In a post I recently wrote about wearing skirts to my son’s daycare, I briefly hinted about something that happened as a result of my wearing skirts there. Before I get into it though, I need to tell a little backstory.
As I’m writing this, the UEFA Euro 2024 soccer championship is currently taking place. Germany’s national team received new uniforms for it which are primarily purple and pink. The color choice has proven to be quite controversial here in Germany.
A couple of days into the tournament, I brought my son to daycare wearing one of my skirts. While I didn’t get any direct reaction to my skirt-wearing, I did happen to overhear a conversation about the new German uniform between some of the construction workers who are building a new playground. They were fuming loudly about the purple and pink color scheme not being manly enough and making Germany look too weak and “womanly”.
The conversation disgusted me and as it turns out, I wasn’t the only parent to overhear it and be disgusted by it.
Fast forward to the next morning. I’m walking my son into the daycare once again wearing one of my skirts and about halfway down the corridor to the room where my son’s group is, I encounter a little boy from one of the other groups wearing a purple and white dress with white tights. The daycare isn’t that large and so I recognize most of the kids in the vicinity of where my son goes and this little boy is no exception.
His mom was still there and I recognized her too because we often drop our sons off at the same time in the morning. She stopped me while I was passing and asked if I had heard the construction workers the day before. I confirmed I had and we proceeded to have a conversation about how disgusting and backward that attitude is.
She then mentioned that she dressed her son in a dress as a counterreaction to the construction workers’ bigoted attitude. While she told me that, she very purposefully looked down at the skirt I was wearing and said that recently, she’s seen me wearing a skirt most mornings and that I was her inspiration for the reaction.
I then received a whole heap of compliments about my breaking of gender norms, my courage for rebelling, and for my general style. She said that while she’d never seen any other man wear a skirt out in public, it doesn’t look feminine on me at all and that she thinks more men need to “grow a pair” and “skirt up”.
While I absolutely loved the conversation, I was a bit taken off guard by it at first because it was early in the morning before I’d even had breakfast or my first hot beverage of the day, and my son’s daycare in our tiny, conservative, rural town was the last place I had expected to have that sort of conversation.
The next morning, I saw the mom and her son again while dropping my son off. He was wearing typical boys’ clothes again, but I stopped and asked her how the previous day had gone. She was beaming when she said that her son loved it and that she had only gotten compliments from the teachers and other parents. She ended the conversation by saying that it definitely won’t be the last time he shows up to daycare in a skirt or dress.
So that obviously got me thinking: Should I dress my son in a skirt or dress for daycare as well? I have yet to talk to my wife about the idea, but I think I’m going to one of these days very soon. Maybe I’ll even coordinate it with the other boy’s mom so that both boys show up in a skirt or dress on the same day.
What do you think about it? Should I do it? What do you think about the mom’s reaction and the daycare’s response? Let me know in the comments below!
Update: After seeing a number of comments on this post, I feel like I should mention that my son as well as the other boy are both under two years old and still too young to talk. That means that if we were to ask them, they wouldn’t be able to give an answer or probably even care.
Wow! That’s simply amazing! Well done sir! Three comments.
1) When skirted, we see the looks but don’t know what’s going on behind the eyes. The demons in our heads think the others are silently mocking us but I’ve become more convinced that the curious/bewildered stares lean far more positive than negative. As you say, you live in a small town. I’m sure most know about your skirt wearing. But here’s positive proof that you’re making a difference in opening the eyes of many to a regular guy wearing skirts as a regular guy. And who knows, you may have freed that young boy to express himself however he pleases.
2) Love the fact that the young kid wore a dress/tights and loved it. Less important in truth but very important in reality that the others accepted him. Should you dress your son in a dress or skirt with or without tights? Hard call. I want your son to wear one but only if he wants to. I think too often women were forced to wear skirts/dresses and now rebel against it. Don’t want the same for your boy. That said, theres a timing issue. That kid did it and it likely has been discussed in many homes. If another boy does it soon after, trends start. Perhaps, if your son took notice of the other boy, you could approach him to see if he’d be interested. Dresses for girls are so much more colorful and interesting than boys stuff. Little boys love t shirts with stuff on the front because they’re human and too young to be fitted in the man box that prevents guys from wearing something colorful or interesting. With your wife’s consent, scrolling through dresses that are of his favorite color or have a favorite character on it could be good.
3). “Grow a pair” and “skirt up”! It’s ironic in talking about a toxic masculinity event (men hating punk/purple cause it’s too “womanly”), she uses a phrase associated with toxic masculinity, “grow a pair.” Perhaps you’re just translating from Deutsch to English though. No worries, I’m not offended by it, instead I find it encouraging.
I’ve had these wonderful conversations in my head about being confronted whilst skirted. One has a person stating I must not be an alpha male because I’m in skirts. To which I reply, thank God I’m not, alpha males don’t have enough self-esteem to wear one. I could easily swap out “balls” for “self-esteem” in that sentence but it hearkens to something I learned about alpha males, the stereotype associated with toxic masculinity.
