‘The meat market’: production and regulation of masculinities on the Grindr grid in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

Abstract

This article explores the regulatory practices that shape the production of embodied masculinities in profile pictures in the online dating app, Grindr. Mobile dating applications are becoming increasingly enmeshed in everyday socio-sexual lives, providing ‘new’ spaces for construction, embodiment and performance of gender and sexuality. I draw on 31 semi-structured interviews and four participant research diaries with men who use Grindr in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a post-industrial city in North East England. Exploring the ways men display, expose and place their bodies in online profile pictures, revealed the production of two forms of masculinity – hypersexualised masculinity and lifestyle masculinity. I argue that the regulatory practices that shape men’s bodies in everyday spaces work to produce these masculinities. I take a visual approach that pays attention to the spatial practices that produce pictures, but that also pays attention to other senses, particularly touch. Paying attention to the visuality of the Grindr grid enables an understanding of the instability of online/offline dichotomies, as it is the interactions of online and offline spaces that enable the production of digital masculinities.

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Gender, Place & Culture
A Journal of Feminist Geography
ISSN: 0966-369X (Print) 1360-0524 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgpc20
‘The meat market’: production and regulation of
masculinities on the Grindr grid in Newcastle-
upon-Tyne, UK
Carl Bonner-Thompson
To cite this article: Carl Bonner-Thompson (2017): ‘The meat market’: production and regulation
of masculinities on the Grindr grid in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, Gender, Place & Culture, DOI:
10.1080/0966369X.2017.1356270
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1356270
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa
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GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1356270
‘The meat market’: production and regulation of
masculinities on the Grindr grid in Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
UK
CarlBonner-Thompson
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
ABSTRACT
This article explores the regulatory practices that shape the
production of embodied masculinities in prole pictures in
the online dating app, Grindr. Mobile dating applications are
becoming increasingly enmeshed in everyday socio-sexual
lives, providing ‘new’ spaces for construction, embodiment
and performance of gender and sexuality. I draw on 31 semi-
structured interviews and four participant research diaries
with men who use Grindr in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a post-
industrial city in North East England. Exploring the ways
men display, expose and place their bodies in online prole
pictures, revealed the production of two forms of masculinity –
hypersexualised masculinity and lifestyle masculinity. I argue
that the regulatory practices that shape men’s bodies in
everyday spaces work to produce these masculinities. I take
a visual approach that pays attention to the spatial practices
that produce pictures, but that also pays attention to other
senses, particularly touch. Paying attention to the visuality of
the Grindr grid enables an understanding of the instability of
online/oine dichotomies, as it is the interactions of online
and oine spaces that enable the production of digital
masculinities.
‘The meat market’: consuming digital masculinities
Josh: I think any dating prole sort of thing is a place for advertising, it’s selling yourself
essentially, you obviously, you’re using that prole with an aim in mind, so it’s a
market, it’s a meat market essentially. You do have to advertise yourself to a cer-
tain extent, you do have to convince someone like that you are what they want
and what they desire. So yeah, like Grindr is a place like that, I truly believe that.
(Josh, 23, white British)
Scholars in digital geographies and new media and digital cultural studies argue
that digital spaces are deeply entangled with the eshy corporeality of embodied
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 16 March 2017
Accepted15 May 2017
KEYWORDS
Masculinities; geographies
of sexualities; Grindr; bodies;
digital geographies
CONTACT Carl Bonner-Thompson c.a.b.thompson@ncl.ac.uk
OPEN ACCESS
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2 C. BONNERTHOMPSON
experience (van Doorn 2011; Longhurst 2013; Kinsley 2014; Rose 2015). Such work
argues that (dis)embodied experiences should be further explored to understand
how digital technologies recongure everyday lives (Parr 2002; Rose 2015). As
Kinsley (2014, 378) states, this involves thinking about the ‘manifold ways in which
technical activities convene assemblages of bodies, objects, languages, values and
so on and fold them in and out of spatial practice’. Drawing upon conceptual and
theoretical ideas oered by ‘digital geographies’, this article examines how spaces,
bodies and technologies are mutually constituted in and through Grindr (Parr
2002; Kinsley 2014; Chen 2015). I focus on the taking and choosing of Grindr prole
pictures to understand how men who use Grindr bring their bodies into digital
being (Parr 2002; van Doorn 2011; Kinsley 2014). I argue that regulatory processes
and practices that shape the everyday material lives of men produce masculinities
across the Grindr grid. I contribute to debates in feminist and digital geographies
by paying attention to how the interactions of online and oine spaces (re)pro-
duce and subvert discourses of gender and sexuality across multiple places.
