It’s no small secret that wearing men’s leggings can feel taboo. Society has pretty strict rules about what a man should wear and what he should not wear and the same goes for women. Society would like to place genders into boxes and clearly define and label them. Whether this is right or wrong is not really the point of my post today. I just want to talk about myself.

As I wrote in my last post titled What does your wife think about you wearing leggings there are consequences, deserved and otherwise, to strutting my stuff while wearing leggings. I still choose to wear them. What does this say about my masculinity?

One of the biggest surprises to me while writing this blog has been the emails and messages I have received from other gentlemen in the same place as myself. The responses have ranged from encouragement, questioning, and advice seeking. My takeaway has been that plenty of other men find themselves here, wearing leggings and loving them.

Do I even need to answer questions about my masculinity?

Probably not - especially not to the world at large, but to myself? Possibly? Maybe…

A bit of background. My entire life I have been drawn to things that weren’t classically male. Yes, I played football, was actually a decent running back, and got into the culture of hunting and fishing. I was a dedicated boy scout and achieved the rank of Eagle. I have always been into girls, like really into girls.

But I was also into dance and musical theater, I enjoyed tights and thong underwear and I can remember wrestling with the disparaging messages I received from the church, from the media, and society about what my tastes meant about myself and manliness.

To a degree, it felt like there were two sides to me. A side that was socially “normal”. A cis-gendered white boy with blue eyes and blond hair. I was a patrol leader in the local scout troop and knew where to pull bass out of the Thornapple River and how to throw, catch and run with a football. That side was easy to share with the world. It was expected.

There was another side tho. One that felt harder to express. The side that for years, decades really had been suppressed. The side that enjoyed long hair, fashion, and feeling soft and curvy versus hard and angular. It was a side that started showing up when I was around 9 years old. I enjoyed tight-fitting clothing and started to make my own rudimentary under DIY style out of the multipack briefs my mother bought for me.

I remember wearing dance tights for the first time and I was like “Oh yeah - these are amazing”. Later in a high school production of Cinderella, the costume included tights and I was thrilled! The other boys in the high school drama production couldn’t stand them. They made all kinds of lewd comments about them. I didn’t relate. I thought they were great, but I wasn’t trying to cram boxers into them.

It was really becoming clear to me that I had a different sense about myself than the “book” definition of being a boy. I wanted to share my other side. But it felt dangerous. I had a clear sense that I was breaking a social norm.

In high school, I tried to share a bit of myself with the world. I wanted to feel seen and release some of the internal pressure that was building as I wore thongs under my baggy clothes around my peers - they had no idea. It was thrilling and also depressing. I felt this strange need to express myself. But I wasn’t brave enough to be honest and open, so I claimed: “I lost a best” and with that flimsy little fib I was able to share a little bit of myself.

But the responses I received hardened my understanding that this was something I shouldn’t share with the world. My peers, boys, and girls would say things like:

That’s Gross!

Why are you wearing women’s underwear??

You should stop that - it’s queer

In college, the girl I lost my virginity to called me a faggot for wearing thong underwear. Any remaining semblance that I could share more about myself with others was abandoned.

That side slowly got placed into a box. After college, I never really even felt it anymore.

I continued wearing thongs - I met my wife and found a person I could be more open and honest with - but for years I didn’t - I had buried the box too deep.

Everything changed with the birth of Elouise.

My first daughter came into the world during a hellacious hail storm and the shock waves that coursed through my mind must have jostled that box up from the depths. Here was this beautiful little girl. There was nothing wrong with feminity and why should those parts of me be suppressed?

She should be empowered to be her true self. How could I be a role model and honest father if I wasn’t being my true self?

I slowly became terrified that my daughter would never really know her father. I had to come to terms with who I wanted to be.

“Whoa, man! We’re just talking about leggings - can you cool it with the existential stuff?”

I realize this is about more than leggings. In many aspects, we are what we wear. It is a major expression of ourselves. I think leggings were my gateway garment to sharing with the world what has always been within me. You can’t hide them like thong underwear. I no longer need to hide behind a fib.

One of the folks who reached out to me said this:

“I like your perspective and also how you don’t really have all the answers as to why you like them, other than that you just like them. That’s a hard one for me, because I do feel like I need a “better” answer sometimes”

First off, he doesn’t actually need a “better” answer. Full stop.

But that shook me a bit. Outside of the narrative of my blog posts I have been slowly coming to a better understanding of myself and how I want to feel about and present myself. For me, leggings have really become a way for me to better accept myself as androgynous.

I have zero intentions of changing my pronouns. I will always be a father, a husband, and a son but my masculinity doesn’t need to be defined by a stodgy old definition that was never really true anyway.

Leggings have allowed me a way to finally share what has always been there. Turns out kids are heartless but as an adult on the other side of puberty and strengthened by my family I no longer have to live by the tight social restrictions I felt as a teenager. That fear is subsiding.

I can become what I always wanted to be. Soft and curvy, elegant and beautiful, skin tight and sexy. Me, both masculine and feminine.

That freedom has brought on a profound change to my life. I have gained so much more self-control as it relates to my diet and drinking. I am way more attentive to my spouse and what she needs to feel loved and appreciated. The way I perceive myself in the mirror has improved - it’s weird. It is like a giant fog has been lifted from my life. It has been very positive all things considered.

So what does wearing men’s leggings say about my masculinity?

Who the fuck cares!

I think the best way to answer that question is to say that I am embracing my complete self. I am not suppressing the sides of me that don’t fit into a Norman Rockwell painting and presenting myself the way that is expected but instead doing my damnedest to be honest with myself about who I am.

I am finding my confidence and my courage. It’s a process but it is labor worth doing.

I am my masculinity and my femininity. Realizing that balance has literally changed my life.