Alpha males have a reputation of always trying to show that they’re the best, the strongest, the fastest a d are often thought to be belligerent about it. But why do they do this? I’ve been taught that if you’re truly the best, you don’t have to say it because everyone knows it. Those who know they aren’t the best AND can’t accept it, have low self-esteem because they can’t be happy knowing they’re only the best they can be. So to get rid of these negative feelings, they run around trying to beat someone else to improve their self-esteem. Problem is, this only works in the short term cause there’s always someone bigger, stronger, faster.
So an alpha male, with low self esteem, will never “man up” and “grow a pair” to “skirt up” because he’s just not emotionally strong enough. He may have muscles, but he’s actually kind of a weak individual. Sadly I feel the old patriarchal goals of man as the “bread winner” and “head of the household” has hurt many men today when they measure themselves up against that archaic standard.
So are skirted men stronger than other men? I can only speak for myself but wearing skirts (and tights) has definitely made me become more introspective on who am I. And I wear what I want increasingly more openly because I’ve realized I love who I am. My success doesn’t need to be measured by how many pull up’s or what I bench press. My success is that I’m living my life with people who love me for me. Something these toxic masculinity folks will never have the “balls” to be. And that’s their loss.
Thanks Alex for posting such a positive story. I really hope your kid wears whatever he wants without constraints. I also thank you for being a great positive role model for your boy and the silent masses who read your blog and hope to one day be as comfortable with themselves as you are.
I hope you understand what I mean by this but I feel its a sad reflection on society that you should have to write what you have written I mean that in a nice positive way and not a negative way.I try and accept people for who or what they are,in other words if what they do or wear dose no harm to anyone physically or mentally what dose it matter.But it seems society seems to think that there is something wrong with people men or women who do not fit into the norms.Treat others how you would like to be.
Yep, I agree. Sad to write that we should all just accept each other as they are.
You speak of normal people. But what’s that? I feel we live in a society where the “normal person” we strive to be doesn’t exist in anyone but is a figment of our misbegotten idealized imagination. Which serves no other purpose than to make us feel bad because we never measure up to it.
Everyone loves a maverick but no one wants to be the pioneer
Hi Greg.
Exactly.
Thanks for the comments!
I agree that most bewildered looks are probably less judgemental than we make them out to be. A lot of people just simply have never seen a man in a skirt before which makes it confusing to them. I also suspect that some men that stare at you are even jealous that you have the courage to do it! I know for a fact that there are a ton of men who wear gender-non-conforming clothing at home, but don’t out in public because they’re too afraid to…
I think it is important that the kid’s experience was a good one. Not only for him, but for the whole of the community. That just shows me that people are often more accepting of it than you would suspect. Unfortunately, I can’t ask my son if he would like to wear it or not because he’s too young to talk or understand what I’m even talking about. He would just wear it and not care at all. Same with the other kid. They are both under two years old.
That was just my loose translation. The German wasn’t quite that vulgar, but I chose that phrase because of the inherent irony in it…
I agree with you about alpha males. My experience with them has been very similar. They are often belligerent about their masculinity exactly because they are weak characters. They don’t or can’t understand that true strength doesn’t come from pure physical prowess, but rather from a certain comfort in being oneself without feeling the need to compare yourself to anyone else. The type of person you are describing yourself to be is much more of a sigma male which I suspect a lot of men who don’t conform to the norm could classify themselves as.
I hope I’m not a sigma male. At least not the description I just read on the internet.
“Robert Crampton, who writes the Beta Male column of the The Times Saturday magazine, describes the controversial social media personality Andrew Tate as a sigma male.“
And I want nothing to do with Tate.
I took a test at a conference and they said I was a zeta male.
But I put as much stock in these generalizations as I do in the generalization that men don’t wear skirts.
I just read the Wikipedia entry and that actually has nothing to do with the definition I’ve seen in many other places on the internet. This is a much better description: https://www.happierhuman.com/sigma-male-signs/
I absolutely wouldn’t classify Tate as a sigma male. He is the very definition of an insecure alpha male.
Hi Alex,
I enjoy the stories of your adventures! Thanks for taking the time to write and post them, but above all – hosting this sensible website. While I understand and agree with the sentiment regarding the construction worker’s comments, I would not have used my son to protest it. I have 2 sons that are now both adults and thinking back on raising them one thing that my wife and I always agreed upon was to not knowingly force our ideas on them (religious or otherwise). We always felt it best for them to discover their own path regarding these issues.
I feel it would have been better for the mom to directly confront the construction workers while wearing the outfit that her son wore. I doubt that it was her son’s idea to wear a dress as a protest. If her son discovers – “hey, I want to wear a dress” then great – facilitate that, but I would refrain from putting the idea in their head.