Work in critical men’s studies argues that bodies are the focal point for the
combination of material and discursive symbolism (Morgan 1992; Connell 1995;
Messerschmidt 1999). Geographies of masculinities pay attention to how embod-
ied masculinities emerge in and the across the spaces and places that they are
practiced (Jackson 1991; Berg and Longhurst 2003; Hopkins and Noble 2009).
Geographers have built on these insights by exploring issues such as masculinities
and age (Hopkins 2006; Richardson 2013), sexualities (Gorman-Murray 2006, 2013),
eshy corporeality (Longhurst 2005; Waitt and Stanes 2015) and emotion and sen-
suality (Evers 2009; Warren 2015). Much of this work attends to the ways mascu-
linities come to be regulated, produced, ruptured, (re)shaped and challenged in
men’s everyday lives, practices and geographies (Yea 2015). I develop this work
by highlighting how regulatory practices that shape masculinities emerge in the
digital through the (re)production of gendered and sexualised bodies.
Grindr is an online dating application targeted at men. The platform has argua
-
bly become a popular place for eeting erotic encounters, sexualised behaviours
and ‘hooking up’ (Tziallas 2015). When a user logs into Grindr they are provided
with a grid of other users. The grid consists of small boxes showing scaled down
versions of user prole pictures. This grid shows men in order of location, with the
top prole being the user’s own, and others become more geographically distant
the further the user moves down the grid. Users can scroll through the grid and
view the proles of other men, but can only access a limited number of proles
unless they pay a subscription fee.
Existing research around Grindr tends to focus on gay men’s ‘risky’ sexual behav-
iours (Rice et al. 2012), HIV interventions (Burrell et al. 2012), or the production of
poor mental well-being (Miller 2015; Jaspal 2017). These studies can pathologise
gay men’s sexual subjectivities, as they conate Grindr practices with sexually trans-
mitted diseases and mental health discourses. Such discourses can essentialise the
bodily complexities that shape gendered and sexualised subjectivities. Instead, I
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GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 3
examine how masculinities and sexualities are negotiated and produced through
the Grindr grid to understand the lived experience of being a man who uses Grindr.
Analysis of 30 interviews and four participant research diaries revealed two
relational productions of embodied masculinities on Grindr proles – hypersex-
ualised and lifestyle masculinities. Although these are not the only masculinities
that occupy the Grindr grid, they were the most commonly embodied by partici-
pants and therefore most dominant. Hypersexualised masculinities are produced
though photos that focus on bodies and exposed esh and skin. In these pic-
tures the context of the image is blurred or the body takes up all space obscuring
the background. It is the absence of a visible context and place that gives rise to
the hypersexualised embodiment. Hypersexualised Grindr users are assumed to
be attempting to attract men who are interested in eeting sexual encounters.
Conversely, lifestyle masculinities are produced though pictures where bodies
are given some context (e.g. a beach, a bar, or music event). These places have
signicance to the image as they work to produce specic performances of gender.
These two productions of embodied masculinities are not mutually exclusive –
those men who construct a lifestyle masculinity can still be sexualised and vice
versa. However, ‘lifestyle’ highlights how men who use Grindr attempt to con-
struct a prole that encapsulates broader practices (e.g. leisure, tourism, or work).
Furthermore, these productions do not exist independently in online spaces, and
instead they are interwoven with the ways masculinities come to be regulated in
everyday lives (van Doorn 2011; Longhurst 2013).
Before I explore the empirical material that has informed these typologies, I dis-
cuss the methodology, highlighting how a visual approach pays attention to place
and appreciates the senses beyond sight. Following, are three empirical examples.
In the rst, I demonstrate that productions of hypersexualised masculinities are
attempts to ‘sell sex’ through the exposure of parts of the esh and the skin. In
the second, I show how productions of lifestyle masculinities emerge through
the regulatory practices that shape men’s material oine bodies and therefore,
men who use Grindr aim to market more ‘active’ dimensions of the self. The third
example highlights how hypersexualised and lifestyle masculinities can intersect.
