Usage of the phrase “I clutched my pearls”, esp. for males?

Solution 1:

As noted in the following article by Grammarphobia:

People have been literally clutching their pearls in shock or otherwise for a long time. Here, for example, is a citation from a 1910 issue of the Chambers Journal, a weekly magazine that published fiction and nonfiction:

• “Without being aware that I had stirred, I found myself close to the table. I drew a gasping breath, and my hand went out without any conscious volition and clutched the pearls.”

But the phrase itself became popular years later mainly as a mocking metaphor, meaning “being ostentatiously shocked by something not all that shocking,” especially if the “shock” was feigned or reflected outdated social prejudices:

• a gay character on the Fox TV show In Living Color is responsible for the earliest example of the usage mentioned in discussions over the last six months on the American Dialect Society’s Linguist List.

• In an April 15, 1990, sketch, the flamboyant cultural critic Blaine Edwards (played by Damon Wayans) gushes over how daring the producers were to cast a male actor as the female lead in Dangerous Liaisons.

• When told that Glenn Close is actually a woman, Edwards squeals in mock shock and says, “Well, clutch the pearls! What a sneaky thing to do.”

As suggested in the following extract, the expression is now dated and its usage has largely declined in recent years:

Judging from the instances of “clutch the pearls” and “pearl clutching” that I found in a Nexis search, the expression showed up only periodically through about 2004, almost always as a pun about wealthy women and literal pearls. Take a 2000 episode of World News Tonight in which co-anchor Alison Stewart said there was “a lot of pearl-clutching going on” in the high-end auction business following accusations of criminal price-fixing. The expression then went largely dormant. There are only 16 Google results for “pearl clutching” between Jan. 1, 2000, and Jan. 1, 2004, though it did appear in a 2003 academic work called Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language.

(https://slate.com)

Solution 2:

The phrase “clutch one’s pearls” is always used derisively or sarcastically. Basically, it’s a put-down. It suggests a hysterical woman on the verge of a swoon. Moreover, it has an added flavor of an old-time caricature from movies of a bygone generation. Cf. Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers movie from the ‘30s:

You see Dumont on the left, prim and proper, ready to play the straight role to the comedians’ shenanigans. That might include shock, outrage, or even obliviousness. She might even fall on a couch clutching her pearls.

A man would never say this about himself, except to make a self-deprecatory joke. To say it about him would be tantamount to calling him a hysterical old lady (which is offensive not only to him but to elderly women as well). To say it about a woman would be a sexist put down.

Any way you slice it, utilizing that image to describe anybody is extremely derogatory.