Re: confidence

[Graham]

Hamish I would love to meet you on my next trip over, this time I promise to leave shorts behind - kilts only!!.

Rob, it's a really really good feeling to get to the place where you hardly even think about the kilt you're wearing because it's so much a part of you.

I'm almost there!

[Martin Fr]

I haven't posted in a long time now, mainly because there seems so little to write about mis/mik. Do trouser-wearers talk about their apparel day after day? Surely not. They get up in the morning and push their legs down the tubes, crush their vitals behind the zip and go about their daily tasks. Similarly, I gird my loins every morning with whatever kilt seems most appropriate to the weather and the mood, and off I go.
During the recent hot spell, my wrap-rounds are plain home-made beige/khaki, since I still have not found any traditional tartan light enough in colour to keep cool in the sun. No English-speaker would call these a kilt (outside the tiny AK- UK community), but what does it matter?
I no longer say I don't care what people may think or how they may react. I don't think about what I'm wearing, I just get on with my life.
No, it has not always been so easy. I remember feeling a little nervous about opening the front door to strangers. I remember going into a hardware store to hire some equipment and feeling the whole store must be staring at me. I remember tugging at my skirts to cover up my thighs when cycling – ever though I was showing much less of myself than any cyclist in shorts. Now I go where I want and let the wind blow where it wants, and I'm happy.
It takes a year or two, but one can get used to anything, and the most eccentric habits eventually seem perfectly natural and normal.

Martin, in Grenoble, France.
(new pseudo etc, 'cause I can't log in with the old one)

[Rob Wright]

Blu, you are right, it took me a while of doing small tasks and wearing the kilt around the house for me to get to the point were I'm not aware that I'm wearing a garment that stands out. There have been times when I was standing in line at a checkout and I would hear people whisper check that out! Or what are they wearing! and I would look around to see who they were talking about before realizing it was me. At work four out of five days I'm wearing my Victory kilt. It does help that people realize that it is not smart to tick off the cook especially if they haven't recieved their food yet.

Graham ,we are our own worse enemies.

Rob Wright

[Alaskan]

I have only been wearing kilts since April, but I've already gotten to the point that I forget that I am wearing something out of the ordinary.

Part of it is that when you are a foreigner in Japan, people will look at you, no matter how you are dressed. When I went to America, where I am not used to people looking at me I was walking around Seattle eating a Blizzard from Dairy Queen and for a moment I thought "What? You've never seen a guy eating ice cream before?"