Why Won’t Joe Sixpack Wear a Skirt?
No red-blooded man is interested in appropriating female power — face it, it is not a trade up to him.
On his radio program, Jeff Lewis, the reality TV personality and designer of Bravo TV infamy, recently spurned Mark Bryan, an American man in living in Germany who wears skirts and high heels to work and about town. You can find Bryan online under various salacious headings like ‘Straight and happily married’ man wears skirts and heels to work to challenge gender norms. They made a point of bracketing Straight and happily married as if dubious of how he could be either if he is wearing skirts and heels to show off his rather beautiful, hairless gams. Anyway, Lewis’s disdain for this man wasn’t at all veiled — his conclusion? “It’s a cry for help!” Gosh Jeff, in your lifetime, your sexual preference, your identity as a gay man, was considered a mental disorder and Matthew Shepard was tragically and brutally murdered because he was gay. In 2021, you still have to think about whether or not it is safe to publicly hold your partner’s hand in some parts of the United States but hey, go on and heap that contempt! So much for allies eh? But this raised the question for me of why. Why is the idea of a man in a skirt so abhorrent and disturbing to us as a society and why do we even see it from heretofore marginalized and oppressed groups?
A skirt is just a thing. It’s a piece of fabric wrapped about a waist, an object that is neither inherently masculine or feminine. Like a chair, it’s a thing. Space aliens wouldn’t find a skirt, examine it and discover it to be female. Unless they saw it in use while observing our society, they wouldn’t even know it was mainly worn by the female of our species. If the first thing they observed was a broadcast of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo or an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race… perhaps even the films Gladiator or Spartacus, they might initially think of the skirts as something worn by males and purely masculine. We only see the skirt as feminine because, as with high heels, which were once fiercely masculine, that is how we today agree to culturally code them. And yes, I said high heels were once fiercely masculine, they were a sign a man had the means to own, know how to ride, and maintain a horse. They were a sign of masculine power (wealth) and military might until appropriated by women then reshaped over centuries into an expression of hyper-feminine sexuality. Now, like the skirt we accept that they are feminine and only feminine.
It requires acceptance of and willingness to follow that agreement and that coding is so strongly and deeply ingrained in us, we don’t really think of it unless it is transgressed. It is very difficult for most of us to dissociate skirts from femininity and from my perspective, RuPaul and other drag acts, as much as I love them, actually reinforce many of the stereotypes and coding rather than break them.
People like to conform out of fear of being an outlier, they fear rejection, not belonging. That drive to be part of a group is evolved to keep us alive so that need to belong is primal. But in a civilized world, men should wear whatever the hell they want and still be men and safe. Good luck though making skirts widely acceptable as an expression of masculinity. If you are a man who wants to wear a skirt, you’ll have to muster the strength do it for yourself and completely own it sans apology — that would be a hell of a good-for-you moment. But to change society, multiply that effort into the tens to hundreds of thousands, maybe even into the millions. Can I see a show of hands for men who are just dying to be one of the ones in the vanguard to wear a skirt to work?
But let’s say a handful of us began casually wearing skirts with the frequency they are worn by women, I reckon that handful already exists. I think most people might be intrigued or shocked, do a double take and then go about their own business. Many would chatter about it, take photos, and post them on social media because of the novelty or perceived oddity of it. Those things are what happened when a man in my town was seen about wearing a loose grey maxi skirt. Mind you, he put no effort into looking like woman whatsoever, he was just a dude in a skirt with a beard and Jesus hair. He actually looked a bit like Jason Momoa. Well, a few people were excited and praised his baddassery, most said something to the effect of ‘wow, good for him, I guess.’ Surprisingly, most of the comments of dislike and thinly veiled mockery came from women and a couple of gay men I know. He was the subject of confused looks, gossip, laughter and support until sightings of him ceased and we moved on. So, that in mind, most people are either accepting or too concerned about what is happening in their own lives to give a guy in a skirt much thought. Some may show you support or feign indifference to your face and then talk about it behind your back — but really, that’s not your business. Be ready for some support but also prepare for that small percentage of people who will be triggered and try and smack you down — they’re around and mostly benign, I used to get teased by a guy at work for wearing a pink tie or shirt.
