In the first decades of the twentieth century, discussions about fashion were an important way for Puerto Ricans to reconcile their sudden encounter with a colonial modernity imposed by the new colonial rule from the United States. Paradoxically, this imposed colonial modernity was desired for the freedoms it brought and, at the same time, feared for the unintended consequences of such freedoms, particularly regarding notions of gender.[1] Thus, Puerto Ricans appropriated transnational fashion discourses as a means of signaling their participation in an ordinary, everyday modernity of global reach in a transitional, colonial context.[2] The importance of fashion is suggested by two factors: one is the massive number of fashion texts and images published in Puerto Rican periodicals, and the other is the heated and impassioned controversies about fashion and its gendered effects that took place in their pages. As in other geographies, women were the main subjects of scrutiny and targets of fashion discourses; they experienced the full force of those discourses — whether advising women to follow a particular trend or condemning them for doing so — and the unrelenting criticisms about their “masculinization” or their display of flesh and sexual exhibitionism.[3] 

However, as this essay will demonstrate, Puerto Rican men were also targeted as fashion subjects and even engaged in their own fashion discussions. The essay briefly delineates the image of the fashionable “modern man” conveyed in advertisements. It also surveys a variety of fashion texts and images to illustrate how sartorial issues connected with other men’s concerns. Finally, it focuses on discussions about the fashionable modern man and the masculinity he represented. This examination will also show that discussions about men’s fashion were scarcely formulated within a nationalist framework, which problematizes and complicates still dominant historical narratives that sustain Puerto Ricans overwhelmingly resisted the United States’ occupation of the island, painting a bleak picture of a society either dominated by political strife or by a perpetual, generalized scarcity.

These fashion texts and images are varied in nature — editorials, opinions pieces, newsclips, photos, cartoons, advertisements — but all deal with or illustrate dress and/or behavior. They were published in Puerto Rican periodicals — newspapers, illustrated literary journals, and politico-satirical publications — of diverse editorial lines and political proclivities (pro-statehood, pro-autonomy), circulation (local, regional, and island-wide), and frequency (daily, weekly, monthly), aimed at the lettered elite and the emergent, aspiring middle classes, mostly conceived as white.[4] Many of those texts and images were translated copies or locally produced for imported goods. However, as Argentinian sociologist Oscar Traversa argues: “for us the world begins in other places, with other bodies. But paradoxically, on paper, in our papers, those bodies resemble each other. We live the gestures of time, the same fashions, we consume the same soaps and the same jazz animated, here and there, the muscles of such different destinies.”[5] Thus, Puerto Rican periodical editors were not only literally translating into Spanish those foreign texts, but also, at the same time, they were translating discourses of modernity for their readership. Also, as The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group showed, the constitution of modern subjects was a global discursive and visual phenomenon. Nonetheless, in their writings, Puerto Rican men and women expressed their consent with, or rejection of, the available notions of masculinity.

As in other societies, one of the main mediums through which Puerto Rican men were engaged as fashion subjects was advertising.[6] As was the case with advertisements directed to women, the ads for men appealed to a man’s desire for youth, style, beauty, modernity, and, specifically for masculine consumers, power and success. Through ads, Puerto Rican men were offered a variety of fashionable dress — in colour, cut, and materials — and were instructed to always be impeccably dressed and coiffed, meaning to appear young, clean, and healthy on all occasions. Moreover, targeting the emergent middle sectors of Puerto Rican society, ads spoke of bounty and comfort, and the image of the fashionable modern man conveyed was a successful, young, attractive, relaxed, and carefree man.

Ads also prompted men to take care of their bodies, especially their hair, including facial hair. As Barbara Clark Smith and Kathy Peiss have argued, the “array of products promising to prevent baldness or restore thinning hair would show [that] men have also worried about their looks.”[7] Ads for hair and beard products — many purportedly developed “in an absolutely scientific way” according to “modern dermatology” — insisted on connecting fashion, youth, science, and modernity.[8] Others emphasized the modern quality of the stylish man. The “very twentieth-century” figure of “Stacomb” (Figure 1) pointed to qualities such as cultural refinement.[9] To the question of what kind of men readers wanted to be in real life, another of their ads proposed a modern ideal, “a modern man,” the Latin film star Ramón Novarro.[10] (Figure 2). In the latter case, in addition to the prescriptive texts found in advertisements, images and quotes from movie stars gave men (and women) — even those who might not be well versed in films — an idea of how to be modern.[11]

