My Summer In Skirts
My Summer In Skirts
I've been wearing skirts that are mostly kilt-like for 4 years now, on and off, here and there. I have skirts/Kilts that I've made myself and ones that I've bought. The ones that get the most wear are the most comfortable ones: a black "original" Utilikilt and two kilts of my own design with Canadian regional tartans.
I introduced my co-workers to my skirts by wearing the tartan ones to parties and such, but eventually dubbed Fridays "kilt day" and, well, expanded from there. Wearing a skirt at work was less of a mental obstacle for me than wearing them to work. Toronto is a pretty cosmopolitan place and unusual sights are taken in with a yawn by most downtowners, but I commute by train and streetcar from the suburbs, which means not only sardine-can proximity to fellow commuters, but an interesting exercise in being among people not of the city core while I'm still learning to be relatively graceful in an open garment ("unbifurcated" is such a clumsy term). This, of course, is where the rubber meets the road. If you can carry it, you can wear it, and carrying it doesn't mean just sitting down and getting up gracefully but also dealing with evil winds often encountered on the stairways of subway stations. Girls learn to do all this early in life...so unfair...but I digress.
I'm pretty much an expert now and I realised the other day that skirt-wearing is a bit of an addiction. Having gotten to the point of skill and social comfort that allows me to simply choose what to wear without any peripheral concerns getting in the way, I choose skirts almost all the time. Doing "the sweep" before sitting down is no more trouble than doing "the pull" we do when we sit down in pants. Dealing with evil winds merely meant learning when they needed to be dealt with, and that was easy (but made me glad I don't prefer "going commando"). Summer weather and the logic of circulating as much air as possible has caused me to choose a skirt almost every day since June. I had to wear pants one day that I rode my motorcycle to work and I wore pants another day just because they were new and I wanted to try them out. There might have been one other day that I wore pants but otherwise it's been skirts every day.
I think part of the addiction might be the usually-amusing interactions I have with people as a consequence of wearing a skirt/kilt. Guys won't usually start a conversation but often say just the two words "nice kilt" as they pass me. This happens a lot. Some guys try to make clever Scottish comments. I sometimes wonder if that isn't because any other "explanation" makes them uncomfortable. They do this almost as often when I am wearing a Utilikilt as when I am wearing a tartan kilt.
Women are the ones who start conversations. I had one young woman stop to speak to me on the street as I was going out to get lunch. I was wearing the black Utilikilt. She wanted me to know that she really liked seeing men wearing kilts and that she'd spotted a guy in a tartan kilt just a few blocks away. Implicit in her manner and tone was that she was hopeful that it would become more common. I've heard this sentiment echoed quite a few times, in fact.
Another interaction I had was with the guy behind the counter of a tool rental shop. I was there to rent a drum sander and as I was leaving he asked where I got my Utilikilt (it was the workman's model). He was forty-something I reckoned, not an edgy club-going teen or twenty-something. He wanted to know because he wanted to get one. I told him how easy it was to order online.
Just last week I had a longish conversation with a woman at a streetcar stop. I was wearing my most unusual design, an olive-drab kilt with only six shallow pleats, just enough extra material to allow moving like a man but otherwise designed for maximum coolness on hot days. She started the conversation by asking if I was a designer. Later she volunteered that she didn't know why everyone didn't wear skirts or dresses all the time, especially in summer, and that she never wore anything else herself.
My summer in skirts has made me conclude that the big fear that keeps men out of skirts is rapidly becoming just an echo of a fear. That fear has its roots in the idea that men need to utterly distiguish themselves from anything associated with femininity because femininity diminishes a man. That attitude, of course, is based on the idea that women are the "weaker sex", something no one really believes anymore. My interactions with people at work, on the street, in the subway, in theatre line-ups, even in Walmart, have almost completely lacked any implicit disapproval and totally lacked any explicit disapproval. My male friends have expressed things like "I couldn't do that" but never "a man shouldn't do that", and they are all fifty-somethings like me.
I think it's a mistake to view the introduction of skirts on men as being about gaining acceptance for the garment itself on men. It isn't about that. It's about freedom plain and simple, in this case freedom from outdated notions of what it means to be a man or a woman, and we are now, finally, substantially there. All that's left to do is to exercise the freedom and let the free market do its thing.
I'll close this, my first post, with my favourite skirt experience so far this summer. I was doing a little shopping at our local Walmart. As I was walking down an aisle I heard a young voice, maybe 5 years old and somewhere behind me, say "look mommy" and an adult female voice answer quickly and matter-of-factly "it's a man in a skirt", full stop.
I introduced my co-workers to my skirts by wearing the tartan ones to parties and such, but eventually dubbed Fridays "kilt day" and, well, expanded from there. Wearing a skirt at work was less of a mental obstacle for me than wearing them to work. Toronto is a pretty cosmopolitan place and unusual sights are taken in with a yawn by most downtowners, but I commute by train and streetcar from the suburbs, which means not only sardine-can proximity to fellow commuters, but an interesting exercise in being among people not of the city core while I'm still learning to be relatively graceful in an open garment ("unbifurcated" is such a clumsy term). This, of course, is where the rubber meets the road. If you can carry it, you can wear it, and carrying it doesn't mean just sitting down and getting up gracefully but also dealing with evil winds often encountered on the stairways of subway stations. Girls learn to do all this early in life...so unfair...but I digress.