We live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line. Not only is this wrong, but it’s dangerous.
—Dr. Brené Brown
Modern western straight men wearing skirts is a fascinating proposition to me, there are days I think it would be great to go out in a simple skirt. And I’m not talking satin, lace, a miniskirt or something that demands a petticoat and stockings or trying to look like a woman, I mean something simple like a black jersey skirt. I don’t do it because I lack the bandwidth for the attention and emotional hassle of it; granted, I suspect, nay, know much of that is self-imposed. I am allowing concern for other’s opinions and reactions to push me into conformity because I have that primal need to fit in and be accepted. But I’m also an introvert and avoid attention. I own a tartan kilt related to my Glaswegian mother’s family, I have very close and many relatives in Scotland but I won’t wear the kilt about the US for the same reasons, the attention starts to really annoy me. But a skirt that isn’t a kilt, let’s be blunt about this: In most societies, including the oh so enlightened and liberated west, a man aspiring to femininity (and a skirt is synonymous with that) is a lowering of status and power, not only in the eyes of men but many women as well — even Jeff Lewis, who isn’t particularly masculine, gets in on the putdowns.
The modern male skirt idea is not at all new. Elizabeth Hawes, an American clothing designer who rankled at the frivolous morays of the fashion industry, proclaimed that, “By 1976, American males will be as free as females to dress to their personal pleasure.” She even designed skirts for men yet here we are in 2021 and you don’t see average men, the Joe Sixpack sort, in skirts.
Full disclosure here: Since I was a kid, I’ve cross-dressed in skirts made for women and continue to be very curious about androgyny, drag etcetera. I publicly ignore many gender boundaries. But some taboo boundaries I still feel uneasy about crossing. I consider myself gender incongruent and I walk about in women’s jeans with my nails painted, long hair up and even wear eyeliner but lipstick, stockings, high heels and skirts remain taboo for me, at least in public. Truth be told, as I’ve progressed through middle age, I’ve mostly lost interest in all of that in private too although, I do own a simple jersey cloth skirt that I lounge about the house and garden in. Nevertheless, to me, a man affecting femininity is beautifully transgressive and I love the sensuality and aesthetic of many women’s fabrics. From my point of view, omen’s fashion is exciting whereas men’s leaves me feeling rather, meh. And before you get too judgy, Mr. Rock n’ Roll aesthetic himself, Keith Richards wrote in his autobiography, “I started to become a fashion icon for wearing my old lady’s clothes.” He went on to describe in more detail how he and his girlfriend at the time, Anita Pallenberg, wore each other’s wardrobes and how that led to his androgynous style. Contemporary western cultures are largely frightened by the social consequences of men accessing and acting on their own sense of femininity even though males like me who identify as somewhere along the trans spectrum are relatively rare. It is as if our gender incongruence were contagious. We see headlines about feminized maleness, lowered sperm counts, synthetic estrogens in our water, or estrogen mimics in plastics, internet memes and bloggers asking, ‘Are Men Turning in to Women?’ or stating, ‘Traditional Manhood Is Under Attack!’ It is as if women insisting men share some equality and stop being dicks to women or degrading ‘the feminine’ is signaling armageddon. For a group of people who boast with such bravado about their strength, resilience and toughness, they are so fragile and fearful of loosing dominance. But none of this ‘society will collapse’ nonsense is new.
Even the word skirt, in slang, is a synonym for an attractive sexually available, young woman and the skirt itself become tied to what is concealed beneath — or up it. Men see skirts as a sign of vulnerability and accessibility — they’ll rarely admit it outwardly to women but it is what goes through their heads, the extreme version of that thought is, ‘Hey, did you see what she was wearing? She was asking for it!’ You are as likely to make a fortune selling t-shirts that state ‘Kiss me, I’m a pussy’ or ‘I Have Vagina Envy’ to straight cisgender men as you are getting a significant number of them to wear skirts.