I draw upon regulations of aged masculinities on Grindr to highlight how skin can
be used to (re)create digital bodies and confuse lifestyles. Through these examples,
I highlight how everyday spatial practices and processes can blur the boundaries
of these two typologies as they inform the production of one another.
Newcastle has received great investment in leisure, services, culture and tourism
to re-develop and re-brand the post-industrial city as a cosmopolitan place that is
desirable to visit. Gay pride in Newcastle is a commercialised event that is heavily
policed and has become a ‘family-orientated’ celebration of non-heterosexuality.
The non-heterosexual zones of the city have also become desexualised, commod-
ied and branded ‘safe’ places. This zone is informally named the Pink Triangle – a
section of the city that is ‘triangulated’ by the location of non-heterosexual bars/
clubs. Many cruising and public sex zones were placed under increased regulation
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4 C. BONNERTHOMPSON
and re-development. Consequently, the non-heterosexual night time economy
became sanitised and unwelcome to, what Casey (2007) describes as, the ‘Queer
unwanted’ – queer bodies that do not conform to the young, white, able-bodied,
men that most commonly frequent the ‘scene’. These processes that exclude ‘older’
men are evident in my research, and several participants explained how they must
be negotiated through the Grindr.
Newcastle’s gay scene is also dominated by white men, and white bodies go
unnoticed, unpoliced and produced as having ‘no race’. Issues of race and ethnicity
were not prominent in discussion of Grindr with participants. However, as white-
ness is dominant in Newcastle, men are rarely confronted with their privilege.
Therefore, the typologies I discuss are in relation to identities articulated by white
men In Newcastle, it was issues of body size and age which are more dominant for
men who use Grindr. The following section discusses the methodological approach
that underpins the conceptualisation of the typologies.
‘Recruiting from the meat market’: men, masculinities and
methodologies
Previous research examining masculinity across dating websites has relied on
visual methods, such as content analysis of proles (Payne 2007; Mowlabocus
2010; Siibak 2010; Walker and Eller 2016). This article explores the visuality of
Grindr proles. Pink (2012) highlights how place and locality are central to visual
methodologies. She argues that visuality should examine how material and digital
practices and localities become entangled in the visual. Therefore, technologies
that produce images are not detached. Instead, they are complexly embedded
in a multitude of oine experiences (Banks 2001). How we experience the visual
dimensions of the digital is multi-sensuous. This draws attention to the ways that
images are more than visual, instead they come into cultural being through touch,
sounds, smells, tastes and sights (Pink 2012). Therefore, I focus on how the pro-
duction of masculinities on Grindr are done to foster a desire to touch in other
users. I use ideas oered by Price (2013) who argues that the eyes act as organs of
touch. For Price, the eyes can approximate touch in a way that can bring bodies
closer, or keep them at a distance. I use these ideas to suggest that men who use
Grindr are attempting to create their digital bodies as ‘touchable’, in a way that
attracts other users.
I build on this work on visuality by paying attention to the power dynamics
that shape the interconnectedness of the online/oine. Thinking about the mate-
riality of the visual and the digital is a way for feminist geographers to examine
the power relations that co-produce online spaces (Morrow, Hawkins, and Kern
2015). By focusing on the eyes as organs of touch, I suggest that looking, or being
looked at, is shaped by regulatory discourses and practices. Through interviews
and participant research diaries I explore how the material regulations of mascu-
linities (re)produce pictures, images and proles. Therefore, I pay attention to the
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GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 5
ways interactions of online and oine space enable gendered and sexual power
relations to emerge.
As part of my project I set up a prole on Grindr between July and December
2015. My prole asked users if they would be interested in talking about their
experiences of gender, sexuality and Grindr. I used three dierent pictures of myself
during this time. Once a participant had contacted me, I provided more informa-
tion about the interview. For example, I explained that it would be informal and
semi-structured, and I oered users the option to read over information sheets and
consent forms before agreeing to take part. The forms were sent via e-mail. If the
user agreed to be interviewed, we arranged a time and place to meet via e-mail or
through Grindr. I conducted interviews in public cafes in Newcastle city centre or
in a Newcastle University building. Despite having the option, most participants
preferred that I chose the location.
