Fashion (turn to the left...)

As you may know, I teach a lot of conversation classes here in Vigevano. Now don't get me wrong, I really like my adult students, they are kind, friendly and well-meaning but, and it is a big but, most of them have never really been anywhere but Vigevano. I don't mean that they've never left the town - a fair number of them work in Milan and several travel abroad on business - however, they have a somewhat limited outlook on life. This is mainly because they live in the town they grew up in, surrounded by family and friends, most of whom they know from school.

As a teacher of conversation classes, it would be all too easy for me to sit back and let them discuss the same subjects again and again (what's wrong with Vigevano, travel, food, reading, films etc. etc.) but I prefer to push my students a little. Try to get them to think out of the box, as it were.

To do this, I ask provocative questions and put forward contrary opinions (some of which I hold, others I don't). And on a regular basis I run up against a brick wall. All too often, the response is blank looks and a retreat into 'this is the Italian way'.

Such a response happened last week. The chosen subject was fashion and clothing. I lead the discussion into women wearing trousers. Everyone agreed this was alright, indeed one student said that no-one she knows wears skirts any more. I then established that, historically, trousers were men's clothes. Nods all round. So, I said, how would people react if a man decided to wear a skirt into work?

Complete and total blank incomprehension.

One student reiterated that none of her friends liked skirts but that if one of them wanted to wear one, SHE could. I repeated my premise - what if a man wore a skirt into work? Nothing. It actually took one of the other students to explain this in Italian before the first one caught on. The combination of man and skirt just did not compute.

The overall conclusion was that Italy is a formal country and no-one would dress like this. Admittedly, I can't imagine anyone wanting to wear a skirt but I can at least image it happening. I do remember, many years ago, (before I became a teacher) a rather interesting case of sexual discrimination in one of the London Borough Councils which had sent a man home because he wore a dress to work. At the time I had a long discussion with one of the secretaries at work about the rights and wrongs of this case. She claimed it was unnatural for him to wear a dress, all the time wear trousers herself.

Oh and Scottish kilts don't count, apparently. It seems that even though they are a piece of material wrapped around the waist, that doesn't make them a skirt.