by Pdxfashionpioneer » Sat Sep 03, 2016 10:08 am
As pretty much everyone else said. When I came out to my minister it was at a restaurant/cocktail lounge after which I went to a nice restaurant for a great steak dinner and a Jack Daniels. The maître d' held the door for me and the waitress wanted to know if I wanted a double of the Jack's. If I wasn't such a lightweight when it came to alcohol, I would have taken her up on that.
Yesterday, I put on my blue Jones NY pencil skirt and blazer with a white men's dress shirt with French cuffs and accessorized the outfit with a red Ascot, gold cufflinks and T-strap wing-tip pumps with, I guess, 3" heels. My first stop was my church so I could talk to the Bookkeeper about the church's finances. Between the parking lot and the front door to the offices an older neighbor lady who was walking her dog told me, "I like your look!" The Bookkeeper, who's also a friend, complimented me on my sense of style.
On my way to lunch I stopped at the dry cleaner's to pick up a tie. No comment on my outfit nor untoward look. Arrived downtown walked a block to the restaurant no notice by anyone that I could tell. One staff member held the door for me, the rest of the restaurant staff couldn't have been nicer or more appropriate, and again, it was a nice, popular, downtown restaurant at lunchtime, so it was busy. The woman I was meeting for lunch I assumed was married, to another woman as it turned out only wanted to know how I usually dressed for work because we were talking about setting transgender policy for the company I had just temped at.
We came to the conclusion that education and a little persuasion of the C-suite would probably be about all it's going to take to get some major company to say, "Sure, why not?" and in 5 or 10 years everyone will wonder what the hell were we thinking of to make a big deal of men coming to work in skirts.
After lunch I didn't have much else to do so I stopped at a coffee shop to collect my thoughts and answer some emails and text messages. There the only people who made anything of what I was wearing were women who gave me approving smiles and people who gave me compliments including a fellow who made a point of coming outside (I was at a sidewalk table near the front door) to apologize for interrupting me before he told me "(he) loved every bit of (my) outfit" and a woman who said, "Cute shoes Momma!" (When you get that kind of approval why quibble about the gender attribution.)
After spending time at the coffee shop I remembered I had some involved business at my credit union and had time to take care of it before I met my buddy for a beer. The teller who was helping me asked while we were waiting on the computer to do its work where I was going next. She was surprised when I told her meeting a friend for a drink; she felt as nicely turned out as I was I should be heading for a party.
With yet more time to kill, I cruised the shopping mall. At Marshall's I was told I was buying a cute purse and elsewhere was received quite cordially.
When he finally arrived at the bar my buddy, who's a construction superintendent, wanted to know what was with my outfit? He was mostly just taken by surprise and didn't quite know what to make of it. I related my history to him and didn't really give him an explanation beyond it was something I had always wanted to do. That seemed to suffice because we went on from there to talk about work, his latest construction project and most of the rest of the other typical guy topics.
In short Bamaskirting, and whoever else is struggling with going out in public -- and even I still get the butterflies -- treat your skirts like anything else you wear, except maybe take a little more pride in how the whole outfit comes together, and so will everyone you encounter.
David, the PDX Fashion Pioneer
Social norms aren't changed by Congress or Parliament; they're changed by a sufficient number of people ignoring the existing ones and publicly practicing new ones.
People for the most part don't give a rats butt what you wear as long as you don't bother them as they have enough troubles of their own.
It's supposed to be nice here in September.
bias cut ones are nice too 