Men in Skirts: Air Force Vet Lobbies for Kilts as a U.S. Postal Service Uniform
Jul 31st, 2008 by admin
Dean Peterson, 49, far right in the above photo, is lobbying the U.S. Postal Sevice for kilts as an official uniform. He served 22 years in the Air Force, retired as a Master Sargeant, and went to work for the Post Office five years ago. His wife introduced him to kilts and he loved them. He’s six feet tall, 250 pounds, and he found kilts to be comfortable and liberating. He and his wife went to a postal service workers convention in Boston recently and lobbied for the adoption of kilts as a uniform. It didn’t fly, but he’s on it.
I think this is great! Until I graduated from high school in 1969, girls were forbidden to wear pants to school, and it would have been dangerous to life and limb to even propose that men or boys should be free to wear skirts. Thanks to feminism, we have arrived at this moment in history in which a traditional man, married, kids, veteran, lobbies for skirts as a work uniform. I think all people should have the right to dress and present in ways which are comfortable and which make sense to them. That’s the stuff of revolution. What you want to wear, how you want to present, the way you look, isn’t and shouldn’t be about sex or gender. It should be about what’s comfortable for you.
In the UK many schools forbid girls from wearing trousers.
I forbid myself to wear skirts!
I was forced into them for the first 20 years of my life.
It’s so freaking cold here in Canada in the middle of winter we girls and young women just really suffered; I mean, it’s pain, to walk 1/2 mile in just stockinged legs in that. Think freezer burn.
We petitioned and we were allowed to walk to school in pants worn under our skirts, and were were required to remove the pants once in the classroom. This was at University, too!
But, heh. I wonder how the postal workers will enjoy those kilts at -30F in your coldest states.
Oh naw this has nothing to do with feminism. Kilts are way considered VERY bull masculine, the antithesis of feminism. The kilt has an association with ultra testosterone and war but also with young hipsters. If it was called a skirt they’d never wear it.
I had worn a skirt (dress) probably half a dozen times until I lived in a city. Everyone wore pants. We’d have frozen to death.
There’s some har har joke about ‘what does a Scotsman wear under his kilt’ REAL men don’t wear anything. Maybe Sparkle will come in and inform us.
Wow, Arantxa, pretty unbelievable that girls still can’t wear pants in the UK in places.
Mary, I hear you. We also used to wear pants under our skirts to keep warm and then we took them off when we got to school. Where I live we don’t have too many days of extremely low temperatures, though we always have some, but we have constant rain and wind and the kind of cold that goes right through you and that skirts are no protection against.
This guy has so far been unsuccessful in getting the Postal Service to agree to let men wear skirts. Honestly, think about that. What’s it to the Postal Service? The kilts are nice, they are the gray, what, twill or whatever the fabric is that all the other uniforms are, and yet they’re not going for it. In patriarchy, the corporate interests must be represented by manly men only, still, in 2008.
Yeah, it does depend where you hail from for sure, very true that kilts are masculine where they originated.
Here in the U.S., they’re only masculine if they’re tartan plaid and worn by a Scotsman, preferably playing bagpipes. :)
The rugby players here often wear kilts. Then, they’re worn with big hiking boots and tattered falling down woolly socks, ripped t-shirts with some misogynistic slogan.
But yes, every parade has a pipeband, and every professional association or union has their ceremonial kilt. Even if they’re not Scots! It’s cultural. Canada’s first Europeans were Scots (and French).
My family and I are kilt enthusiasts. We have been to Highland Games festivals for the last two years, and my husband and our five boys all wore kilts and looked great. As they say, “A man in a kilt is a man-and-a-half!” :)
Utilikilts.com is a non-traditional type of kilt, very much like the ones pictured. They aren’t plaid. They are more like work-weight duck material. They also have leather!
Once you’ve been to an event where a lot of the guys are wearing kilts, you’ll never think of them as skirts or girlie again.
Please forgive me for not jumping for joy that man and his male (and mail) buddies. Until feminism does all of what women need it to do for us, I couldn’t care less about what it does for Teh Menz.
