As a soft power skill how personal image is build up on cultural heritage in Sri Lankan male modelling industry

Abstract

Modelling is a fashion for establishing one’s body and psychological personality in a live set- up of audience reception. It is identified that how young mens’ costume and art designing are configured by the use of traditional cultural values and norms, eventhough global male modelling is widely constructed through western male modelling. Accordingly, this paper explores as a soft power skill how personal image is built up on cultural heritage in Sri Lankan male modelling industry. Sri Lankan male modelling is constructed by the Sri Lankan traditional cultural costumes and body figures.

On qualitative textual analysis of the conveniently selected visual pictures and videos of ramp male modelling, this study finds that most of the mens’ body is constructed by Sri Lankan traditional cultural costumes and attires. These include cultural artifacts such as national dresses, Kandyan Muladuma, Sarong, historical king’s dresses, traditional religiously made gods, Kandyan Wes dancers and other local dressings. This has featured as a cultural dresses representing on their cultural heritage. Also, men’s body has been established as an aesthetic and erotic from of configuration in order to attract the pageant audience, but male modelling is created based on the western oriented nude or/and swim wearing. Young men show a growing interest to develop their male masculinities on male modelling, so that they form their local bodily presentation on beauty and body masculinities, although these fashions are dominated by western creative industries’ cultural icons and images. In addition to cultural clothing, in creating young men’s body beauties and formation, these people used to follow physical exercises in gymnasium workout schedules. Finally, this concludes that male modelling is developed as a cultural resource of making young people more stylistic and fashionable for developing their male masculinities into a cultural soft power.