By Clinton Duncan

WE hear it every day; more than once a day, men are told “man up,” “don’t cry” and reject everything labelled “feminine”. We are limited to a specific set of rules about how we should walk, talk, act and even how we should express emotion (or the lack thereof). I look around at the guys my age and it seems that regardless of nationality, religion or socio-economic status, we are stranded at an impasse on the road to realising manhood.

We are weighted by the confusion of a generation lost to treacherous forces they never saw, for reasons they were never able to comprehend. We are suffocating in a world that decides who, or rather, “how” we should exist, even before we are able to explore the possibilities for ourselves. We are suffering from the loss of things never known. We are, quite literally, a dazed generation of men, confused by the smoke-screens of “what we ought to be”, and unable to see what we could be. The feminists were right. What we call masculinity has, as it relates to modern realities, corrupt, oppressive and destructive elements that need to change.

And yes, I mean that literally. And no, I’m not kidding.
In fact, the entire thrust of my latent anger regarding this topic is that the monstrous social degeneration we are now witnessing, more than anything else, is the result of outmoded and horribly misguided masculinity.

As high fashion designers take their allegedly feminised styles to shops, and liberal hyper-masculine artists adopt some “metrosexual” and not so “butch” fashion and style ideas, it appears that straight men can now wear pink and man buns. But Jan Tomes writes that the latest menswear trends are bland – and some verge on cultural appropriation of subversive countercultures like the androgyny, club kid and vogue ballroom scenes.

“There are fashions today that are considered acceptable, at least in “urban” areas, that would have been dismissed as ‘gay’ earlier this century: the colour pink, tight trousers, or the ‘man bun,’ though it’s worth noting that that particular hairstyle has its provenance in samurai warriors and sumo wrestlers, not women,” says Anja Aronowsky Cronberg from the London College of Fashion.

And, for the record “‘Real men’ have not gone anywhere. Though lately there have been cries about masculinity ‘in crisis’ and the emergence of a ‘new man’ – an idea that the fashion industry has been quick to capitalise on – a skeptic would point out that while men try on pussy-bow blouses and extra-long sleeves, the catalyst for this plethora of new looks might be more closely related to the ever-increasing commodification of everyday life and advances in marketing and advertising than it is to any kind of new man.”

Men have been wearing skirts for years in traditional ethnic cultures all around the world and dare I say that (according to my understanding of the course of history) the ancient ideals of masculinity were the purest and had the least restrictions. I sat a while back and had an epiphany that some people don’t necessarily have a problem with men in skirts, they have a problem with men who are soft or don’t possess the outward hallmarks of modern swagger like the male celebrities who have worn skirts and gotten away with it, like Vin Deisel, Kanye West or P Diddy’, who all still possess their “‘straight” cards.

We need to move toward an age where artistic experimentation is not frowned upon, where I can wear what I want when I want, even if it’s androgynous and not have to deal with hundreds of judgmental eyes between my home and my destination.

We need to accept the truth about life which is that change is inevitable, and if art reflects life and fashion is art then we should also accept that “Change happens for the sake of change: That’s the mantra of fashion.” And it’s indeed a sad day in the world where clothes begin to define people, and our understanding of masculinity is so fragile that wearing a skirt or the colour pink is all it takes to shatter it.

And that is why men wore skirts in 2017 to remind the masses that masculinity is inherent and is impossible to be done away with by a mere artistic fad, whether it be a jheri curl, a bell bottom, a rhomper or even at the far left, a skirt.