Monday, September 21, 2009

Boxed In

Why wear a kilt?  Well, I felt boxed in.  Men have very few fashion options.  I worked in corporate communications for a while and with three work suits, one evening suit, half a dozen shirts and a dozen ties I was set for a year or two (I should address the tie at some point because it may be that while the form is given, men can play with content).  I felt boxed in.  There are many kindred souls out there.  And, there are kindred companies--most namely for me Utilikilt.

Here's me (in a box) wearing my very first Utilikilt. I know you can't see it, but, hey, I was in a box. 

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Avatar


One of my new course preps is called Animation and Communication.  The course survey's the discourses of animation, and student work is done by creating character animation.  We use a variety of software packages (my training is in Maya):  Blender is our primary app.  We also use Poser and Daz for certain applications.  I used Poser to create my online Avatar.



A Change in the Wind

Look at the fag with the cool car,”  a preteen said just loudly enough for me to hear as I got out of my Miata at the local Foodlion.  What struck me was not the name calling,  although this was the first time I was called a fag (to my face anyway), but rather bad experiences (name calling, being laughed at) were happening more often.  I wore a kilt everyday for two years (the only exceptions being funerals or business meetings, few and far in between that necessitated a suit).  In those two years I got odd looks and double-takes, but more often encouragement:  "Nice kilt." "Good for you.”  “Where can I get one?”  “I love the kilt.”  These are the words I heard, and the positive vibe of the speech was echoed in the body language and gestures of the speakers.


So why the hostile environment now.  Before considering it more rigorously I'll speculate:  Call it the Obama backlash; the resugence of comncervency in the face of fear...of a black president....a man wearing a kilt.... of the socialist take-over of America. Things were different, and the timing seemed pretty clear.
  
So how did kilt wearing start?  (how's that for a non-sequeter?)  My wife and I were renting a cabin in Vermont for the summer.  I don’t remember how kilts came up, but my wife said she thought they were sexy, I’d always been pulled toward the fringes of fashion (I spent a deacde of wonderous freedom living as a rock musician, a drummer.  As Hendrix said, “Mr. white collar conservative business man; you can’t dress like me”).  I’d always pussed the nevelope, but let’s face it; long hair, even eye liner isn’t so far afetched.  OK, maybe the eye liner (a style I miss) can only be pulled off by a rock musician like Keith Richards, but I bet marketing agents eventually find a way to tap the male market.  Anyway, when we returned from Vermont my first kilt arrived--a classic McGregor tartan.  My high school friend, who was best man at my wedding was there.  I put it on, and his only question:  “Why would you wear that?”  I forget how I responded.


I had been reading the literature.  Thanks to the web there is now available literature on everything.  Kilt wearing men’s speech shopwed definite thematic patterns.  One invarient was, “people don’t really care what you wear.  They’re not really interested in you [just themselves].”  


The first time I wore my kilt out, I went for a wlak with TC (my wife) and our dog (Diggity).  We had not gone two hundred yards when a friend pulled up:  He’s a fireman, real man type.  We talked.  He didn’t mention the kilt.  He saw it, of course, but the observation appeared to be right:  He didn’t really care.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Fashion, Feminism and Marxism

While women have identified sources of oppression, and worked together to create better conditions of living, men have not.  Masculinity shares in common with the heterosexual assumption and white invisibility a tendency to take itself for granted.  Masculinity is a hegemonic structure, the questioning of which is largely taboo for the heterosexual community (to the point that naming a "heterosexual community" is really naming something that does not yet exist).  Men will even fight for their own oppression!  


For the past three years I've been wearing kilts (for two years I wore nothing but kilts excluding only situations in which a suit and tie were important).  I bought a pair of jeans recently, and while wondering why, I also wondered why I had not done any scholarly reflection on the matter.  The result of thins thinking:  This blog.


This blog is a series of reflections on kilted experience.  I'm already throwing around "big words," but that's just me.  This blog is written for men, and women, who want to embrace their being even if that means doing things out of the ordinary, or even things like being a man who likes to wear kilts (which are a style of skirt)