Straight Man Who Wears Skirts Slams LGBT Community For People Thinking That He’s Gay
Image: Mark Bryan Images: Instagram
A married heterosexual influencer, who has challenged gender norms by wearing skirts and high heels to work every day for years, has blamed the LGBTQI community for everyone thinking that he’s gay.
Mark Bryan, a 62-year-old American living in Germany claimed that gay people have made it harder for him.
Bryan, an influencer who’s developed a following for his outfit choices and wardrobe aesthetic, believes clothing is genderless and the clothes he wears does not reflect his sexuality or personality.
‘I Try To Separate Myself From The LGBTQI Community’
During a conversation with Queer Eye: Germany’s Avi Jakobs in a new docu-series Beyond Fashion, Bryan told the beauty guru that he did not want to be associated with the LGBTQI community.
“I try to separate myself from the [LGBTQI] community because of the gay community that wore skirts and high heels before I did. I feel like they actually made it worse for me, being straight because now I’m assumed to be gay”, Bryan said.
The series’ first episode is entitled ‘Hat mode ein geschlect?‘, which translates ‘Does fashion have gender?’
“I don’t really think that I’m fighting with you, but I’m not fighting against you, either,” Bryan claimed. The influencer asserted that LGBTQI people were to blame for the challenges they’ve faced and have made it “difficult for themselves by just being more flamboyant.”
“I think they’re too outrageous and too flamboyant,” he said.
‘We Are The Reason You Can Dress That Way’
Bryan’s comments invited swift criticism. One twitter user posted, “Mark Bryan really made money off of wearing skirts & heels, even walked in a fashion show, had a commercial with lgbtq people in it and now he is against the idea of being looked at as gay.. he wouldn’t even be able to wear heels as a man if it wasn’t for us.. he’s gross.”
Another user, @JohnAugust87 tweeted, “ Mark Bryan, we are the reason you can dress that way. Period. You don’t like people thinking your sexuality is different from what you say it is? Welcome to our world, bud.”
Speaking to Bored Panda, Bryan explained, “I dress like this because I can. Just to be different. I have always admired the women that wore tight skirts and heels. Not sexually, but the power they presented.
“I don’t dress to be sexual, but to dress like any professional woman would. To me, clothes have no gender. I prefer skirts to dresses. Dresses don’t allow me to mix the genders. I prefer a ‘masculine’ look above the waist and a non-gendered look below the waist. It’s all about clothes having no gender.”
Some people were quick to call out the irony in Bryan’s statements of clothes having no gender, while choosing to blame the LGBTQI community for making other people think that he is gay.
“The irony/hypocrisy that he can’t separate identity/gender expression/sexuality/equality DESPITE the fact he wears 6 inch (late) Louboutins and has zero issue dressing “flamboyantly” for magazine spreads tells me he has a LOT to still work through”, Twitter user @leao25 posted.
I don’t care what he wears or why but it’s stupid to blame the LGBTQ community when it doesn’t control how people see you. Gay people crossdress all the time for various reasons, but they’re not the cause of other people’s perceptions of you. He needs to get over it.
At first I thought that this article was just funny, but then I realized that wearing a dress or skit is not all that different to wearing a toga or a kilt – By not wearing the uniform of modern capitalism Western culture he is making a very defiant ideological statement. Even the Gay world sometimes wants to create a focused set of normal behaviours because it creates a sense of unity and critical mass, but even with Gay people you have so much diversity – tops, bottoms, sides, fems, straight acting. The man has the right to be offended if people think that he is something that he is not. Even in the Gay community there are some quite strong attractions and aversions.