Men in Skirts

Abstract

There are signs that the wearing of skirts by men appears to be on the increase in the West. Connor's essay provides a series of historical reflections on the signification and cultural phenomenology of male and female apparel. The first appearance of bifurcated dress in the late mediaeval period is considered, along with the struggle between men and women for command of lateral space during the seventeenth century in Europe, as attested to by commentators like John Bulwer and John Evelyn. Explications are offered of the thematics of the fringe and the pocket, as they are dramatized in trousers and skirts, as well as of the logic of lightness and of the pendant. Trousers, Connors concludes, have never lost their fanciful associations with utility, practicality and rationality; they are the signs of occupation, of being taken up in what you do, rather than consumed in what you are. The political victory of the trousered over the untrousered races (Romans, Scots, Indians etc.) is confirmed by its inversion in male masochist fantasies of 'petticoat government', from the late nineteenth century onwards.