Well, I'm back home, after a wonderful week. Here's my report, in a sort of unordered, stream-of-consciousness "what I did in my summer vacation" style.
The camp is something like 50 or 100 acres of woods on a pond near Plymouth Rock, Massachussetts, with unpainted cabins of various sizes scattered among the pines and birches. I was in a cabin with 5 single rooms and a screen porch overlooking the pond. Just up the hill was a grouping of little cabins barely large enough to hold a double bed. But for dancing, there were 3 large roofed pavilions with wooden floors and stages for the band, in various places. There was dancing pretty much from after breakfast until 11 p.m. at night, and people making music on porches, retaining walls, on the swimming dock.
There was English country dance, and Contra dancing, and Morris, and rapper, and sword dancing, and clogging, and others I can't remember. There were some pick-up bands, which I sometimes joined in on to help them meet their quota of wrong notes and chords
And singing and partying, especially after the dancing ended at 11:00 p.m. And the requisite level of silliness -- one of the activities everyone looks forward to is the "Wellie toss" (I'll let our U.K. readers explain what a "Wellie" is, if you don't know.) And I won't soon forget the "bad English accent competition."
It's definitely a low-tech place: no recorded music, cell phones are discouraged, though I did see the odd laptop being furtively consulted every now and then.
Everyone was very friendly and in good spirits. My biggest regret in that department is that I'm not good with remembering names or dealing with large numbers of people I don't know well, so I was sort of lost, emotionally, a lot of the time, and didn't get to know some nice people as well as I would have liked. I'm planning to go back next year to the same program, in the hopes of getting to know some people better.
Also, with all the excitement and at least 5 activities going on at any given moment, some of us just had to lie down and rest during the day to keep going.
Anyway, enough of
that boring stuff, and on to the Obligatory Skirt Content:
I arrived in shorts, but switched to a skirt as soon as I unpacked, and pretty much stayed in skirts the whole week. I got no even remotely negative comments. I hadn't realistically expected any. On the other hand, out of something like 150 people, there was only one other man who wore skirts, and I didn't really talk to him because he somehow had a manner that made me uncomfortable.
I tried out about 4 or 5 different skirts during the daytime -- a 33" denim skirt (Lane Bryant) and a 30" grey jersey skirt (also Lane Bryant). When it got warmer (it was never hot), I wore a pink print skirt from Wal-Mart (about 33"). I wore it with a salmon pink T-shirt, which led one charming lady to tell me "that shirt does
not go with that shirt." I dutifully found a different T-shirt, and our relationship blossomed: she became a sort of fashion consultant, and each time she saw me in a different outfit, I had to model it for her.
I later wore a seersucker skirt (also 33", also Lane Bryant), which had a grey in it that matched the camp T-shirt they are selling this year (each year is a different color.) The tyranny of color-coordinated outfits!
For the evening, of course, I had to dress up! I brought 4 skirts I made myself: one gored seersucker (27") with alternating blue and green gores, one brown gored (25" long), one blue tiered (30" long), and one red tiered skirt with a lime-green waistband and hem (22" long.) They're all quite full (about 5 radians) so they swirl nicely when you spin during a dance. The red one, though, I didn't feel quite as comfortable with -- it sticks out quite a bit even when I'm standing still, like a square dance skirt, and my fashion consultant compared it to a tutu (as did a few others.) I originally put on red knee socks and a red short-sleeved shirt to go with it, but several people I asked thought that it went beyond dressing up to being like a Halloween costume, so I changed.
Later in the week I found myself feeling sort of disoriented. I decided I wasn't used to skirting 24/7, so I wore pants in the morning Thursday and Friday and changed back into a skirt at lunch. Some people asked what happened to the skirt (my response: "I thought I'd shock everyone and break the rules"), but some women started telling me I looked better in pants. I couldn't come up with a good rejoinder on the spot, but I now think I should have said "thank you, I'm glad you like the way I look. But I think I'll still keep wearing skirts."
I did notice that when I wore (long) pants, my legs and crotch got pretty sweaty. When I switched back to the skirt, I went "commando", and it was a relief to feel my lower body drying out.
There were two situations where I felt a little uncomfortable: one man kept telling me he liked looking at my skirt. He probably meant well, but it made me feel vulnerable. The other situation was when the other man who wore skirts asked me in the middle of the dance floor whether I had a slip on, and if so, what kind. Again, I don't think he meant anything by it, but I didn't really want to discuss it with him, so I put him off with "well, a lady would never tell, and neither should a man." I think it gave me a taste of what women say they go through.
I also brought some shorter skirts, my 18" skirt that I mentioned in a previous posting, a 20" rayon skirt, and a 23" white skirt, but never got up the nerve to show that much of my body. Maybe next year.
I noticed that I wore skirts more than most of the women there. Even in the evening, about 1/4 of the women wore pants, and during the day, most wore shorts. (It fits in with one of my justifications for wearing skirts: "well, if the women are going to fall down on the job of skirt-wearing, I guess we men will have to take up the slack!") Even those who wore skirts tended to wear plainer skirts than mine -- duller colors, less full.
One thing I noticed: I'm still in the experimentation stage of skirting. Each time I go out in a skirt, I re-evaluate how I feel about myself and what I'm wearing. Sometimes I feel more like pushing the envelope, the next second I want to pull back. Sometimes it's all no big deal, the next minute I wonder just what the heck I'm doing. It's a good thing this was a supportive environment. I would not want to be going through this in a place where I didn't feel (emotionally) safe. Anyway, whatever I end up doing in the end: at least I'm not gathering moss....
-- AMM
Thanks for all the fish.
