Normative/Non-normative Masculinity

What Susan Courtney from last week's reading referred to as "vulnerable whiteness becom[ing] quintessentially mapped onto female bodies" (88), as that which white masculinity sought to protect from black masculinity and desire, is present in this week's reading. Luis Alvarez positions nonwhites, specifically Mexican American and African American zoot suit youths, as being viewed as endangering whiteness. The body of the Other was regarded to as that which needed "improvement," as hypersexual, animalistic, and diseased. It was the Other, that threatened white masculinity, patriotism, and the war effort during the WWII era, and these were the characteristics associated with the zoot suit counterculture.

Dominant white masculinity was challenged by the non-normative gender performance of zoot suiters, the man's suit tail skirts that moved like skirts. Women were no longer necessarily regulated to the domestic space, as they challenged patriarchy and went out on their own without male escorts; they chose what they wanted to wear and exercised agency. Men were not restricted to being service men in the military and used clothing as a form of expression (it is important, however, to note, as does Alvarez, the level of elasticity in the subversions, as some zoot suiters did enter the military and women were still viewed as conquests). Alvarez clearly states that the transgressions lay in "making evident in their cultural practices that masculinity was not the sole property of men and femininity did not belong only to women" (82-83).

One of the zoot suiters challenges of dominant white masculinity was the interracial venues that challenged miscegenation. Although some public spaces remained segregated, certain jazz clubs and dance halls became spaces where white women and Mexican American and African American men could interact. The violence that erupted during the Zoot Suit Riots contains overtones that harken back to last weeks reading: the need for the white male to protect the white female body from contamination. "Vulnerable whiteness" was mapped onto the white female body, and she was conflated with white hegemony. By rescuing her from the Other, from non-normative masculinity, the dominance of white hegemony was also being solidified.