Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Clippings from news sources involving fashion freedom and other gender equality issues.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by Dust »

On the question of the female in Christianity:

Christianity had from it's earliest days a strong feminine side as well in devotion to the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was the subject of early councils, and plays an integral part in Orthodox liturgy and Catholic theology to this day. Only the protestants appear to have kicked her to the curb.

Additionally, feminine traits and values are assigned to God in the Old Testament, and all, male and female, are said to be made in God's image and likeness.

The idea of the Church as the "Bride of Christ" is as old as the Gospels. The New Testament (and the Old Testament, perhaps to a lesser degree) is loaded with marriage symbolism, and that carried right into the prayer of Christians and our understanding of our relationship with God. This is a little discussed but important reason why some Christians take such strong issue with things like homosexuality and "same-sex marriage." They become an attack on the way in which we understand our very relationship with God.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by Dust »

moonshadow wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 3:01 am
Dust wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 2:42 am First, skirts are not necessarily feminine
Dust, you're overlooking my point. They are not feminine... to you.

...
I think you missed my point. Their is nothing stopping skirts from existing on a spectrum from masculine to feminine with a wide variety in between. The way in which men are pushed into the macho box is part of it, people's perception of and experience with skirts is another. But skirts can be masculine.

The word "skirt" is another part of the problem. I can't count the times people struggled with using the word to describe what I'm wearing. If I'm wearing a (non-kilt) skirt as part of a masculine outfit, people will call it a kilt or awkwardly avoid calling it anything.

If you did your survey with words, yes I believe you would get your expected skirts-are-feminine response. But if you showed them simple masculine or neutral outfits from guys here, and asked for their opinion if such a thing could be considered masculine, I imagine the response would be far more supportive of male skirt wearing.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by moonshadow »

Dust wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 3:21 am The word "skirt" is another part of the problem. I can't count the times people struggled with using the word to describe what I'm wearing. If I'm wearing a (non-kilt) skirt as part of a masculine outfit, people will call it a kilt or awkwardly avoid calling it anything
See... you explained my theory as to why more guys won't wear skirts. They can't even call it a skirt as the word itself is associated with femininity. I too have made that observation. I've had people call my skirts kilts when they don't even look like kilts.

So I understand the rebuttal to my argument is that many members here would like to see the skirt become a gender neutral, if not flat out masculine garment.

As I have no hangups over being perceived as "feminine" then it should be expected that I'd naturally advocate for destigmatizing femininity in society, of course the prevailing position on this thread is that we should divorce the notion of femininity and skirts.

I think we all can at least agree that both agendas are tall orders and very unlikely in our current culture.

I would argue that under my agenda, at least a man can explore and express virtually anything he desires, no matter how feminine, whereas under the opinion of my opposition men will always be bound to what society views as acceptable dress for men. Certain skirts may make the grade, but others still will be "womens only" territory.

And that is the biggest reason I support destigmatizing femininity. It's the only way all people can be afforded the true freedom of choice.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by Faldaguy »

Regimented conformity. Perhaps those men who do not wear skirts, in public anyway, are only embarrassed -- as it seems many of us were from reading the stories of our first ventures out. Embarrassed because indeed the majority, and the expectation, in our western culture was men wear pants. They might not actually believe skirts are feminine, merely that skirt do not conform the the expectations for male clothing -- at least if they are providing a cerebral thought. Given how casually we use language, I would not doubt the majority will answer "Yes" to Moon's survey question.

It does seem to me the onus is upon men to declare themselves (usually considered a masculine? verb) -- so perhaps the majority of men fearful, unwilling, unable or not interested in wearing a skirt are indeed feminine! Thus, by this reckoning those of us men who wear skirts are the only masculine ones! :?
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by moonshadow »

Faldaguy wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 3:55 am It does seem to me the onus is upon men to declare themselves (usually considered a masculine? verb) -- so perhaps the majority of men fearful, unwilling, unable or not interested in wearing a skirt are indeed feminine! Thus, by this reckoning those of us men who wear skirts are the only masculine ones!
An ironic concept, and one I've experienced first hand. I had a man tell me a few years back after a long discussion on the matter that he felt my skirts made me more masculine than the average man, simply on account of my courage and "don't give a damn what people think" attitude on the matter.

