I Wear Dresses and Skirts
If I were a girl I wouldn’t have to stand around a barbecue grill and pretend that I like talking about work. I could go to the barbecue in a skirt and makeup and people wouldn’t think that I’m weird; an outcast; someone to be left alone and looked at sideways. People wouldn’t think that maybe I’m here to size up the children.
“Get the kids in the house, Midge, skirt-guy is here” he’ll say aloud; jokingly from the deck in his summer dude BBQ uniform: khaki shorts, concert tee shirt, flip-flops, baseball hat. All the dudes are wearing the uniform. The girls, on the other hand, are all wearing dresses of the same design, cut, and fit, with slightly different flower patterns. (It seems that the girls don’t want to be different either.) They stand around and complement each other on their choice of dresses, then, later, after I’ve left, they’ll finally all think aloud about why I’ve got to be different. “Maybe he’s just trying to be ironic.” “Certainly, he can’t actually want to dress like that.” Incredulity pervades the back yard. Sometimes, I find out about that stuff later. They don’t like it. Normal adults never do. At least they don’t admit it to one another.
So I don’t go. I get invited to things from time to time but I don’t go very often. Generally it’s the dad or the guitar teacher that they invite to the party, not the dude in tights. I know that some people can deal with it and others are cool with it, but, there are enough people who think that it’s a huge deal –weird at best, blasphemous at worst- that, unless I’m feeling like being the center of attention, I just don’t go. After all, if I show up and pretend that a part of me doesn’t exist, would I have been there anyway? Sometimes it just takes more energy than I have so, instead, I drive wedges between society and me. Between my friends and me. Between my family and me. Between my girlfriend and me. Even between me and me.
They don’t want to know me. None of them do. Or, rather, I imagine that if I were them I wouldn’t want to know me. Does that make sense? And it’s not just my low self-esteem talking. I’ve heard the things they’ve said about people like me when they thought I wasn’t, you know, how I am. On TV, moms act like they’re about to barf when they see their boy wearing a skirt. Luckily for them, it’s just a gag and all the moms –in and out of the TV- breathe a sigh of relief when they find out that it was all a misunderstanding.
After all, boys don’t like pink, they don’t like fingernail paint, and they don’t like lipstick and any sad ****** who accidentally has leftover lipstick from a smooch with his wife will surely get the **** he deserves from the other dudes in the locker room. It’s cool though; he’ll just give the **** back then go wipe it off. NEVER, however, will anyone ever think that he actually LIKED the lipstick.
When thought out logically, the idea that a color or a category of clothing being the exclusive domain of a specific gender is ridiculous. Seriously. Hasn’t anyone ever thought of that? That dudes wear only pants and chicks wear whatever is mostly due to the semi-random fluctuation of fashion and that current culture has yet to bother itself with any sort of real conversation about changing what actually constituted the institutionalized sexism of the past. We still keep the girls sexy ‘til they’re ready for some child-rearin’. After that, they’ve gotta’ be cute and put together for when the man comes home from work. It amazes me that so many women are interested in carrying on this stereotype even when they’re working and taking care of kids.
And on Sundays after church, they all sit in their living rooms with the “Live. Laugh. Love.” signs from Target hung around the pictures of their perfectly normal kids and friends. Little Johnny’s got a Justin Beiber-looking haircut and in his spare time writes comments on YouTube about how much he hates Justin Beiber. Johnny’s little sister, Janie, has on a beautiful pink dress with perfectly appropriate curls. They both have lots of friends and both do perfectly gender appropriate activities. The parents are on their Fred Meyer furniture with Budweisers in their hands as they stare for hours at a time at big, muscular men in tights and eye makeup with job descriptions that include “Tight End” and “Wide Receiver” who all prance around and slap each other on the ***. Of course, if I come over in tights and eye makeup to watch the game with them, I’ll just be laughed at. What a great joke; a guy in tights and makeup watching football.
If I were a girl I could come over wearing tights and makeup and watch the game with you and you wouldn’t think it was a joke. You might even think it was hot. You might even make a move on me or try to take it even further than that. I wouldn’t like that. I’d probably have to stand around in the kitchen for at least part of the game with the other girls and make sure that there was enough food and drink for everyone and compare notes about the best rental rates on bouncy houses for a kid’s birthday party. We’d probably make plans to meet every Tuesday morning after we drop off the kids at school and go for a walk and I would hate every ******* minute of that too.
If I were a girl I could wear what I want and people wouldn’t think I was weird because of it. They’d think I was weird because I wanted to watch the game instead of making 7-layer dip or that I wanted to go to the batting cages after shopping. There are feminine things and masculine things. Don’t get them mixed up. One look between your legs at birth and all your life’s activities are planned for you. Fit in or **** off. I don’t fit in either way.
I don’t want to be a chick. Too many dudes are ********. I want to be a non-******* dude who wears skirts, pantyhose, makeup, and high-heels. Not all the time, just when I feel like it. FREEEEDOOOM!!! In order to achieve this goal, I’d like to simply share my entire self with people but, instead, I feel like I’ll have to adopt the more cynical mantra “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.” I’ve tried both approaches with varying degrees of success. The normal people still joke that they can’t trust a dude in eyeliner. Even most of the dudes down at the roller derby think it’s just a costume.
