Modern men are breaking traditional gender norms

Dresses and skirts are clothes that are traditionally worn by women. Nowadays however, it is becoming more popular for men to wear dresses on runaways and even on red carpets. Those men are redefining gender norms and while some people love it, others find it strange and unusual.  

The blurry lines of gender norms 

Gender norms are a hot topic in our modern society. Gender norms are based on the different expectations that individuals, groups and societies have of individuals. These expectations are based on sex and those expectations are based on  values and beliefs about gender that different societies have. These expectations and beliefs define what appropriate gender norms are and they decide what kind of behavior is appropriate for females and what kind of behavior is appropriate for males (Blackstone, 2003).

We all know about the traditional gender roles where men work to make money and women stay at home, where blue is for boys and pink is for girls and especially where men wear pants and women wear dresses and skirts. According to the traditional gender roles, clothes have a gender and some people still believe in that, but some do not. 

The idea that pants are masculine and that dresses are feminine, is a way more modern idea than you might think it is.

People are starting to advocate that clothing does not have a gender. Especially the younger generations say that they do not want to be boxed into a particular gender based on their clothes. This idea of clothes having a gender, is a very western-centered idea. In several cultures, from southeast Asia to India, Robes and skirts are totally acceptable  for men. The idea that pants are masculine and that dresses are feminine, is a way more modern idea than you might think it is. For a long time, dresses and skirts were worn by everyone, even by men. 

A piece of fashion history

If we take a look at our history, we will see that it was completely normal for men to wear dresses and skirts. Skirts were worn by many of humanity’s most ancient civilizations by both men and women. This was mainly because skirts provided cheap and efficien and you could do anything in it. Pants were also worn by both genders. Two reasons for this was that it was warmer when it became cold and because pants were necessary for horse-riding. 

The separation between pants are for men and skirts are for women was not fully there until around the 19th century. In this century, academics, monks and men of leisure still wore gowns. The change in the acceptance of this, was how it was applied to children. Up until the 19th century, european children were dressed in skirts no matter what gender they were born as. In this same century however, it became a thing to give boys between the ages of 4 and 7 their first pair of trousers. This was to show that they had g beyond infancy. At this time  perspective on what made a ‘man’ started to shift.

Deviants are created by society and are based on how people react to certain actions and create certain groups.

Right now, a lot of contemporary menswear lines have skirts in their collection and on the runway, but it is not really mainstream anymore. There has been a lot of resistance against men wearing skirts and dresses based on the idea that those are feminine clothes. A man wearing a skirt or a dress would therefore be feminine and weakened or simply looking for attention (Thorpe, 2017). Therefore, a man wearing a dress is sometimes depicted as a deviant. Groups make rules and norms and someone is deemed deviant when they break one of those rules. Groups however, are not natural and are a social construct that mainly exist in the mind (Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998). So, deviants are created by society and are based on how people react to certain actions and create certain groups (Becker, 1963). 

Men redefining gender norms 

In the world of Hollywood, men are starting to redefine gender norms by wearing dresses and skirts on red carpets or on stage. Prince, Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, Jared Leto, Keiynan Lonsdale and Vin Diesel are all examples of famous men who have worn dresses or skirts. Someone who really wants to make a statement out of fashion is Billy Porter. 

Billy Porter is an actor  ‘Pose’, which is about New York City’s African-American and Latino LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming drag ball culture. 

Porter has always worn unusual fashion pieces, but it really started at the Golden Globes of 2019. Here, Porter wore a suit with a huge hot pink cape attached to it. After this, he gained the courage to go even further. At the Oscars of 2019, Porter could be seen on the red carpet in a beautiful tuxedo gown and on the red carpet for the Oscars of 2020, Porter wore a stunning gold gown.  

