Men in skirts

[JocelynJames]

So the other morning I was listening to a local rock station (Boston) that has a morning show from Michigan( probably Detroit) called Dave and Chuck the freak. They spoke that something that has come about that once again many clothing companies were trying to introduce skirts for men . That as a result of the pandemic, men realized how freeing a skirt was and because they were not under scrutiny of , well, everyone, working remotely, this was the direction many were going.
One statement that made me want to call in, but it was previously recorded from the day before , was when the host said ? no straight man wears skirts? WRONG! How close minded. Like nearly every other thing , there are people from all walks of life that enjoy things they are not ?supposed to?. Grandmothers that enjoy rap, women that enjoy hunting and fishing, motor sports , math and science, white people that love the blues , and yes, men that enjoy women?s clothing. I think Planet Fitness may have the right attitude, but should apply worldwide- judgment free zone. Think of where we could go and what we could do as a planet if we weren?t busy judging others because their beliefs don?t align with ours. -rant over

[GretchenM]

You are so right, Jocelyn. The comment that straight men do not wear skirts is wrong. Why did the Scottish armies adopt kilts and the Roman soldiers wear a kind of leather skirt? Freedom of movement in battle. Native Americans often wore a kind of skirt as formal wear in dancing. Of course, those are special situations and cases, but the point is the statement reeks of stereotypical thinking that borders on discrimination or at least is a source of discriminatory behavior. The ugly sledge hammer of the gender binary strikes again. There should be no problem with wearing a skirt, but there is. I have worn my hiking kilt to the store and been subjected to such severe looks you would think I showed up naked. It is a kilt, for crying out loud. It is a male skirt. Lighten up people. We are not all clones. We are unique, each and everyone of us. (End of my rant.)

[Karren H]

Kind of enjoying the uniqueness but If everyone starts crossdressing.... I am going to have to find a new hobby!

[jennifer1958]

I am a girl at heart, but could never pass so I don't try. I have often been in public in a skirt (jean or khaki), neutral looking boat shoes and either a dress shirt with a camisole underneath or a polo shirt, although not in my hometown. So I have gone grocery shopping, pumping gas, Home Depot, having my nails done, or grabbing a drink at a bar. I get some stares, but have never had a rude comment. Wearing a full dress remains in the confines of my home.

Jennifer

[susann_gardener]

I can't pass, so late nights when able are the only times I can get out.
This pandemic has been just terrible for time alone.

[Stephanie47]

Straight men wear dresses too!

[Julie MA]

Some judge and stereotype out of fear. Some feel it gives them power over those who are different. Some out of the security of herd conformity.

[kellyanne]

In the west, we ( The Romans) wore skirts before women - it was standard fare for men.

How do you know if someone is a " barbarian ? A : They wear pants - these were taken from The Gauls.

So don't worry - history is on your side.

[AngelaYVR]

320027

This is making someone very angry!

[Kirsty2907]

Jocelyn

I quite agree with your points..
But wish to add 2 comments
By the name of the show ?Dave and chuck the freak? I don?t think your call would have changed anything and possibly just given them fuel for the fire.
2nd being could this all have just been an April fools? Again by name of the show doesn?t sound like they are covering in-depth topics

[Teresa]

Jocelyn ,
OH Dear , what planet are those idiots from ? I suppose they will be assuming all women that wear trousers are lesbians !!

I guess if you haven't got the intelligence to get a proper job you can always find a job in media !

As for the statement about more men wearing skirts , I'm not convinced on a permanent basis some fads come and go but basically it's nothing to do with gender issues .

[Leslie Langford]

You are so right, Jocelyn. The comment that straight men do not wear skirts is wrong. Why did the Scottish armies adopt kilts and the Roman soldiers wear a kind of leather skirt? Freedom of movement in battle. Native Americans often wore a kind of skirt as formal wear in dancing. Of course, those are special situations and cases, but the point is the statement reeks of stereotypical thinking that borders on discrimination or at least is a source of discriminatory behavior. The ugly sledge hammer of the gender binary strikes again. There should be no problem with wearing a skirt, but there is. I have worn my hiking kilt to the store and been subjected to such severe looks you would think I showed up naked. It is a kilt, for crying out loud. It is a male skirt. Lighten up people. We are not all clones. We are unique, each and everyone of us. (End of my rant.)

So true.

The German soldiers facing any Scottish kilt-wearing regiments across from them in the trenches of WWI had the greatest respect for them and their fighting abilities. Their commonly-used nickname for them was "The Ladies From Hell". ;) :heehee:

[suzanne]

There's only one problem. Every skirt I've seen that was designed for men is UGLY. As if someone forgot to sew the inseam of a pair of pants. I'm not a fan of kilts, but they do look better than these new abominations. There's nothing wrong with a guy wearing a "woman's" skirt. They have a shape that is designed specifically work with the shape of a human tushie and move when you walk. On Pinterest, I have found dozens of examples of guys who are absolutely killing it in a very feminine skirt without actually trying to pass as a woman. A quote I'm seeing ever more frequently is "Clothes have no Gender". That's especially true with skirts.

