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Dandyism was a spreading phenomenon in the cities of the late nineteenth century. Its more bourgeois and literary aspects are well researched, but it also influenced a number of youth subcultures that were seldom expressed in written or published forms except when journals and newspapers derided them. One of these was the character of the masher which emerged as a distinctly British variation during the middle of the century and was established as a form of popular dandy type in the 1880s. It is typical for a phenomenon like this to remain unexpressed, but a curious short-lived periodical entitled ‘The Masher’ was published in a few issues in 1883 during the height of the masher culture’s popularity. Through a study of the issues of this journal and the contents of its articles, this article aims at contemplating masher culture as a specific male subculture and testing the notion that this journal was a manifestation of it. Considering aspects of gender, performativity, dress and cultures of frivolity, the discussion centres around the self-irony and affectedness of the masher role, and its relation to other forms of more respectable dandyism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]