THE FREEDOM PAGE

Freedom? Freedom from what?

Imagine the government told you what to wear - everyday. You are allowed to vary the colour and cut of the garment within narrow boundaries e.g. colour: dark, subdued, preferrably beige, black, grey or blue, not too bright; cut: no slits, lace, frills or anything unusual. You'd be outraged at this limitation on your liberty and choice. This is happening today, without government interference. BUT, it is only happening to men, and it is society who is exerting this subtle pressure on men to conform. Fortunately, there are some men who rise above this pressure. These men don't do this lightly; it takes courage to be different, to stand out from the herd.

This page is for the one thing that I feel really passionate about - fashion freedom. In these days of equal opportunities, equal rights and unending choice in just about everything, why it is still 'wrong' for a man to cover his lower body and legs with a single piece of cloth, rather than fashion two tubes for his legs to go into. To put it another way, why must men always wear trousers? Why doesn't society allow men the same fashion freedom that women enjoy?

I work with a woman; we do the same job and (hopefully) get the same pay. There the similarity ends. She wears skirts on warm days, jeans on colder days. I am expected to wear trousers every day - why?

I was born just after WWII - I'm a 'baby boomer', complete with wife and two children. Unlike some other baby boomers, I'm not into big motor bikes or fast cars, trying to recapture my youth. I want to help overturn one of the most stupid unwritten rules of the western world; the rule that says if you are a man you must wear trousers. Even if I don't survive to see skirts become a unisex garment (just like trousers have become), I hope that I'll have made a small contribution to men's fashion freedom for future generations.

Think me crazy if you like; it's the crazy people, the ones that aren't part of the herd of lemmings, that innovate. You only get one shot at this life, so why not enjoy it?

The usual pre-conceptions

I, and other men like me, prefer attire that is entirely and unambiguously masculine. Ideally, it should be completely separate and distinct from the design of skirts and other clothing worn by women. We are not cross-dressers in any way. We are not interested in wearing women's clothes or adopting "feminine" styles. We don't care for stockings, women's underwear, women's cosmetics, and other such things. We have no interest in androgyny. We simply want to reclaim a man's right to wear masculine, unbifurcated garments (e.g. skirts, kilts, sarongs etc) because they feel good on the legs and provide greater comfort for our male anatomy (try wearing a skirt next time you go on a long car journey - far more comfortable than wearing trousers).

Men live their entire lives under a tyranny of trousers. "Tyranny" has been defined as "an arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power." The rule restricting men solely to trousers is indeed arbitrary - it has no logical or anatomical justification. (On the contrary, trousers are ill suited to the male genitalia.) Furthermore, the unrestrained power of this rule rigidly dictates not only what men wear but also what they think. For a man even to question the trouser rule is regarded by some people as shameful and perverse. Most men would not dare such a thing, for fear of raising doubts about their sexuality.

Why should any man want to wear skirts?

Four reasons:

• Comfort

The trouble with trousers is that you have a knife-edge right next to your 'squashy bits'. Gents outfitter: "Which side does sir dress, left or right?" Translated, this means "Which side of your genitalia do you prefer the centre seam to be, so that it doesn't get too painful?" (Note this is not a problem for the women who, anatomically, are better suited to trousers). In today's sedentary world, we do a awful lot of sitting down; skirts are just more comfortable than trousers for sitting in. I know of (male!) truck drivers who wear skirts because they are more comfortable when sitting driving for many hours.

• Equality

Equality works both way, or things aren't equal. When it comes to clothing, women dress in dark suits and jeans just like the men; I see no reason why men shouldn't invade the women's wardrobe and wear skirts. The "because that's the way it is or always has been" reason isn't good enough.

• Choice

Choice has become the mantra of western so-called civilisation. We are offered a huge choice in everything from electricity suppliers to varieties of bottled water. Society more or less mandates that men shall only ever wear trousers, and what is available in the shops is a pretty poor choice. Fortunately, it is not illegal to wear a skirt (or a kilt - and you don't have to be Scottish) providing modesty is preserved. Unfortunately, most men don't realise they have the choice between a skirt or trousers - society has carefully kept this astounding fact away from them, so they believe that they must only wear trousers.

• Fashion freedom

Look around you. Observe what men are wearing, then see what women are wearing. Men wear trousers in a very limited range of patterns and colours; women wear skirts or trousers in a vast array of patterns and colours.

Men either:

• haven't considered wearing anything else but trousers, or
• would like to wear something else but haven't the courage, fearing reprisals from other men or, at the very least, fear they will get laughed at and called names, or
• think that if they encase their lower body in something with less than two legs will make them a cross-dresser (a particularly sexist term, considering that women have no compunction in wearing men's clothing if it suits them), a transvestite or gay - yet another idiotic misconception.