[Meghan4now]

The Ten Commandments was on last night. Aside from being totally cheesy and SO '50s culturally retarded, most the guys especially the Egyptians were in miniskirts. Three inches above the knees. Yule Brenner was ROCKING it. From a fashion perspective the movie is a CD's wet dream!

[BLUE ORCHID]

Hi Jocelyn :hugs:, Skirts for men would not be Crossdressing, I'm not interested ,

>>>>>>> >Orchid**O:daydreaming:O**

[JocelynJames]

Jocelyn

I quite agree with your points..
But wish to add 2 comments
By the name of the show ?Dave and chuck the freak? I don?t think your call would have changed anything and possibly just given them fuel for the fire.
2nd being could this all have just been an April fools? Again by name of the show doesn?t sound like they are covering in-depth topics
I don?t believe it to be an April fools stunt- here?s the article from a week before
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/mar/24/super-freeing-mens-skirts-emerge-as-pandemic-fashion-trend

[Cheryl T]

Ahh, longing for Roman times when all the men wore Togas.
See the first dresses for men were by Italian designers...lol

[Jane G]

Not fust if I"m wearing a skirt a dress or trousers. I just feel more me dressed in women's clothing.:daydreaming:

[kimdl93]

I am always skeptical of the fashion industry’s attempts to generate enthusiasm for any type/style of clothing. These efforts always seem so artificial. Efforts to promote skirts for men particularly feels contrived to me.

As a woman in spirit, I am pleased that, for the most part, skirts remain in the province of women’s wear.

[SophyV]

I never understood how fashions take off. Who told all of the women to start wearing yoga pants all of a sudden. This doesn?t seem to happen with men as much. Probably because no one is trying to advance men?s fashion. Yet, I think it would be great if the fashion police started loosening their enforcement of the no men in skirts rule.

[Lori Ann Westlake]

It's certainly true that women are far more prone than men to follow a new fashion. Women like variation. Men are more conservative. "Skirts for men" have been tried before, and didn't take off then either. But I don't know if I want men to be routinely wearing skirts. For me the whole pleasure of crossdressing is to wear something uniquely female, something different from what men wear. If that difference were erased, it would take the pleasure out of crossdressing.

[DianeT]

How do you know if someone is a " barbarian ? A : They wear pants - these were taken from The Gauls.
KellyAnne, history is written by the winners and the Barbarians are always the others. Gauls had their own civilization too. Or did you just mean they didn't speak Greek?

[JohnniX]

Plenty of straight men in Scotland wear kilts. Mind you, if you dared to suggest it was a skirt... lol There's also that European guy who wears a skirt to the office. History also has many examples of men considered macho warriors wearing what we'd call skirts nowadays. Men In Skirts? Count me in ;-) x

[April Rose]

I wear women's clothes to express my inner femininity. It doesn't seem likely that is going to be embraced by Bro culture.

[Alyssa Lane]

I like to wear skirts, yet culture and the “manly men” thing won’t ever seem to pass. Even seen leggings for guys as a weird zone yet bike shorts etc are fine...

[Lori Ann Westlake]

There's also that European guy who wears a skirt to the office.

Welcome to the board, Johnni! I see this is your first post.

All I can add is, out of Europe's 715 million people (living west of the Urals, that is), I sure hope there's more than one man who wears a skirt to the office! Fortunately I'm sure there is. All the best! :)

[AndieB]

It was pop star Harry Styles that recently caused an "uproar" because he dared to wear a "dress" on the cover of Vogue magazine. :rolleyes:

https://www.vogue.com/article/harry-styles-cover-december-2020

It was mostly conservatives who had a problem with it, saying manly men are going away, or whatever.

Even though I'm married I think Harry looks pretty cute in the photos. And the Gen-Z kids think so too.

[Kirsty2907]

Lori
No johnni was right, just 1 in Europe
Big john from Berlin, that?s it 😀

[Leslie Mary S]

Comments with out thought, or comments to erk a response, are common on talk shows. Consider the source. We all know many men like skirts, some even on themselves.

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Lori
No johnni was right, just 1 in Europe
Big john from Berlin, that?s it 😀

Gee, Kirsty, I didn't know about this guy. Thank you for educating me! So maybe the German edition of Vogue didn't have a photo of Harry Styles on the cover wearing a dress?


...comments to erk a response are common on talk show...

In other words, talk shows are full of Trolls, right? ;)


We all know many men like skirts, some even on themselves.

Hey Leslie, that was witty!


In the west, we ( The Romans) wore skirts before women - it was standard fare for men.

How do you know if someone is a " barbarian ? A : They wear pants - these were taken from The Gauls.

So don't worry - history is on your side.