Although fewer than those directed at women, there was a sizable number of variegated fashion texts aimed at men. The anonymous author of an article complained about the lack of changes in men’s styles and the delay in the arrival of fashion news to the island.[15] However, the writer had compiled some news about men’s fashions to inform the readers. Another interesting aspect of this article was the information about the assorted styles for the various times and activities of the day. This recalls how fashion used to mark upper and middle-class women’s daily lives according to the time of day and activity, and does not correspond with men’s supposed adoption, in the nineteenth century, of the “business suit” as the standard dress for all occasions. The page also included a display of accessories — cufflinks, tie clips, canes, handkerchiefs — showing a preoccupation with the finishing touches of a stylish appearance.[16]

Other texts, focusing on individual pieces of a man’s wardrobe, connected fashion and health. In a 1925 unsigned note, after complaining about the new hairstyles for men, the author informed the reader about the advice of a British physiologist regarding men’s use of short pants to avoid varicose veins.[17] In addition, the doctor opposed the high collar as unhealthy because it reduced the absorption of ultraviolet rays and caused terrible pains, and advocated a collarless shirt similar to boys’ “mariner suits.”[18] The anonymous critic ended the text mockingly, expecting to soon see “the first parade of shorts and sailor shirts in San Juan,” implying that Puerto Rican men, at least in San Juan, were fashion informed and that some followed the trends, no matter how ridiculous they were.

In addition to texts examining style changes or innovations, Puerto Rican men were targeted as fashion subjects in pedagogical articles and notes, which served as veritable dressing and behavior manuals, much as the fashion columns directed to women. Such written pieces instructed men in the minute details of fashionable modern dressing. They were taught the “laws” of dressing appropriately for each occasion as well as to combine different clothing items to present the correct public image. Even more, men were educated in the practices and rituals of fashionable modern behavior. The “Buenos Modales” page in Puerto Rico Ilustrado (PRI) is a good example.[19] Through a series of short stories, men were coached in formal dressing or leisure attire, and in polite conversation and behavior. For instance, they were told to avoid the use of any jewelry beyond a ring, cufflinks, and a watch because it signaled a lack of propriety, meaning it was not manly to use so many adornments. The image of the fashionable modern man that emerges from those sources is one of physical neatness and polished comportment.

Beyond being passive recipients of those discussions, Puerto Ricans participated actively in them, discussing health, gender identity, and fashion concerns as clashing views about facial hair demonstrated. As Alun Withey has shown for England, between 1650 and 1900, the display of a bearded frame or a clean shaved face has been cyclical, but both always maintain their association to masculinity and sexual prowess, while simultaneously prompting controversies about men’s health and cleanliness.[20] Moreover, he demonstrates that by the end of the nineteenth century, the short-lived “Victorian ‘beard movement’” was already in decline. An anonymous poem evidences how Puerto Ricans participated in those discursive connections, through a couple’s staged debate over the man’s decision to shave his moustache.[21] The man argued that he shaved to “look more like tourists” and “based on the principles of hygiene.” However, she did not accept such reasonings and berated him, linking his moustache to his masculinity. For her, his moustache was a symbol of his manhood, and its absence was a defect, denoting a lack. She yelled back at him: “anxious I would not suffer such mockery/ of having my boyfriend shaved/ because the jíbaro is always distinguished/ for his thick moustache/ and not for his shaved face [sajonado].”[22] And a little later: “I did not think you so dumb/ (she said arrogantly)/ to get to shave!/ don’t you understand they will put you/ if you continue shaving, among women?” The unknown author used the discursive connection between facial hair and masculinity to criticize modern fashion trends; the clean-shaved man resembles a woman, rather than a (“true”) man.

This text is one of the few in which modern masculinity appears as foreign and in direct contrast to a “native” manhood. The modern fashion trends were symbolized, in the author’s imagination, by the tourists who, as the woman on the poem said, were arriving in “terrorist fashions.” This and the reference to the clean-shaved man as “sajonado” suggests that for the anonymous author, fashionable modern masculinity was something foreign and a threat to some implied “native” manhood of luxuriant mustaches.

