Have We Won Acceptance of Kilts?

[Riverkilt]

Just back from the walk to Horseshoe Bend Overlook on the Colorado River. This trail is packed with tourists - even now. Always before I'd get many comments on my kilt. Stopped, asked to take pics, questions. This weekend in my Royal Air Force tartan kilt only one lady asked about the kilt (What is it called?) and "Can I take a photo.

One lady out of hundreds out on the trail from around the world.

[OC Richard]

It surprises me, actually, how little notice I often garner.

Is it seeing various ethnic dress in TV and films?

Or indeed in person! Around here seeing people in Indian ethnic dress is an everyday sight. No wonder Highland Dress hardly gets a second glance.

[Macman]

Ron, if I may say, you're looking very svelt!

[Steve Ashton]

Ron, I'll second David's comment. You look really good.

But - about winning acceptance - I would say that as long as people still find a kilt unusual enough to make comments or ask for photos, the kilt has not yet reached 'acceptance'.
I'll count acceptance when no one even notices the kilt as being outside 'normal' enough to comment.

[Jock Scot]

That’s an interesting question Ron that has touched on something I was thinking about as I drove home from town the other day.

I suppose different areas and countries are dealing with Covid in different ways and it appears to me that the UK in general is rather more rigorous with its “lockdown” procedures than other parts of the world. So for the last year we in the Highlands, apart from a couple of months in the summer, have not seen visitors.Even the locals generally only do essential shopping, little or no visiting of friends and family and so on. So the visitors are noticeably absent.

When I was in town the other day doing my essential shopping it suddenly dawned on me that the locals made absolutely no comment about my kilt attire. Why should they? It has been always that way with the residents. Frankly it is rather refreshing to go shopping or for a stroll in the countryside without being bothered with smiling sweetly into a camera lense. At a guess it shortens my shopping time by a good twenty minutes or so.

So what am I saying? The locals for sure see me———-and other locals——-dressed in in our assorted Highland attire going about our business without comment. In passing, a kilted gentleman is still in a small minority in the Highlands. I and the locals certainly don’t wear the kilt as a “ look at me” item. They, I assume, accept it as a norm which of course it is. It is the strangers who think the kilt is out of the ordinary and it is the almost total lack of visitors that makes that point very clear.

For what it is worth , I really cannot imagine the kilt being worn out of its natural surroundings as being seen as anything other than an oddity by those viewing the sight--------I most certainly do!----------- and they will continue so to do for many many decades to come and maybe for ever.

[KiltedDixon]

Looking good Riverkilt!

Interesting observation in a superb setting.

[OC Richard]

I and the locals certainly don’t wear the kilt as a “ look at me” item.

That's a super observation.

It's the "nub of it" as Abraham Lincoln would say, the litmus test of the dynamic between the wearer and the community the wearer moves about in.

It's my avoidance of "look at me" in the places I move about in which has resulted in me only wearing Highland Dress when I'm playing the pipes as public performance, or participating in a specifically Scottish-themed event where Highland Dress is called for.

But I do have to travel between home and these public events! So I might pop into a Starbucks kilted. Such times are the only ones I'm kilted amongst an unsuspecting public, and happily I don't get a second glance most of the time. No smiling for photos! No questions about my kilt!

I would think it would be far more difficult to escape notice in the Highlands of Scotland, when it's swarming with Americans who prepared for their Scotland holiday by binge-watching four series of Outlander.