FW: Why Pants?

I must first add a disclaimer that I had never before begun to think of these things till I went into bagpiping. I remember donning my first kilt and walking around in it thinking, This is quite fun! It was after I had done a few parades and had been seen in public in my kilt, that I began to ask myself, why do men wear pants? And in addition why do women wear skirts?

Luckily my querying landed me in a conversation with a good friend of mine. I asked him what he thought about the subject pointing out that many Scottish still wear kilts (though I’m not too sure how commonplace this is). He replied that he had his own skirt he wore at night to bed, something he picked up from the Orient. Many men in Asia wear a loose robe or something of a skirt to sleep in or even to walk around in. We came to the conclusion that wearing pants is, in all actuality, barbaric. The Romans wore skirts (togas as well) while the barbarian tribes wore pants. My friend informed me (and this is unconfirmed as of yet) that the Romans actually passed a law banning all pants from Rome to keep the Barbarians out! But alas, Rome fell, the Barbarians triumphed over the civilized culture of the day and pants emerged victorious. Thus it is my belief that pants is more of a cultural norm inherited from Barbarian tribes than anything else.

One can take a look at those still donning the skirt such as in Scotland (kilts), in Malaysia (sarongs), Japan, the Middle East, the Islands of Polynesia and in all sorts of places to see examples of the man-skirt. Not that I’m calling for a skirt revolution (though some would—I found some funny and very strange websites while doing some google research on this subject). I don’t believe that just as pants have become acceptable for women that the skirt will someday be acceptable for men living in the United States. No not all—nor would I necessarily endorse such a change! What does the future hold for the man-skirt? I don’t know nor do I care much about it, though I still do like to pull out my kilt for a parade or two every now and then.