What Women Wear

It’s no hidden fact that women love to dress up. Our entire lives revolve around that one word – shopping. We may or may not be very fashionable, but we love to buy new clothes and flaunt them.

Whom do we dress for is a question that can have multiple answers. If one said she dressed for herself, you should probably look for the pajama she wears at home. If she has worn it for more than 6 months, then probably she doesn’t dress-up for herself. You know, because then her pajamas should be shiny as well.

If she says she dresses up for her partner, she would have an extensive lingerie collection as well. Now, of course, these generalizations are just, well, generalizations and are subject to standard deviations. The most common answer that you’ll hear is that we dress up to look good. Look good to whom? – One may ask. Well, to look good to other women.

How else can you explain the dressing up for Kitty parties? Women buy one new dress after the other bearing in mind that kitty party she has to go to the next month. They think of the coffee mornings, the girl’s night out and the Mommy meets before deciding on what to buy. We don’t want to impress other women, we just want to make them jealous. And somehow, we feel, wearing better clothes is one of the subtle ways to do that.

Women in Saudi Arabia wear abayas in public. But when they are at a party (which usually segregates men and women), they take off their abayas and show-off what they are wearing underneath it. I have heard that they are the most fashionable people in the whole world. If they dolled up for themselves or other men, they would probably never take off their abayas or probably wear basic, simple clothes. But because we dress up to look good, they go an extra mile to buy the most chic clothes available.

I still don’t know any woman who dresses to impress other men. I mean, do men even look at clothes? I assume they have wild imagination and if they want, they can even look underneath an abaya. Of course, most civilized men won’t do that.

This brings me to the whole cleavage controversy between Times of India and Deepika Padukone. If Deepika or any other woman wants to show-off her cleavage in REEL or REAL life, how does it matter? By pointing arrows on her assets, whom are you trying to titilize? Sure, you got a scandalous story on your site, but doesn’t that bother you that an educated lot like you has become like another road-side gunda?

What women wear has been under scrutiny for ages. Most people say women should dress up modestly to keep themselves safe.  Tell me, if men had such little self-control, would there be any nude beaches? Or rather, would there be any beaches at all? How would have cave men got any work done when they have had so many free-shows around them!?

If a woman wants to flirt with you, trust me, you would know. She doesn’t have to tighten her skirt or deepen her blouse to attract attention. We dress-up because we just LOVE to dress-up. You’re probably jealous because you just have that blue shirt and black pant. Pray you become a woman in your next life, because it is only then you will understand why we wear what we wear.

It is unfortunate that this article in TOI is by a woman herself. I really have no words to describe how ridiculous it all sounds. If the newspaper had apologized, it could have become like a ray of hope in our country. A response like this one is unbelievably regressive and makes me hate the newspaper and the journalism behind it.