I'm pretty much an expert now and I realised the other day that skirt-wearing is a bit of an addiction. Having gotten to the point of skill and social comfort that allows me to simply choose what to wear without any peripheral concerns getting in the way, I choose skirts almost all the time. Doing "the sweep" before sitting down is no more trouble than doing "the pull" we do when we sit down in pants. Dealing with evil winds merely meant learning when they needed to be dealt with, and that was easy (but made me glad I don't prefer "going commando"). Summer weather and the logic of circulating as much air as possible has caused me to choose a skirt almost every day since June. I had to wear pants one day that I rode my motorcycle to work and I wore pants another day just because they were new and I wanted to try them out. There might have been one other day that I wore pants but otherwise it's been skirts every day.
I think part of the addiction might be the usually-amusing interactions I have with people as a consequence of wearing a skirt/kilt. Guys won't usually start a conversation but often say just the two words "nice kilt" as they pass me. This happens a lot. Some guys try to make clever Scottish comments. I sometimes wonder if that isn't because any other "explanation" makes them uncomfortable. They do this almost as often when I am wearing a Utilikilt as when I am wearing a tartan kilt.
Women are the ones who start conversations. I had one young woman stop to speak to me on the street as I was going out to get lunch. I was wearing the black Utilikilt. She wanted me to know that she really liked seeing men wearing kilts and that she'd spotted a guy in a tartan kilt just a few blocks away. Implicit in her manner and tone was that she was hopeful that it would become more common. I've heard this sentiment echoed quite a few times, in fact.
Another interaction I had was with the guy behind the counter of a tool rental shop. I was there to rent a drum sander and as I was leaving he asked where I got my Utilikilt (it was the workman's model). He was forty-something I reckoned, not an edgy club-going teen or twenty-something. He wanted to know because he wanted to get one. I told him how easy it was to order online.
Just last week I had a longish conversation with a woman at a streetcar stop. I was wearing my most unusual design, an olive-drab kilt with only six shallow pleats, just enough extra material to allow moving like a man but otherwise designed for maximum coolness on hot days. She started the conversation by asking if I was a designer. Later she volunteered that she didn't know why everyone didn't wear skirts or dresses all the time, especially in summer, and that she never wore anything else herself.
My summer in skirts has made me conclude that the big fear that keeps men out of skirts is rapidly becoming just an echo of a fear. That fear has its roots in the idea that men need to utterly distiguish themselves from anything associated with femininity because femininity diminishes a man. That attitude, of course, is based on the idea that women are the "weaker sex", something no one really believes anymore. My interactions with people at work, on the street, in the subway, in theatre line-ups, even in Walmart, have almost completely lacked any implicit disapproval and totally lacked any explicit disapproval. My male friends have expressed things like "I couldn't do that" but never "a man shouldn't do that", and they are all fifty-somethings like me.
I think it's a mistake to view the introduction of skirts on men as being about gaining acceptance for the garment itself on men. It isn't about that. It's about freedom plain and simple, in this case freedom from outdated notions of what it means to be a man or a woman, and we are now, finally, substantially there. All that's left to do is to exercise the freedom and let the free market do its thing.
I'll close this, my first post, with my favourite skirt experience so far this summer. I was doing a little shopping at our local Walmart. As I was walking down an aisle I heard a young voice, maybe 5 years old and somewhere behind me, say "look mommy" and an adult female voice answer quickly and matter-of-factly "it's a man in a skirt", full stop.
Daryl...
- couyalair
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Re: My Summer In Skirts
Welcome!
It's good to read about someone confident in his choice of clothes and about the future.
Certainly, once one has taken the skirted path and gotten beyond the early doubts, the comfort of open clothing becomes so obvious that there should be no reason to look back.
The mere idea of trousers at this time of year is enough to make me squirm!
Martin
It's good to read about someone confident in his choice of clothes and about the future.
Certainly, once one has taken the skirted path and gotten beyond the early doubts, the comfort of open clothing becomes so obvious that there should be no reason to look back.
The mere idea of trousers at this time of year is enough to make me squirm!
Martin
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Re: My Summer In Skirts
Welcome aboard, Daryl!
Learning to manage the garment is important, but it's a learnable skill that just takes a bit of application of common sense and practise. I don't own too many short skirts, so I have less issue of sitting than those folks who do "go short"; instead, I have the opposite problem -- I like very long skirts, especially in the wintertime. These bring a host of "management issues" with them, but once those are learnt the very long looks are quite attractive and compelling. Stuff in the mid-range is easiest to "look after" but does require attention to wind, particularly if the fabric is light and the diameter-at-hemline is large.
When I'm in the Big City to my east, I usually wear mid-lengths, and that puts me on trains and very visibly out in the public eye. I have never received anything but positive responses there. My experiences in my old hometown, as might be expected for a backwater, are a bit different, but all that takes is a bit more effort to make the observer understand things.
I like the notion of "open clothing". "Unbirfucated" always sounded contrived and forced to me. I have precisely no problems calling my skirts "skirts" and I would never call a kilt a skirt (this stance has been known to provoke arguments, as can be seen by reading older posts from this community) because a kilt deserves its branding.

