LET'S CASTIGATE THE MODEST ONES

When did we decide to be the kind of society that thinks the decent ones are not cool enough? When did we turn into the typical secondary school cool kids who point and laugh at other students just because he’s well behaved and less popular? I don’t even know if this is the way it has always been since I was born; I just know that we’ve been lost for a long time. That we do unspeakable things isn’t the issue here, it’s that we pretend all the time not to know the right thing to do.

When someone with who has a great sense of right and wrong suggests something better, a greater direction, a better line of actions or behavior or attitude, we as a society pounce on them like blood thirsty vampires. When someone simply says, “this is wrong, this is the correct way to do this, maybe we should try a better alternative,” we  launch an attack on them, remove their tongues, pull out their liver, then hang their remains as a warning to anyone else who might think they have enough ‘chest’ to come out and correct us next time.

I remember in 2014 when Olamide, a roommate in school invited me for a wedding party in Ile-Ife.

I wore a backless long blue gown with a tube shaped front; which sincerely left little to the imagination. I felt good in it; I also admit that the stares of men ogling my big bumbum made me feel like I was the most beautiful girl at the party but I also knew my parents would be disappointed in me if they ever saw me in that dress. A woman finally called me to one side and told me that I had a great body, and I didn’t need to display it the way I did. Of course I disliked her rationale and I regret to say that I rudely told her it was none of her business, in a loud proud voice; as a warning to anyone that might want to define how I should be dressed.

The best defense I could come up with during my rants later to my roommate was that the woman was making a big deal out of it. Now, it’s true she didn’t mind her business but now I realize all she did was express her opinion because she probably had a daughter like me, to be more prudent in my attire. I was the one willing to so passionately defend the honor of my bad dress. I was the one who got upset. I was the one being petty with my loudness at telling her off. I was the one who couldn’t cope with even the slightest, most mild condemnation of my dressing.

Now many ladies have found themselves in this exact situation; dressed badly but couldn’t take a little condemnation- the right kind of condemnation for their dressing, And what’s truly bad in all of this  isn’t that so many people are trying to defend bad dressing and say there’s nothing bad in them, but the fact that millions of people see nothing in being indecently dressed. An entire virtue completely wiped off the table. Disqualified. Penalized and ejected from the game.

Look at the arguments ladies usually make when told off bad dressing or indecent appearance:

I’ll wear what I want because I like it. It’s my body afterall.

You can’t tell me how to dress, that’s an act of oppression and an infringement of my human right.

It’s comfortable.

If a man is lustful, that’s his problem. Why should he stare in the first place?

These are attacks against a good dress sense and this is where the real issue is. We’re no longer arguing over how virtues should be applied, or how they manifest themselves, or what they look like when acted upon; we’re fighting over whether we should even be decent or dress well at all. The truth is that modesty goes beyond cloth choices. But it definitely includes your dressing, and if these are the best reasons you have for what you’re wearing, then you shouldn’t be wearing it. The truth is it’s the way you dress you will be viewed, addressed, treated and revered.

So if men generally are saying that you are making things difficult for them to remain sane when you go out in public wearing something that very explicitly highlights the private regions of your body, I don’t think  saying “I like it, it’s comfortable, it makes me feel good, it’s convenient”  are enough moral defenses. They’re excuses, yes, but not morally positive reasons to dress badly. And it’s not just about how others will react; it’s about not being seen as a sex object or a tool of desire.

I know that I often fail to act with dignity or dress modestly, I’ve worn figure enhancing clothes, cleavage revealing clothes, deliberately worn clothes that highlight my body- for one reason or the other: just to feel good about myself, to make people think I’m hot, to make guys find me desirable. So, this is not me telling you to remove the speck of dusts in your eyes and try to do better while I have a huge bamboo tree logged in my eyes too. I wish our choices could be considered justifiable just because they make us feel good and we want to do them. That would be an easier world.

That however is only an illusion. I’m not saying that any woman who wears what is considered indecent is bad, but I am saying is that if we wear what we wear for bad reasons, then we shouldn’t wear them at all. I think all we need to do a god evaluation of ourselves. Decency is very commendable. The society can make a mockery of it, take jabs at it, make it a comedy, ridicule people who stand firmly for it, but in the end we only degrade ourselves as people.