I've never been the kind of gardener to use garden gloves. Part of it is probably due to sheer ignorance, but mostly it is probably cultural. I never really thought of the dangers or gardening and exposing your naked hands and arms to potential hazards in the garden. Cuts, scrapes, dirt under your fingernails and bug bites all seem to be things a gardener comes to accept. Garden gloves always strike me as being something for women.
For a couple of years I politely turned down companies who offered me garden gloves, for the reasons stated above, but then a year ago I met Alice Strong, owner of GardenBasket.com, at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show. It was there that she gave me a pair of Atlas garden gloves and told me to test them after telling her of my resistance to wearing garden gloves. She told me about how the gloves were originally designed for assembly line work and all of a sudden the idea of garden gloves seemed less feminine than before.