Comfort, for me, is a big driver, but there's also the notion of free will and choice. Unlike some here, I am not willing to give up trousers altogether: I want the ability to decide when I get up in the morning what I'll wear for the day. It's much more interesting that way, and what I wear is usually a strong reflection of my mental state when I get up that day. It lets me express things and communicate without the need for the spoken word.
I "broke cover" at work a little more than a year ago during a very hot and humid spell -- even upper management suggested cool clothing as we deliberately raised the set-points on the building A/C to save energy. I don't own a pair of shorts, but simply told my boss that I'd be wearing my skirts for a while as they're much cooler than trousers -- and made good on that threat the very next day. (It was already understood that I wore skirts on my own time, and had already been called into work on a weekend one time before and wore one then.)Daryl wrote:I introduced my co-workers to my skirts by wearing the tartan ones to parties and such, but eventually dubbed Fridays "kilt day" and, well, expanded from there. Wearing a skirt at work was less of a mental obstacle for me than wearing them to work. Toronto is a pretty cosmopolitan place and unusual sights are taken in with a yawn by most downtowners, but I commute by train and streetcar from the suburbs, which means not only sardine-can proximity to fellow commuters, but an interesting exercise in being among people not of the city core while I'm still learning to be relatively graceful in an open garment ("unbifurcated" is such a clumsy term). This, of course, is where the rubber meets the road. If you can carry it, you can wear it, and carrying it doesn't mean just sitting down and getting up gracefully but also dealing with evil winds often encountered on the stairways of subway stations. Girls learn to do all this early in life...so unfair...but I digress.
Learning to manage the garment is important, but it's a learnable skill that just takes a bit of application of common sense and practise. I don't own too many short skirts, so I have less issue of sitting than those folks who do "go short"; instead, I have the opposite problem -- I like very long skirts, especially in the wintertime. These bring a host of "management issues" with them, but once those are learnt the very long looks are quite attractive and compelling. Stuff in the mid-range is easiest to "look after" but does require attention to wind, particularly if the fabric is light and the diameter-at-hemline is large.
When I'm in the Big City to my east, I usually wear mid-lengths, and that puts me on trains and very visibly out in the public eye. I have never received anything but positive responses there. My experiences in my old hometown, as might be expected for a backwater, are a bit different, but all that takes is a bit more effort to make the observer understand things.
"Discomfort" can come about as a result of unfamiliarity, and that's likely what you are experiencing. It's probable that the bloke in question didn't have a "mental box" to classify you into, and the resulting confusion came across as discomfort". I find this perfectly understandable, and that the best defence in this regard is to act as if being a bloke in a skirt is right as rain. Returning to my car following lunch yesterday, I noticed a car with four twenty-something males in it one who whom rather loudly commented, "What's that guy doing in a skirt?" I merely waved to them (with the hand holding my bag, no less) and continued to my car. Not a further peep was heard.Daryl wrote:Guys won't usually start a conversation but often say just the two words "nice kilt" as they pass me. This happens a lot. Some guys try to make clever Scottish comments. I sometimes wonder if that isn't because any other "explanation" makes them uncomfortable.
Indeed, it is only men themselves who are not allowing themselves the option of adopting skirts and kilts as everyday garments, to be worn when whim or appropriateness calls. Only in certain very backwards does the notion of the "weaker sex" persist, and in those areas one frequently gets the impression that they'd like to turn the clock back five or six hundred years. I endeavour to avoid those areas like the plague.Daryl wrote:My summer in skirts has made me conclude that the big fear that keeps men out of skirts is rapidly becoming just an echo of a fear. That fear has its roots in the idea that men need to utterly distiguish themselves from anything associated with femininity because femininity diminishes a man. That attitude, of course, is based on the idea that women are the "weaker sex", something no one really believes anymore.
I completely concur, and the more guys that exercise that freedom the better off we will all be. There will be pockets of stiff resistance, but from the places I've been a bloke in a skirt just isn't a big deal; if anything, it's and excuse to light up a conversation because the odds are the bloke in a skirt will be an independent thinker -- and those tend to be fun to chat with.Daryl wrote:I think it's a mistake to view the introduction of skirts on men as being about gaining acceptance for the garment itself on men. It isn't about that. It's about freedom plain and simple, in this case freedom from outdated notions of what it means to be a man or a woman, and we are now, finally, substantially there. All that's left to do is to exercise the freedom and let the free market do its thing.
I like the notion of "open clothing". "Unbirfucated" always sounded contrived and forced to me. I have precisely no problems calling my skirts "skirts" and I would never call a kilt a skirt (this stance has been known to provoke arguments, as can be seen by reading older posts from this community) because a kilt deserves its branding.
I see the notion is already getting use.couyalair wrote:Certainly, once one has taken the skirted path and gotten beyond the early doubts, the comfort of open clothing becomes so obvious that there should be no reason to look back.