All participants in this study identied as gay men and were aged between
20 and 50. 25 men identied as white British, and the remaining ve identied
as Filipino, British Pakistani, Pacic Islander, mixed race and Southeast Asian. The
interviews lasted between one and two hours, with open discussions about how
participants used Grindr, the sexual and non-sexual experiences they had with
men from Grindr, what qualities they found attractive in men and how they saw
themselves as men. Four of these interview participants agreed to write partici-
pant research diaries, which were sent to me via WhatsApp and e-mail. The inter-
views and diaries were coded with NVivo and analysed using a grounded theory
approach.
The pictures I used were of my smiling face and clothed torso against a wall. I
attempted to ‘construct boundaries’ by being explicit about my research intentions
to limit the amount of people that may have (mis)read my online presence as
looking for sex or dates (Cuomo and Massaro 2014; Taylor, Falconer, and Snowdon
2014). As a young, gay man who has previously used Grindr socially, I could easily
be understood and recognised as an ‘insider’. Cuomo and Massaro (2014) argue
that some feminist research ‘insiders’ may actually benet from constructing cer-
tain boundaries as a way to protect the wellbeing of researchers and researched.
I used the phrase ‘looking for research participants only’, alongside details about
the project as a way to ‘separate’ myself from Grindr users. However, I still received
multiple sexually suggestive and explicit messages and pictures. My face and my
body were sometimes the focus of these messages, and users said things such
as, ‘I didn’t read your prole, I just saw your cute face and long hair’, and ‘wow,
you’re hot’. One non-respondent commented on one particular picture where I
was wearing a shirt with the rst two buttons undone. Upon realising that I was
not interested in a ‘hook up’, he said ‘you’re being a tease, showing us all your
chest like that’. In the context of the conversation he was making a joke, however
this did prompt me to change my picture to one were my body was more fully
‘covered’. On reection, my body and prole were subject to a form of regulation.
Despite attempting to construct a researcher prole, I was still clearly entangled in
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6 C. BONNERTHOMPSON
the sexual politics that shape Grindr. My exposed body emerged as a site of erotic
potential. Once other Grindr users understood that I was not using the space for
dating or hooking up, the exposure of my body was policed. Therefore, my body
– the constitution of the eshy and the digital – was entangled in this research
(Longhurst, Ho, and Johnston 2008). This could arguably be a way for other users
to attempt to negotiate my rejection of the sexual uses of the app. It is important
for researchers using apps for recruitment to fully consider the potential readings
of their bodies and their parts in prole pictures. Despite attempting to engage
in ‘boundary-making’ (Cuomo and Massaro 2014), the sexualised nature of this
online space often shaped the way my body was understood, and the ways that
regulation of online identities occurred. The following section further explores
hypersexual masculinities by drawing upon empirical examples.
‘Sex sells’: hypersexualised masculinities
Some Grindr users chose to show dierent parts of their unclothed bodies in their
prole pictures. Only certain body parts are able to be exposed in pictures as
Grindr have ‘prole guidelines’ that restrict complete nudity. Therefore, users are
unable to use naked pictures, or pictures that highlight the shape of their geni-
tals through clothing. The degree of exposure varied, and included, but was not
exclusive to, shirtless men, and men in underwear and unbuttoned clothes. Some
pictures focused on particular parts of the body, leaving out the ‘full’ body. In the
following quote, a participant describes his exposed body in his prole picture
and how and why he chose it:
Joe: it’s a picture of my body with my shirt open, the reason I picked it is cos’ I was sat
own on the couch and I was eating ice cream and I was like I should really start
my diet now, this was a couple of weeks back, and I went, ‘how bad am I actually?’.
And I went to the mirror, unbuttoned my shirt, took a photo and I actually quite
liked the outcome of it.
Carl: Is there any reason you chose to have your shirt open in the picture?
Joe: I feel it just starts a lot more conversation with people, showing a bit of esh. Sex
sells, and if you’ve got to sell yourself on these apps, that’s the way to do it. (Joe,
24, white British, call centre assistant)
Joe is attempting to increase interest in his prole by using images of his skin
and esh, as he has come to learn that bodies that reveal more skin are more
desirable across the grid. In this example Joe’s body becomes ‘dismantled’ and
one ‘part’ – his torso – is the main feature of his digital body (Mowlabocus 2010).
