Recently I had the chance to see a video of an authentic hula dance. I had to lean in to the screen for a closer look – I knew that women from Hawaii wear hula skirts, but it looked like the men were wearing them too! What the heck? I thought Scotland was the only country where men wear skirts!

I decided to do some reading. It turns out Wikipedia’s entry on hula is huge! I never knew this was an entire huge tradition of dance. I thought it was just one individual dance, like the moonwalk, but it’s a style of its own. There are different schools and types of hula dances for every occasion. I had no idea.

Okay, so you’re wondering, what’s the answer? Do men wear the skirts too? Well, no, not exactly.

Most people think of grass skirts when they think of hula. Men and women do use leaves as decoration when dancing. But originally, men wore simple loin cloths and women wore short skirts. Both garments were very lightweight, and distinct. Howerver, to show off their wealth, dancers started to use more and more fabric. Women would wrap yards and yards of cloth around themselves for a skirt, and men did the same with their loin cloths. The result was male and female costumes that both have wide hips and a skirt-like look.

So the men don’t wear hula skirts, but they could have fooled me… I think if I head to Hawaii I’m sticking with linen pants!