Bodies, Football Jerseys, and Multiple Male Aesthetics through Football in Turkey

Abstract

Football (soccer) jerseys for professional male players are increasingly designed with a tighter, snugger fit. Such design infers a fit male body and a lifestyle, which accompanies, and cultivates such a body. Replica kits, which are manufactured for consumption by fans, often emulate this tight fit but are purchased and worn by bodies that differ substantially from the increasingly valorized fit athlete’s body. This paper discusses the multiple male aesthetics that are produced in the process and through the practice of differing bodies wearing the same garment. I specifically juxtapose the body and the sociality of the disciplined, professional, and fit male footballer to the body of male fans with bellies. I argue that the reverence of a specific fit male body which results in tightening jerseys and which tighter jerseys celebrate, produces the unintended consequence of highlighting less-than-fit bodies and body parts as well as the social practices that yield such bodies through fans’ dressing practices. With an ethnographic focus on Turkey, I demonstrate how the idealization of a specific male body is subverted, albeit unintentionally, by the very forces that create it in the first place.

Keywords:

• football
• Turkey
• body
• male aesthetics
• jerseys

Notes

Acknowledgments

The conference entitled “The Beautiful Game: The Poetics and Aesthetics of Soccer in Transnational Perspective” held at the University of Basel in 2016 was the first forum where I discussed the ideas developed in this paper. I thank the various participants and organizers of this fruitful conference for inspiring me to complete this study. I thank editor Valerie Steele and Fashion Theory’s anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful feedback as well as Cenk Özbay and Belin Benezra Yensarfati whose insightful comments helped me during the research and writing processes.

Notes

1 Ekşi Sözlük is a collaborative online wiki and a community in Turkey with approximately 400,000 registered users. There are numerous topical strands on the wiki pertaining to football but the wiki also includes entries that do not relate to football.

2 “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” is a football chant that is sung in the UK in cases when fans feel like the players are not giving 100 percent on the pitch in an effort to fight and win the game. My colleague John McManus described the chant as “pretty common” albeit “harsh” and therefore “saved for a particularly embarrassing performance or bad result.”

3 It is true that players like Paul Gascoigne or Sergen Yalçın have enjoyed immense popularity despite (or rather because of) their “unfit” social lives. However, in Turkey, there is always considerable disapproval from fans directed toward players like this, not necessarily on a moral level but on a sporting level, where fans question such players’ ability to maintain a certain standard of performance on the pitch. Since their lifestyle affects their sporting performance, they are considered “unprofessional” which allows me to conclude that the epithet of “professional” is not always the negative opposite of “being committed.”

4 There are replica kits designed specifically for women. They usually have a different cut and fit from male footballer kits. It would be a worthwhile undertaking to study the aesthetic identification and subject formation of jersey-wearing women but such is not the focus of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yağmur Nuhrat

Yağmur Nuhrat has a PhD in anthropology from Brown University. Her research interests include football (soccer), gender and language, ethics, and urban anthropology. She has published in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals including the American Ethnologist (August 2018) and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (March 2017). She is assistant professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of Sociology. [email protected]