This part of his body is used as something to be consumed, and he is doing so
in a way that he thinks can demand the ‘gaze’ of others in the ‘competitive’ grid.
The ways men look through Grindr can be multi-sensuous. Looking is something
that we do with our eyes, but we also ‘touch’ with them (Marks 2000; Price 2013).
Grindr seeks to put people ‘in touch’, both through conversation but also cutaneous
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GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 7
touch. As mentioned earlier, Grindr is centred on location and proximity, showing
users within a localised, geographic radius. In this sense, the aim for many men
is to meet in the esh and to touch the skin. By showing the skin, men who use
Grindr are attempting to create a desire to touch in users on ‘the other side’ of the
screen. Therefore, digital masculinities emerge when bodies and skin become
sites of eroticism and sexuality, with hypersexual bodies intersecting with youth,
size, shape and whiteness.
Joe understands his skin as a site to ‘sell’ his body. However, taking the image was
not a sexual practice. The act of eating and tasting ice cream produced a feeling of
unhappiness around his body size and shape, and lead him to photographically
document his body. Feminist geographers have highlighted how food and eating
are visceral practices that are saturated with power relations formed through place
(Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy 2008; Longhurst, Johnston, and Ho 2009). The
taste of sweet food led Joe to question his eating practices in a way that urged him
to think about regulating his body size and shape. The motivations that produced
the picture are therefore shaped by the regulation of embodied masculinities
and not necessarily eroticism. Furthermore, the picture is also produced though
reections on his lifestyle, particularly eating and exercising practices. However,
when the image is uploaded into Grindr’s prole space(s) it becomes culturally
recognised as erotic. Therefore, the ways masculinities are embodied in the digital
do not neatly map onto material identities. Instead, they take on new meanings
that are produced by the instabilities of online and oine dichotomies. This is one
way bodies become digital.
In an image of a torso with no background or recognizable geographical con-
text, the exposed skin becomes the site of importance. As oine places and con-
texts are not visible, the body is the site through which gendered and sexualised
discourses emerge, rather than a constitution of esh, objects, places and ‘things’.
By removing other embodied dimensions of the self (e.g. the face) and focusing
on other body parts, the construction of gender and sexuality is partial, giving
rise to the hypersexualised idea of a prole image. This production of hypersex-
ualised masculinity is used by men to market themselves as sexualised bodies in
the hopes of touching.
Although the skin and esh can become sexualised, this is not always the case –
skins are understood is multiple ways. Ralph discusses his picture choice as a way to
mask his identity. In the picture, Ralph’s torso is toned and lean, with his abdominal
muscles clearly visible. His body also ‘takes up’ all the space in the image:
Ralph: so it’s a picture of my torso … My torso is my body. My body is what I’m living in.
It’s as much as what I’m living in as my face is, so for me there’s nothing wrong
with having that on there, you know. I don’t like the idea of being recognised in
public and approached by people I have chosen not to speak to or mix with on
Grindr. (Ralph, 22, Mixed Raced, Retail)
Ralph specically highlights how the exposure of his skin is not a way to produce
a hypersexualised body. The skin becomes a way he can produce a digital body
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8 C. BONNERTHOMPSON
that is rooted in his materiality, but that simultaneously masks his face. Therefore,
other Grindr users are less likely to recognise him in oine spaces. As Ralph worked
in a retail store in Newcastle city centre, he did not want other Grindr users to be
able to address him whilst working. The production of this partial digital body is
a way to prevent online and oine identities from being coherent. For Ralph, he
does not want to be read as a hypersexualised body in his oine working spaces.
In this sense, the exposure of skin is a way to de-sexualise identities. As erotic
Grindr practices do not necessarily map neatly onto working and professional
masculinities, they are attempted to be kept distinct and separate. Therefore, the
ways masculinities are produced in and through Grindr are entangled in oine
identities and practices. In this sense, Grindr users are managing and negotiating
their identities as they construct digital bodies. In the following section, I explore
how this entanglement produces lifestyle masculinities on the Grindr grid.
‘I knew my body was good’: lifestyle masculinities
Images of muscular and toned bodies are often used in marketing campaigns and
have become a desirable form of embodied youthful masculinity. The exposure
of such bodies on the Grindr grid can be understood in this way. In his interview,
Axel discusses how he chose to use a particular picture of himself from a holiday
that showcased his ‘good body’. In this example, the front of Axel’s body is shown,
from head to toe and only wearing swimming shorts:
Axel: I was very horny when I was traveling Asia so I had sex with a lot of people and
met up with a lot of people … I got back to Newcastle in September and I was
kind still in this holiday mode, uni hadn’t really started properly, I was talking to
a lot of guys.
