5 Skirts in 5 Days: Helping 3,000 People Vote

I just finished working for Elections Canada as an Information Officer, helping people at the door during all four advance voting days plus election day. I wore a different skirt each day and probably interacted with close to 3,000 voters.

There were outfit restrictions—we weren't allowed to wear solid colours close to party branding (red, blue, green, orange, or purple)—but I had some neutral skirts that worked fine. I wondered if anyone might say something about skirts being too political, but no one did.

Most voters didn't seem to notice. A few people stared or did double takes, but almost everyone stayed polite. Considering the area leans conservative and is pretty rural, I expected more bad vibes. Maybe a few people seemed uncomfortable, but once we talked, they generally relaxed.

There was only one interaction that stood out as clearly negative: I asked a man in the Boomer generation for his voter card so I could direct him to the right line, and he replied, “I’ll talk to her,” pointing to my colleague and basically refusing to engage with me. When I thanked him as he left, he didn’t say a word and avoided eye contact.

But this was outweighed by a couple of really positive interactions. One day, a Gen X guy complimented my skirt and casually mentioned he didn't wear his that day—and that he has dresses too. He was dressed fairly typically, and I wouldn't have guessed. 

Then there was an older woman, likely from the Silent Generation, who pointed to my skirt (a longer beige one) and asked what I was wearing. I told her it was a skirt, not a kilt. She asked if it was traditional and what my heritage was. I explained that I'm a mix of Northwestern European but the skirt wasn't tied to any tradition. It seemed like a simple interaction at first, but I wondered if she might've been a bit put off.

But after she voted, she came up and said she had a question for me: "Do you wear skirts all year round?" I said yes, a variety, sometimes with leggings in winter. I mentioned that I run a blog called Everybody Skirts to promote this kind of fashion for men. She had a big smile by this point, and told me she absolutely loves skirts and used to wear them all the time, even through winter in Manitoba (a colder province in Canada). That interaction made my day.

All in all, just being approachable and helpful in a setting like this probably did more to desensitize people to men in skirts than any big statement could.