#meninrompers

Rompers are the rage!! Get with it. Sol street studio broke this two years ago. Follow Solstreetstudio for more black fashion.

Men in Rompers #nooo now ok so the brother added an accessory, #meninrompers why? Sorry been at DR. Going to take it easy today. @regrann #repostapp🔛 #leearango123shareanythingipost (at Royal Screen Co.)

I'll make a few declarations at the onset of what I'm about to say. Masculinity is not a clearly defined word. What being masculine or being a man means in the States, is, qualitatively, light years away from what it means in everywhere else. In addition, rompers, as a fashion item worn by human beings that identify as male, is not new. Not by a long shot. Also, it's just clothing. On the sliding scale of dangerous, problematic, tsk-tsk worthy things that men take part in….I mean, damn, where do you start? And finally, I'm not trying to change minds. Trying to change a mind, is like an auto mechanic trying to fix a car over the phone. You can tell the mechanic what's wrong, what sounds the car is making, etc. But, unless someone gets under the hood manipulates wires, takes defective parts out, and replaces fluids, that car ain’t ever gonna run right. The response from men (and women) to men, wearing rompers is fascinating in its circuitous silliness. I almost can't get past the fact that the most effective title for the issue is, “men wearing rompers”, which sounds as Monty Python a skit as I could imagine. What’s bubbled up, is all manner of hateful, misogynistic, homophobic, ageist tweets and status updates. It’s astounding in its predictability. I've parsed through a number of opinions on the “men wearing rompers” controversy, and have seen women blasting men with the hot sands of misogyny. Where black people have Uncle Toms, I imagine the patriarchal equivalent for women, would be Auntie Tams. Being a willing participant, in furthering the chasm between men and women, in a society that's built on women as second class citizens, when you are a self-identified woman, is borderline lunacy. Even in as small an act, as regurgitating the bile men rocket at each other, in the efforts of creating binary gender roles and establishing dominance on societal playgrounds. I wonder if these women think it makes them more like men. If they, in the daze of subjugation, have convinced themselves that if you can't beat them, be them. Be just as simple, petty and fraudulent. Why fraud? We are mighty picky on when, where, how, why, and whom we allow to cross the lines. Prince, Bowie, Jimi, James, and Andre all dressed brazenly on the line. In suede and sequin and sheer. They are heroes. They are myths. They are immortal. They, also, are human, and man, and male, and musicians. Are the blouses, now, passè? Have leather jumpsuits been hijacked by gay and queer alike, and as such can only be associated with them? There lie, within this fallacy, a hypocrisy, as is usually the case. What I'm finding in these condemnations, stashed away behind the words, is fear. It's a marvelous thing, fear. When harmless affectations and dress styles, tear open the dread that your way of life is under attack. Your man code. Your gender roles and rules. Your generational identities. People don't so much as carry real disdain for these things, as they arm themselves with their terror for the misunderstood. For example, arachnophobes do not hate spiders. Definitively, phobias are irrational fears.  Arachnophobes fear spiders. They exclaim that they hate spiders in defense of their fear. What exacerbates, and, at times, is the impetus for this fear, is the misunderstanding that spiders cause death. When in fact, zoologically and factually speaking, very few spiders can even break skin, leave alone are venomous. Irrational fear disguised as common sense hate is an ideology that permeates throughout the fragile psyche of man in all arenas. Fearing the unknown seems like such a wasteful experience. Maybe there's a thrill I do not grasp. A kind of, Schrodinger’s cat appeal to the world. It feels exhausting. So rarely do the things we don't understand pose a real threat to our lives. Maybe we know the mundanity of life and need to create demons. Giving our lives purpose through a fictional dragon begging for a slaying. These perceived, if not delusional, devils, perennially create blockades for growth. There is nothing gained fighting a monster you manufactured. You set the limits of its power and the zest in its evil. You are unlikely to create a hurdle you can't leap in a single, unaffected bound. The real battle presented to you, is very often not around you. It's in you. It is not of your own creation. It is you Amusing as outrage, colored with machismo, over men wearing rompers may be, it's dangerously ignorant. Men in rompers or romper like outfits are old hat. A fashion trend going years back. Not far from overalls and jumpsuits. There is an current of misogyny just as strong as the current of homophobia. This idea of a “gay agenda” imposed on our youth. This is what tolerance looks like to those in small cages. Conspiracy. It should look like freedom.