Hi Mark, I appreciate your comments. Using your kids to protest is fraught with problems. But on the flip side, teaching her child that wearing a dress doesn’t mean you’re weak or “womanly” is also in the table. Honestly, I don’t see boys taking the initiative to want to wear a dress because of the pervasive feeling that boys don’t wear dresses. As a parent, it’s important to open their eyes to the possibilities out there and let them make their own minds up. No right or wrong answers here. Being a parent is hard and God bless them all for doing it. I wish more parents would dress their children in skirts and dresses and tights. Not because I want to have others doing it but I know how comfortable I am, I’d hate to see another generation grow up limited in their choices
I also agree that most boys probably won’t take the initiative to want to wear dresses or skirts since it’s “just not what boys do”. That said, my guess is that my son will express an interest in it at some point when he’s a little older since he sees his dad wearing a skirt practically every day.
Ya never know, the kid may have wanted to do it.
Hard to say since he is too young to talk… I really should have mentioned that in the post.
Hi Mark!
You’re absolutely welcome! I enjoy writing about my experiences and sharing them!
I agree about not forcing your ideas on your kids (my wife and I are raising our son with the same philosophy), but in this case, the kids are so young, that they most likely don’t have an opinion on their clothes as long as they are comfortable since they are not aware of social norms yet. They are under two and not even able to talk yet.
” it doesn’t look feminine on me at all” It is sad that this is even considered a negative still. This certainly needs to change.
As to your question about your son. Ask him. Ask him what he thought about the other boy’s outfit, and if he would like to have such style as an option.
THIS is how things change, and how backwards and sad attitudes as those construction workers exhibited will die out.
Please keep us informed as to what happens in the future.
Exactly. As long as anything feminine is considered as a negative or needs to be qualified, there will never be equality.
But it does make me think that it’s less difficult to wear the same uniform and mock anyone who doesn’t toe the line. Takes serious courage to be yourself.
Hello Pythos
I agree totally with what you say and as I think I may have said in the past I like your style and attitude to life.What harm dose it do how people dress we are all individual.If you want to look the same as everyone else join the the army or something and wear a uniform (no offence meant).
I don’t think she meant it in the sense that femininity is generally something negative, but rather that she was surprised that a man wearing a skirt could look normal (in this case “masculine”). I do agree with you, however, that this divide needs to change. If I wore a flowery dress with lace on it, it would certainly look “feminine”, but as a man, I should still be able to do that if I so choose.
I would ask my son, but he’s not even two years old yet and can’t talk. He isn’t old enough to be aware of social norms and probably couldn’t care less about what he wears as long as it’s not uncomfortable and/or restrictive. Same for the other boy.
Please check with your son to make sure he is comfortable wearing a skirt or dress first. Him being comfortable is what is most important.
He is too young to talk (under two), so it is hard to ask him. He probably doesn’t care though at that age.
Great story. I wish I could jump ahead twenty years and see what becomes of the different approaches to raising a boy. My own, long grown has recently transition to an androgynous sort-of gender, including style of dress. Had the world been more accepting of that style long ago, would that change have happened or not?
It is definitely going to be interesting to see how things will have changed in that regard in the next twenty years. Generally, the topic of gender has become so mainstream that something is bound to change. Of course, there is already a huge amount of pushback from archconservatives, but that is to be expected with any change.
Jesus, is already magenta / purple color also “too feminine” for some? This “soldier” mindset where every male wears likely the same clothes is really difficult to understand, especially when we all sometimes feel the need to express ourselves and impress others. It might be bigger for female, but guys immediately reject doing it in other way than “hard work”. I could understand if they say these colors are not “German”, still they would need to somehow deal with the fact that German team sometimes played in white T-shirts, so color not present on German flag.
I believe the direct “confrontation” between that mom+son and construction workers would have a bit of impact on the youngest one – I could imagine workers starting to laugh or just swear about today’s fashion or world coming generally to an end. While mom tries to tell her son to not worry about that, he would definitely take that seriously (and keep in his head for some time). We all know that 99 positive comments are considered less important than 1 negative comment.
And well, let’s see if your kid wants to try it out – at this age kids want various things, including some that are completely unrealistic, so being careful with things we do / give is extremely important, but I guess you know that way better than I do. I also hope that your wife will be open to discussion, provide her feedback in the spirit of mutual trust, and not start immediately arguing about “this is going too far”.
Yup, it is which is utterly ridiculous. I haven’t heard or read any discussion about the colors not being German, just about whether they are masculine enough which is just stupid.
You are right about negative comments having a bigger impact on somebody than positive comments. Fortunately, there wasn’t any direct confrontation between anyone since the boy came dressed in a dress the day after the construction workers were complaining. I don’t know if they saw the boy or not, but from what the mom was saying, it was an entirely positive experience. So even if they did, they didn’t say or do anything.
I think we need ‘Grow a pair & Skirt up’ on a t-shirt, what a phrase to live by.
Hi Darryl.
Sounds Good perhaps with the Beskirted logo on it !
That would be hilarious!
Word order is important. ‘Grow a pair and upskirt’ on a tee-shirt would convey a somewhat different meaning. (I derive a lot of my humour from wordplay.)
Yes, that would change the meaning entirely! 😀
Hi Mateusz
Why can not the Human Race live and let live your right about the 99 positive comments,negativity sadly is always stronger.What harm dose it do if some one wants to dress from the accepted norm,may be I am just a Rebel without a cause or may be I have found my cause here,keep on Skirting It. Hee Hee.