Dressing masculinities: muted colours, aesthetic citizenship and nation-building in Tashkent, Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT

This article explores the sartorial practices of Uzbek men across diverse urban contexts in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, highlighting the significance of muted colours as a discursive site for asserting aesthetic citizenship. Drawing on thirteen months of fieldwork, this article depicts how the dressed bodies of working-class young men are intertwined with notions of hegemonic masculinity and Uzbekness. It also analyses how nation-building narratives give rise to gendered sartorial norms and forms of self-discipline, bolstered by everyday dress regulations. I argue that working-class young men’s preference for muted colours, rooted in the Soviet aesthetic’s prioritization of practicality and simplicity, serves as a somatic means of de-beautification, which allows them both to distance themselves from ‘foreign’ fashion and consolidate masculine subjectivities. Thus, embodied sartorial practices become a gendered stance against supposedly zararli (harmful) foreign ideologies and an assertion of aesthetic citizenship against a background of an ongoing surge of gendered nationalism in Uzbekistan.

KEYWORDS:

• Uzbek men
• masculinity
• sartorial practices
• de-beautification
• aesthetic citizenship

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a University of Queensland Research Training Scholarship. I extend my sincere gratitude to Prof. Claudia Liebelt and Anne Kukuczka for their insightful and constructive comments on the earlier drafts of this article, as well as for organizing the conference on Beauty and the State in Berlin in July 2023, where I had the opportunity of receiving valuable insights from both them and fellow attendees, particularly Prof. Jie Yang. Additionally, I deeply appreciate the contributions of Dr Jenny Munro, Prof. Garth Stahl and the two anonymous reviewers whose feedback and comments have been instrumental in refining this work. I also would like to acknowledge Kate Leeson’s assistance in editing and proofreading the manuscript. Last but not least, the generous assistance and insights shared by my Uzbek male interlocutors during my fieldwork have been instrumental in completing this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Lezginka, a Caucasian folk dance prevalent in post-Soviet countries, can be performed either by men alone or as a male-centric dance for couples. In the solo rendition, male dancers emulate the majestic movements of an eagle, characterized by rapid pacing and sharp body motions that overtly highlight masculinity. Conversely, in partnered performances, while the male dancer takes a dominant role, the female dancer adopts a softer stance, complementing the male’s vigorous movements with gentle ones that accentuate femininity. This stark contrast in dance styles between genders has led to a pronounced gender division in dance classes.

2. The women’s liberation campaign of the 1920s, known as hujum, represented a concerted effort led by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to eliminate gender inequality across the Union Republics of Central Asia. This initiative resulted in a significant push against the practice of veiling among women in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.

3. Aripova (2022) notes that the 1926 Soviet Uzbek Criminal Code banned male same-sex relationships and that the present independent Uzbek government continues to refuse to legalize homosexuality. The first president of Uzbekistan Islom Karimov has criticized homosexuality, describing it as a ‘vulgar’ representation of Western culture.