We don't dress the women! The media does.

There was a discussion over a podcast recently. Ladies from the world over were calling in to relate their experiences with jogging around their neighbourhood. Callers from Asia and Africa invariably complained that it was a great challenge. They had to endure all the stares, heckling, uncouth remarks and the visual undressing to complete their feat. The discussion hovered on about overcoming this hurdle. Unfortunately, it looks like the mindset of the people of that need to be changed, not the activity.

Back home, I was indulged in a solemn discussion with a bevy of young lassies regarding how their way of dressing would be determined by other people's expectations or rules. Invariably all of them, the selection group being from the educated urban young adult ladies, agreed that it is their prerogative how they should dress. They quoted the weather, the milieu of the intended occasion, appropriateness to their own judgement and, of course, fashion sense. They reiterated that dressing is an individual's unique way of expression and a human right too. So, other people's expectations do not count, it is their own. Nobody owes anybody anything.

Well, it is fine and dandy if everyone are quite all right when everybody respects each other and agrees that they could be more than one way to skin a cat. Problems arise when one sets their own values as the only yardstick upon which others should toe the line to. And the Neanderthal quantities of Man are left to roam with a free rein!

The silver screen, especially from Bollywood have not it made simpler over the years. The depiction of the main heroine galavanting around the countryside in the skimpiest of attires gyrating their bodies provocatively to ear-catching leg-thumping tunes, responding positively so easily to masculine advances objectifies the female species as showpieces without a mind of their own. On one hand, the culture pressures one to be dressed in a particular way whilst the other expects one to act in another.

As long as this mindset is not changed, the incidences of honour killing, elders sanctioned revenge rape and unfair justice to the fairer sex will remain at status quo.

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