I'm sorry to say, Kellyanne, history doesn't work that way. I noticed DianeT remarked that "history is written by the winners"--and history is also made by the winners. The trouble is that the "winners" change all the time! Just like the Super Bowl. When it came to Rome, the Barbarians won in the end!

Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome in 410, and she never really recovered after that. Slowly the whole Roman Empire fell apart, as it had been doing for centuries, and got overrun by Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and just plain Goths, not to mention Huns, Vandals and whatnot. By the sixth century the Goths were running the show. Meanwhile in Britain in the far north, where the Romans had conquered the native Britons, they in turn had been overrun by a bunch of German tribes. And so on.

Of course, the descendants of Romans did recover, and by early modern times were playing important roles in art, trade and the like. But they never did regain their position as the world's "top dogs," except in the world of opera, arguably in sports cars, and (for a long time) the continued use of Latin for universal communication. It was the descendants of barbarians who brought civilization to its newest heights in recent centuries: the descendants of Gauls, and of the Saxon tribes who beat the pants off the Roman general Varus (or they would have done if he he'd been wearing any!) in the Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD. The Roman legions never had much luck in Germany. And descendants of the barbarian Vikings of the far north, who terrified Europe for centuries, and settled everywhere from Britain and Normandy all the way to Kiev. It's ironic that the very name of the country of "Russia" comes from the name "Rus" applied to the Vikings who overran the Slavic regions. By the time these groups of conquering barbarians got really civilized in the last few centuries, they were all wearing pants. The men were, anyway.

So what has clothing got to do with all this? Although the sway of a toga may be "dignified," pants are practical. For certain purposes anyway. On horseback for one thing. Ladies in ankle-length dresses either have to hitch them up (which is immodest) or are reduced to riding side-saddle: not a good way to control a horse. So one thing the British brought back from India was the jodhpur, a particular type of Indian trouser that was promptly adopted not only by polo players but by women especially for riding. (And of course, we all know what Amelia Bloomer invented, which gained renewed popularity during the bicycling craze of the 1890s.)

As for Rome, they never made as much use of cavalry in warfare as they could have done. Cavalry (and chariots) weren't so great in the hilly country around Rome itself, and the Romans were stick-in-the-muds in some ways. Being "top dogs" at the time, they didn't always see the need to adapt to different environments. Meanwhile a lot of those barbarians were nomads who lived their lives on horseback. The Huns for instance were expert mounted archers, deadly in warfare. The Romans had the high civilization, with fine buildings, statues, aqueducts, hypocausts, baths, circuses, a Senate and whatnot. But the barbarians were tough and adaptable, with ingenuities of their own, and knew how to survive in rough conditions and win. And they were learning all the time. Did Rome "fall," as people say... or was she pushed? Mostly the latter, I'd say.

However, the real advantage of pants is that they're cold-weather clothing. Skirts and dresses (or "robes") are fine for warm climates. Traditional Arab dress for instance is ideal for a hot country. It keeps the blazing sun off the skin, while allowing air circulation underneath to keep cool. But when it's freezing cold, pants cover far more and keep people warmer. And pants, apparently, originated out there on the plains of Asia where it can get pretty chilly at times, and where many of these barbarians came from. "Mongolian trousers conquered the world," wrote Morris Bishop in his classic 1968 book on The Middle Ages. (To give them their due, many Native Americans in colder climates wore pants as well, or leggings at least.)

This is highly relevant, because the torch of technological progress, on which civilization is based, eventually passed from Rome to the colder regions farther north, where pants proved more practical. The reasons for this are essentially environmental: ecological, climatic, geographic, geological--the same reasons that centers of human development had been shifting from one place to another for ages, too complicated to go into here. But pants won out in the end, and have even made great inroads into the world of female costume. A pity, in my view, since I love female clothing expressly because it is uniquely female. Others may disagree.

However, the sexes still like on the whole to distinguish their clothing styles from one another's. So no sooner had women adopted pants than we started seeing uniquely "female" variations, from tight jeans showcasing the shape of the leg to capris and loose "harem pants," even crazy styles like ripped jeans. So the bottom line, as I mentioned earlier, is that I don't see skirts for men taking off in a big way any time soon, Certainly not unless women stop wearing skirts altogether, which I don't expect them to do.

[dominique]

Personally I think men in skirts is just a fringe fashion I doubt it will go mainstream in the foreseeable future. This will go the same way as make up for men, splashed over mags etc but no cut through.

[Kelli_cd]

Plenty of straight men in Scotland wear kilts. Mind you, if you dared to suggest it was a skirt... lol There's also that European guy who wears a skirt to the office. History also has many examples of men considered macho warriors wearing what we'd call skirts nowadays. Men In Skirts? Count me in ;-) x

He is (or was? ) a member here: Mark B. I don't recall seeing posts from him recently.

[Leslie Mary S]

I once got in to it when I told a Scotsman that, without his Sporran (purse), that his kilt looked just like the skirts girl wears while going to a Catholic school.