The modern man, who was impacted by fashion discourses, kept an eye on the latest trends, and dressed in his fitted suit with a clean, shaved face, was harshly criticized. Those criticisms were part of a wider current of anti-modern discourses, especially regarding effects on masculinity. Male fashion at the turn of the nineteenth century was criticized as representing men’s lack of “vitality,” strength, and character to deal with life’s hardships, a consequence of the modernizing processes that had pushed men into closed spaces, prompting them to lose contact with nature and historically male-oriented open-air activities where they would discover, acquire, or strengthen their innate masculinity.[23] As Tamar Garb argues: “modern man, it was widely believed, was a weak replica of his ancient forebears, […], modern man was gradually being destroyed by the effects of modernization.”[24] Since early in the twentieth century, Puerto Rico had its own proponents of these anti-modern discourses. In a text in which he condemned and, at the same time, praised American women, Tomás Carrión Maduro, legislator of the pro-statehood Puerto Rican Republican Party, complained about the Puerto Rican modern man: “the effeminacy of the contemporary man is too much. Contemporary man is a caricature of the true man. This frail, frazzled man is an affront to his sex.”[25] Carrión’s contemporaries, Luis Felipe Dessus and Pedro Manzano Aviñó, similarly described and lambasted a weak masculinity.[26] For them, modern men had been ceding not only their place in the social hierarchy but also their very own “life force.” Both portrayed a frail modern manhood of “sentimental” men, who would enshrine their own torturer because they did not have the strength, the virility to deal with life’s setbacks. Those modern men constituted “a heinous phenomenon […] weird and despicable.” For Dessus and Manzano, men had to regain their power, their position, they had “the need to be strong, especially in matters of the heart.”[27] As Manzano so clearly and harshly put it:

We then see man, already subjected to the mesmerizing power of women, ceasing to be the true man of iron will with which he achieves triumphs and climbs summits; disappearing from him the great conservative force of his indomitable courage, the powerful I who engraved on his forehead these words: ‘Man: King of Creation.’[28]

These early criticisms of modern men, men caught in women’s clutches, happened in the context of the first attempts by male allies to support legislation in favour of women’s political progress.[29]

Fashionable modern men were satirized in press images, too. A cartoon in one of the weeklies showed two oldish men observing three younger men walking drunk down the street (Figure 4).[30] The outfit of both sets of men differed: the three drunk youngsters — all shaved — wore a type of smoking jacket, symbolizing their quality as modern men, whilst the garments of the two older men were more “traditional.” The observer’s comment satirized modern men’s masculinity, its lack of strength, and emasculated them with the use of the Spanish diminutive (“jovencitos”).

The “Dude” — an “affected” man, carefully groomed, delicate, dressed in fitted clothes — was the caricature of such frail and impressionable men (Figure 5).[31] In one form or another, this depiction of the modern man made its way into the pages of Puerto Rican periodicals. Many images presented men in this way (Figure 6 and Figure 7); they were drawn in fine lines, carrying themselves with “affected” mannerisms, exhibiting a sinuous figure like that of the Gibson girl.[32] As if to instruct men on how to carry themselves as true men, an article reported on the advice of “two notable doctors” about how people should walk.[33] While the part on women just briefly summarize the information directed at them, the part on men dictated:

…the normal man (average life span, health, volume, weight, etc.), should walk with his head raised, without leaning to either side, and making sure that his arms mark a certain rhythm, a movement somewhat similar to that of soldiers. The arms should fall along the trunk by their own weight, without any affectation or muscular contraction. The chest should always tend to be pulled out, that is, the arms and even the shoulders should tend backwards. In this way, fatigue is avoided, and many lung diseases are postponed.[34]

Printed in Gráfico, another widely circulated satirical weekly, the text functioned as a veiled denouncement of the modern masculinity represented in the images. Men ought to avoid an affected demeanor — it was not only unmanly but also unhealthy.

