(Posted to Helen who is doing a dissertation on men's skirt fashion)

For the record, I am a 23 year old heterosexual male, just finishing
my Masters degree in Physics at Cambridge, UK. Apart from these
studies, I have always lived in Finland.

I have always considered myself more artistic/philosophical and less
athletic/aggressive than the average man. I have experimented with
clothing and hair styles well before discovering men's skirts.
Therefore, for those who already knew me, skirting was not a big
surprise.

When I look at people around me, both in Finland and Britain, most of
them make me think: what a boring bunch of losers. That is the message
conveyed by their appearance; it is like a camouflage for the urban
environment. It makes me think: those people are probably ashamed of
themselves, the way they are hiding themselves in the surroundings.

Of course, I cannot draw conclusions of the people simply based on
their looks; there are many, many interesting and intelligent people
around, who do not express their abilities in their looks at all. I
have also come to appreciate the freedom to choose between outstanding
and understating styles. But if most people are always choosing the
dull one, what does it tell about the people? Are they in fact making
a choice?

I take it as an axiom that people have to wear clothes, both for
modesty and climate, and I do not try to change that. So, in the
morning we want to put some clothes on, but do we make a conscious
choice of what to wear? The impression I get, is that most people
don't make conscious choices when it comes to clothing -- and in fact
many other things.

This might be a good point to tell why I like to dress in a more
interesting and provocative way. 

Reason 1: I do what I feel like, I'm an individual, nobody is telling
me what to wear. Sometimes it's trousers, sometimes skirts, but there
are no real reasons why the former should be favoured.

Reason 2: I want to express what's going on in my head. I want to give
other people an impression of an interesting, artistic person.

Reason 3: I want to question the obvious in fashion (and pretty much
everything else). To make other people think that there are more
choices than what they're used to.

Some people have asked about my hair, why I keep it as it is (most of
it, but not all, shaved). It seems hard for them to accept that I just
do what I feel like. They want explanations. I think if I told them
it's my religion, they would accept it. Why can't I just be an
individual? Why can't they accept that things just happen in this world?

Often I think this society accepts a greater freedom in fashion for
women than for men. It also seems that lesbian women are more readily
accepted than homosexual men. How could this happen in a
male-dominated society? 

It might be, that men are blindly relying on this whole
male-domination thing, and are not doing anything to maintain
it. Meanwhile, women have been fighting for their freedom and power in
the society, and they will continue to do it. Men are in fact becoming
the weaker sex.

One aspect of the fashion divide is that, for example, men in kilts
actually look really masculine and sexy -- and it is not accepted,
because the society is afraid of male sexuality. This is an example of
the male suppression mentioned above. 

People are brainwashed into thinking that the male body is ugly and
dangerous, and must be covered. So, while the men have all the bare
female skin to rest their eyes on, what do the women have to look at?
This problem seems like a relic of the male-dominated society, and I
can quite happily imagine this would change if the women gained more
substantial power. 

There's also the interesting point that men are hornier than
women. Now if that were true, surely men and women could dress more
equally, and men would still be sexually interested in women. In fact,
men should dress more attractively, to balance things out! In fact,
before the industrial revolution, women were considered the more
lecherous sex; incidentally this was a time when men dressed in very
colourful and interesting ways. So perhaps there is not so much reall
difference between the sexes, it's just the way they are portrayed in
the society. 

In a way, my personal mission with fashion is a part of "men's
liberation movement". Fashion is just the tip of the iceberg, but it
could trigger a further change towards more open thinking . I want to
compare this to the early feminist women who wanted to wear
trousers. They certainly had a political message to convey, and so do
we, the Men In Skirts.

But that's not all. In the end, I want a whole conscious revolution of
mankind. I believe many of the important problems in today's world
stem from the fact, that people are not thinking freely. An example I
mentioned is the choice to wear what we want, but for most people it
is not a conscious choice. Instead, people are living half-conscious
lives guided by different authorities. There are so many expectations
from friends, relatives, co-workers and so on. Most people are not
living their own lives, they are living other people's
expectations. That's why most people are miserable. And suddenly it
makes sense why they are dressed in grey understatements: It's the
funeral of mankind.

And the flip side is that those who dare to be alive as themselves,
which includes Men In Skirts among others, are a minority of weirdos
in this mentally dead society.