The article is devoted to the problem of modern masculinities considered as a set of dominant and alternative images of men, ways of behaviour or identity strategies. Their sources can be tracked to the 19th century, the time when – according to many researchers – the modern masculinity was constituted. Connell’s claims about the “hegemonic masculinity” (and also Bourdieu’s concept of the “male domination”) are treated as a starting point. Moreover, the article presents factors that influenced initiation of the new type of man (the Renaissance culture, modern philosophy, the development of empires, large-scale wars, class society and capitalism etc.) and describes such categories as: male honour, the figure of a gentleman and a dandy, male beauty canons and androgynous masculinity
