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The reason why men largely don't wear skirts has little to do with aesthetics and a lot to do with power. Skirts represent subservience, period. You must have heard the comment, made of a shrewish, high-maintenance, uppity woman (notice how these adjectives are apportioned almost exclusively to females?) and her downtrodden husband or male partner: 'It's obvious who wears the trousers [pants, if you're Stateside] in that relationship...'

Witness how, in pre-feminist days, women were compelled to wear restrictive skirts all the time; indeed, early women's rights campaigners who fought for the option of bifurcated attire were arrested and imprisoned. As society became more egalitarian, girls and women gained limited licence to cover their legs, first in informal situations and, in the past few years, with a few lingering exceptions, in formal environments such as workplaces and schools.

And yet... women still love wearing skirts. Minis, pencils, kilts, A-lines: while girls (a term that no longer sets female teeth on edge) acknowledge the practicality of trousers, most prefer wearing attire that marks them out as exclusively feminine. Why? I contend it's because your average heterosexual woman enjoys being a woman, and that includes having doors opened for her, getting men to do practical tasks by pleading helplessness, attracting the male gaze, being seduced... you get the rest.

So perhaps female identity and sexuality is partly about playing with submissiveness - for most, at any rate. And perhaps that submissiveness also gives women power over men. And any woman will tell you that a short, figure-hugging skirt, newly waxed legs and killer heels combine both of these forces in a way that trousers and flats can't hope to usurp.

What has this to do with male attire, and specifically our reluctance to drop our trousers? It's simple. The minute we lose our pants, we lose our power. And that power is crucial to our sense of self, and our appeal to women. The French - sexiest nation on Earth - have a saying: vive la difference ('long live the difference [between men and women]). By preserving and accentuating our differences we maximise our attractiveness to the opposite sex. Which is why, in the long term, women will ditch their trousers and men will never don skirts.

Learn more about this author, MarkB.
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