Close Shaves: Vulnerability and Hypermasculinity in the Barbershop

Abstract

This thesis is a written accompaniment to a series of 36 paintings that were created in partialfulfillment of my Master's of Fine Arts degree. This thesis explores the barbershop as a complex site of identity formation, negotiation, and contradiction, particularly for queer Filipino men navigating hypermasculine spaces. What began as a personal exploration rooted in my experience of getting my long hair cut and stepping into a traditionally masculine domain evolved into a broader investigation of how intimacy, vulnerability, and identity are expressed and repressed within barbershop culture. Drawing from interviews and direct engagement with Filipino barbers, my work examines the lives, spaces, and gestures that define these environments, each shaped by layers of postcolonial history and personal aspiration. Through representational painting informed by ethnographic practices, I document the tensions between care and performance, visibility and concealment. I use vibrant, synthetic palettes inspired by Filipino "banig" weaving, and apply paint in ways that capture both presence and ephemerality, echoing the duality of tenderness and hypermasculinity found in these spaces. The barbershop becomes a site of double consciousness, where the comfort of touch and transformation coexist with the anxiety of surveillance and conformity to hegemonic norms. My work reflects on grooming not simply as an aesthetic act but as a practice loaded with colonial legacy, racial identity, and gender politics. Ultimately, this body of work seeks to queer the barbershop by revealing its contradictions and possibilities as a space of mentorship, community care, and subtle defiance against the rigid boundaries of masculinity.