Dress to impress

Teen Times: Picture the scene. It's Saturday morning at around noon. Like every other teenager you've wandered down for breakfast and are just finished buttering that second slice of toast when your brother walks into the kitchen. Wearing a skirt.

A pink, flowery skirt to be exact.

Naturally, the sight makes you spill the orange juice all over your pyjamas and start choking on the toast. Your brother walks calmly to the back door, picks up a bag full of rugby gear and leaves the house. Your mother, of course, nearly dies of a heart attack and you spend the next 10 minutes scraping your jaw off the table.

Unbelievable, right? But why? Women of the 20th century adopted a male style of dressing as far back as the 1930s when actress Marlene Dietrich decided to stun Hollywood by wearing top-and-tails to the premiere of her new movie. From the 1950s onwards, it has been pretty much accepted that women could wear trousers. Girl power indeed.

So why then do we have such a problem with men wearing women's clothes? Take my friend for example. The first time we met, I was convinced that he was gay. Everything about him screamed "GAY" at me, from the brightly coloured shirt and long hair to the accent. So imagine my surprise when I was told by a mutual friend that his preference was for women.

Why did I automatically label him as gay? Is it because our stereotypical image of the perfect male role model is someone with a deep voice and a chest that even Mr Universe would be impressed by?

Or perhaps we expect our men to be manly and our women to be, well . . . ladylike. As the song goes, "boys don't cry". Maybe this pigeon-holing of men is one of the reasons why we have a growing trend in eating disorders among young men.

This is probably how those men in the 1930s felt when they saw Marlene Dietrich in top-and-tails: a woman? In a suit? Don't be ridiculous! Personally, I wouldn't be seen dead in a skirt after school hours and mostly live in a baggy pair of jeans and a slightly grubby T-shirt. Nothing unusual about that, you say.

So why is it that we can do this, when the members of the opposite sex can't wear female clothing without being labelled a freak? If you put two and two together, you will get four, and the logical thing to do would be to accept that if boys want to wear female clothing, they should be allowed to.

Unfortunately, when it comes to gender issues some people seem unable to add properly. The stereotypes which surround both women and men still exist, long after so-called equal opportunities were introduced.

We have a female president, yet little girls and women are expected to like pink their whole life and to dress up like fairies at any given occasion, from crèche parties to weddings.

Who knows what the future will bring? Maybe our grandchildren will live in a culture where cross-dressing by both sexes is permitted. Where the scene I described above won't seem so strange. And where equality extends to the clothes we wear. Men and women wearing whatever makes them comfortable. Picture that scene.

• Aisling Bolger (16) is a student at Scoil Mhuire College, Wellington Road, Cork

• Submissions of 500-word opinion pieces for this column are welcome from teenagers to: teentimes@irish-times.ie. Please include a telephone number