It has been suggested that of you travel far enough in the universe that you might eventually come back around full circle where you started...

Perhaps the same phenomenon takes place with masculinity and such... travel far enough into feminine territory and you wind up masculine again...

*shrugs*
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by denimini »

I think that the word "fashion" in the thread title says a lot. Skirts are considered feminine by those adhering to current clothing dogma, which is most people (hence definitive of the word fashion).

To me it sounds like Bodycon considers wearing skirts as just being unfashionable in clothing choice, which is also my take on the matter.
Bodycon wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 5:13 pm None of this gender / masculinity or religion is of any relevance to skirts, which simply went out of fashion for males, ................ I don't give a (insert an expletive of your choice) what people think of my clothes or if they misconceive my gender or sexuality. It simply isn't important to me what people I don't know think of me, or some that I do for that matter.
Moon seems to be accepting clothing fashion to some extent and considers wearing skirts as ignoring conventional gender constraints, which I think is just as commendable, perhaps more so because this offers more choices regarding personal identity than just clothing.
moonshadow wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 3:34 pm I want to add that I think humanity assigning gender to inanimate things can be considered a good thing....It's what makes life interesting, entertaining, and gives life extra value.
I disagree with the following:
Bodycon wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 5:13 pm You will find that all (that I know of) cultures are based around masculinity and to an even greater extent in the animal world is where (with the exception of maybe spiders and meerkats) females are subservient. It is the natural order of the planet. I am not some kind of misogynist; it is just that the strongest take power and male is physically stronger than female. Stronger males lead weaker ones etc. Evolve for a few thousand years and humans do not now need to have a subservient gender in order to survive and that is leading to changes in attitudes, which is a good thing, so long as we stop at equality and don't go off in the other direction.
moonshadow wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2022 3:34 pm Without our concepts of gender, we'd just be a punch of hunter-gatherer primates, grunting at each other, living to the ripe old age of 20.
It seems that there are plenty of examples of successful societies that are not patriachal, in fact in my own country the original inhabitants have the longest surviving society in the world (at least 60,000 years) and were quite egalitarian. Apparently there are not many matriarchal examples because to be so would not be egalitarian, suggesting that men were the only gender happy to not have such equality.
Uncovering the Truth Behind Matriarchal Societies in the Ancient World wrote: In seeking to identify the existence of a prehistoric matriarchy in which women “ruled”, it is noteworthy that most anthropologists do not consider that there are, or ever have been, any societies that are known to be “matriarchal” in this sense. Their identification as “matriarchal” is considered to represent a confusion with a number of other related but distinct societal structures, such as matrilineal (tracing kinship through one’s mother), matrilocal (families remain located close to the maternal line), and matrifocal (where the mother is head of the family).
Dr. Goettner-Abendroth has agreed that matriarchies will by definition never be found if one is looking simply for a society in which women take the “ruling” role of men that characterizes patriarchal societies. But this she argues is because a matriarchy will not be based on domination by any gender, but upon maternal values which will exhibit as caretaking and nurturing negotiation-oriented communities, with complementary equality for women and men alike.
So understood, she has found “abundant evidence” for the existence of many matriarchal societies, to be found today in Asia, America, and Africa. All, she notes, are “ gender egalitarian societies , and many of them are fully egalitarian”, with “no hierarchies, classes, nor domination of one gender by the other”. Most academics exclude egalitarian societies from the concept of “matriarchy”. In my view, they are mistaken in doing so.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history ... ty-0011588
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by STEVIE »

