You know how the principal of Polytechnic Government College in Bandra recently lost her head and most semblance of basic gynaecological knowledge when she said girls suffer from PCOD “when they dress like men”? Unfortunately, this ain’t the first time members of the famed moral police in India have attempted to shame women for what they wear. Over a year ago, one Tamil magazine had quite bizarrely put up photographs of women’s bottoms in leggings – crying about how ‘objectionable’ they looked. At the time, The Quint had decided to list out (tongue firmly in cheek) what we thought men shouldn’t wear too – because, hello, objectionable! We believe this is still very relevant, unfortunately, and therefore, we’re reposting this from our archives...
So, the famed Indian moral police has done it again. Yup, they’ve waved their invisible batons – and brought them down hard on offending women’s bottoms. Bottoms wound up in tight leggings, to be precise. Yup, leggings. The bane of all womanly costume, the horrifying eyesore for all men on roads (according to a noted 59-year-old Malayalam writer) and the general cause of havoc.
Case in point? A Tamil magazine by the name of Kumadam Reporter recently brought out a cover story on the ‘trend’ of women wearing leggings. And it didn’t stop there. No sir. It also displayed carefully photoshopped images of women’s bottoms hugged tightly in an array of colourful leggings – pictures that were probably taken without these women’s knowledge. These bottoms were then left to the mercy of ‘culture-crying’ hawks and vultures.
But here’s the deal – if we’re really going down that road, what of all the ‘objectionable’ stuff that fashionably challenged men wear that we don’t talk about? Let’s, shall we?
The Quint is proud to take up the charge of exposing all the things that we (men and women included) don’t like to see on the roads.
It’s not a pleasant task, ladies and gentlemen. But someone’s got to set the record straight, no?