May be some of you are tired of talking about it and some women may dread the topic. Some might have a completely opposite view Some of you there , by now, might have already began labeling me as ‘backward’, ‘stick-in-the-mud’ ,‘spoilsport’ or any of the bad names . Still I choose to say what I have to say. Do I sound very serious? I don’t intend to. This is my personal opinion, and I have put a question mark on ideas which I believe controversial.
The how-to-wear stuff has been dealt with time after time and every woman and man perhaps has their own stand on the issue. I am presenting mine.
Because nature (or it may be society?) has allowed many parts of a woman’s body to be (seem if society) sexually attractive, the moment we think of ‘the how-to-wear,’ in relation with sex we think of how-women-wear. So, I will talk about women’s wearing style.
I am not talking as a religious person or a fanatic as you might assume. I am not speaking to people of a single religion but to a mind which can figure out and a conscience which can judge. Of course how we judge things might be very personal and everything may sound relative. And I am not maintaining that people who hold a different view have no conscience. I am only saying that whoever reads this can critically see what I am saying and react in whatever way he/she deems right. Why all these cautions? Because I don’t want to be misunderstood!
As liberated (?) as the world seems today, people are following their own fashion in every aspect including their ways of clothing. But, should we do whatever we like? Don’t we have certain universal moral rules to guide us? Have we ever listened to the God within us? Here, I would like to put what Immanuel Kant said.
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.
Let us say there are no moral laws within us or the moral rules concerning code of dress vary from culture to culture and therefore are not universal. There still is a good reason to mind how we wear because how we are affects how others are or will be. I would not have started writing this had not how we look mattered to other people and especially how women look to men. If we want to live as a mutually interdependent society, each one of us will have to care about how our actions affect others, I hope everyone will agree with this.
I go around and I see women showing their naked breasts and thighs and still they don’t want me to stare at them, isn’t that amazing? May be some men can do that but there are many others who cannot elude the trap of ‘that sexy body’ which is naturally (?) supposed to turn men on. Of course men should also try to control their emotion and should not simply allow themselves to be driven by their urge. But if we agreed on putting some limitations on how women wear (might differ from culture to culture), men would be saved from struggling hard with their emotion. So women, cooperate with us by considering some men’s incapacity to hold back their sexual feelings.
Go to China, Australia, or anywhere in the world and almost everywhere an undressed thigh and breast remain erotic. Please tell me if they are not so in your land. I know there are some exceptions, a person who read this scribble mentioned of cultures where it is ok for men and women to be half-naked alike. In that case, we can think of the issue in our context-wherever wherever we are.
All I am saying is that there should be a certain limit (set by their good conscience) on how women dress themselves or otherwise the pace at which men run after women for sex will keep increasing. I don’t remember who but somebody said ‘women show us their almost nude body and when we ogle they accuse us of sexual harassment.’
I would finally like to pose one question. ‘If I enjoy a woman’s nearly unclothed body, what will her man enjoy?’ Here, I am not presenting a woman a sexual object. I believe women should enjoy men (which includes the body) and men women. I believe that is part of the merits of a combination between the two sexes (?).
I know that whoever reads this note will react in some way and I will be glad to know how. I is up to you to say what you feel on the issue.
I would like to extend my greetings to people who gave me their comments on the first draft of this note (Lola, Bereket, Yewelessew, Berhe). My discussion with Lola (an analytical woman) had forced me to reconsider some of what I said and how I said them.
Humbly
Tsegaye
February 23, 2011
