ARE WOMEN TAKING POUND OF THEIR FLESH

ARE WOMEN TAKING POUND OF THEIR FLESH

Start any discussion on the decency - or lack of - of what our ladies wear these days under the guise of being trendy and modern, and you are likely going to generate a debate with sharp divisions, depending on which side of the divide one pitches his or her tent.


In the last couple of years, our sense of decency has gone on a sabbatical and our descent into a state of normlessness is steadily gaining momentum.
Dressing is an aspect of culture. We dress to look good, not awful. The 21st century lady is ultra-stylish, sophisticated, urbane, and surely knows what looks good on her.
Style and fashion go hand-in-glove. Style brings you out of the crowd and makes you look unique. Like a merry-go-round, styles come and go in cyclical trends.
I appreciate beauty, elegance, and style, but I have a problem when it comes to parts of our supposedly reserved crevices and cleavages being generously dished out, as if they were a sneak preview of what a guy is likely going to get if he solicits.
Don't mistake me for a moralist.
The truth is that I can no longer hold my peace, because everywhere I go, I am intimidated by women who unleash their frontal and posterior endowments, the breasts and buttocks, at me and other innocent male homo-sapien.
It appears the ladies have just discovered the ballistic missile in their arsenal and are hell-bent on taking their pound of flesh from the men by lasciviously distracting them with a lewd outlook.
Everywhere you go, you see breasts, breasts, and more breasts. Nothing is left to the imagination any longer as you continue to see these thoracic protrusions in different shapes and sizes. From the cashier that pays you in the banking hall, to the usher that welcomes you to the church, to the front desk officers and secretaries. It is a carnival of breast-flashing.
In these times where there is a flurry of social events from music awards and fashion fairs to corporate events, it is becoming a norm for our dear mothers, sisters, and wives to be decked with boobs-revealing dresses, as if they would be turned back from the event if they don't comply with this awkward ‘dress code'.
In the past few days, I've seen this soft tissue in many forms: cylindrical, cone, rotund, and more, all begging for attention. Some are adorned with tattoo marks and others, stretch marks.
Some are actually pseudo-breasts. Women now go under the knife to have silicone inserted and inflated to their desired specification. If this trend is left unchecked (by women themselves), soon our dear ladies may have to stop over at a vulcanizer's stand to get their stuff inflated in event of having ‘flat tyre'! Simply sad.
As if this seduction in the frontal region is not potent enough, low-waist trousers that reveal the waistline are the in-thing now. It is a common sight these days to see ladies on a motorbike exhibiting the undergarments they are sporting. Like the breast-taking encounters, I've also had a peek at variegated undergarments conspicuously displayed by these daughters of Eve. Some look like a sling, some like beads, and others just outright out-of-the-world artifacts.
A few years ago, I was in a church service in a Ketu neighbourhood and a young girl who sat in front of me had me wondering just how far our values have declined. One of her bums was staring at us in the back row, and it had a rose flower tattoo noticeably engraved on it, as if it were a work of art by the great Picasso exhibited for prospective buyers.
A man who could not contain the raunchy scenario signaled one of the ushers, who then volunteered her shawl to cover the girl's bare areas. By this time, the young woman was experiencing fits of spiritual ecstasy and not minding the opprobrium she was generating with this inappropriate spectacle.
Our so called celebrities and music and television personalities are also caught in the fray. Being a star is now synonymous with getting an automatic visa to ‘Banana Republic'. Highly respected matriarchs of influential families, female lawmakers, and prominent female corporate players have also endorsed this culture-conflict by strutting their obscene stuff all over the place.
The seeming compulsive obsession for anything western is inflicting deep wounds on our collective psyche. No doubt, culture is dynamic and change is constant, but must we sacrifice our values and identity as Africans on the altar of westernisation?
Revealing clothing is worn by people with inferiority complex and a jaundiced cultural background.
African women, in my opinion, are beautiful, charming, gorgeous, and graceful. Let's accord them their pride of place. They must champion the change for posterity's sake.
At the risk of sounding anachronistic, chauvinistic, or like a moral policeman, the thrust of this piece is to make women conscientious about the subtle ploy to objectify women, as perpetuated by other women, in the name of being trendy and fashionable.
Women are the custodians of a society's norms and values. Desecrating these values will bring about cataclysmic effects on the forthcoming generations.
This is a clarion call for self regulation and adjustment by our women folk.