Inside out: men on the Home Front

This paper examines the representation of men as domestic experts in British lifestyle television programmes. It considers contemporary representations of the home, locating these in relation to changes in British primetime programming where a movement towards hybrid TV forms appears to rearticulate the mission to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ and to transform private matters into public spectacle. The paper examines the ways in which contemporary representations of the male domestic expert struggle to negotiate perceived boundaries between the ‘inside’ of private space and the ‘outside’ of the public sphere and between the categories of femininity and masculinity. It argues that in the homes and gardens series, Home Front, the figure of the designer provides a significant contemporary rearticulation of the male dandy, and aestheticism and camp become key strategies for the redefinition of the home and of masculinity as matters of lifestyle.