Pants or Skirt?

This is a bit of a combination of two shots I've done in the past, directly resulting from a comment left on yet a third image, of me wearing a dress. A fan on deviantART said to me:

"i think you look lovely in a dress. or in jeans. or in nothing at all."

And I was immediately inspired by the contrast of these two very different styles - dress vs. pants and a shirt. The latter is more traditionally masculine (although it can certainly be done up feminine, too), while the former tends to be more feminine, and can be very fancy and stylish. Certainly, men don't generally have the freedom to open their closets and ask themselves whether they'd like to wear pants or a skirt today. In our culture, that choice is reserved for females.

And so I thought it would be visually interesting to illustrate the contrast between these two very different styles, with - as inspired by the above comment - some nudity in the middle to bridge the gap. It reminds me of an image I did a long time ago, where I posed the hypothetical question: of my two "alternative" interests (being nudism and gender experimentation), would the average person be less shocked or offended by seeing me naked, or wearing a dress?

But, ultimately, the final product resembles more closely another image, which I used to illustrate the Madonna-whore complex, in the form of a girl in her underwear (portrayed, of course, by me) standing at her closet deliberating on whether to dress more modestly, or more flirtatiously, according to two contradicting messages she's received from our culture. (Actually, that could describe yet another image in my repertoire - it's not surprising this is a recurring theme). This newest image jettisons all that baggage, though, hopefully to its benefit.

I had some trouble picking out a dress I wanted to wear for the one panel. They can easily get super fancy - which looks incredible - but I wanted something a little more casual, because casual and dress-up are two very different occasions, and I wanted to emphasize the choices available in a given situation (and I own more casual dresses - although apparently not enough, as I tend toward the semi/formal, despite not having any opportunity to wear them - than I do gussied up jeans and t-shirts).

I really need to get more fancy shoes, though. These heels are great - I love 'em. And they're pretty neutral, so they go with a lot of different styles and colors. But you can't wear them all the time. Besides, they're old and quite worn out. It's just that, shopping for shoes is so difficult. I can never find anything I like in my size. It's like, sizes 10-12 are made for different kinds of people than the 6-9s - the shoes are always either so tacky looking, or apparently designed for larger body types (as opposed to someone like me, who is relatively skinny, but tall, and with big feet - I know "big" and "tall" are often lumped together as common alternatives to the traditional shape, but the two really do require very different approaches).