I have bought my first skirt

[crfriend]

You've really got me thinking about long skirts now with that pic it looks great and very manly. Every bit as manly as trousers. I bet that would be lovely and warm in winter. Add tights and you've got yourself a little furnace whilst all the other blokes freeze!

That seems to be a very well-kept secret.

I still vividly recall standing outside the Worcester train station waiting for the 06:05 express to Boston to arrive and watching the locomotive stall repeatedly trying to back out of the overnight yard. It was wretched cold and humid that morning, think -5C and 90% humidity with a wind that cut through everything like a scalpel. I was wearing a Korean-War-era military-issue great-coat, had my arse yak-like into the wind, and was still freezing; yet some of the women in skirts didn't seem to really mind. (One of the wags present commented shortly following a large belch of black smoke from the struggling locomotive, "No pope yet." which exerted some effort to relieve the misery on the platform.)

Over the years, I'd been accepted into a small "community" of commuters on the train, a large portion of which were women, and when I groused about freezing my tookus off at the station was gently recommended, "pantyhose".

I'm a born skeptic, but I figured, "What the heck, I've got nothing to lose" and requisitioned a cast-off pair of Sapphire's for a test-run -- and darned if the advice wasn't bang on! Fast-forward a decade, and I discovered skirts, which I found could be warmer than trousers in the winter, and paired with tights and petticoats even more-so. I haven't frozen in winter since.

So, there's a dirty little secret exposed.

[Silhouette Legs]

Yeah same with myself and tights. My ex convinced me to try them last December and I haven't looked back since. At first I began wearing them under my jeans to work in the cold then as summer neared, and it became too warm, I found I didn't want to stop and began wearing them with shorts instead.

In the space of a few short months my whole perception of tights changed from something that was an exclusively female garment to failing to comprehend why they weren't unisex. I couldn't understand why other men weren't wearing this fantastic product I'd just discovered, especially considering how you can now buy ones specifically manufactured for men. But of course we all know that's down to simple fear as very few blokes want to be seen as the one who steps out of line. Stopping wearing them personally however would have been tantamount to an acceptance of the additional restrictions society places upon men which is not how I wish to live my life.

The whole episode has really opened my eyes to the inequalities in social dress codes and brought me here to this forum. Why is it fair that women can wear practically whatever they want yet there's so many needless restrictions on how we're expected to dress? That's not "equality." The opposite sex can keep as cool as they want in the summer and as warm as toast in the winter. Our mainstream fashion options are lacking in comparison.

They say that men merely "wear clothes" and don't have the same interest in fashion. But how's that supossed to change when our choices are so stiflingly poor? If your sister for example had a selection of the most renouned international chefs cooking her some of the finest dishes from around the world every evening, yet your brother was expected to live live off burger and chips, then which one of them is most likely going to take an interest in fine cuisine? As much as I love jeans and t-shirts I'm fed up of being expected to wear them every single day. I think I'm worth more than that.