"I invented Edna because I hated her.... I poured out my hatred of the standards of the little people of their generation."

Wrote Barry Humphries, quoted in "Barry Humphries (Dame Edna to You, Possums) Is Dead at 89/Bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, Mr. Humphries’s creation was one of the longest-lived characters ever channeled by a single performer" (NYT).

Dame Edna emerged when the young Mr. Humphries, under the sway of Dadaism, was performing with a repertory company based at the University of Melbourne.... On long bus tours, he entertained his colleagues with the character of Mrs. Norm Everage — born Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga, Australia, sometime in the 1930s — an ordinary housewife who had found sudden acclaim after winning a nationwide competition, the Lovely Mother Quest. 

Unthinkable as it seems, Edna was dowdy then, given to mousy brown hair and pillbox hats. But she was already in full command of the arsenal of bourgeois bigotries that would be a hallmark of her later self...

I loved Dame Edna. (Click my "Dame Edna" tag.) But not everyone appreciated this sort of humor: 

"For the 30-ish fashion stylist Mickey Freeman, who has eschewed trousers for some six years, a kilt is a tool for flouting societal constrictions on what constitutes Black male identity."

"'Most people have an internal directive of how clothes play into a man’s masculinity,' Mr. Freeman wrote in an email. Guys looking to loosen 'the internal shackles' of gender presentation may benefit from giving a test run to wearing a garment created without two legs and a zipper."

From "The Boys in Their Summer Dresses Gender fluidity enters its next phase as men increasingly step out in skirts and frocks" by Guy Trebay (in the NYT)

The headline is a play on a famous short story title, "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses." The article does talk about men wearing summer dresses, but I just want to say that a kilt is not a dress, and a kilt is not "a tool for flouting societal constrictions." A kilt is a very traditional item of men's clothing.

Now, it's possible that "a kilt is a tool for flouting societal constrictions on what constitutes Black male identity," but that has to do with a black man challenging convention by wearing something from the traditional clothing of white men, not about playing with gender. It's like saying a dashiki is a tool for flouting societal constrictions on what constitutes white male identity.

By the way, Freeman seems to be black, so he may be able to talk about "the internal shackles of gender presentation." But I recommend eschewing slavery metaphors like that, especially when you're just talking about your feelings of being restricted. Your shyness, insecurity, and inhibitions are not like slavery, and as hyperbole, they're in bad taste.

"Two men dressed as women attempted to 'penetrate' the entry point with their vehicle when a shootout occurred...."

ABC reports on the incident at Fort Meade.