Masculinities change and they are learned. Generational differences, attitudes, practices and societal changes create and challenge masculinity. In youth, masculinities are transmitted from other men to younger men (Pompper 683). In the early 1900s of America, organized sports were popularized and the Boy Scouts of America were founded to instill manliness in boys (683). Some scholars posit that commercial masculinity, the current change in conventional, normative masculinitybegan in the 1950s through the "heterosexual hedonist" featured in Playboy magazine. (Shugart 282). Similarly, since the 1950's the social roles of men and women have changed. The success of women's movements has altered the limits of traditional masculinity, leaving men conflicted about their role in society (Pompper 682). As the barriers between the genders have diminished, the appeal of accessories, grooming habits and health fads of men has grown (Shugart 285). Ultimately, the 1980's are regarded as the prominent culture shift toward objectification of the male body (282). This shift is attributed to the proliferation of men's fashions, and a "new aesthetic codes" for how men were represented in film, television and advertising (282). These new representations of men brought in a new generation of men's lifestyle magazines where there had been very few before (Mooney 248).

30 years later, it appears that commercial masculinity is not a trend; it continues to steadily increase. According to The Economist, "The market for men's fashion, accessories, grooming products, and body/fitness goods and services is anticipated to continue to increase indefinitely, at an exponential rate" (qtd in Shugart 282). As a result, the market is now shaping men's wants and needs with this reconstructed masculinity that according to Edwards, "demonstrates very few signs of postfeminist consciousness and many more indications of intensely sexualized and phallocentric muscularity" (qtd in 283). From 1984-1990 the men's magazine industry saw an emergence of "new man" imagery, which showed men being sexualized as men (Rahman 229). According to Momin Rahman, "this moment signifies the end of masculinity being taken as the universal norm, and marks the beginning of men being addressed as a specific gender" (229). This differentiation upsets Mulvey's argument that visuality is structured into a Freud's concept of gender where, "pleasure looking has been split between active/male and passive/female" (Rose 159). The masculine position is to look, and the female is to be looked at. This "new man" imagery caused men to do the looking and be looked at, resulting in a reshaping of the hegemonic masculinity, since the visuality had been altered. Hegemonic masculinity is "culturally normative ideals of masculinity within a structure of social relations where some men are subordinated" (Ricciardelli 65). It can be viewed as a role, status, perspective, behavior or characteristic (65). Typically, when a hegemonic masculinity is challenged a new hegemony emerges (Ricciardelli 65). But when a hegemonic masculinity becomes an ideal that it not easily realizable, it creates a situation where men are forced to challenge their identities (Ricciardelli 65).