Carl: why did you chose that picture of yourself?
Axel: I just back from holiday [travelling Asia], and I had a picture of me in the beach
and stu and people were like ‘ooh, nice beach’ … well I mean, I knew it was a
nice picture, I looked nice on the beach, having a great time, also, I knew my body
was good so I was just like why not … yeah no, I was just aware that I looked
good … (Axel, 21, white British, undergraduate student)
Later in the interview Axel described what he thought of as a ‘good body’:
… like a holiday body, like what you want when you’re on holiday, like triangle shaped,
great arms, not hairy, just like, yeah.
Axel denes a muscular body as one that is hierarchically ‘better’ than a body
that is not. The features of a ‘good body’ conform to contemporary ideas of desir-
able western masculine embodiment (Tanner, Maher, and Fraser 2013). Bodies of
men that are lean and muscular and have little or no chest hair dominate media
and advertising culture (Alexander 2003). Axel’s ideas of ‘looking good’ are clearly
enmeshed in this, and therefore he has chosen to use his regulated size and shape
to ‘sell’ his prole. In this sense, his visible muscular torso becomes an embodied
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GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 9
symbol of achievement of desirable youthful masculinity (Yea 2015). Axel also gives
his body context as he suggests that his ‘good body’ is a ‘holiday body’. This con-
structs his sized and ‘haired’ body as one that has spatial and temporal specicity.
Through regulating his body shape and size, Axel has achieved what he denes
as a ‘holiday body’, meaning his exposed body’s masculinity is ‘in place’.
The spatial dimensions of the picture matter in digitally mediated masculin-
ities. In this example, Axel is also advertising the idea that he is having a ‘great
time’. He attempts to construct a prole that highlights his ability to have fun, be
active and have a happy lifestyle, alongside his body size, shape and body hair. In
this sense, there are class dimensions as the picture reects Axel’s geographical
mobility – being able to travel to ‘exotic’ locations in south-east Asia. Although the
body can be seen from head to toe, it is the exposed ‘part’ that Axel places more
emphasis upon. This spatial situatedness, the exposed skin, and its muscularity all
work together to (re)produce a form of lifestyle masculinity. As the exposed body
can be spatially recognised, it gives a broader context to gendered and sexual
identities, and therefore can be understood as a more ‘complete’ picture of the
self. The place, objects, things, skin and body in the picture work to produce this
lifestyle masculinity.
Lifestyle masculinities emerge when men who use Grindr seek to (re)construct
a digital body that is entangled with everyday and material geographies. The reg-
ulatory practices that can shape men’s material bodies – for example, size and
shape – work through the productions of masculinities in the Grindr grid. In spite
of this, being aware that he is ‘looking good’ suggests that the visuality of Axel’s
body is used as a tactic to foster a desire to touch in other men who use Grindr.
His interview also highlights how he was ‘horny’ when he put is prole picture
up on Grindr, suggesting that his motivations were also shaped by embodied
moods and desire. Therefore, a sexualised subjectivity can seek to produce lifestyle
masculinities. Regulation of masculinities, lifestyles and sexualities are therefore
entangled in how men who use Grind produce their digital bodies. The following
section explores the ways these two typologies come to be entangled through
intersections of age.
‘Got me tits oot for the lads’: ageing masculinities
So far I have highlighted how lifestyle and hypersexual masculinities are not mutu-
ally exclusive. I develop this through the intersection of age to highlight how
hypersexuality is a negotiation of gendered and sexual lifestyles. The seven par-
ticipants I spoke to who were over the age of 35 often spoke about being too ‘old’
in ‘gay years’. This would prompt them to use strategies to resist ageist discourses.
One strategy was to leave the ‘age’ category blank, whilst using pictures of their
exposed torsos. Age is not the only aspect of identity that people sometimes chose
not to display on their prole. However, it was an identity category that ‘older’ users
chose not to disclose as a way to appear more desirable across the grid. Gareth
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10 C. BONNERTHOMPSON
and John talk about not using age and putting a shirtless picture on their prole.