Critics of the fashionable modern man in Puerto Rico participated in global discourses of masculine improvement through the arduous work and stern discipline that exercising signified, such as “Muscular Christianity” and the “strenuous life.”[35] The representation of a Puerto Rican muscular male body made its incursion into the pages of the island’s periodicals. For instance, Puerto Rican trainer Fa Solat, in his semi-regular column in PRI, promoted the practice of weightlifting and bodybuilding, providing advice and reviewing the efforts made by individuals throughout the island. Solat, in his confidence in, and commitment to, the growth of the lifting and bodybuilding sports on the island, connected — as proponents of the “strenuous life” and Muscular Christianity did in the U.S.A. — Puerto Rican men’s muscularity and masculinity with the vitality and vigor of the nation. Thus, he was committed to “cultivate more vigorous generations […] There will be strong men here.”[36] The development of an athletic, robust, muscular body signified activity, vitality, and the possession of a resolute character, and became the medicine against the malaise of a dainty and unhealthy fashionable modern manhood.

Still, such affected manhood was viewed as dangerous and perceived as being present in the streets. Early in the 1910s there was a noticeable preoccupation with masculinity in the pages of Puerto Rican periodicals.

A first cartoon (Figure 8) shows two men, side by side: the man on the left — a blacksmith — is drawn at his workplace, tools in hands, in a position that denotes strength and activity.[37] His clothes are working clothes, but what is interesting is that they expose hair-covered flesh. This man is identified as “los hombres sí” — he is the paradigm of what a man should be, the symbol of “correct” masculinity. The man on the left is not shown working but engaged in pleasure — walking his dog (a dog so slender and stylized that it looks emaciated). He is fully clothed, with no flesh shown, in a suit: broad-brimmed hat, jacket, pants, delicate tie, flower on the lapel, handkerchief, ring, pants turned up to reveal an adorned pair of shoes of medium-high heels. He has no facial hair and a well-combed hairstyle underneath his hat. Everything about his self-fashioning and comportment (the delicate way he is grabbing his dog’s leash) shouts cleanliness and delicacy. Moreover, he is drawn in profile to display his S-shape body, the famous silhouette of the Gibson girl, contrary to the “hombre sí” who was drawn from the front to show his wide figure. This man is named “los hombres nó,” indicating the undesirability of the masculinity he represents. The image suggests a working-class masculinity as the ideal one.

The next figure (Figure 9) shows the “hombre nó” from the front, drawn side by side with a woman donning the hobble skirt.[38] It is almost the same figure as before — same hat, same suit, same shoes — only this time he holds a cigarette in his left hand and has a shining ring on his right little finger. An important detail to be noted is his figure: he is thinner than the “hombre sí;” his shoulders are very narrow and sloped and he has a thin waist; and his hips are wider than his chest; in fact, his hips are wider than the woman’s. The caption identifies this “hombre nó” as “a man of conquest,” while the woman at his side is characterized as “a conquest without a man,” thus begging the question: if she is a woman ready to be conquered but had not been, who then, is the conquering man set out to conquer? Or, alternatively, if they are meant for each other (if she was “conquista” and he was her companion), why did the artist insist that she was without a “man”?

An article, aptly titled “Hombres sí y hombres nó,” narrativizes the contrast of the two masculinities, imbuing them with additional symbolic meanings.[39] This written portrait corresponds with the visible characteristics each man displays in the cartoons but adds new layers that the viewer cannot get from the images. According to the author, Agapito Rojas, the “hombre sí” could dress elegantly but would never present any “affectation,” while the figure of the “hombre nó” was the result of wearing a corset. The “hombre sí” spent little time and effort in his appearance, while all the gestures of the “hombre nó” were studied in front of a mirror trying to imitate women’s “charms,” and his demeanor always had “the delicate gesturing of girls.” This man, the “hombre nó,” slept with flowers and a pale light on his bedside table like a “fifteenth years-old Venus.” For the author:

…the “hombre sí” is not handsome nor can he be, he is often hairy, and has a chest full of hair. With a fixed and penetrating gaze, he seems to say to us: I have nothing of Eve and if I was born of her, it is because I transmitted the seed that fertilizes and makes men./ The ‘hombre nó,’ is something else, this one, if he had a mustache, he took it off, because a friend suggested it. He often wears patent leather chaps. He has a languid gaze and often a chaste girl’s smile is drawn on his cheeks. [...] In short, the ‘hombre sí’, [...], dominates, the ‘hombre nó,’ seduces, the ‘hombre sí’ persuades, the ‘hombre nó’ begs, the ‘hombre sí,’ commands, the ‘hombre nó,’ pleads.

