(Mini) Skirting around the issue

I am a mini-skirt wearer, a lover of hot pants and an appreciator of crop tops. Due to recent reasoning in our country lately about what exactly a woman’s choice should be translated to mean, allow me to decode my sometime choice of attire.

 

Mini skirt – This definitely means that I am tired of walking on crowded streets without having men turn around to stare at my blemish free thighs because how else will my existence have meaning but to drive men to distraction with the suppleness of my legs. 

Hot pants – Whenever I wear shorts you can assume that the first thought that fluttered into my mind when I woke that morning is “all those kombi drivers and conductors sure have been quiet about a woman’s body let me give them something to talk about”. No really, I absolutely wear cute hot pants to arouse men at the bus rank. Who doesn’t?

Crop tops – You’re probably starting to get the hang of this but in case you’re not this is obviously to allow men to touch my taut belly. What else are stomachs for if not to be stroked by strangers in the street?

Recently some young feminists in the country who are tired of having their attire scrutinised and being treated like their bodies are a piece of meat because of it held a mini skirt march to the Manzini bus rank, supposedly where the worst perpetrators are. This left the men absolutely unaffected but maybe a little aroused because the street interviews held afterwards reflected that their sentiments were that they would carry on harassing girls who dressed inappropriately because it aroused their desires and they were teaching them to respect their bodies.

Teaching someone to respect their bodies by subjecting it to the worst form of disrespect must be a new technique that the world hasn’t quite picked up on yet, but we’re coming we’re coming. Maybe ladies should look for men baring their calves in shorts and proceed to lasciviously stroke them or maybe even smack them with a towel – the same one you will hand over for him to wipe his tears after being objectified.

We cannot avoid the fact that we live in a society that normalises and excuses sexual violence against women or that the objectification of women’s bodies and glamourisation of rape subsequently disregards women’s rights and safety.

I do not want to live in a world which tells me not to wear certain types of clothing lest I arouse sleeping giants, or midgets. I want to live in a world which celebrates my womanhood and does not define it by making it stereotypically prone to victimisation. I should not need to live my life in fear of being potentially raped, I should not have to look forward to bringing sons into a world which trivialises sexual assault by saying “boys will be boys”, or bring daughters into a world which insists that “only promiscuous women get raped”. 

If men understood or experienced the very real fear that women feel when they face the possibility of sexual assault this would come to an end. I always define myself as a part-time feminist and a full-time woman, the why is a long story but I am a woman who does not have a body to be used as a way of teaching me a lesson. 

I own my body and all its parts, everything that happens to it should be consensual. Education is also a dangerous feeder into this psyche that the world operates by; as women we are taught that all men are potential rapists. 

I don’t mean taught by society or the public but this is literally what we are taught in our schools. From as far back as I can remember I sat through classes where teachers told me how to protect myself from being sexually assaulted by suspicious looking men. I was taught to take self-defence classes, to carry a whistle, to cross the road when a suspicious looking man was walking towards me. Because men with unkempt moustaches (I assume that is the trait of suspicious men) are rapists and they cannot cross roads.

Something has got to give, I struggle to accept that we are just walking around engaging with men who cannot control their desires. Ladies if all else fails, I hope you realise that wearing mini skirts will get you raped, and wearing short shorts and crop tops and just basically leaving your house so stop doing that.