Do Real Men Wear Skirts?

[Guest Anglesault]

NEW YORK (Feb. 8) -- Consider the plight of the man who wears a skirt.

 

Schoolchildren snicker as he passes. Construction workers give him grief. Perfect strangers assume the right to criticize his wardrobe. He might be fired. He might be beaten up. His wife might leave him for a man in slacks.

 

 

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Yesterday, in what future generations may look back on as the birth of the Male Unbifurcated Garment movement, some 100 men in skirts marched from the Guggenheim Museum to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to proclaim their rights to women's clothing.

 

"We're not transvestites, homosexuals or cross-dressers," said one marcher, David Johnson. "We don't want you to call us Jean or Sally."

 

"We're men," said Mr. Johnson, a retired global studies teacher from Poughkeepsie. "Men who want the right to wear a skirt."

 

If the cause of men in skirts has yet to take its place beside the gay rights or women's movements, one could hardly fault the marchers who assembled yesterday to make their case on a nippy February morning. They came from small towns and large cities all across this country. They came in minis, tutus, kilts and, in one case, a fluorescent orange number with matching orange shoes and orange vest.

 

Chris Taylor, 27, came from Levittown, on Long Island, in a full-length crimson dress. In the natural world, he said, the clothes horse of the species is invariably the male.

 

 

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"The male bird is always the pretty one, not the female," said Mr. Taylor, who is difficult to disagree with at 6'3" and 340 pounds. "Why can't the male human being dress with style and color?"

 

Before the march began, there was much talk of the movement's history. Men, it was said, have been wearing skirts much longer than women. There were glowing mentions of the Highlanders of Scotland, for example. It was noted with pride that European nobles of the 16th century wore skirtlike outfits accompanied by heels.

 

It was the French Revolution that turned the tide, said Ingemar Johnsson, 39, who flew from Sweden to attend the march. The French peasant, he said, wore pantaloons. As the monarchy was overthrown, pants became the fashion. The modern men in skirts movement can be traced to another Swede, he said, a man named Roger Lewau. In the early 1990s', Mr. Lewau built a Web site, now defunct, known, he said, as the Skirts Lover Nest.

 

"But that was long before I joined the movement," Mr. Johnsson said.

 

These days, the movement finds its guiding spirits in Tom Manuel, 48, a computer consultant from Virginia, and Larrie James, who is 55 and from Wisconsin.

 

As he rallied his troops yesterday, Mr. Manuel explained that the movement had recently experienced a schism between the freestylers, who believe that all skirts should be worn, and the bravehearts, who tend to dress exclusively in kilts.

 

 

"We don't want you to call us Jean or Sally."

-David Johnson, demonstrating a man's right to wear a skirt 

 

"There was almost a war, if you will, on the Internet," he said.

 

The term "unbifurcated garment" was created to address this rift. Kilts and skirts are both unbifurcated garments. Mr. Manuel is hopeful that with this new inclusive term, the tension will be finally laid to rest.

 

At a march of men in skirts, it is only natural that conversation would turn toward clothing. The following is fairly typical:

 

MARCHER 1: Who does that skirt?

 

MARCHER 2: Bear Kilt. You know them?

 

MARCHER 1: Yeah, but their tailoring doesn't work for me.

 

MARCHER 2: Really? They always fit me fine.

 

You would think that a hundred men in skirts with a bagpipe band marching on the streets at 10 a.m. would attract some real attention. But reaction was fairly tame. A couple of doormen came to watch, and the morning poodle walkers seemed a bit confused. The officers on escort duty all had smiles, but there was not a single a heckler.

 

In a matter of minutes, the marchers arrived at the Met where they planned to visit an exhibition called "Bravehearts: Men in Skirts." They were gathered in the plaza near the fountains when a double-decker tourist bus pulled up.

 

The sightseers gazed in awe at the crowd of men in unbifurcated garments. Someone in the crowd called up to ask the tourists what they thought.

 

"What I think?" said one young man with a clearly foreign accent. "I think I love New York."

[Red Baron 0]

Thrasher and Mosh wore skirts.

 

Indeed, Real Men Do Wear Skirts.

 

 

Or Kilts...

[Guest Fook]

*insert Roddy Piper joke here*

[Garth 0]

I have a kilt and wear it fairly often, its kinda nice not being restricted my trousers/pants depending on your country of origin.

[Ravenbomb 0]

a guy in a kilt can usually kick my ass, so I tend to not try to piss them off

[Garth 0]

That was in fact my theory for why i didn't get any abuse for wearing it, that they assumed that i would only wear a kilt if i was some crazy, badass scots man who could kick their ass if i did.

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

kilts own your assez.

[2GOLD 0]

What kind of skirt?

Are we talking a tasteful knee length number?

Are we talking a plaid schoolgirl skirt?

Are we talking upsettingly high mini?

 

What kind of skirt?

 

Cause the last two, no man should be allowed to wear ever.

[DerangedHermit 0]

a guy in a kilt can usually kick my ass, so I tend to not try to piss them off

But what about a guy in a skirt?

[Slovakia 0]

A guy at my school got in trouble for repeatedly "skirting" the dress code by wearing a kilt often. I don't know what the problem with wearing a kilt is, as long as you have underwear on. As long as you're not going commando, go ahead and go to school in a kilt. I wouldn't go that far, but if I had a kilt, I'd wear it. It's much less restrictive, I feel.

[Garth 0]

It's knee length the kilt i have, its allot of fun to wear, and being the attention whore that i am, it certainly gets just that.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

I saw a group of guys at the mall about 2 weeks before Christmas. Each of them had on a bit lower than the knee skirts, with spike bracelets and dog collars, one of them the type of meshy shirt christian used to wear and the rest had regular tshirts, and they all had wierd hair (one had a mohawk, one had spiked up hair like a pineapple, one had multicolored hair and the other had really long hair) and one of them had a roll of duct tape stuck to their skirt. I think its one of those you would have had to been there deals.

I

[spiny norman 0]

I too wear a kilt, plus do crossdress from time to time, just for a bit of fun. But the kilt thing, yeah, I do it fairly often.

[Damaramu 0]

Problem is that most guys who wear skirts are kids that are "just trying to be different!"

 

And kilts do rule......I see many men in Kilts at the Dropkick Murphy Concerts that I have attended. And they are monsters that could whip my ass.

 

But what kind of skirts are they talking about? A kilt? Or a frilly number?

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

I look dynamite in a kilt. I once wore one on stage in this shitty drunken punk band I used to be a part of, and got swarmed by the lasses afterwards.

[Damaramu 0]

I look dynamite in a kilt. I once wore one on stage in this shitty drunken punk band I used to be a part of, and got swarmed by the lasses afterwards.

Did you wear underwear? Because if you don't you can walk to the edge of the stage and give everyone a look-see.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

It wasn't that elevated. I was definitely naked 'neath the pleats, though.

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

you don't wear underwear under a kilt...it's just not right.