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http://culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/rw-connell-masculinities-science-of.html?m=1

http://www.livestrong.com/article/557876-should-men-do-zumba/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HRkNfdlm5Qs

https://www.quora.com/Do-men-do-Zumba

Connell, Raewyn. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge, Polity Press; Sydney, Allen & Unwin; Berkeley, University of California Press.  Second edition, 2005.

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'Overestimating the extent to which your actions and appearances are noted by others.'This theory has been linked in to men within dance classes and the deflation of there ego, with the fear of looking like a fool as a stereotypical judgment they decide not to participate in classes at all, so they can keep a sense of pride

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Joe Donatelli

Joe Donatelli is a journalist in Los Angeles and the publisher of the Humor Columnist website. His work has appeared in Salon, Cracked.com, DAME and other publications. Donatelli is a graduate of Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

Zumba. Most guys have heard of it, but few know exactly what it is. A quick rundown of what Zumba isn't:

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It's a dance fitness program, which is the simple way to say it. More accurately, Zumba is the Huffington Post of cardio workouts. It unapologetically aggregates every other cardio dance workout in its path, consuming all.

A single Zumba class might include salsa, merengue, cumbia, reggaeton, Arabian rhythms, country, samba, cha-cha-cha, belly dance, bhangra, soca, martial arts, belly dance, hip-hop, world rhythms and, possibly, the " Ickey Shuffle."

Read more: 11 Unusual Workouts You Probably Haven't Tried

Zumba was brought to the United States in the 1990s by Alberto "Beto" Perez. Perez invented the workout as a 16-year-old aerobics instructor in his native Colombia when he forgot the music for a class and used an eclectic mixed tape instead. His students loved it.

In 2001, he and his American business partners launched Zumba Fitness in the states. Today, Zumba Fitness says it is the most popular branded fitness program in the world and is being used in 180 countries by more than 15 million people every week.

While there's been no outside study of the gender breakdown of these dance classes that I know of, I'm willing to bet about 95 percent of the participants are female. The women I talked to while reporting this article said that they never or rarely see men in their Zumba classes.

A Zumba Fitness spokesperson said the official numbers are 80 percent women and 20 percent men, but at least one Los Angeles studio owner agreed with my 95/5 assessment based on attendance there.

The reasons for this are not just specific to Zumba - men in general prefer to work out alone, while women make up the majority of most cardio classes. But Zumba, as opposed to other dance classes like hip-hop and breakdancing, which at least get a smattering of dudes, seems especially unpopular with men.

The question is: Why? Why don't men Zumba? I set out to find the answer. As it turns out, there are a few reasons. And one of them involves mustard stains.

I enrolled at Your Neighborhood Studio in Culver City, where the rooms have wood floors, ballet barres and floor-to-ceiling mirrors that provide ample opportunity to see every mistake you make during each routine.

The instructor began each song by silently introducing a series of dance steps no American man has ever performed outside of an NFL touchdown celebration. The typical routine went like this: Two-steps-left, kick-pivot, two-steps-right, kick-pivot.

We'd repeat those steps a few times. I'd get better at the moves. Got it. Awesome. But then - wait, what? - the instructor would introduce a whole new sequence. Some women, such as my wife, magically got the dance steps as they happened.

Meanwhile, I'm tripping over my feet and saying to myself (or possibly out loud, I can't quite remember), "What was wrong with the last sequence? I was NAILING IT! Why must we always change?" In Zumba, you do 10 to 12 songs in an average class, so I basically became more unhinged with each new track.

So, that's the first main thing I noticed, which I think cuts to the heart of why many men avoid Zumba. I had no idea what I was doing most of the time, knew I looked like an idiot and every new sequence made me want to punt the MP3 player.

Why? Zumba took me out of my element and put me face-to-face with my insecurities. And because of that giant mirror, I got to see every mistake I made. And for men, that sucks. As a guy, you want to be the best in the room - especially if that room is full of fit women. When you're not, it's humbling.

But here's the saddest part of all, and it didn't occur to me until around my third class: My shame, embarrassment and towering loathing for my inability to move my body in sync with the music and the instructor, was all coming from within.

Not once did a teacher or classmate say anything about how poorly I danced. No one made a single critical, pitying or mocking glance. No one seemed to even notice my struggles. Yet I felt stupid.

As it turns out, I was suffering from what psychologists call "The Spotlight Effect." That's a fancy term for the tendency to overestimate the extent to which your actions and appearance are noted by others.

It's natural to think everyone is looking at you all the time, like when you're sure everyone at the party will notice the mustard stain on your jeans. But as researchers at Cornell concluded in a 2000 paper in the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology," it's more likely that no one is looking at you.

No one is obsessing about that yellow glob but you.

My female classmates ranged in age from 20s to 60s. Their skill level was all over the place. But there was no judging.

At first, I felt almost crippled with fear over what these people - these nice people who I didn't know and probably would never see again - would think of me. Even though science tells me that they likely didn't even notice!

When I asked Zumba creator "Beto" Perez how to increase male interest in Zumba, he said, "Men just need to get over their insecurities."

That's easier said than done.

My embarrassment and fear were eventually overridden by an even more intense sensation: Exhaustion.

In Zumba, the movement is almost non-stop. There are five-second breaks between songs, enough time for a quick towel or a drink of water, but no real rest. The sweat pours quickly and heavily because you're using every muscle in your body.

Perez says that Zumba doesn't feel like a workout, and he's right. Zumba feels like a wedding reception where you never leave the dance floor and every song is a line dance choreographed by a high-strung bridesmaid.