‘My goal is to be a walking piece of political art every time I show up. To challenge expectations. What is masculinity? What does that mean? Women show up every day in pants, but the minute a man wears a dress, the seas part.’ - Billy Porter

Porter knows that just living inside his own truth in public, is a political act. He decided to add fashion to it and really make a statement. He did not want to accept that women who put on pants are considered strong, because pants are associated with the patriarchy, but men who put on dresses are considered disgusting (Ashenden & Makari, 2019). He wants to redefine gender norms and make a political statement that masculinity and femininity are not set in stone and that you should not limit people. 

Dresses for men are not mainstream

Ideas, activities or attitudes that are shared by most people and regarded as normal, are mainstream. Men wearing dresses and breaking gender norms, are still a minority. This makes it hard to become mainstream, because there is a hierarchy of credibility. The members of the highest group have the right to define how things are and what rules you should obey (Greer & McLaughlin, 2010). 

Men adorning dresses and skirts mainly happen in the celebrity world and not everyone will see that. On social media you are in your own little bubble, because of the algorithms. If you do not look for men in dresses, you will probably not see it. So, people who think that a man wearing a dress is wrong, will likely not see pictures of Billy Porter, Jared Leto or Jonathan van Ness on their social media feed. A way that th gender norms have gained more attention is because of Harry Styles and Vogue. 

On the 13th of november, 2020, something revolutionary happened. Harry Styles became the first solo male on the cover of Vogue magazine. Vogue magazine was launched in 1892 and has had many noteworthy covers. In 1974 Beverly Johnson became the first black woman on the cover and in 1988 Michaela Bercu became the first Israeli model on the cover. Now in 2020 Harry Styles has become the first ever solo male model on the cover of Vogue and on top of that, he is wearing a dress. This cover was everywhere on the internet and it was almost impossible to miss it. 

Harry Styles reconstructs gender norms

Harry Edward Styles is an English-born singer. In 2010 he auditioned for the UK television show ‘The X Factor’, where he got grouped together with four other contestants who then became the boyband One Direction. One Direction became a pop music sensation and had a lot of success, but in 2015 they went on a hiatus after one of the members had already left the band. Two years later, in 2017, Harry Styles launched his solo career by releasing his first solo single and, later on, a whole album. In that same year he also made his debut as an actor in the Cristopher Nolan movie Dunkirk. 

Harry Styles is not only known for his music and his acting, but also for his flamboyant fashion. high fashion outfits that challenge the traditional gender norms. Styles has said in an interview with Variety that people who he looks up to in the music industry are musicians like Prince, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Elvis Presley and Elton John. All of these musicians were also breaking the traditional gender norms when it came to fashion. 

This magazine cover is not the first time that Harry Styles has dressed , or not even the first time that a man wears

a dress, but this time Candace Owens spoke out about it and her tweet got a lot of media coverage. It was everywhere on the internet and this caused a lot of controversy.  

Candace Owens has her own rules for society

Candace Owens is an American conservative author, commentator and political activist. She has become known for her increasingly pro-Trump activism as a black woman, in addition to her criticism of Black Lives Matter and the democratic party. On the 13th of november she took to twitter to let everyone know what she thought of Harry Styles in a dress. 

Owens sees Styles as a special kind of person because he has broken a rule. He has worn a dress,  for women. She sees styles as an outsider or a deviant. According to Becker, the simplest view of deviance is essentially statistical, defining as deviant anything that varies too widely from the average. Owens is defining gender roles and she is deciding about the rules that people should follow. People who break those rules are seen as outsiders. 

Owens distinguishes two kinds of men in her tweet. One group consists of strong manly men and one group consists of feminized men. She makes a generalization that no society can survive without strong men. She connects feminized men with cultural marxism and she calls th outright attack. By using the words outright attack, she emphasizes that it is something bad that we should fight against. This also implies that we should support the strong manly men and that we should be against feminized men. 

