Cuteness, friendship, and identity in the brony community

Authors

  • Theo A. Peck-Suzuki University of Chicago

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2016.0674

Keywords:

Consumption, Contradictory consciousness, Fan fiction, Fandom, Gender, Masculinity, Material culture, My Little Pony, Nerd

Abstract

I examine the practices of fan productivity and gender negotiation in brony fandom, the community of primarily college-age men who are fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (2010–). I examine the contours of brony textual and material practices, noting how productivity within the fandom plays a role in the negotiation of identity and community ethos. I also consider the implications of cuteness in the fandom and discuss how this aesthetic and its corresponding narrative have led to the development of a unique discursive mode among bronies, which I term the discourse of friendship. Drawing on Matthew Gutmann's theory of contradictory consciousness, I argue that the discourse of friendship is an innovative framework that encourages new ways of taking part in existing social institutions that destabilize hegemonic masculinity.

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Published

2016-09-15

Issue

Vol. 22 (2016)

Section

Praxis

License

TWC Nos. 25 onward are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC by 4.0). For an explanation of the journal's reasoning, see the TWC editorial Copyright and Open Access. TWC Nos. 1 through 24 are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, with TWC, not the author, retaining copyright.

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