The Real Reason Why Black Men Are Wearing Red Dresses in New Orleans

The Red Dress Run Gives Black Men Freedom for One Day. We Deserve It Every Day.

For one day each August, New Orleans becomes a runway where Black gay men can wear red dresses without apology.

The concept of men in dresses has always sparked conversation, no matter the moment or the stage. Take Dennis Rodman, who in August 1996 showed up to a Manhattan book signing in a horse-drawn carriage, wearing a custom wedding gown, to promote his autobiography, “Bad As I Wanna Be.”

He announced he was bisexual and that he was marrying himself. It was quite polarizing at the time, but not for the reason you’d think. Most of the coverage treated it as pure spectacle, but underneath all that shock value was a man performing an early, public act of self-love, years before we even had the language for it.

Then there’s Billy Porter, who showed up to the 91st Academy Awards on February 24, 2019, in a custom Christian Siriano tuxedo gown. He later wore that same gown on Sesame Street. That one hit different: a petition circulated accusing the show of “sexualizing children,” and at least one sitting state senator backed it publicly. The issue was never that a gay man was appearing on a children’s show; Porter had already been on before. It was that he was doing it in a dress.

Kid Cudi’s tribute to Kurt Cobain fits the same pattern. During a 2021 performance on “Saturday Night Live,” Cudi paid homage to the late Nirvana frontman, who was known for challenging gender norms through his fashion choices. Cobain once told the Los Angeles Times that wearing a dress let him be “as feminine as I want,” regardless of whether he was straight or gay.

While Cudi was on stage performing, the focus somehow always drifted back to what he was wearing rather than what he was doing. And that drift always seems to land in the same place: conversations about the emasculation of the Black man, or what men do or don’t (shouldn’t) do.

That’s not dissimilar from some of the things I was told growing up, especially in the South, or stories I’ve heard, policing men’s norms and behaviors, all under the guise of protecting and projecting masculinity. Our own upbringings. Our own lives.

We’ve all heard, seen, or know someone who’s experienced something that tried to dictate who we should be or how we should express ourselves. The “men don’t do that.” You know the ones. And for a lot of us, that pressure works; we falter, we shrink, we edit ourselves down to something safer, sometimes even as a mode of survival. But every so often, we have moments where we don’t. One of those moments is the Red Dress Run in New Orleans.

What the Red Dress Run Is — and Why It Matters 

The Red Dress Run in New Orleans has become a familiar time for our community to commune, convene, and celebrate with one another. In a place like New Orleans, that honestly isn’t too hard to do. Ironically, however, the Red Dress Run was never an LGBTQ+ event to begin with; it’s a general charity run open to anyone. But over the years, as it’s gained popularity and grown in attendance, our presence and participation have grown right along with it. It’s become almost an extension of a new “Black Pride.”

Now, for those unaware, the Red Dress Run is actually a charity event. If you’ve ever wondered why so many people are dressed in red in New Orleans on the second Saturday in August, it’s because the Red Dress Run is a charity run hosted by the New Orleans Hash House Harriers, a local drinking club that puts on what some might say is a unique running event. Once it’s complete, visitors descend on the French Quarter to keep the celebration going, with the one unifier being a red dress, or something close to it. And you know the gay community loves to put a twist on a theme; this moment is no different, delivering some of the most unique and creative displays of the year.

It has given the queer community, the Black gay community specifically, a level of freedom our white counterparts get to walk around with every single day of their lives: how they dress, how safe they feel just existing, all of it. For one day, in that space, you can be as masculine or as feminine as you want, wear whatever you want, and do it without judgment. The only other space I can even begin to compare it to is Halloween, the one moment where you get to embody a version of yourself you might not feel empowered to be the other 364 days of the year.

While the Red Dress Run gives us another space to claim, it also brings another conversation to the forefront: the concept of men wearing dresses. Timelines fill up with this freedom of gender expression, but it also shows that queer men, Black queer men especially, aren’t often given the space or these moments to express themselves freely without judgment.

But for one day, red dresses on men read as celebration. The other 364 days, that same expression can read as threatening, problematic, or controversial. 

Even within our own community, the conversations around who’s “allowed” to top, to the pressure of not being caught in a dress, holding a purse, or appearing too feminine, we keep drafting this narrative that Black men aren’t allowed the same level of expression as our queer counterparts. It seems like the only time a man can express his femininity is during the Red Dress Run, or moments like Halloween, where we get to take on the embodiment of another character.

It could also be said that there’s a level of nuance in how this expression is received, which, in most cases, depends on the body it comes with. It seems more accepting of a masculine-presenting physique in feminine clothing; we don’t think twice. In contrast, someone whose presentation already reads as more feminine gets written off. Disregarded, then covered with the line “that’s just my preference.”

But masculinity and femininity are not a costume. They’re something you wear every day of your life. We all carry a level of both masculine and feminine energy, and everyone should have the right to express that whenever they see fit, not just on the day of the run, or on Halloween. For our community to feel safe existing as we are, we have to allow more room for that. There’s a level of femininity that exists within anyone, no matter your sexual position, no matter your identification within the queer community, and we should build more safe spaces for that to be okay.

Now, this isn’t about deciding what’s masculine or what’s feminine. It’s about the queer expression without judgment, because sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. That judgment feels most prevalent within the Black community specifically, where we’re constantly relitigating masculinity and femininity, including in the most intimate spaces, where femininity is somehow more permissible in one role than another. That double standard, too, is a heterosexual norm we inherited. It’s one we should be getting away from.

But Red Dress Run shouldn’t be the only day we get to do this. One day a year isn’t enough. We need more moments like it, more spaces where showing up as ourselves doesn’t require a charity run or a costume as the excuse. So love yourself enough to show up as you are, wherever you are. And if you’re on the fence about the next one, go ahead and put on the dress. Because more men should wear dresses, period.