Hey, CoolAunt, I hear you, but I didn’t post this to support the men– I posted it because the only way gender (as subordination)will end, the only way the bondage of sex stereotypes will be history, is if all people, whatever their sex, may dress and present in any way they like and have total freedom to do so. It’s telling that the USPO refuses to allow this. In this they stand as enforcers of gender and of gender roles, i.e., “Men do not wear skirts” (in the U.S. anyway). Or, “Skirts are not a proper male uniform for our American organization/institution.” This is a very central site of resistance for radical feminists anyway, this insistence being a man/male or being a woman/female is not about what clothes you wear or how you present.
Just a note- the Irish do not wear plaid kilts in general, they wear solid color kilts. And there are a number of Irish pipe bands. Men have been wearing kilts much longer than they have been wearing pants. The history of kilts is really a matter of practicality and not fashion until the Victorian era. They started as a huge blanket that men wore when they might be away from home for several nights (the pleats were not sewn down). They are worn to the knee because of the high grass plains-this kept them from getting their blanket wet.
As far as the USPO, they allow the carriers to wear shorts, and those are not considered professional by many. But I’m sure they are comfortable.
Anf since the gender roles has been mentioned, I’ll say that I am a male kilt maker and have been for about 5 years now. Whenever I go out for supplies to the fabric stores, everyone wants to talk to my wife even though I’m asking the questions or whatever. And they just can not believe a “man would learn to sew”. I can tell you that the foolish thoughts go both ways.
Thanks for that kilt info, Jared. I like kilts. My oldest son wears them and they look great on him!
Re men learning to sew, it is extremely rare to find men in fabric shops because they like to sew, so the questions make sense. Generally men who sew are called “tailors” or “designers” and are highly societally revered, similarly to the way men who cook are called “chefs” and lauded for their talents and gifts and given special hats and so on.
Women, on the other hand, sew every single day of their lives, cook every single day, and nobody pays much attention, no matter how gifted or brilliant is their work. They’re just women, doing “women’s work.”
Gender and clothing have a long way to go. Someday I want to see men walking down the street in dresses, any colour and pattern that takes their fancy. Remember when K.D. Lang was on the cover of Vanity Fair in a suit? That was like some big deal.. yeah we’ve come so far we are still gaga over a woman wearing a tie.
Will there be a day when men can wear dresses *as men* and not trying to pass as women? That we are no where near this yet shows how entrenched gender expectations and fashion are. Maybe some folks would be less desperate to take the knife to themselves to try and carve themselves into the other gender if they could embrace everything associated with that gender as their own gender.
LOL, I remember when I was in high school in the 70’s a boy in my class came to school wearing a dress. He did it to challenge the dress codes arguing that the dress in no way contravened them and the girl he had borrowed it from wore it to school often. He was made to go home and change. He was a fairly charismatic personality and the younger boys who looked up to him were in shock and didn’t know how to process this. Of course we girls could wear “boy”’s clothing to our hearts content.. but society freaks out if a man wears something associated with women. Maybe he is seen as a betrayer of his gender?
Definitely a yes for men in skirts. I agree with the main article, men people should be able to wear what they like and feel comfortable in it. I can not go with that that some people frek out seeing a men with some clothes which could be associated with women.
What people [purposely I say people instead of women/men] like to wear is everybody’s own purpose, period. If somebody don’t like it, just do not look on them!
It is overtime that men start wearing [originally] their own clothes, and we all now that 60% of all men on the world still wearing their traditionally skirt in all different length, ankle-long to mini-super short, and their are still men, huh!?
I think, men looking great in skirts because I saw several men walking around lately, they looked confident with their skirts, ‘manly’.
Kilts are OK however men already, in some settings, have a recognized right to wear them. I find the flat front not appealing. I am not Scottish, don’t draft me into their culture. Are women limited to one trouser style? Don’t limit men to one skirt style. I have a Greek “fustanella” that I wear to dance presentations in Dallas and it resembles a ballet skirt. I have some great pleated skirts and petticoats from EBay, though the other day a sniper took away a 15 inch deep blue super full petticoat I would have died to wear. Bras? Not for me. That’s a real anatomical difference. Who has stood against the sexes having dress liberty? PSYCHIATRY & ministers.
Hey Charles;
It is not about ministers and psychiatry, it is about homophobic, I believe. I also think that a skirt is not just a female wardrobe, it is unisex but as a garment fixed on female gender for some years. Finally men becoming confident enough wearing skirts, which is the best wardrobe for their body’s.
The skirt is an ultimate piece of clothes for both sexes, women found this out long time ago, and men must follow.