Malessere, Coatti, and Maranza: the popular construction ofdesirable masculinity in the Italian outskirts

This study analyses how certain models of masculinity rooted in Italian popular contexts of the outskirts become observable, standardised, and amplified through TikTok’s dynamics. It examines three subcultural phenomena from the peripheries of Naples, Rome, and Milan, Malessere, Coatti, and Maranza, which have gained visibility on the platform. Through the qualitative analysis of 150 TikTok profiles, the study highlights how practices are reproduced, configuring recognisable models of masculine desirability grounded in respect, dominance, jealousy, body care, symbolic consumption, and street codes. In dialogue with the literature on street masculinity, gangsta masculinity, muscular masculinity, and working-class masculinity, the analysis suggests that these configurations do not emerge spontaneously in digital space but find their conditions of possibility in contextually embedded social settings. TikTok accelerates their circulation, standardises their signs, and enables their comparative observation through indirect indicators such as language and aesthetics. The contribution lies in foregrounding how platformisation renders visible and circulable a situated form of hegemonic masculinity rooted in popular classes of the outskirts, which becomes a recognisable, imitable, and commentable repertoire even beyond its original territorial contexts.