Women can never be careful enough, can we? If we take naked pictures of ourselves, we’re asking for it. If someone can manage to hack into our accounts, we’re asking for it. If we’re not wearing anti-rape nail polish, we’re asking for it. If we don’t take self-defense classes, we’re asking for it. If we get drunk, we’re asking for it. If our skirts are too short, we’re asking for it. If we pass out at a party, we’re asking for it. If we’re not hyper-vigilant every single f...ing second of every single f...ing day, we are asking for it. Even when we are hyper-vigilant, we’re still asking for it. The fact that we exist is asking for it.
— Anne Theriault, The Bell Jar Blog
Again, the thought of men increasingly in skirts upends us to the point we see it as a portent of the destruction of masculinity and therefore civilization’s imminent collapse. Without Don Draper in charge, how on earth will we survive?
Like it or not, and many people don’t want to hear or admit this: Even in the liberalized west, women are still viewed by many men (consciously or unconsciously) as second-class citizens and to be associated with their lifestyle is a comedown. In Ian McEwan’s novella The Cement Garden, the character Julie says:
“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s OK to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.”
Don’t ban skirts in school. Let everybody wear them | Ellie Mae O’Hagan
On 23 Dec 1938, a distressed Indiana mother wrote a letter to The Richmond Item, her local paper, asking it’s agony aunt for advice on how she should deal with a problem she was having with her son. He’d gone to a fancy dress party disguised as a girl but since, was entirely committed to dressing as one daily.
‘His sisters have to keep their closets and their bureau drawers locked up to keep him from wearing their things. We have tried every way in the world to shame him and his father has thrashed him several times about it, but nothing stops him. What can we do?’ she asked.
The response back was surprisingly introspective. The advice columnist wrote, “Isn’t it queer that for a boy to want to be a girl, and look like a girl, and dress like a girl is so unusual that it fills his parents with fear that he is abnormal, whereas virtually every girl in the world wishes she were a boy and the majority of them try to look like boys, and act like boys, and dress like boys? The greatest insult you can offer a man is to call him effeminate, but women esteem it a compliment to be told they have a boyish figure and that they have a masculine intellect.”
But unlike women in trousers, we also hold a myopic view that a man in a skirt can only be crossing gender boundaries and imitating or adopting feminine stereotypes. Apparently you’ve not seen Russell Crowe in the film Gladiator.
For a man to be likened in any way to a woman is generally seen as weak or ‘gay,’ (sadly to many, the same thing) and is the ultimate insult to him. At the core of this attitude lie homophobia, transphobia and misogyny, flip sides of the same coin. Even though many gay men are stronger, fitter and more manly than many heterosexual men societies around the world equate gayness with femininity because wanting to have sex with a man means you are therefore like a woman and to want to intimately handle or be penetrated by a penis is seen by many men as degrading. And yet, the same attitudes arise within the gay community, because they are after all first and foremost, men. To be called effeminate means you do not deserve to be male, you’re out of the pack, whatever pack you belong to, “turned in your man card.” Somehow, if you need a card as proof of manhood, I tend to think you can’t be that secure in it anyway.
In 1492, the last sultan of the emirate of Granada, Muhammad XII was deposed. Having lost Granada, the last moorish stronghold in Spain, to the Catholic Castilian monarchs, he looked back one last time as he crested the Sierra Nevada and cried for what he had lost. Legend states that his mother Aixa, sitting next to him chided:
"You weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man."
To my reading, her words are not so much a damning of her son as they are a condemnation of femininity as weak, ineffectual, frail and prone to emotion. It is a reflection of the esteem, or lack of it, in which women were held in that culture. It was so pervasive that even women bought into it. Lady MacBeth manipulated her husband’s ambition by calling his manhood and strength into question. Like I said, the surest way to insult a man and incentivize him to behave in a more destructively masculine way is to deride his masculinity.
That dynamic continues today. Women will put boys and men down by calling them girly, sissies, gay, etcetera. I’ve been contemptuously called ‘girly’ by a woman for having an aubergine-coloured lunch bag. I’m sure she’d also put me down for being specific and using the word aubergine instead of purple! That leads me to ask why, despite all the bravado and posturing about the tough, rugged confidence of masculinity, is it so damn tenuous and easily threatened? A strong and confident woman can shake a weak man’s machismo like nothing else because the machismo is an affect, a mask. We’re so often terrified of feminine power.
