Clothes Maketh A Woman?

Some readers would remember a cartoon with a woman in a bikini and sunglasses looks at a woman in a burqa and thinks, “Everything covered but her eyes, what a cruel, male-dominated culture.” The woman in a burqua in turn looks at her and thinks, “Nothing covered but her eyes, what a cruel, male-dominated culture.” The upshot being that what women wear is more often than not decided by men; either males in their family, community or religious leaders, or even the fashion industry, dominated by men.

Recently, a village in Andhra Pradesh banned women from wearing nighties during day time, because it was “inconvenient” to see them dressed thus. The Tokalapalli village heads ordered that women cannot wear nighties from 7 am to 7 pm.  Interestingly, the village council which came up with the ban was headed by a woman—though one wonders if she came up with the idea on her own. A violation of the ban would invite a fine of Rs 2,000, and  those who give information about the women wandering outdoors in nighties, would be rewarded with Rs 1,000.

With the decline in the popularity of the sari, the nightie, has become the preferred lounge or casual wear for women all over the country. Often paired with a sari petticoat underneath and a dupatta over it, for the sake of modesty, women go to the market or to pick up and drop kids to school, in the loose, comfortable and maintenance-free garment.  Which is why, shops and street stalls are display colourful nighties or maxis, some embellished with frills, bows, ribbons, embroidery and the occasional sequin or abla(mirror). It’s an ugly garment, but that’s no reason to ban it; the village in question has made international news. Some years ago, an area in Navi Mumbai tried to impose a similar ban, and failed, because women simply ignored it.

No village council has ever banned men from going out in their pyjamas, or striped kachchas and banians!

Interestingly, in the West, it is now trendy to go out dressed in stylish pyjama suits; athleisure wear, that is tracksuits, sweatshirts and sportsbras are acceptable wardrobe choices for casual dressing, and fashionable women worldwide must have sighed with relief as they kicked off their six-inch stiletto heels and got their feet into sneakers, even to pair with dressy outfits. It’s never too late for good sense and comfort to be put on top of the wardrobe list.

Anyway, one can excuse village elders for their patriarchy, but how does one explain a journalist of Tavleen Singh’s seniority to tell, a younger Faye D’Souza “Why don’t you turn into a man? You’re dressed like a man,”because she was wearing a trouser suit. The video clip, with D’Souza’s angry response about being free to wear what she wants went viral, and Singh was subject to some vicious online trolling. Singh later said, she was joking and expressed regret that uproar over it derailed the discussion on the #MeToo movement, which, incidentally she thinks is elitist.

Men have historically had a problem with women wearing trousers. Till as late as the twentieth century, many states in the US had laws that forbade women from wearing trousers.  According to information on the net,  “Existing laws such as anti-vagrancy statutes were pressed into service to ensure that women would dress in accord with the gender norms of the time. One such instance would be New York's anti-vagrancy statute of 1845, which stated that "Every person who, having his face painted, discolored, covered or concealed, or being otherwise disguised, in a manner calculated to prevent him from being identified, shall appear in any road or public highway, or in any field, lot, wood or inclosure, may be pursued and arrested.”. This law was used to prosecute women for cross-dressing, on the grounds that their dressing outside of gender norms constituted a "disguise.”

It was in 2013, a bylaw requiring women in Paris, France to ask permission from city authorities before "dressing as men", including wearing trousers (with exceptions for those "holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse") was declared officially revoked by France's Women's Rights Minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkace. This was decades after suits, jeans and slacks were adopted by women for casual and formalwear.

Women were not allowed to wear trousers on the U.S. Senate floor until 1993, when Senators Barbara Mukulski and Carol Mosely Braun wore trousers in defiance of the rule, and female support staff followed soon after. The rule was reportedly amended later that year by Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Martha Pope, to allow women to wear trousers on the floor so long as they also wore a jacket.

According to a Wikipedia post, In Rome in 1992,  45-year-old driving instructor was acquitted of raping his 18-year-old student, because she was wearing right jeans, and must have helped him to remove them, thus making the act consensual. The Italian Supreme Court stated in its decision “it is a fact of common experience that it is nearly impossible to slip off tight jeans even partly without the active collaboration of the person who is wearing them.”  This ruling sparked widespread feminist protest. The day after the decision, women in the Italian Parliament protested by wearing jeans and holding placards that read “Jeans: An Alibi for Rape.” It was only in 2008 that the Italian Supreme Court overturned their findings, and there is no longer a "denim" defense to the charge of rape.

So, if there’s good news from the sartorial front, it a Time magazine report by Amy Odell, on lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret struggling to stay relevant. She writes, “Perhaps the most important factor in this decline is the reality that the company’s one-note definition of sexy is no longer shared by many American women. Of course, plenty are still interested in push-up bras and would love to have the abs of an Angel, and L Brands is hardly the only brick-and-mortar retailer to face headwinds in the era of online shopping. But as brands like Aerie, ThirdLove and Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty move into the market, capitalizing on the sex appeal of all body types, Victoria’s Secret finds itself an odd fit for lingerie’s new feminist era.”

Women have come a long way and are, hopefully, not going back!

(This piece first appeared in the Free Press Journal's Herstory column on December 5, 2018)

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