TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of sexual assault.
The conversation regarding sexual double standards reignited between my friends and I after we watched Amy Poehler’s Moxie.
The film deals with an overly idealistic teenage revolt against sexist high school dress codes and phallocentric status quo. We were getting heated up about a scene where one of the female characters was suspended for wearing a tank top simply because she had a larger chest in comparison to another girl wearing a similar outfit.
She was deemed too “distracting” for a classroom environment just because her body type was hypersexualized by the school administration.
The reason given was that she was “showing off too much collarbone,” which I too have been accused of doing. When did my collarbones and shoulders become sexual deviants? When did a part of everyone’s skeletal system become so overtly feminine and shameful?
It was a dismal reminder of my own high school’s dress code where, despite the written rule that “a student may not be disciplined or excluded from instruction because of his or her appearance if style, fashion, or taste is the sole criterion for such action,” many female students had to miss class to dumpster-dive for a cover-up in the lost-and-found bin.
If nothing was found, they were sent to the main office for a stern reminder of the unwritten dress code: no tanks, no visible bra straps, and no off-the-shoulder tops. The high school I went to is in the United States.
In India, we wore school uniforms, but the dress code applied to our “mufti” days—special occasions where we could wear our casual clothes at school. Even then, dress coding in India does not just remain within the classroom. It extends to every public space in the country and differs by state.
I have lived in three south Indian states and have had different cultural expectations imposed on what I wore in each one. In some states that are more culturally conservative, I was advised to not wear “western” clothes, specifically shorts, short skirts, above-the-knee length dresses, as well as scoop-neck and off-the-shoulder tops in public places. Considering the heat and my personal style, these would be my go-to outfit choices.
I’ve been told that these clothes are “too revealing” or that people around me would not be “comfortable” if I wore such outfits, regardless of my personal comfort. While I respect the wishes of my elders and betters who are concerned about my safety, it is concerning that I cannot defend my outfit choices. Instead, I am met with a wall of traditional barrage in response to me supposedly sacrificing my culture to the West by being “young and rebellious.”
Wanting to have the freedom to choose my own outfits is not about being disrespectful to my roots. As Indian journalist Sagarika Ghose wrote in an article published in the First Post, “It’s about the vacuum in the law, lack of security at leisure spots, lack of gender justice, lack of fear of the law, police and judicial apathy and the complete lack of awareness that men and women have the right to enjoy exactly the same kind of leisure activities.”
It brings to mind many harrowing instances where Indian women are publicly slut-shamed by an older, more conservative generation for not adhering to a regressive mindset that has no place in modern India.
Last year, a south Indian actress was verbally harassed and physically assaulted by an older woman in a public park in Bangalore for wearing a sports bra while working out with her friends. In a video of the incident that shows “moral policing” at its extreme, the older woman is seen hitting one of the girls while a crowd—which included the local police—gathers to watch the drama unfold without any intervention.
A similar incident went viral in 2019 under #SaySorryAuntyJi after another middle-aged woman slut-shamed a group of girls at a Delhi restaurant. Emphasizing her victim-blaming mentality, the woman is recorded saying, “Being a lady, I’m telling you, you’re encouraging the males outside.”
I have the utmost respect for India’s ethnic traditions and strongly believe in dressing for the occasion. However, being forced to dress “modestly” because clothes that highlight my natural curves or a sliver of my skin might attract the “male gaze” angers me. I feel as if I am being simultaneously dressed and undressed with one look.
The male gaze, be it sly or leeringly obvious, is the reason I can’t wear what I want outside without worrying about my personal safety, especially when I’m walking alone. It’s the reason I’m called “shameless” when I don’t wear a vest or a camisole under every outfit to hide my bra from those whose eyes wander down and stare at my chest.
It’s the reason I avoid walking near staircase railings in a dress and always wear shorts under my skirts, no matter their length, after a peeping Tom spread indecent rumours at my school about the colour of a girl’s panties.
He was never considered a shameless pervert. He was praised in locker room conversations and through chest bumps in the hallways. She was never the victim, but the vixen. She was ostracized by her friends and her peers, ousted by a male-dominated administration.
Thanks to a toxic hook-up culture, being sexually active as a teenager has become less about having intimate, private experiences and more about parading conquests and showing off one’s sexual game. While girls are labelled “easy,” “sluts,” “hoes” or made for “the streets,” most guys are put on a pedestal by other men. Perverted behaviour is shrouded by lies concocted at the expense of a woman’s reputation just for the clout or the opportunity to say “I tapped that” for the body count.
The truly shameful act would be to believe that it is our clothes and what we wear under them that are also to blame. I connected with the #AllWomen social media campaign after the random abduction, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard because it does not matter how self-aware you are as a woman walking home alone. Even if you choose to walk home on busy, well-lit streets like Everard, you’re still at risk of being victimized just for being a woman—even by members of law enforcement who have sworn to protect you.
In such tragic cases, doing everything “right”—pepper spray tucked into your purse, location services on, and family and friends alerted to your destination—is not enough when you’re a woman whose life is free game in a man’s world.
I have my own bodily insecurities and I have always been self-conscious about my chest size, the thickness of my thighs and my conspicuous curves, but having to be self-conscious out of fear is exhausting and unjust. The fear all women face is the stuff of horror stories and it’s a reality faced by all of us.
It’s going to take a whole lot of moxie, idealism and an unrelenting push by all genders to create a world where all men and women can stand together on equal ground, without fear.
Featured graphic by Eva Laberge.