Glad to see that normal service has resumed and I would like to make a further point.
The reason that women have such an abundance of "freedoms" today is that they fought damn hard for them in the past.
Fashion is just one example but since we are here, it will do.
It seems to me that when a female does something innovative with her appearance other females will be generally supportive.
When a guy dons a skirt, the rest of the blokes can be decidedly negative. Cafe patrons are naturally excluded from this sweeping statement.
My experience has certainly been that my most genuine supporters have been predominantly female apart from family.
The "feminine stigma" that was mentioned earlier most certainly has to be eradicated to allow progress.
However, it is for men and men alone to strive for without the expectation of change as if by some sort of magical process.
Personal considerations aside, if we don't go out there and show that we are serious in our solidarity with one another there won't ever be a fashion swing for the better or one that we even deserve.
I really do not think that I can make it any simpler than that.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

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Do we hope for a fashion swing or do we hope for broad acceptance of the unusual?
Personally I prefer the latter because no matter what the fashion is there will always be someone on the outer.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by rode_kater »

Grok wrote: Sun Jan 02, 2022 11:08 pm One of the few things I remember from French class decades ago....the language assigns a masculine or feminine gender to most anything. English is different in that fews things are assigned a gender.
I think this misunderstands the meaning of the word gender in language. To illustrate I'll use the language I happen to know a lot about: Dutch. The fundamental point here is that there is no neuter possessive form.

There are two forms for possession: "haar" (for women) and "zijn" for men. These are the equivalent of the English "his" and "hers". There is no equivalent for "it's". For people and animals it's clear which you should use, if you know the gender. If you don't you guess. Businesses, councils, etc can also (grammatically) posses things, but how do you know which to use? Well, people have drawn up lists based what people actually used and so words were grouped into "masculine" and "feminine" based on which of the two words are used to indicate possession. These were then decreed to be "correct".

For extra confusion, there is a neuter gender,for things like gold. They always use "zijn" which is the same as the masculine form. This is just a demonstration of the more general rule: the masculine form is the default, and feminine forms specifically for female things. If you have a group of friends of mixed gender, it's "vrienden", but in the special case where they all female, then you say "vriendinnen".

Next to this people easily anthropomorphise things and so in language use what ever word they feel sounds better to them. But this doesn't mean we actually consider businesses, cars, chairs to be feminine, it's just the word people use. And people of course don't remember these lists and especially foreign speakers mix it up.

So much so that for many words in the dictionary both are considered correct and the dictionary lists them as "m/f". No grammar checker I've seen even checks for this and only native speakers will ever notice it's wrong. It's also not likely the language will gain a neuter possessive form like "it's". In English you can make any noun possessive with the 's, we don't have that either.

Linguists these days prefer the term "noun classes" because there exist languages with lots of them and it's a bit weird to talk about 8 noun genders.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

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The English language is complimentary and conflicting on how words are used.
rode_kater wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 1:55 pm....<snip>.... There is no equivalent for "it's". For people and animals it's clear which you should use,
if you know the gender. ....<snip>....
A lot of people get confused when to use It's and Its (with or without the apostrophe)
Google Dictionary wrote:It's is a contraction, meaning a shorter or "contracted" form of "it is" or "it has."
(Example: It's going to rain.)
Its(no apostrophe) is a possessive pronoun meaning, "belonging to it," or a
"quality of it" (Example: The carrier lost its license or its color is red.)
Language is fun, confusing and difficult at the best of times ;)

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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by crfriend »

moonshadow wrote: Sun Jan 02, 2022 2:56 pm[1] I like that... I think for a while I'll go by Princess Moon. :lol:
Whew! At least it wasn't Sailor Moon... {Dives for cover}
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

