Despite exposure to male music artists wearing feminine clothing in their music videos, men on the Mary Washington College campus in the 1980s kept their styles simple and traditionally masculine.

This disregard for gender bending trends started by male music artists may have been due to the academic environment of the university. Male students likely valued comfort over a desire to remain on trend as they walked from class to class and attended various campus events.

Even more likely, this disregard may have been due to rigidity of masculine norms in fashion. While men in the spotlight of the music industry have the freedom to play with their style for the shock factor that would help them sell albums, everyday men felt more confined by his peers to blend in. Any skewing too far outside the norm would alienate him, so many men kept to what they knew: t-shirts, jeans, sneakers.

In fact, men at MWC in the 1980s looked very similar to the way men dress at the university today. The only real markers of ’80s men’s fashion include: shorter shorts, tucked in polo shirts, ginormous glasses, and the occasional thick mustache left over from the trends of the ’70s.

However, a couple of men did venture outside their comfort zones to wear the feminine trends they saw from their favorite male music artists on MTV, but this typically only happened when these men were performing on stage either as a members of a rock band or in the college’s annual Wo-Man pageant (Now called Mr. UMW) in which men dress up as women to compete for a crown while women dress up as men to escort them.

Overall, men at Mary Washington College in the 1980s dressed primarily in clothes and styles designed for men. The feminine styles seen on MTV were only worn by men for performances, proving there is a distinct division between the “everyday man” image and the “rock star” image.