Dressing changes with time and sometimes it is determined by what is new in the market. (What is considered hip at the moment) Young women today want to dress according to fashion and so they do. Not all young women, but majority prefer to go along with what is fashionable at the moment. Sometime back it was ‘pencil’ and now it is stockings. When it was ‘pencil’, majority of young women thought of it as a must thing to own and so they purchased them. Nowadays the hip thing is stockings and so most young women want to or already own these.
In Nairobi, Kenya today young women have taken into wearing of stockings and a dress top or some stockings and a short skirt and some of the Kenyan men seem to have issues with this dress code.
Yesterday evening as I sat in a bus waiting for it to get full, some young woman passed on the streets. The driver said “Wasichana wa Nairobi wanapenda kukaa uchi”-Nairobi girls like to be naked. So I asked him, “Huoni hizo nguo amevaa” –You don’t see those clothes she has on. His reply was, “Kama sio hizo stockings angekuwa uchi”-Were it not for those stockings, she would be naked. This got me into thinking of all the patriarchy that has been in deciding for women what to wear and what not to wear.
In my mind it got me thinking that there are double standards where dress codes are concerned. Just 2 months ago, a young man was crossing Ngong road shirtless. I do not know why he decided to walk shirtless; could be the sun was too hot or he wanted to show off his ‘cubes’. I saw the bystanders just look at him as he walked on and some even smiled at him. I wonder if the same scenario was a young woman topless and what the reaction of the bystanders would be.
In some communities, those who have attempted to do it have been locked up in mental institutions while in others they have been branded ‘loose’ and considered ‘outcasts’ of their communities.
In the olden days, both men and women walked naked as clothes had not been invented. Some people today choose to ‘over dress’ while some prefer to ‘under dress’. Who are we to judge people’s choices? Who decides on what is decent clothing and what is not?