AMM wrote:I guess I've had a sheltered life -- I've never been exposed to a "ballet fetish", though I guess I should have known there would be one..
The only exposure I can recall having to a man (in real life) wearing a tutu, other than in a ballet, was a picture of a man (on a boat) in Australia, in a National Geographic article which referred to some sort of regular festival when guys deliberately do silly things. I'd also expect to see a few men in tutus in the New York City Hallowe'en parade, though since I haven't gone in 20 years, I couldn't say for sure.
But, let's assume that it's true that 99% of time when a non-dancer adult male wears a tutu, it's because he has a sexual obsession with them, as exemplified by the website Bob referenced.
Doesn't this situation strike anyone as a little odd? As something that needs explaining?
Why aren't there guys who just kind of like it, but don't need to go off the deep end over it? (Or gals, for that matter.)
I mean, there are indeed men who are sexually fixated on women in high heels, but there are more men who just kind of like the look. There are websites for corset fetishists and leather fetishists, but also people who like to wear one or the other without going off the deep end.
Where are the guys who occasionally wear tutus just for the heck of it? I can't help feeling that somewhere under the rockslide of socialization that we all go through, there is a significant number of people who might have liked to wear a tutu occasionally, if they hadn't learned that this was unthinkable. Isn't it a little hard to believe that only 5-year-old girls would by nature feel any attraction to ballet costumes, and never any 5-year-old boys, or 10-year-old girls?
I have to admit, I myself think tutus and other dance costumes are kinda cute. I might even consider trying one on, if I weren't afraid of being permanently branded a pervert if I did.
If my fears are typical (and remember, I'm willing to wear a skirt in public!), then you'd figure that someone would have to be pretty driven to overcome their fears and actually go out and do it.
So, in a sense, the social disapproval ends up making it a fetish activity (if only by driving away the non-fetishists.)
And to the one or two of you who haven't yet written me off as having more than one screw loose, I say:
Maybe it's time to liberate dancewear from the fetishists, in the name of Fashion Freedom.
-- AMM
"Some people see what is there and say, why? I see what is not there and ask, why not?"
(misquoted from somebody or other.)
Don't get the idea that just because I agree with you it means you don't have multiple screws loose!
From what I've gathered, the difference between fashion and fetish is the extent to which it "flops your mop". If you're flopping your mop every time you see a particular item of clothing, it's a fetish!
A normal hetero man can have a strong appreciation for a woman who, let's say, is wearing open toe high heel sandals and several toe rings. It wouldn't be unusual to be a little aroused by that; I mean, she wouldn't wear them if she didn't want you to notice them. That's the point of fashion. But if the man then hired a hooker to wear open toe high heel sandals and toe rings while he flopped his mop over her toes, well, that's a fetish!
If the idea of putting on a tutu is a little bit exciting, in a naughty way, and you do it a few times just to be silly, maybe even run through the park for the sake of the freedom to look and act silly, and maybe you flop your mop afterward, that's not necessarily unhealthy IMHO. But if you have a closet full of tutus and you wear them contsantly at home and need to flop a lot, that, to me, would constitute an unhealthy fetish.
But my screws may be loose, too.
Sasq
You naughty people have one track minds..................! 
:sarcastic: 
That isn't fair yet it happens all the time. I'd say both sides are harmed when men are judged more harshly and that women aren't seen as sexually driven.