Oh, I know all about the problems of gear. Try getting those tokens. In the entire time my guild did ICC, I got two...yes two. One was about a week before the expansion hit and the RNG favored me. Before that I suffered at the hands of the hunter class who didn't have to spend DKP to outbid other classes and always had tons of the stuff to spend on tokens to upgrade what they had.

I've been arm, fury, prot, even funky nasty hybreds in BC at the direction of the GM who stated that I spec it or never raid again. It was his idiotic idea to have a prot/arms combo.

The big problem is that guild masters and raid leaders by and large are still stuck with the Burning Crusade attitude that melee dps is a liability. You bring them along when the bosses are on farm. In Wraith my guild did some bosses in Uldar and ICC when we were melee heavy and burned the bosses down quicker because we could hang in there and didn't die from a stiff breeze blowing the stink from the boss across us. Still the attitude in most guilds is that if you don't tank you sit. With the increased CC in 5 mans we are treated as liabilities again.

As far as wearng a dress. I had to wear the god awful parrot helm as a tank in BC. A freakin' stuffed parrot on my head, Oh and the best DPS helm outside of Sunwell which almost nobody got was the TIki Mask. Warrior gear appearance usually caused your targets to fall down laughing rather than be afraid.