Gareth had recently changed his picture after a friend had advised him that he
would get more men interested in him:
Gareth: So I put my topless picture on, like on an evening, woke up the next day, loads
of messages, standard. Got me tits oot [out] for the lads like. And I don’t have
me age on there, as you probably noticed, again cos age is, I’m dead in gay
years, and it is, kind of, it’s quite sad that people look at the number and they
write you o. And I’ve chatted to guys … we’ve talked about meeting up, we’ve
liked the interaction, we exchanged pictures, we like what we see, ‘oh and by
the way, how old are you?’ ‘I’m 42’, ‘oh, okay, sorry a bit old for me’. (Gareth, 42,
white British, A&E nurse/actor)
John: People don’t declare their age, I didn’t put my age, because it’s a taboo in the
gay world. So at rst very discreet, very limited, no photograph, then I changed
the photograph, then I put a more risqué photograph on which got a lot more
responses, which obviously tells you a lot about what it’s for, so it does change,
but as and when, as and when.
Carl: what did you change your photo from and to?
John: well it was from nothing to a picture of my torso form my chin down to about
here [hands are placed beneath his chin to about his waistline]. (John, 50, white
British, special needs support)
Gareth and John are seeking to reduce the stigma attached to their aged body.
Commercialised gay and queer spaces can (re)produce ageist discourses in ways
that make ‘older’ bodies feel unwelcome, unwanted and undesirable (Binnie and
Skeggs 2004; Casey 2007). Casey (2007), in particular points to the ways that the
‘gay scene’ in Newcastle is unwelcome to ‘older’ bodies through its commercial-
isation and focus on youth and ‘younger’ bodies. Casey (2007) argues that they
become the ‘queer unwanted’. The otherness that is attached to ‘older’ gay men’s
bodies is clearly not exclusive to spaces of the night-time economy, but seeps into
digital technologies to regulate sexual and gendered identities (Downing 2013).
The option to ‘hide’ the numerical value of age is used as a form of resistance
to the ageist discourses that celebrate ‘young’ bodies. For those men that may be
deemed ‘too old’ for non-heterosexual dating apps, temporarily removing barriers
of ‘otherness’ can also be achieved by focusing on the skin. Gareth chose to use a
picture of his shirtless body in a de-contextualised surrounding, as an attempt to
centre his eshy materiality over numerical age. Despite being policed by norma-
tive ideas of gender and age, individuals have the agency to manage and negotiate
these power dynamics in and through place and time (Tarrant 2014). Research with
men in the USA and Finland has highlighted how middle-aged men engage in
embodied practices to ‘slow down’ or resist bodily ageing processes. Practices such
as physical exercise and controlled diets (Ojala et al. 2016) and cosmetic surgery
(Kinnunen 2010), have been highlighted as ways for me to subvert ageing bodies
to appear younger. As a way to resist ageism on Grindr, Gareth and John attempt
to draw more attention to unclothed skin by showing esh. Here, body parts are
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GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 11
used to enable sexualities to emerge. This strategy is an attempt to foster a desire
to ‘touch’ in other Grindr users when the skin is seen on their screens. Lifestyle
masculinities (age) are prevented from emerging in the categories that produce
digital bodies, alongside pictures. Images that reect a part of men’s lifestyles can
give an indication of age, therefore they are ‘left out’ of prole pictures. Digital
spaces have the ability to enable men to (re)make and play with their ageing
sexualities and masculinities (Frohlick and Migliardi 2011), in a way that reduces
attention on the ageing lifestyles. Creating such ambivalence around age can seek
to undermine ageist discourses as pictures of exposed body parts can be seen as
an attempt to undermine the importance of quantitative age.
Although, these strategies may seek to challenge everyday ageism, they can
simultaneously reinforce the value of youth and young bodies in contemporary
western societies (Kinnunen 2010; Ojala et al. 2016). Regulatory practices that
shape Newcastle’s ‘gay scene’ come to be recognised as older men come to produce
their digital bodies. In other words, ageism shapes how older men choose to digi-
tally present themselves. These strategies may undermine, but do not necessarily
destabilise ageism. The (re)construction of material bodies – digital and eshy –
through the ideologies of age can seek to stabilise the desirability society places
on youthfulness (Kinnunen 2010). Older bodies must nd ways to negotiate the
ageism that works through the Grindr, (re)making their sexualities to avoid being
the ‘queer unwanted’ (Casey 2007). Therefore, the ways we (re)make bodies digital
is constantly being learned as we negotiate regulation.
