FashGen — don’t judge someone based on their clothes

Have you ever made assumptions about someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity based on their looks and fashion? Like men wearing makeup, skirts and crop tops. When did people start to assign what fashion trends are for each gender? When did makeup, crop tops and skirts become a woman thing? 

Men and women should receive the same amount of freedom in their fashion and looks without being judged. 

Society nowadays views fashion and makeup as a single gender thing. For me, fashion is clothes and items to show your personality, but that is not the case for every situation and that doesn’t suit everyone. Sometimes people like to be different and try out new things, but that doesn’t mean that what they wear reflects on the standard fashion. For me, I wear makeup almost every time I walk outside because I have a current feature on my face that needs some coloring to make me not look like a dead person. Some people suffer from different things and they need to cover it in order for them to have confidence within themself. 

One day, I ran through “6 men demonstrate the amazing power of no makeup makeup” by Bridget March. I really like the article because it was the article that influenced me to change my mind about men wearing makeup. To be honest, at first, I also thought that men wearing makeup felt weak. After seeing the real scenario of men wearing makeup, I understand more about the power of makeup. I ran into Danny, 20, who has been suffering from acne. Danny said that “I have been dealing with acne (and all the scarring that comes with it), on and off for the last 5 years. It wasn’t until I started wearing makeup that I actually started to think that anybody could find me attractive.” This proved that makeup gave everyone the power of feeling confident within themself. If makeup can make everyone feel confident in themself, why is there a limit? 

If we are talking about makeup, we shouldn’t pass on recent fashion trends. Recently, many big brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Rick Owens started introducing their new collections that include skirts for men. “Super freeing: men’s skirts emerge as pandemic fashion trend” by Priya Elan has mentioned the new trends and how others approach it. The article also mentioned how De Saint Sernin shared that, “It’s just really fun, I guess, being able to wear something that usually belongs to womenswear, and at the same time keeping the look believable on a man.” This shows that men are comfortable wearing skirts and they are still able to maintain their manliness. If you are a girl, I’m sure sometimes you would walk into a men’s section and find cute items. So why can’t men view a skirt as a cute thing and be able to wear it? The tag never says that skirts are only for women, so why is there a limit in gender.

I believe that people would feel that men wearing skirts is weak, just like how a comment said in a post about men wearing skirts, which was brought up in the article, “Could men wearing skirts finally be normalized for AW21?” The comment said that “There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the West, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” Well, let’s respect their view, but let’s bring back how men were wearing skirts and crop tops back in the day. In China, there is a traditional custom which is “HANFU,” and men are wearing skirts just like women. Also, did you know that there were many people and celebrities back in the day wearing crop tops while being filmed or just casually walking out? So then what is the difference between back in the day versus now?

I hope that people would be open to new fashion trends just like the way they are opened to new advanced technology. If you are struggling because of how others view and being judgmental to you, then just ignore those words. They don’t live for your life, don’t give birth to you or give you money to spend, so why should you be listening to their words. There are many people who have been through a lot just to be as confident as they are now, so please don’t drown them down and put them into the same hole that they have been filling up with confidence.

Thao Tran