The phrase feminization of masculinity is also shaped in a way that it sounds wrong, unnatural and like it should not be happening. The opposite genders are juxtaposed against each other and this comparison implies the degeneration of the ‘superior’ male gender into the ‘inferior’ female gender. By using the phrase ‘the steady feminization of our men’, Owens wants to really make it sound like the superior men are declining to the level of the inferior women.

This is a very agressive tweet. By calling people idiots and stupid, she puts herself above other people. She takes the position a leader who can make rules and decide what is right and what is wrong. Men dressing as women is wrong according to her. Men in dresses fail to obey group rules which makes their behavior deviant.

 again establishes a group of feminized men who are apparently not stable. She connects a man wearing a dress to mental illness. According to Becker, an illness became everything in which they could detect any sign of malfunctioning, based on no matter what norm. 

The tweets that Owens tweeted, received a lot of support and a lot of backlash. A lot of other celebrities also gave their opinions on the matter. Even politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke up about the whole phenomenon. 

AOC supports breaking gender norms

A is an American democratic politician serving as the U.S. representative for New York’s 14th congressional district since 2019. AOC is the youngest woman ever to serve in the United States congress and she has a significant social media presence. She uses social media to her advantage and that is how she stumbled upon the topic of Harry Styles wearing a dress. She put on her instagram story that she was going to answer questions from her followers  someone asked her what her thoughts were on the subject. 

Just like Owens, AOC also recognizes two different groups. She does not talk about the men wearing the dresses but rather about the people reacting to it. AOC mentions that the Vogue cover might provoke some anger or insecurity around masculinity and femininity. he likely refers to conservative people, who have a hard time parting with traditional gender norms. She makes it very clear that she is not part of that group. Her own opinion on the cover is that it is wonderful and that the masculine and feminine elements are beautifully balanced. 

AOC  it is important artists create things that make people think, because nobody wants to see the same things all the time. Even though she says this, she does not label anyone as deviant or an outsider. AOC simply depicts men wearing dresses as a change that is happening  we should start to accept. This makes her 'group' seem way more inclusive for everyone than the 'group' that Owens is representing. 

A simple magazine cover became political

Harry Styles wearing a dress has become way more than just a nice picture. It has become political. Owens takes a conservative point of view while AOC takes a progressive one. They made it a debate on traditional gender norms and on how far someone can take their freedom of expression. Owens even starts using the term cultural Marxism and saying that marxism in combination with feminized men is an attack on society. Cultural Marxism is in itself a multiculturalist project in which the traditions of our Western cultures are questioned deconstructed and ridiculed (Blommaert, 2019). 

Owens has constructed men wearing dresses as deviants and outsiders. This is because they break the rules that she has for society. She wants to live by traditional gender norms, but society is changing and so are the perspectives on masculinity and femininity. More and more people want more freedom and equal rights for everyone which does not go together with the traditional conservative gender norms. The younger generations are more progressive than conservative. We can only wait to find out what kind of man will come out on top. The strong and traditional manly men who are supported by conservative minded people, or the so called feminized men who are supported by progressive minded people. 

References

Ashenden, A. & Makari, R. (2019, July 12). Pose star Billy Porter: Wearing a dress is a ‘political act’. 

Becker, H.S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. The Free Press.

Blackstone, A, M. (2003). Gender roles and society. In J. R. Miller, R. M. Lerner & L. B. Schiamberg (Eds.), Human Ecology: An Encyclopedia of Children, Families, Communities, and Environments (335-338). ABC-CLIO. 

Blommaert, J. (2019, November 28). Why has cultural Marxism become the enemy?

Blommaert, J. & Verschueren, J. (1998). Debating diversity: Analysing the discourse of tolerance. Routledge.

Greer, C. & McLaughlin, E. (2010). We Predict a Riot? Public Order Policing, New Media Environments and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist. The British journal of criminology, 50(6), 1041-1059. DOI:10.1093/bjc/azq039

Thorpe, J. R. (2017, May 22). The history of men & skirts.