It took two classes, but I eventually began to lose my inhibitions. I began, to borrow a phrase, to dance like nobody was watching. I stepped, shimmied and shook. I spun and didn't knock anyone over. I was actually having fun. And I discovered what women worldwide already knew: Zumba is a good workout.

You burn about the same number of calories you would on a treadmill, but there are more challenges and a greater variety of muscle movements. As you get better at the moves, you experience more enjoyment from the class - and a sense of achievement.

Zumba's biggest upside: Time flies. A lot of working out is monotonous, and when you're bored, time creeps by slowly. But with Zumba, you're learning dance steps, memorizing them, putting them into combinations, paying attention to the instructor, keeping your distance from the people around you and listening to the music for cues.

A total-body workout that's challenging, helps you become a better dancer, makes time pass quickly and puts you in a room with 20 women? Perhaps the real question is why isn't EVERY guy doing Zumba?

Are you a guy that goes to Zumba classes? Why do you like going? What's your favorite part of class? If you're a guy that's never been to a Zumba class, why? What do you prefer to do instead? Would you ever try a class? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

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Joe Donatelli Joe Donatelli is a journalist in Los Angeles and the publisher of the Humor Columnist website. His work has appeared in Salon, Cracked.com, DAME and other publications. Donatelli is a graduate of Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Zumba. Most guys have heard of it, but few know exactly what it is.

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From my questionnaire which i shared via social media, I can see that woman are glad that men don't attend Zumba classes, when asked why it comes down to them feeling like they're being objectified, and judged. Linking in with Raewyn Connell's theory that you can't have masculinity without finite and that they bounce of each other as a relation.

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'With masculinity being a relational concept, for masculinity and femininity only exist in relation to one another, masculinity as an object of study will always be masculinity in relation. The science of masculinity for Connell will always be the science of gender relations.'

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In chapter one of her book Masculinities titled "science of masculinity" R.W. Connell examines the production of knowledge regarding masculinity, arguing to its ambiguous nature and problems with its claim for objectivity on account of its gendered practices of research and production of knowledge about masculinity and gender differences.

Albeit the lengthy discussion of these forms of organized knowledge about masculinity, Connell suggests that other, none clinical or academic, forms of knowledge about masculinity have accumulated, namely the form of political knowledge.

This type of knowledge about masculinities accumulated in various political spheres with the most important of them being the gay liberation movement and the women's liberation movement.

The gay liberation movement, by the way of coining the term homophobia, realized that homophobia and gay persecution are related to dominant and hegemonic forms of masculinity. Connell notes that one of the interesting products of the gay liberation movement and the discussion of homophobia was the blurring of the distinction between the men/women polarization and the homosexual/straight polarization. In this respect it is interesting to see the onward attacks on gender conventions, such as drag, which formed the queer style.

Second wave feminist thinking initially dealt with the concept of patriarchy and at some point turned its attention to male violence. The theory of gay liberation shares feminists' take on mainstream masculinity as an institution which is essentially related to power, is organized for the purpose of domination, and which resists any change out of allegiance to existing power relations.

At the end of chapter one of "Masculinities", "The Science of Masculinity", R.W. Connell wonders if masculinity is the problem of gender politics, or whether the problem is not masculinity (or hegemonic masculinity) itself but rather the institutional arrangements which produce inequality and bring forth the need to scrutinize masculinity.

Connell believes that masculinity is shaped out of the reciprocal relations between the personal and social dimensions, and she therefore wonders if this type of dynamic interaction allows for a stable object of knowledge, and if the science of masculinity is at all possible?

As far as positivistic science of masculinity is concerned than Connell's answer is a definite no, unless we are willing to reduce this science to biology only while excluding psychoanalysis, sociology and ethnography.

With masculinity being a relational concept, for masculinity and femininity only exist in relation to one another, masculinity as an object of study will always be masculinity in relation. The science of masculinity for Connell will always be the science of gender relations.

As elaborated later on in chapter three, R.W. Connell defines masculinity as practice configurations which are structures by gender relations. Masculinities according to her are essentially historical constructs, and their changing invention is a political process which influences the balance of interests in society and the courses of social change. Knowledge about masculinity can never be positivistic, and it can never be objectively reflective - it must be critical.
Raewyn Connell - "Masculinities", 1995 Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

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R.W. Connell - "Masculinities": Science of masculinity - summary

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In chapter one of her book Masculinities titled "science of masculinity" R.W. Connell examines the production of knowledge regarding masculinity, arguing to its ambiguous nature and problems with its claim for objectivity on account of its gendered practices of research and production of knowledge about masculinity and gender differences.

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Due to the lack of boys at Zumba I decided to go to the gym to find out why. In the gym I had an interview with a regular named Steph. When asking him if he would attend and why/why not he said without a doubt he would not, his reason behind this is because of his ego/sense of pride, and that if his other male friends found out he would feel embarrassed and be scrutinised. I asked him why he thought is was, he said its because he feels it's what's not expected of men, and that if you want to get fit that you should just go to the gym.

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This form of dance is originally derived from social Latin dance, however it has now progressed to a form of motivational and enjoyable fitness. At the end of the class I attended I asked many of the woman why they participated, there answer was virtually the same - they found it non threatening and fun, with it being the best alternative to the gym which they felt with more of a masculine/male dominated environment.

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On Saturday morning I attended a Zumba fitness class at the Compton school with fellow student Aimee Dalton. Within this class I was the only boy taking part, I then at the end of the class decided to interview the female teacher. I went on to learn that in her 6 months of teaching the class there had only been 2 boys taking class, besides me. This then made me take a look at the movement