Skirt Essays 1-9

I took a short look in the mirror and wondered where the chin hair had gone. One of the three little pigs had joked, “not by the hair on my chinny chin chin”. It seems that I was about to be taken, by a wolf? Hair is a defense. More importantly, ugliness, disheveled and maintaining a foul scent are as well. Tell me, what are we afraid of when we do that? Have you ever watched the movie The Princess Diaries and her transformation? A beastly crop of fur masquerading as hair. What about the homeless man that strutted the runway for a couture fall fashion line in New York City? The juxtaposition of status and appearance makes you wonder.

Take it a step farther. Is beauty a bridge over prejudice? Ever notice that the national beauty standard can be determined by the cleanliness, comeliness and dress of a certain style of working woman? Here is where I scream about former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. How could the history of the world turn on a hemline? For God’s sake, again!??!!  Well, if I recapped the punishment women received for wearing bloomers in the 1800’s, you wouldn’t gasp enough.{ FYI: Bloomers were the predecessor to pants.} In an age when only men wore pants, some can laugh now when you ask a lesbian couple, “who wears the pants in the family”? Dare I say that both of them do. Although, lipstick lesbians do exist and Portia Di Rossi, Ellen DeGeneres civil partner, is one.

A wild thought and public punishment I receive is for wearing a skirt or dress. I wear them more than pants. It is a conscious choice that has nothing to do with Pentecostal traditions or some stereotype I learned from other women, and kids. Namely, “only prostitutes wear skirts”. I like wearing skirts and dresses, because I assert my female nature to myself; and to others–specifically men. Yet, I do not seek to get paid for it, although unique qualities do draw higher prices. (That was NOT an advertisement).

[Aside: Recently, while at a museum, two precocious children passed by me. One male the other female. They seemed to be brother and sister and no older than age 8. I heard the little girl whisper loudly to her brother that only girls who want to “date” men wear dresses. The funny thing was, everyone was wearing shorts, but me. It made me wonder all the way home, what kids know about relationships and initial contacts. I began to howl quietly in the back of the car on the way home. Concerned I might have not heard them correctly. Was I the accused prostitute in the room?  It seems my lingering presence at one installation, angered the lady to comment on no less than, my dress.

Though some see it as a rebellion “of the vindication of the rights of women” and all other benefits of the inheritance of feminism. I prefer to be seen as maybe, just female. I definitely fear to be defined as some haggard female stereotype to be tossed for dross. Even now, in an antiquated way, I want not to be viewed as a spinster or an old school marm— Also because I am still single at this age, not to be gossiped as gay, neither seen as woman (politely put) having been made one by a man, nor as the gay divorcee seeking to recapture her youth. To carefully obey older conventions, I will not mention any previous liaisons, or if I had any at all.

I have been accosted with remarks in the past four to five months about how I am crazy for wearing a skirt, or when tension hits the high notes of the day in public: I have been threatened with a beating or two if I did not go home and change clothes. Happily, it has not happened. And I hope it does not. Strange how it has frequently been a woman’s voice that does the speaking.  So why would the visual fact that I wear skirts and dresses, offend another woman? One reason would be their personal insecurity. Another might be that I am not fashionably dressed. The more I started to pay attention to common street fashions and even those on television, the more the answer became obvious. I noticed that  women’s, misses and girl’s fashions are strongly given to pants and men’s structural designs. If you look at GQ and Glamour you’ll notice that male and females are wearing the same clothes, the same hair cuts, and the same behaviors. I can see the unisex revolution so clearly now, it is scaring me. When women look like men, and men look like women, what is the point in separating anything out? At places I have worked and frequented, I have watched the evidence of the complaint of the wrong sex in the wrong bathroom. What happens when the sexual assaults or the perverted displays begin? Not that they would at all, but be kind enough to use your own bathroom, post-operative transvestite or not.

Honestly though, the thing I am most afraid of is getting romantically involved with some apparently beautiful man. And we kiss, then, lo and behold he pulls a Hillary Swank on me. Meaning he is really a she who has stuffed their pants with a strap-on. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a plastic penis mounted on an underwear like apparatus. As a former P-Flag type friend to homosexuals, friends began to open up about their sex lives to me in ways that frequently stunned me, but I listened because they were friends. A particular black female from Africa explained to me how she would go to bars wearing something like I described. Then having hit on someone, would take them to her car and proceed to perform a sex-like act. She bragged that she was known for being able to “get wit’ anyone”. The last I saw her, over a decade ago, she had married a man.

Is there a conversion of sorts for someone like that? Meaning her aggressiveness, dominance and brutal personality always made me wonder, what am I doing wrong? In my methods of communication I need not stand so defiantly; In my choice of subtlety, I need not be abrasive about my expressiveness; In my pursuit for male companionship, I need not be deviant. Maybe coy, clever, and flirtatious; but not deviant. That is one of the reasons why it is the cut of the cloth not the measurement of the inseam for me.

by N. C. Constantine

Copyright July 6, 2009