Adding intangible characteristics to the images already known, the author presented the “hombre sí” as strong-willed, heterosexual, and fertile, in contrast to the easily manipulated, and effeminate “hombre nó,” thus, linking physical attributes to behavioral, moral, and ethical qualities; all “positive” in the “hombre sí” and all “negative” for the “hombre nó.”

Another text continued this contrast of masculinities. The piece examined María Luisa Zerobe’s views on men.[40] For Zerobe, a music teacher, men did not know how to make women fall in love anymore and, by the examples she gave, everything pointed to a defective or deficient masculinity symbolized in their unsuitable and unseemly way of dressing:

First visit:

Dressed in gray plaid suit; red, blue, or orange tie; wide-brimmed ashen hat, ring of diamonds and rubies.... Don’t you find these colors extremely feminine?

Second visit:

A victoria [a type of car] with a low top, light-colored pants, navy blue frock coat, patent leather boots, a red dahlia in the buttonhole... But we say, when lurking behind the curtains we see such a parrot arrive: Sir, and what do they leave us women?

[…] It is us, women, who are obliged to show off, to compose ourselves, to stretch our imagination to invent so many subtleties to enhance our charms, those charms with which we long to captivate men.[41]

Zerobe clearly portrayed fashionable modern masculinity as something akin to femininity; a weak, deficient, and possibly even deviant masculinity. This becomes clearer when contrasted with the description she made of the man whom she loved deeply. Friends and family criticized him for being “ugly” and “crude,” but he conquered her with his tough, virile qualities, symbolized in his hands: “Ah, but his hands! Wide hands, with long fingers; dark hands covered with black hair; hands with a strong complexion.”[42] The hands described were the hands of a true man who symbolized a normal/normative masculinity, which reminded the hair covered body of the “hombre sí” in Figure 8. As a contrast, representing the fashionable modern man was an unnamed pianist, who was in love with Zerobe but whom she rejected. The pianist possessed “such delicate hands. Hands of an aristocrat. […] They seemed to draw tears and sighs, rather than notes, from the piano.” Her friends praised the pianist’s hands as “the exquisite hands of an artist,” but she emphatically disagreed: “No! They are the exquisite hands of a….!!”[43] It is possible to easily imagine a series of strong adjectives to finish her thought, but the relevant issue is that the author took advantage of the story to contrast two masculinities available for men in the island, and, along the way, criticize, in no uncertain terms, the fashionable modern man, contributing another intervention in the polemic.

Numerous similar texts presented cases of men dressing and even passing as women, which further prove Puerto Ricans preoccupation with the self-fashioning of gender. For our purposes, however, one example is enough: a brief report announcing the authorization obtained by “Jorge Van Zobeltitz” from the Potsdam police (Germany) to be allowed to dress as a woman.[46] Apparently, Van Zobeltitz belonged to a rich family and since childhood had liked to dress in women’s clothing, leading doctors to declare that he suffered from “an incurable, unhealthy predisposition, and that it was better to authorize what it was impossible to prevent.” Modern masculinity, being characterized as “affected” and even close to femininity, was also located close to illness. To period commentators, these were troublesome examples of men who successfully passed as women during lengthy periods of time.[47] If people were willing to tolerate — and even accept — such non-normative behavior, then perhaps it was possible that modern masculinity could establish itself as the “true” masculinity.

Finally, a 1923 cartoon portrays how such dubious masculinity could be punished. It shows a scrawny-bearded fashionable modern man being sentenced in court by a thick-mustache wearing judge (Figure 11).[48] Once again, the silhouette resembles the “Dude,” with a touch of the Flapper in its tubular shape. The thinly drawn lines and his slender outfit (fitted and with a diminutive bowtie) express his delicacy, as does his lithe demeanor (hands gently crossed in the front holding his hat, and his slightly inclined head). It could be argued that such powerlessness is expected in a courtroom but considering the image within the context discussed here opens the possibility of understanding the figure beyond the walls of the court and, instead, as an insight into his social persona, something innate to his performance of masculinity. The judge’s statement implies that the man’s transgression is fashion — and masculinity — are related; and the man must carry out his sentence in a women’s jail. In this way, the cartoonist similarly passes judgment on a “delicate,” but nonetheless, threatening masculinity.

