Do you think men should be allowed to wear skirts?

[ciarafoley97]

This was brought up by an article I read in the DailyMail (www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8847579/Straight-married-father-three-reveals-hes-worn-skirts-high-heels-day-four-years.html)

Some would say the fact that people think it's ridiculous for men to wear feminine clothing but the reverse isn't true is because the patriarchy sees women as being inferior to men. Therefore in a true gender egalitarian society, clothes would have no gender.

What about dating prospects? Would you date a man who wore skirts/high heels?

Men can wear whatever they want.

I mean of course.... men around the world have worn skirt like clothing for millennia

Of course men are allowed. In many cultures they wear dress/skirt like outfits. Go to the Middle East. Men typically were long robe outfits, never trousers. And look amazing, might I add.

Wear. Not were. Terrible auto correct.

What if a woman was wearing it?

Ah, now if you’re talking about a women’s kilt, it’s constructed differently. It has the pleats at the back, but it’s constructed more like a skirt and looks like a skirt. No other elements of dress are “required” (though sometimes it’s worn with a tartan sash) so kilt and skirt are often used interchangeably for it.

A man’s kilt is traditionally constructed of 8 yards of tartan (it’s heavy!) and would always be worn with a sporran. Ideally, it’d be accompanied by other traditional elements like a sgian-dubh, kilt pin and flashes, but it can be dressed down and worn with an aran sweater and walking boots, or dressed up fully formal for a wedding. Anyway, women are just as entitled to wear this if they want but, if they do, it’s definitely a kilt and not a skirt.

I have a number of male friends who wear traditional Indian clothing that could loosely be described as 'a skirt' . I was brought up in Scotland, where kilts are commonplace.

I was quite partial to Kurt Cobain in a frock and eyeliner back in the day.

I wouldn’t date a man who wore skirts and heels if he gave off even a whiff of getting off over the perceived submission of wearing female coded items (because that is rooted in misogyny and misogyny isn’t sexy).

I’d happily date a man who did it as part of high fashion or alternative look, but there aren’t many of those about in the middle aged heterosexual category.

My favourite look on a man is ‘long haired rocker in a flouncy blouse’ but there aren’t many of those about nowadays either.

I think Harry Styles is a great example of a current bloke who plays around with clothes without any hint of fetish and still maintains his masculinity. He seems so confident with it as well, I love it! It's such a refreshing change from everything else we are being told at the moment and this need for validation from everyone, Harry just does what he does. I keep dreading that he is going to come out with some non-binary/trans stuff, but so far he seems to just be a bloke who sometimes wears stuff more usually associated with women, and looks good doing it. More like him please

Absolutely they should be allowed to wear skirts. And indeed they are.

Would I be interested in dating a man in a skirt and heels? Not unless he rocked them as well as I do, so ...... that'll be a no!

People should wear what makes them happy. Break up those gender prison boxes!

I really don't know why they don't. Skirts and dresses are way more comfortable than trousers. I've spent lockdown wearing my usual work dresses cos they are just so easy to wear.

Every other man round by me seems to be wearing a dress as I live near a mosque. They look just fine.

Anyway. Op. The question is not tha5 great. Should men be allowed to wear skirts

They like women are allowed to wear what they want

Look at portraits of aristocratic men in the 17th and 18th centuries. Note long hair wigs, lacy velvet jackets, bling, high heeled shoes with lace trim, fetching tights.

Sure, no one is stopping them, at least outside of uniform related situations.

However, I thin the reality is that a majority of people like to have some level of differentiation of fashion for men and women. Maybe they don't really care what that entails, at least in a principled sort of way, but they like there to be a difference.

As long as that is the case, there will be some clothes or other accessories that are associated with a particular sex, and and if a person of the opposite sex wears them, that will be noted as unusual and possibly as an attempt to send some message.

I don't see it as a big deal though. No one really needs to wear anything in particular. I seriously doubt that 200,000 years ago people felt less authentic because their choices were a deer hide or a bit of mammoth fur.

@Goosefoot

Sure, no one is stopping them, at least outside of uniform related situations.

However, I thin the reality is that a majority of people like to have some level of differentiation of fashion for men and women. Maybe they don't really care what that entails, at least in a principled sort of way, but they like there to be a difference.

As long as that is the case, there will be some clothes or other accessories that are associated with a particular sex, and and if a person of the opposite sex wears them, that will be noted as unusual and possibly as an attempt to send some message.

I don't see it as a big deal though. No one really needs to wear anything in particular. I seriously doubt that 200,000 years ago people felt less authentic because their choices were a deer hide or a bit of mammoth fur.

I think you're right there on all points. The only trouser suit I ever owned was a dinner suit cut for a female body. I didn't wear it because it was comfortable or practical but because it was unexpected and stood out at a formal black tie dinner.

It's a little disingenuous for posters to say of course men can wear skirts and cite as examples kilts (a garment seen as masculine for 100s of years) sarongs - (culturally male in some cultures but certainly not mainstream western clothes. Look at the flak David Beckham got and he looked gorgeous in his) and a supremely confident outlier like Harry Styles.

The average bloke in the average office/ shop is at best going to get funny looks, possibly insults, possibly worse and that's setting aside all the armchair psychologists assessing whether he's a fetishist/AGP.

Yes they should be allowed, why not?

No to dating, for me personally. I wouldn't like to date an autogynephile, for many many reasons, and obviously men who wear skirts are more likely to have that fetish. Not generalising, just risk-assessing! If more men wore skirts then it would be less likely to signify a fetish.

Most men that wear skirts are performers of some description. Mostly vicars and rock stars. It isn't a social norm, you don't see many men popping to Tesco in a skirt, or working a wide range of jobs in a skirt. Does that matter? People who stand out against social norm need the norm as a measure of what they stand out against.

That said, if men are to wear skirts they'd better clamp those legs together

A hazard at Scottish weddings is large numbers of men in kilts who have not had the female socialisation of learning to sit with their knees together

Loads of men all over the world wear flowing robes, kilts, gowns, if you just look beyond the western paradigm of suits and ties.

Of course men should be allowed to wear skirts.

Most of them just don't want to, though, because skirts are coded feminine/non-masculine and a lot of men are a bit funny about things that might make other people question their manliness. They're quite heavily invested in skirts as a signifier of not-a-proper-man.

I'd not date a man in a skirt because he's a man. Not interested in dating one in trousers either, for the same reason. I do find skirts on women offputting, attraction-wise; it's specifically the feminine coding that I find unappealing. But everyone ought to be able to wear whichever according to their own preference.

I saw an older gentleman, in our sleepy little village, wearing a very short skirt, chunky heels, tights and a fair isle knitted jumper. The jumper looked odd, tbh, but the skirt looked ok and he had good legs for it.

Yes! Women wear trousers men should feel free to wear skirts. We should all wear what we bloody like and stop fast tracking kids on a path to puberty blockers and disfiguring surgery because everyone's so uptight about clothes and make up.

On a slightly different item of clothing, women's undergarment's seem more of the commonly worn items of clothing among men, although I don't have any articles to confirm this, from my studies a while ago.

women's undergarment's seem more of the commonly worn items of clothing among men

A certain subset of men, perhaps. Shouldn't stop the rest of them wearing skirts. Maybe if they weren't so worried about being beaten up by each other they'd have done it ages ago.