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denimini wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 10:47 am Do we hope for a fashion swing or do we hope for broad acceptance of the unusual?
Personally I prefer the latter because no matter what the fashion is there will always be someone on the outer.
In the context of "fashion" men in skirts is really a misnomer.
When men commonly wore what we now describe as skirts, they were very specifically Menswear.
Women had their own specific garments as did the various classes of members of society.
Today, men and clothing choice doesn't really add up and not just for skirts either.
I too prefer the advance of a simple acceptance that anyone is free to choose their garb without let or hindrance.
Time will tell.
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by moonshadow »

crfriend wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 3:27 am
moonshadow wrote: Sun Jan 02, 2022 2:56 pm[1] I like that... I think for a while I'll go by Princess Moon. :lol:
Whew! At least it wasn't Sailor Moon... {Dives for cover}
You simply have no idea how hard it was for me to find a non Sailor Moon and non Disney princess cartoon avatar! :mrgreen:
Note that I handled that somewhat unpleasant exchange similar to how I handle many unpleasant exchanges in the real world (including teasing and mild harassment regarding my skirt wearing), I took something meant to be negative, owned it, identified with it, and finally had fun with it.

And this is why being accused of being feminine doesn't bother me.

As a man, if I'm going to be accused of being a sissy, well then, I'm going to be the best damned sissy the world has ever known! 8) :lol:

It's kind of a "sticks and stones" thing...
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by crfriend »

moonshadow wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 11:41 amYou simply have no idea how hard it was for me to find a non Sailor Moon and non Disney princess cartoon avatar! :mrgreen:
I can well imagine.

I got pinged on the "Sailor Moon" notion by my lady-friend when I was in Savannah (her daughter appreciates it), and mentioned that I was aware of the character and that the anime visualisations were pleasing to the eye, but was a look that I could not possibly pull off successfully and hence I tend to avoid it. This then touched on the notion of violence in anime, and I pointed out that the sort one sees in anime is, to me, preferable to what one sees in American media (which, more often than not, can be compared to splatter- and snuff- flicks) which drew agreement.
Note that I handled that somewhat unpleasant exchange similar to how I handle many unpleasant exchanges in the real world (including teasing and mild harassment regarding my skirt wearing), I took something meant to be negative, owned it, identified with it, and finally had fun with it.
When one can have fun with the outcome it's a distinct win, but sometimes that's not possible and the best one can do is be satisfied with an outcome. I had to deal with some of that in the past week and it was not pleasant.
And this is why being accused of being feminine doesn't bother me.
If one is entirely secure in his identity it should not bother one in the slightest. Chucking off some of the machismo that men are expected/demanded to display day-to-day in the USA can only be described as a "Good Thing" (with no apologies whatsoever to Martha Stewart).
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Re: Vogue: How Men’s Fashion Changed for the Better This Year

Post by Dust »

STEVIE wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 10:30 am
denimini wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 10:47 am Do we hope for a fashion swing or do we hope for broad acceptance of the unusual?
Personally I prefer the latter because no matter what the fashion is there will always be someone on the outer.
In the context of "fashion" men in skirts is really a misnomer.
When men commonly wore what we now describe as skirts, they were very specifically Menswear.
Women had their own specific garments as did the various classes of members of society.
Today, men and clothing choice doesn't really add up and not just for skirts either.
I too prefer the advance of a simple acceptance that anyone is free to choose their garb without let or hindrance.
Time will tell.
Steve.
Of course what men wore when un-bifurcated garments were common for everyone, the ones men wore were specifically menswear. There will always be a distinction between men's and women's clothing. I don't think you can ever get away from that. And even if historical garb from a given period looks the same for men and women to the untrained modern eye, I guarantee that people back then could tell the difference.

I myself hope to see more options for men as menswear, and realize that a lot of that will have to be female-marketed stuff being incorporated into men's outfits until it catches on. And there will be plenty of crossover and unisex items, even once we get there, but I believe there will always be separate men's and women's fashions on some level.

To get there, I do expect more acceptance of the unusual to be at least a step along the way. Change can't happen if people stubbornly refuse to accept anything different from what they have come to expect (the usual).
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