All of us are aware of the fact that one of the root causes of all the social issues that exist is the downtrodden mentality of the society. Of course, we all belong to the society but that does mean that the society owns us. Let us take an example here. Many of us live in cooperative housing societies. Of course the members of such a society need to abide by certain regulations imposed by the said society, but that doesn’t give the society to dictate the colour of the wall paint of any particular house. It cannot regulate how any house in the society chooses to aesthetically decorate its place, because though the house belongs to the society but it doesn’t own the house. That’s an individual ownership. In the same way, the society doesn’t own the body and free will of an individual and thus have no right to dictate what he or she chooses to wear.
So, judging a woman by the choice of her clothes is downright nonsensical. It has got no basis whatsoever. People have a tendency to mark a woman characterless if she’s wearing a short dress with a fish net stocking. There is no sense to this logic. People must understand that because a few such misguided women chose to wear a certain type of clothing doesn’t mean that all women who wear such clothing are also lacking in character. Our society is too quick to handover character certificate over an individual’s choice of clothing, especially women’s. It’s like judging the talent of a guitarist by the price of the guitar he or she is playing. That’s downright unfair.
Now let’s not get even started on how hypocrite our society is. It’s perfectly fine when the waist of woman is visible in a saree but it’s deemed shameful when the same woman is seen flaunting her waist in a crop-top. These hypocrites are the same people who ogles over their mobile and computer screens when engaged in porn sites but declares a woman characterless if her clothes are not “appropriate”. Such people plague our society and make lives of the women miserable.
It’s high time when people realise the fact that it’s not the women who must keep their dressing style in check, but it’s the society that must change and better it’s perception and mentality towards the dressing style of any woman. Justifying a horrendous crime as rape, just because the victimised woman had been wearing “revealing” clothes is downright inhuman. As longe as such antisocial elements exist, we cannot expect our society to free from all the vices anytime soon.