It’s all bullshit! If I were a girl, I’d probably fit in to this world about as well as I do as a dude. I think the only thing we’ve learned here is that normal people suck. Have you ever met a “normal” person though? These people are ****** up. EVERYBODY is weird, normal people just try to hide it. Then they ridicule the square pegs. I don’t actually know that, but I bet they do. There’ve been enough politicians caught doing something they call “weird” or “blasphemous” that I just use their behavior to implicate the rest of “normal” society. Ironic, eh?
OK. I admit it. I don’t really know what the people I categorize as “normal” are like; I’m just sore because I want to share my entire self with the world and not be thought a freak and I just don’t feel like I can do that today. Some days are better than others. Today was not.
“Get the kids in the house, Midge, skirt-guy is here” he’ll say aloud; jokingly from the deck in his summer dude BBQ uniform: khaki shorts, concert tee shirt, flip-flops, ba
So I don’t go. I get invited to things from time to time but I don’t go very often. Generally it’s the dad or the guitar teacher that they invite to the party, not the dude in tights. I know that some people can deal with it and others are cool with it, but, there are enough people who think that it’s a huge deal –weird at best, blasphemous at worst- that, unless I’m feeling like being the center of attention, I just don’t go. After all, if I show up and pretend that a part of me doesn’t exist, would I have been there anyway? Sometimes it just takes more energy than I have so, instead, I drive wedges between society and me. Between my friends and me. Between my family and me. Between my girlfriend and me. Even between me and me.
They don’t want to know me. None of them do. Or, rather, I imagine that if I were them I wouldn’t want to know me. Does that make sense? And it’s not just my low self-esteem talking. I’ve heard the things they’ve said about people like me when they thought I wasn’t, you know, how I am. On TV, moms act like they’re about to barf when they see their boy wearing a skirt. Luckily for them, it’s just a gag and all the moms –in and out of the TV- breathe a sigh of relief when they find out that it was all a misunderstanding.
After all, boys don’t like pink, they don’t like fingernail paint, and they don’t like lipstick and any sad ****** who accidentally has leftover lipstick from a smooch with his wife will surely get the **** he deserves from the other dudes in the locker room. It’s cool though; he’ll just give the **** back then go wipe it off. NEVER, however, will anyone ever think that he actually LIKED the lipstick.
When thought out logically, the idea that a color or a category of clothing being the exclusive domain of a specific gender is ridiculous. Seriously. Hasn’t anyone ever thought of that? That dudes wear only pants and chicks wear whatever is mostly due to the semi-random fluctuation of fashion and that current culture has yet to bother itself with any sort of real conversation about changing what actually constituted the institutionalized sexism of the past. We still keep the girls sexy ‘til they’re ready for some child-rearin’. After that, they’ve gotta’ be cute and put together for when the man comes home from work. It amazes me that so many women are interested in carrying on this stereotype even when they’re working and taking care of kids.
And on Sundays after church, they all sit in their living rooms with the “Live. Laugh. Love.” signs from Target hung around the pictures of their perfectly normal kids and friends. Little Johnny’s got a Justin Beiber-looking haircut and in his spare time writes comments on YouTube about how much he hates Justin Beiber. Johnny’s little sister, Janie, has on a beautiful pink dress with perfectly appropriate curls. They both have lots of friends and both do perfectly gender appropriate activities. The parents are on their Fred Meyer furniture with Budweisers in their hands as they stare for hours at a time at big, muscular men in tights and eye makeup with job desc
If I were a girl I could come over wearing tights and makeup and watch the game with you and you wouldn’t think it was a joke. You might even think it was hot. You might even make a move on me or try to take it even further than that. I wouldn’t like that. I’d probably have to stand around in the kitchen for at least part of the game with the other girls and make sure that there was enough food and drink for everyone and compare notes about the best rental rates on bouncy houses for a kid’s birthday party. We’d probably make plans to meet every Tuesday morning after we drop off the kids at school and go for a walk and I would hate every ******* minute of that too.
If I were a girl I could wear what I want and people wouldn’t think I was weird because of it. They’d think I was weird because I wanted to watch the game instead of making 7-la
I don’t want to be a chick. Too many dudes are ********. I want to be a non-******* dude who wears skirts, pantyhose, makeup, and high-heels. Not all the time, just when I feel like it. FREEEEDOOOM!!! In order to achieve this goal, I’d like to simply share my entire self with people but, instead, I feel like I’ll have to adopt the more cynical mantra “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.” I’ve tried both approaches with varying degrees of success. The normal people still joke that they can’t trust a dude in eyeliner. Even most of the dudes down at the roller derby think it’s just a costume.
It’s all bullshit! If I were a girl, I’d probably fit in to this world about as well as I do as a dude. I think the only thing we’ve learned here is that normal people suck. Have you ever met a “normal” person though? These people are ****** up. EVERYBODY is weird, normal people just try to hide it. Then they ridicule the square pegs. I don’t actually know that, but I bet they do. There’ve been enough politicians caught doing something they call “weird” or “blasphemous” that I just use their behavior to implicate the rest of “normal” society. Ironic, eh?
OK. I admit it. I don’t really know what the people I categorize as “normal” are like; I’m just sore because I want to share my entire self with the world and not be thought a freak and I just don’t feel like I can do that today. Some days are better than others. Today was not.
By:
Candace75
Age:
36-40
,
Male
