Hello. It's a Wednesday like any other, and I'm wearing a skirt.
It's not a particularly interesting skirt. In fact, I deliberately
chose the most plain skirt I could find when I went shopping for
one. That is not to say that it's a homely skirt by any means, simply
plain. It's straight, ankle-length, and completely black, so that it
may be easier to match with the rest of my wardrobe. It was a bit
too wide at the hips when I first bought it, so I took it to a tailor
who modified it to my size, seeing how I'm not the kind of person who
would have wide hips.
There is nothing about this skirt that could in any way be construed
as feminine. That's deliberate too. It's simple and long. It
has absolutely no decorations, though I do own another skirt from
Thailand that is richly geometrical. There is no lace, no colour but
black, no real shaping to speak of unless you want to count the
modifications my tailor made in order to reduce the measurements
around the hips. It's just as straight and narrow as I am.
So why am I wearing it? I suppose that at a very superficial level, I
am exploiting the stereotype of the eccentric mathematician. Simply because I like to do
mathematics, I'm allowed to be a deviant freak. It's perhaps a cheap method
for attracting attention from people around me, although it's valid
too, I suppose. Unsurprisingly, it's mostly males who give me any
notice, though not exclusively. A couple of close male friends are
allowed to make jokes about how I look like a sissy, or if I'm going
to start wearing lipstick and high heels any time soon. I'm not, and I
appreciate their jesting. It is, after all, a little silly that a
Westerner male should wear a skirt for ordinary day-to-day affairs
such as school is.
At another level, I do it because sometimes I just like to be a lawful
troublemaker. After all, there is really nothing feminine
about this skirt, and even if there were, there is no legal or moral
forbiddance about men wearing skirts, except that most Westerners have
certain unwritten societal norms about the proper attire for males and
females. It has been quietly decreed that for public life men must
wear fabric which clearly separates the two legs, and that anything
else is simply not done. I revolt against quiet decrees, partly for
fun, but partly out of a conviction of liberalism and in order to
emphasise that I can do whatever I damn well please so long as
nobody's put in harm's way by my actions.
Then there's the abstract ideological level at which I am wearing this
skirt in the name of all the women who in the past, nary a century
ago, wanted to wear trousers for numerous
reasons. This is my retroactive celebration and recognition of those
trailblazers who wanted to push the limits of fashion as a political
statement. I know my situation is different, that I'm in the majority
and that nobody is oppressing me by virtue of my sex, and that perhaps
some may think that it is hypocritical of me to sympathise with a
cause that's not my own by wearing a skirt as a symbol of camaraderie with such illustrious
figures.
But let's not take anything too seriously. I am wearing this skirt
because it's fun, because it's a little silly, but also because it's
comfortable (c'mon, boys, try it out, wear a skirt, take a
step, whoooosh! feel how the fabric moves the air around your legs,
taste the freedom!), and damnit, because I look good in it. Yeah,
hell, why not, I'll say it: my ass looks hot in a skirt. This
accompanying dark forest green long-sleeved tee-shirt matches it
nicely, plus black sandals don't look so bad with a black skirt, even
if I'm wearing black socks and sandals in true mathematician
fashion.
I like my skirt.