Hypersexualised masculinities can emerge through resistances to regulatory
processes. However, as the above example highlights, this subversion may only
be temporary. Other users can come to (re)place the importance of numerical
age on bodies during conversations. Therefore, although age can be disrupted,
identity categories are constantly re-emerging in and though online and oine
spaces (Chen 2015). Therefore, age, sexuality and gender must be constantly nego-
tiated through internet dating and hook-ups (Frohlick and Migliardi 2011). This
example highlights how the dichotomies of online/oine spaces are unstable.
Production of digital masculinities are dependent on the interactions of online and
oine space. Online and oine spaces and bodies are co-producing experiences
of gender and sexualities on the Grindr grid – the ways bodies become digital is
(re)shaped by oine practices, discourses and embodiments.
Producing and regulating masculinities on the Grindr grid
This article has examined how the regulation of embodied masculinities works
to (re)produce digital bodies in and through the Grindr grid. By exploring the
practice of taking and selecting prole pictures, I demonstrate how men who use
Grindr produce two common forms of masculinities – hypersexualised and life-
style. Hypersexualised masculinities emerge through a focus on the skin and esh.
Lifestyle masculinities are often more spatially ‘recognisable’ as they are produced
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12 C. BONNERTHOMPSON
through objects, things and places. I argue that these forms of masculinities are
produced through the ways that material bodies are regulated in oine lives.
Thinking through the visuality of the Grindr grid highlights how the motivations
for taking and selecting pictures do not neatly map onto the cultural meaning
they are given in digital space. Therefore, digital and material bodies are complexly
interwoven, emerging in and through multiple practices, objects and places. The
productions of masculinities are formed by intersections of age, class, race, body
size and shape and sexualities. It is through the interaction of online and oine
spaces, identities and materialities, that bodies and identities are (re)constructed,
(re)congured and (re)created (van Doorn 2011; Longhurst 2013). Therefore, insta-
bilities of online/oine dichotomies require men who use Grindr to negotiate
power dynamics and learn ways to continually (re)produce digital bodies.
I have taken a multi-sensory approach to the visual to highlight that the prac-
tice of looking is also about touching. The production of digital bodies is about
a desire to be touched by other men. Men who use Grindr think carefully about
their prole pictures. Questions around how their bodies look, what parts of their
bodies can be seen and the locations of their bodies are often considered. This
enables men to attract other men who use Grindr through digital screens. Men
in this context do not necessarily only allow themselves to be passive ‘objects’ of
consumption, but also actively produce masculinities that enable them to attract
and consume particular men (Frank 2014). This highlights the importance that
age, body size and skin play in the formations of desire and sexualities for men
who use Grindr in Newcastle.
To conclude, I highlight two insights into geographical scholarship that are
informed by this research. First, that a multi-sensory approach to the production
of online dating proles can highlight how embodied regulations and practices
shape the formation of digital bodies. Such an approach can highlight how people
are learning to negotiate online and oine bodies, identities and spaces. Paying
more attention to this can further challenge online/oine binaries, whilst exposing
the power dynamics that (re)produce experiences of digital practices. Secondly,
building on Longhurst (2013, 676), I hope that other researchers will ‘examine sim-
ilar topics that recongure the visual and material through embodied processes,
practices, and technologies’. Exploring how bodies, sexualities and gender work
together to co-produce online experience can advance feminist geographical
scholarship on desire, embodiment and materiality.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Pamela Moss and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful critique and
guidance. Your advice and knowledge has made this article much stronger. Thank you to Lizzie
Richardson and Daniel Cockayne for organising this special issue, and for asking me to be
involved. I would also like to thank my supervisors Peter Hopkins and Mark Casey for the help
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GENDER, PLACE & CULTURE 13
in drafting this work. Finally, I would like to think the participants that took the time to share
their Grindr stories – without them this would not have been possible.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council.
Notes on contributor
Carl Bonner-Thompson is a PhD student at Newcastle University, UK. His supervisors are
Professor Peter Hopkins and Doctor Mark Casey. He formally served as the editorial assistant
for Gender, Place and Culture.
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