and decoration in contemporary Australia. Data is drawn from an in-depth qualitative study of men's domestic practices in inner Sydney, and include interviews, diaries, home tours and photographs. The project seeks to understand new relationships between masculinity, home and homemaking in a context of changing gender, work, lifestyle and household patterns. Utilising an analytical lens informed by cultural geographies of home, in this paper I scrutinise what the data reveals about shifting associations between gender, the domestic sphere, and material dimensions of homemaking. Against the traditional ideology of the domestic sphere and its constituent practices as a feminine domain, the men in this study are highly engaged in interior design, active in composing the appearance of their homes alone and alongside their partners. Morevover, I find that their involvement in the material aesthetics of home is deeply entwined with fostering comfort and wellbeing, expressing personalities and identities, and strengthening relationships. Consequently, I argue that masculinity and domesticity are bound together in ever more complex correlations: men's increasing participation in interior design, amongst other domestic practices, is simultaneously shifting gendered meanings of home and generating new (domestic) masculine subjectivities.