Today, very few men wear skirts. While it is permissible for women to wear trousers, if a man wears a skirt in public he risks ridicule. Associated as they are with women's clothing, skirts have become potent symbols of femininity. The idea of men in skirts blurs the visual distinctions between the sexes. It contradicts how men are expected to look and, more fundamentally, challenges ideal attributes of male behaviour. A man in a skirt is not only perceived as looking feminine but being feminine.