“Court ordered.”

This essay probes the place and role of fashion — as dress and behavior — for Puerto Rican men of the upper and middle classes and proves that they were represented as caring about their appearance, as they were addressed as fashionable subjects and consumers. From the pages of Puerto Rican periodicals, men were advised and coached in ways to care for their dress (of which they were offered a noteworthy variety), physical appearance, and demeanor. Many of the advertisements and texts linked that self-care with personal and business success. At the same time, this preoccupation with fashion points to Puerto Rican men’s desire of participating in an ordinary modernity of global reach in a transitional, colonial context.

However, for Puerto Rican men, this colonial modernity had some unforeseen side-effects. As in the case of women and femininity, men’s fashion was a pivotal ground for debating contrasting notions of masculinity. Of the instances examined here, there was the fashionable modern man, who was swayed by contemporary sartorial discourses and was criticized as exhibiting an affected and feeble masculinity, symbolized in the cartoonish figure of the “Dude.” On the other side, an unaffected or normal/normative masculinity was discursively displayed as an inverted mirror.

If the types drawn in the polemic were not enough to bring the point home, then the case of Mario Sacristán/María Quesada might. The case of the man who lived dressed as a woman for years embodied a real-life example of the “threat” represented by modern masculinity and the social entente for its tolerance. Within these rigorous and prescriptive social norms, Puerto Rican modern men had to walk a tightrope, keeping a balancing act between caring for their appearance but without giving the impression of effeminacy.[49]

Nonetheless, despite the fears modern masculinity provoked, discussions about the fashionable modern man in the Puerto Rican colonial modernity context were scarcely framed within a nationalist discourse. On the contrary, critics of the modern man shared their arguments with similar anti-modern tendencies found in the colonial metropolis. As opposed to other colonial and postcolonial contexts, there was no immediate development of an oppositional fashion discourse on the island nor of a national costume.[50] Once again, the sources examined here point to Puerto Rican men’s desire to, and dilemmas surrounding, fashion(ing) modern subjectivities. These findings are significant considering that still-dominant historiographical narratives in Puerto Rico argue Puerto Ricans resisted United States colonial control from the beginning through any means necessary.

This essay is a first approach to the examination of the function of fashion in early twentieth-century Puerto Rican colonial society in transition. This research examines the construction of modern subjectivities, specifically regarding the fashionable modern man and the masculinity he represented. This focus also allows for the questioning of still powerful and pervasive narratives in Puerto Rican historiography. Many topics still need to be researched: for example, working-class men’s fashion and the corresponding discourses or the plurality of masculinities performed on the island. Future projects that tap heretofore understudied sources and employ new methods and approaches will further expand our understanding of the power fashion has in the staging of a colonial modernity. Nevertheless, as this essay has shown, fashion and its gendered discourses remain a critical arena for reevaluating conceptions of masculinity, its performance, and popular representations in early twentieth-century Puerto Rico.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Manuel Rodríguez, for commenting on an early version of this text, and for all his help and encouragement throughout the years. Also, I want to thank my colleagues at the Centro de Estudios Iberoamericanos at the University of Puerto Rico-Arecibo for their amazing reaction to a presentation of a previous version of this text in one of our “Jornadas de Investigación.” An abridge version was presented at the 135th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in New Orleans. My gratitude gladly extends to Sarah Scaturro and Ann Marguerite Tartsinis for the invitation to participate in this special issue, for their insightful and incisive comments and suggestions, and above all, for their patience. Last but not least, I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their kind words, detailed reading, and penetrating comments. This is a much better text thanks to all of them. It goes without saying that all shortcomings are entirely my fault.

Author Bios

Article Citation

Hernández-Matos, Antonio. “’Hombres sí/Hombres nó’: Fashioning Masculinity in Early Twentieth Century Puerto Rico.” State of the Field, special issue of Fashion Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1-26, https://www.fashionstudies.ca/fashioning-masculinity-in-early-twentieth-century-puerto-rico, https://doi.org/10.38055/SOF010102.