Comfort, for me, is a big driver, but there's also the notion of free will and choice. Unlike some here, I am not willing to give up trousers altogether: I want the ability to decide when I get up in the morning what I'll wear for the day. It's much more interesting that way, and what I wear is usually a strong reflection of my mental state when I get up that day. It lets me express things and communicate without the need for the spoken word.
Retrocomputing -- It's not just a job, it's an adventure!
- Since1982
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Re: My Summer In Skirts
WWOW!!!! 
11 paragraphs of introduction, a breaker with one paragraph, and then 9 paragraphs of welcome. I've not seen such a typist for a couple of years.
OBTW
from me too. 

11 paragraphs of introduction, a breaker with one paragraph, and then 9 paragraphs of welcome. I've not seen such a typist for a couple of years.



OBTW


I had to remove this signature as it was being used on Twitter. This is my OPINION, you NEEDN'T AGREE.
Story of Life, Perspire, Expire, Funeral Pyre!I've been skirted part time since 1972 and full time since 2005. http://skirts4men.myfreeforum.org/
Story of Life, Perspire, Expire, Funeral Pyre!I've been skirted part time since 1972 and full time since 2005. http://skirts4men.myfreeforum.org/
Re: My Summer In Skirts
LOL, thanks, I think.Since1982 wrote:WWOW!!!!
11 paragraphs of introduction, a breaker with one paragraph, and then 9 paragraphs of welcome. I've not seen such a typist for a couple of years.![]()
![]()
![]()
OBTWfrom me too.

Daryl...
- Since1982
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- Location: My BUTT is Living in the USA, and sitting on the tip of the Sky Needle, Ow Ow Ow!!. Get the POINT?
Re: My Summer In Skirts
OBTW = Oh By The Way..Yes, it's all a compliment. I forgot words like "sweep" regarding movement of skirts about 2 months after April of 2005 when I pitched all but ONE pair of trousers and ONE pair of Cargo shorts and started building my UNbifurcated collection to the current collection of around 35 various skirts, 5 nightshirts, 3 Jumpers and 10 sulu and other sarong type "native" garments depending on which island my memories were from when I went to choose a garment. I've spent about 11 years collecting salt water tropical fish and shipping them to the USA from Tonga, Fiji, 3 Hawaiian Islands, Majuro and Eniwetak of the Marshall Islands chain. There was a famous battle in world war 2 called "The Battle of Eniwetok" but the American Pacific Command misspelled the name of the Island, calling it Eniwetok instead of the actual name of it, "Eniwetak". Both sound exactly the same tho..The Marshall Islands pronounciation is Eniwetak with a long "TAKKKK" in the ending instead of the American sounding "TOC" as in a clock's tic toc sound.
I've been pantsless all the time except when some friend I honor asks me to intentionally wear pants or shorts as a favor to them. OR when the ex-local small claims court Judge asks me specifically to wear pants, she won't even allow shorts in her court (She DID have those rules until she was voted out of office).

I've been pantsless all the time except when some friend I honor asks me to intentionally wear pants or shorts as a favor to them. OR when the ex-local small claims court Judge asks me specifically to wear pants, she won't even allow shorts in her court (She DID have those rules until she was voted out of office).


I had to remove this signature as it was being used on Twitter. This is my OPINION, you NEEDN'T AGREE.
Story of Life, Perspire, Expire, Funeral Pyre!I've been skirted part time since 1972 and full time since 2005. http://skirts4men.myfreeforum.org/
Story of Life, Perspire, Expire, Funeral Pyre!I've been skirted part time since 1972 and full time since 2005. http://skirts4men.myfreeforum.org/