Where Else Could That Ever Happen? The Reproduction of Heteronormative Masculinity on a Catholic College Campus

Abstract

This article considers how a Catholic college’s men’s beauty pageant serves as an arena where cultural ideals of heteronormative masculinity are constructed, performed, and reinforced. Since its inception in 1998, the annual “Mr. Brookfield” pageant has become a way of promoting solidarity and discouraging dissent in regard to gender and sexuality on campus. Through a qualitative analysis of materials promoting and discussing the event on campus, I argue that the performance celebrates and reinforces heteronormative masculinity, which has implications for the student culture as a whole. Located within the context of the Catholic institution, the perpetuation of heteronormative masculinity and the policies of the Church together ensure that the marginalization of women and gay people persists. As reflected in the archival documents, the pageant has become an important way of doing so, through the construction and celebration of a heteronormative masculine identity that calls attention to the boundaries between feminine and masculine and straight and gay, the degradation of women as a way of demonstrating the heterosexuality and masculinity of the contestants, and the promotion of this masculine identity as the ideal within the student culture.