Regardless of the cultural system, social pressure to appear straight seems to be fairly intense cross-culturally. Indeed, one is inclined to wonder, if being straight is just natural, why does it require quite so much policing?
— Alice Dreger
Now, of course, that is some men, but still, I’d be curious to know how many of us are willing to listen, learn or look up to a woman’s strength and wisdom. Gosh, If I had a dollar for every time I was called a pussy, panty waist or f****t by an online troll hiding behind a screen for suggesting that, I could buy my wife and I nice dinner. I’m very happily married to a woman though, who I respect and treat as my equal consequently getting more sex in a week than I men who look down on women likely do in a month so call me all the names you want.
I am intrigued with the idea of men wearing skirts as a purely masculine affect. Yes, yes, I can hear the eye rolls and laughter through the screen, I am being called a ‘fag’ again but who am I kidding, those people who’d use that word haven’t read this far. Long, long ago, it used to be commonplace, men wore skirts, see Russell Gladiator Crowe above, It’s not that big a bloody deal.
As I mentioned, my maternal family are Scottish and I own highland attire. It is ceremonial though, and although my mother tells me of a time in the 1940s and 50s when tinkers still had horse-drawn carts and farmers could be seen about the village or at market in their kilts, I don’t go to work or the shops in mine; I am so sick of women asking me what I am wearing under it and stroking my sporran or trying to lift it up for a peek — yes, that has happened! I guess though, in light of my collective maleness, turnaround is fair play. Moreover, living in the United States, I have a heightened awareness that when I do wear it, I am screaming for attention.
I see men in ‘kilts’ somewhat often though; a company out of Seattle called Utilikilts fashions them out of thick, drab, canvas, workman-type cloth and camo with riveted on cargo pockets á la Carhartt and Wrangler. Why do I hear Mike Meyers in my head right now?
Anyway, for me, Utilikilts puts way too much effort into stereotyping masculinity, heaping on rough and heavy odds and ends to help men feel comfortable and manly wearing a skirt. In the photo above, notice the tape measure and steel ruler suggesting a certain dexterous manliness. I know a lot of bears (a sub culture of gay men) who wear them but I think, they’ve maybe added to the general straight male phobia of wearing skirts, but that’s only my opinion, to each his own and more power to them. I’d wear a simple, loose woman’s jersey skirt before a Utilkilt because, to me, it would be like driving a jacked up pickup with gargantuan tires and a gun rack. Look, I know I am being persnickety, all the more power to Utilikilters, it’s a step forward but it’s just not my bag. If I’m going to wear a skirt in public, I’ll damn well wear a skirt. If I feel I need to compensate or somehow redeem it, which is what I’d be doing in a Utilikilt, I’m not ready.
The tartan kilt has a deeply nationalistic, cultural, martial and male history and when it was simply a man’s clothing of the day, it was markedly different from the clothing of women. That was before Victorians invented the modern myth of the highlands and the modern kilt along with all the schmaltz. But there is nevertheless, a sacredness to highland male attire and I have NEVER, worn women’s garments with a tartan man’s kilt and I get why calling it a ‘skirt’ (which at it’s most literal it is) is so touchy with Scottish men. They want to protect it so its masculinity isn’t ‘stolen’ or diluted. With modern iterations of it though, like the Utilikilt and its ilk, we skirt the issue (pun intended) of calling it a skirt by naming it a kilt (because it only RESEMBLES a skirt — but it isn’t because it’s kilted (kilt | Definition of kilt in English by Oxford Dictionaries) It reminds me of a father at my son’s preschool who insisted on calling his son’s baby doll his “drinking buddy.” That which we call a rose, By any other word… Remember what I said about a male being associated with what might be viewed as a feminine quality? To all too many people (again, even some women) the state of girlhood/womanhood is viewed as weak and demeaning and for male to be associated with it is an insult. With the baby doll, better to be drunk than nurturing. The kilt is saturated with the sweat of manhood, history and the stubborn memory of rebellion, bloodshed and loss of a romantic ideal. I just don’t get that with a Utilikilt. Kilt comes from a word meaning “to tuck up” which, funnily enough, is a method used by people hiding their male bits to more seamlessly pass as female - just a wee aside.
