Because I want to
Why do many men think they cannot wear leather pants unless they belong to some particular group of people? Robert Staudhammer thinks he is will never be “cool enough”:
I can’t play an instrument so I would never be part of the next giant rock band. I will never race motorcycles because it scares me. I’m too sexually conservative to follow any desire to strap on S&M gear. And I’m too rational to lose myself in the rave scene.
Rockenheimer thinks he is too old:
My arms were sore coming in to the office, but it was a good sore. I felt good, I felt awake, I didn’t feel like a sloshing barrel of junk food mixed with beer being rolled down a hallway. I already had visions of Slim Steph with his abs of steel back into place, speed bumps on a wall. [- - -] I’ll fit in my leather pants again and if I can find my biker boots I’ll be the badass rock ‘n roll machine that I was back in… aw crap, who am I kidding – what reason can I possibly come up with for wearing leather pants at 40 years of age? That’s for the young, the pretty and the studly.
Wouldn’t “because I want to” be good enough a reason?
One for all and all for one
Charlie Webster would like to wear leather pants:
If you’ve never tried on a pair you are missing out! I promise you this, you will never, ever feel as man-sexy as you do when wearing leather pants.
However, Charlie does not wear leather pants because it is not “socially acceptable”. This made me think about social acceptance. What does “socially acceptable” mean?
Social acceptance has to do with other people’s opinions on something. So let us imagine a society consisting of three persons: A, B and C. Let us also assume that everybody in this society wants to make socially acceptable clothing choices. When A wants to know whether wearing something is socially acceptable, he consults B and C about it. Correspondingly, B consults C and A about his sartorial choices and C consults A and B.
Do you already see where I’m getting at? If everybody sought social acceptance, then everybody would get to influence a person’s clothing choices but the person himself.
He’s such a doll
Marcus Wright is one of the two main characters in “Terminator: Salvation“. Marcus wears leather pants throughout the movie. But don’t get carried away: there are almost no good shots of the leather pants in the film and I could find only a couple of promotional photographs that may spark the interest of a leather lover.
The funny thing is that if you do a search for images of Marcus Wright, you seem to get a lot of good hits. However, many of them are not images of the actor Sam Worthington but images of the collectible figure by Hot Toys.
When I saw photographs of the collectible figure for the first time, it took me several seconds to realize that they were photographs of a collectible figure. That’s a long time. In a way, my slowness was quite fitting: in the film, Marcus Wright isn’t quite what he seems to be at first glance.
Monumental leather
Andrey Nikolayevich Tolstoy will probably always be remembered as the guy in leather: he has been depicted in one-to-one scale wearing a long leather coat in his tombstone in Tolyatti, Russia.
According to the article “The world’s tackiest tombstones“, thousands of gangsters died in criminal wars that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and it is easy to find grandiose tombstones commemorating them in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.
Cam Gigandet finds leather hot but cool
I have just the coolest wardrobe. I have the leather coat and leather pants and lots of leather. It’s very warm, but [wearing the clothes and riding on the bike] is definitely one of the coolest things that you get to do — feeling like a badass.
Cam Gigandet in an interview with MTV about filming “Priest“
No, I fuck women. I really do.
Today I stumbled across a Facebook group called “Leather trousers (pants) on men are NOT gay“. Here is an extract from the description of the group:
This group is for STRAIGHT men who have the confidence to wear their leather trousers (pants) with confidence and manlyness and reclaim them from the gay community!
You can only join this group if you are a straight, MANLY man who isn’t afraid to wear them and show the world they’re great. We are *NOT* fetishists in this group, we wear our leathers like normal trousers and in all situations… if you are a fetishist, this group is not for you.
The group even has a pledge:
We, the straight people of the world, solemnly pledge that we will wear our leather strides and hold our head high in the knowledge that we are reclaiming leather back from the gay pride community as a damn good, comfortable and practical clothing choice.
I believe the name of the group would be more self-explanatory if it was “I am NOT a gay man even though I wear leather trousers”. Oh, what the heck, lets make the name even more self-explanatory: “I am NOT a gay man even though I wear leather trousers but many people seem to think that I am a gay man because I wear leather trousers and I don’t like that because being a gay man is a baaad thing (and, by the way, so is being a girly straight man)”.
The Leather Party
Adam Uhrynowski’s girlfriend doesn’t like Adam to wear his leather pants:
I’m highly encouraged by my girlfriend not to wear the pants – ever. She hates them, hates their history, and hates the connotation that her heterosexual boyfriend whose legs are draped in cow skins might bring. Which means mostly I wear them just to piss her off.
Read the rest of the entertaining story “The Leather Party” at the Yes But No But Yes blog.
Mother knows best
Who should you rely on when it comes to assessing whether your leathers are well-fitting or not? Why, your mother of course. Ken, a former boy band member, reminisces:
It was the Fall of 2000 I think and At Last was going to have their first CD release party. It was at Club Soho downtown, we had a cool stage and all these people were coming. We were planning wardrobe. We didn’t wear the same thing, but we matched… and my mom wanted to buy me some leather pants. Yes you can laugh, but they were popular then. My mom actually sat outside the dressing room at Macy’s and made me come out and told me the ones I wanted weren’t tight enough. LOL. Mom’s great.
Wear leather pants, get out of work earlier
Leather pants can be used for many purposes. I have already learned that by wearing leather pants, one may get discounted admission to a museum of modern art. I have also learned that by promising to wear leather pants, one may entice people to listen to delusional claims about the existence of supernatural beings.
Today I learned that with the help of leather pants, one may get out of work earlier. At least Bryan Foltice from Florida managed to do just that when he wanted to travel to Tampa to a rock concert:
I get out of work around lunchtime. I am not about lying to my manager, giving a fake excuse for leaving early. I cut a deal with her that I had to post a picture of me wearing leather pants if she lets me out early.
It began to rain in the concert. It made Bryan to contemplate his employer’s attitude towards leather pants:
My leather pants have become one with my body. We could be looking at 1-2 weeks before they may come off. I contemplate Deutsche Bank’s leather pants policy. Could they pass as dress pants? How would HR address this?
An opera for me
I have seen one opera. Well, perhaps I exaggerate if I say seen. I was present when an opera was performed. I remember next to nothing of the evening. I was 15 or something. I have been told that the opera was Rigoletto.
Had I been in Boston a couple of days ago, I would certainly have gone to see Don Giovanni. Not Don Giovanni, the opera, as much as Don Giovanni, the character. He was played by Elliot Madore. According to The Boston Globe, Madore “brought athletic energy and narcissism to the title role”.
Athletic energy and narcissism in leather pants. And on top of everything else, he is a baritone. Yumm.
