If you were an alien anthropologist, probably the one thing that would baffle you the most is why human beings wearing pants (🇬🇧 trousers) is so commonplace.
First of all, if you’ve ever been to one of Earth’s regions close to the equator (where about half the population lives), places where it is generally warm outside all year round, then you know just how uncomfortable wearings pants can be.
And even if you live in a temperate zone, you know exactly how unpleasant wearing pants is on a hot summer’s day.
With their tailored legs and closed-off crotch, pants cause your genital region to overheat quite quickly in warm weather, and yet they stubbornly remain as the most popular garment worn by modern people today.
Even stranger, in many cases, wearing pants is required for things like certain jobs and positions. Can you imagine speaking to a bank teller or a judge or even an accountant who isn’t wearing pants?
A few years ago, I saw a documentary on conditions inside a prison in Perth, in western Australia, and the voiceover explained that the prison guards had the legal right to wear shorts on the job.
Even though I consciously knew that wearing shorts during the heat of Perth’s summers (which get quite hot, indeed) was the logical thing to do, it still looked weird and out of place.
But the concept of wearing pants is incredibly silly. Literally, millions of people are walking around as I write these words, sweaty and uncomfortable, solely to avoid looking “weird.”
And yet nobody ever asks why such a stupid garment was invented in the first place.
Skirts vs. Pants
Over the years, I’ve asked a lot of people why they think pants were invented, and I’ve yet to get a coherent answer.
Furthermore, even a basic knowledge of human biology will tell you that it’s completely backwards that pants are (or were) predominantly articles of clothing for men.
Think about it for a second. Pants are two tailored tubes of fabric (for the legs) that run tight across the crotch and then up around the waist.
Out of the two genders, why would you have the one with external genitalia hanging out (men) be the one to cram themselves into such a tight garment?
If anything, it’s a woman’s body that is more naturally suited for a garment that is tight in the crotch, such as pants. And yet until just about a century ago, it was forbidden (sometimes on pain of death) to wear pants, precisely because they were clothing exclusively to be worn by men.
Likewise, if you were that hypothetical alien anthropologist, it would be only natural to assume that skirts are men’s clothing. A loose, unfitted crotch is perfect for a human body with external genitalia hanging out.
Indeed, if you look at the garments worn by such people as the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt or the philosophers of Ancient Greece or the emperors (Caesars) of Ancient Rome, you’ll see that none of them were wearing pants.
The garments these men wore weren’t called “skirts” in the modern sense of the word, but they were loose, flowing articles of clothing that functioned much like a skirt.
Furthermore, I think everyone reading this is familiar with the “kilt” of Scotland, which is just a skirt by another name, an article of clothing that was worn by all men up until about three hundred years ago (when they started wearing pants).
And there are other similar examples from around the world, such as the dhoti of India and the sulu of Fiji, which likewise used to be ubiquitous men’s garments and are now slowly being relegated to special occasions in favor of, you guessed it, wearing pants.
My Kingdom for a Horse
So, if the ancients of Egypt and Rome and Scotland and India and the Pacific Islands all used to wear skirts, how did it come to pass that people started wearing pants? And why were they (and in some cultures, still are) exclusively meant to be worn by men?
There are two answers.
First, if you examine the indigenous clothing of people who live beyond the 40th latitude in places like Greenland or Siberia where it’s cold all the time, you’ll find that both men and women wear pants.
The reason for this is simple: pants are the best type of clothing to wear to keep your all-important genitals warm when it’s bitterly cold outside. But nobody is wearing pants today in London or New York or Rio de Janeiro because of people in the Arctic Circle.
Aside from reasons of warmth, the real reason that pants spread as a “fashion” throughout the world is because they are essential garments for riding a horse.
If you’ve ever ridden a horse, or seen someone riding a horse, you’ll note that they’re wearing pants. Even during the days of Julius Caesar, when everyone from the emperor on down to the common laborer was wearing a type of skirt, you’ll find that the calvary uniform (i.e. the clothes worn by the guys on horses) consisted of pants.
As one British Museum website puts it quite pithily, Ancient Roman cavalry wore short trousers to “avoid chafing while sitting on the horse.”
Indeed, any kind of skirt or dress or garment that is loose around the crotch will ride up and provide your genitals no protection against the bumping and sliding (and chafing) that takes place when you’re astride a horse.
The first peoples to ride horses (as opposed to just eating them) such as the Scythians were gender egalitarian, and both men and women donned pants and rode. And fought. Because riding horses was perhaps the greatest weapon ever mastered by humanity.
However, as the popularity of horse riding spread into other cultures that were more patriarchal, where only men fought and women did not, then horse riding became exclusively the domain of men.
And if wearing pants was a required part of horseback riding (and fighting), then it soon was perceived as an exclusively male garment.
Soon enough, any women who were stubborn enough or brazen enough to insist on riding a horse (as opposed to being pulled in a cart or buggy by one) were forced to do so “side saddle” (to prevent that all-important chafing), which is the most ridiculous way to ride a horse ever invented.
Because goodness knows, women couldn’t be allowed to wear pants!
Interestingly enough, what broke the “lock” on pants as an exclusively male garment was the invention of the bicycle because it is literally impossible to pedal a bicycle “side saddle.”
And yes, there was a lot of pushback at first, but it wasn’t long after bicycles became commonplace that the internal combustion motor was invented.
Shortly thereafter, everyone stopped riding horses altogether, and the reason why people ever needed to wear pants in the first place faded from memory.
Today, all that’s left is a cultural legacy that pants are the only acceptable garment for men to wear during “formal” or “serious” or “professional” situations, and it won’t belong before that fades away, too.
Bonus Points
If you’re wondering why the Scottish kilt and the sura in Fiji and all those other non-pants types of clothing for men persisted, the answer is simple.
The Highlands of Scotland and the islands of the Pacific and the jungles of Myanmar are, due to geographical reasons, places where horses (and similar animals such as donkeys) were never a practical or commonplace form of transportation.