But back to the concept of an entirely masculine (but not cartoonishly so) western male skirt that is NOT some version of a kilt. As things stand today, and I hope I’m wrong, I have difficulty envisioning a day when it is commonly accepted for men to wear a mohair pencil skirt to the office, a flowy madras maxi for a romantic evening out, or even a Ben Davis mini to the factory. In our collective mind, ‘skirt’ has become an entirely feminine word. Sure, in ancient Rome and other long-gone cultures, very masculine men wore skirts and ‘gladiator’ sandals but we’re not in ancient Rome.
I am long given up on high fashion changing our attitude about this, because, and go figure, there is something inexorably effete about male models striding the runway in avant-garde skirts. That is the worst possible way to convince your average straight, cisgender guy to don a shirt dress or even a skort to go hang with his mates at the pub. I’d love to be able to wear a non-costume, non-ceremonial skirt and look like an unremarkable man going about his day rather than a crossdresser or Game of Thrones enthusiast; It’s a pipe dream. I really do wish a man in a skirt was as mundane a sight as a woman in pants. As a man though, I just cannot wear a skirt out without making a statement that draws a lot of attention to myself and I don’t like the attention. As I’ve already commented, to get anywhere, we’d need to start doing it en masse, make it a movement but how and when is that going to happen? I’m thinking 1940s Katherine Hepburn’s shocking trousers as an assertion of equality — but she was appropriating a symbol of male power. No red-blooded man is interested in appropriating female power — it is not a trade up to him.
I applaud Billy Porter in his Oscars ball gown and he is a man after my own heart, in fact, seeing him in it made my heart skip. It was a bold, courageous, NECESSARY and nonetheless attention-grabbing statement. A New Yorker Magazine article reports, “Porter wrote that he wanted to wear the gown in order to play with the gender binary, to melt the lines between masculine and feminine that red-carpet conventions tend to reinforce.” Thanks Billy, I’d never have guessed that… and Billy, I’m already in the choir and singing loud and proud but you lost Mr. Straight Broheme’s attention before you even began. The concept of straight men in skirts scares the crap out of most people, now Harry Styles is at the brunt of the jokes, and it seems to me the only way your average bro will ever wear skirts is if there arises a utilitarian need for it. The closest version of this I can come up with, the nearest to necessity for now, is a sarong at the poolside or beach.
Sarongs are not particularly fussy and, on a westerner, usually serve a clear purpose: To temporarily and modestly cover, protect, and warm the body at the resort between episodes in the water without a lot of thought or effort. Hell, the towel I wrap around my loins to walk from the gym shower to my locker is, for all intents and purposes, a skirt but in either case, I’ll not be having dinner out wearing either in downtown Fresno. Done without a lot of thought, effort or vanity, in exactly the right time and place, they can be roguishly and ruggedly masculine in the same way long hair on Jeff Bridges is but decidedly is not on Michael Jackson. The key is to do it confidently without care, make it look flung on and unplanned with almost zero time in front of the mirror, fussing over how others see you. Hint: It usually looks that way because that is exactly what happened.
So, as far as getting Joe Blow into a skirt, I see a glimmer of hope in guys like Jason Momoa who are ultra-masculine and blurring gender. Maybe if Conor McGregor was in a skirt instead of on one, that might tip a few men toward wearing them — but it would still be an exceedingly tough row to hoe.
I truly believe it is going to have to evolve naturally out of some need. A skirt, in our minds, is synonymous with femininity and to Joe Average wearing one is a perceived lowering of his of status and power. Right now, the only way I can envision that guy wearing one is if society were to collapse and post apocalyptic men, with no internet or shops, having long forgotten how to sew and tailor clothing, just belt an old torn curtain around their waist, call it good and head out the door. That, or if wearing pants inexplicably started causing erectile dysfunction at which I’d get in on the stocks for male skirts early. Until then, the closest you’ll get to wide-spread acceptance is the split skirt, AKA male culottes.
Hold on though, didn’t Fred Flintstone wear a leopard print dress?
