You're not wearing that?!

The story of a woman's life retold through the prism of gratuitous fashion advice

It starts soon after birth. Girl babies must be dressed in pink. Their dresses must have plenty of frills and ruffles. A bit of sparkle wouldn't go amiss. And it doesn't matter if the poor mite is virtually bald, stick a shiny headband or a shimmery barrette on for good measure.

Girls, you see, must look like girls. If you must dress them in trousers be sure to slip on a floral T-shirt on top. If you put them in shorts rather than skirts, make sure they are wearing delicate ballerina shoes not sturdy sneakers. And if they are on the beach or at a swimming pool they must wear proper swimsuits, with a bikini top that covers breasts that they haven't yet sprouted.

And from then on, the fashion messaging gets rather relentless. Girls who want to wear jeans and shirts rather than pretty little dresses as they grow into their pre-teens are described indulgently (and sometimes exasperatedly) as 'tomboys'. The subliminal message is that this is a phase they will grow out of, once they have gotten in touch with their femininity. Because this is clearly not how girls are supposed to look.

Teenage brings with it it's own set of rules, depending on where they live. If they live in small towns or in rural India, then this is the time to put away their frocks and skirts and seek shelter in the 'safe' haven of a salwar kameez. If their parents are more 'liberal' than most, then they can wear jeans with a kurta, if it is long enough to cover their derrières. But that's only until they get married. Once they are in their husband's home, the in-laws decide what they get to wear. Salwar kameez or sari. Head covered or uncovered. Goonghat or no ghoonghat.

The fashion lives of urban women are relatively unrestricted -- but only up to a point (at the end of the day, they are 'girls' after all). And so long as their parents, brothers, husbands, in-laws, and larger communities are on board.

So college girls in the major metros can, in theory, wear dresses, skirts, jeans, shorts or whatever the hell they please. There's just one catch. The fashion police that parades every campus, indeed every street, in India must approve. And if they think that tight jeans are 'distracting' or that short skirts are a 'provocation' well then, they wear that kind of stuff at their own peril.

In fact, as girls grow into women, it is quite amazing just how many fashion choices come attached with a tag titled 'Asking For It'. That sleeveless top tucked into the waistband of your trousers; that sari blouse tied across your back with a couple of strings; that skirt that rides up your thighs when you sit down or cross your legs; the leggings that show off the shape of your posterior; the dress that reveals cleavage when you bend down; or even the otherwise staid sari that shows off your midriff and stomach. No matter what your choice of outfit and which body part it exposes (or conceals), there is always a good chance that you are 'asking for it'.

What did you say? What are these women 'asking for'? Well, that depends. It could be anything from being cat called on the street, being followed home by putative stalkers, being groped in buses, marketplaces or on the Metro. And that's if they are lucky. If they aren't, they could even be 'asking for' being molested, or even raped by hapless men who have been so thoroughly 'provoked' that they can't be held responsible for their actions.

This scenario gets even more complicated if you bring the entire world into the mix. You can't wear bikinis in Iran. You can't wear burkinis in France. You can't leave your head uncovered in Saudi Arabia. You can't cover your face in Belgium. And so on and on and on.

Nor does it get any better as women get older. They might think that they have now passed the stage of being seen as sexual beings. And that they can now relax and wear whatever the hell they want. Well if they do, they have another think coming.

Once they are in their 40s, the fashion advice comes couched in 'mutton dressed as lamb' terms (sometimes from their own daughters who scoff: "Are you really going out in that?"). Anything above the knee is a strict no-no. Tight trousers or dresses are seen as a dodgy choice. And bare upper arms or a dash of cleavage invites exhortations of "Just put it away, dear!"

Even when women are post-menopausal or well into their 60s and 70s, the gratuitous tips doesn't cease. And in India, it gets particularly intrusive if they are widows. Don't wear bright colors. Don't use so much makeup. And is that bindi really a good idea? In fact, the style rules still apply even when they are dead: a red sari for the pyre if her husband survives her; a white one if she is a widow.

As far as dress codes go, there's none quite as stringent as the ones prescribed for women: from the moment they enter this world to the time they depart it.

This really is a life-long service. And it matters little that you didn't sign up for it.

The Dress Code

It really doesn’t matter what you wear; you can be a feminist in both a sari and a skirt

Women and clothes. It really doesn’t get more complicated than that. There’s conflicting advice coming from every corner. Everyone has an opinion on what you should or should not wear (and where you should or should not wear it). There are people who seem to believe that your choice of outfit has a direct connection with your personal safety. But no matter how much care you take to dress every morning – or evening – you can rest assured that there will always be someone out there who believes that in those clothes, you are simply asking for it.

As for me, all through my life, I have tended to take the path of least resistance when it came to clothes. Growing up in Calcutta, where I went to a school and college run by nuns, there was a certain assumption that ‘good girls’ always dressed conservatively. And quite frankly, I never had a problem with that. I wore salwar kameezes and churidar kurtas routinely and felt incredibly grown-up whenever I wore a sari on special occasions.

Looking back, I often wonder why more of us Loreto girls didn’t rebel against the unspoken dress code that even outlawed something as tame as pedal-pushers (if you have no idea what these are, consider yourself lucky). My guess is that it was mostly because we never really paid that much attention to what we wore. We didn’t see clothes as a means to making some sort of political statement. And I most certainly didn’t think that they defined who I was in any manner.

Clothes definitely did not make this woman, I would have said if I had given any thought to the matter. But quite honestly, I never did. I had more important things to think about (like when I would finally get through the interminable James Joyce opus; and why I could never keep all the characters in War and Peace straight in my head).

After college, I began working at the ABP group, which – in those days at least – was a bastion of orthodoxy. All the women wore saris to work (only one lady with a particularly racy reputation would wear tight kurtas with trousers, which was regarded as the height of daring) and I duly took my cue from them before relaxing into the odd salwar-kameez and finally graduating to that old journo standby, blue jeans.

However I may have dressed on my time off, at work I always veered towards the line of sartorial safety. I would no more have worn jeans and a T-shirt to cover an election rally in a rural area than I would have worn a bikini to an official banquet at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The idea was always to blend in, to seem non-threatening. If I was going to be the proverbial fly on the wall, then I had to be a cipher, nondescript enough to disappear into the background. I couldn’t be that girl in a Bermuda shorts, who thought she was striking a blow against patriarchy by showing off her legs.

But then, these are choices that most women of my generation made, because we wanted to be taken seriously – and we had bigger battles to fight. So, we wanted attention to be focussed on our brains rather than our bodies. And we wanted the conversation to be about our talent and professional abilities rather than our clothes.

I guess we’ve come a long way from that (er, baby, as the sexist Sixties line would have it). And in a way it is comforting that we now take enough of our freedoms for granted to finally be able to have that conversation about clothes. At some level, I suppose it must be seen as a sign of progress that women are all charged up to fight for their right to wear a mini-skirt and not be leered at.

But speaking for myself, I still find the idea of a Slut Walk risible in the Indian context, when women in rural areas who are wrapped up in six yards of fabric get sexually molested, assaulted and raped every day. And call me sexist if you will, but I find it hard to sympathise when women complain of being leered at after putting their breasts out on display in their latest push-up bras. Hell, there are times when even I gawp in horrified fascination at those acres of cleavage on display, so I’m not one to point fingers.

When it comes to clothes, though, I think the common-sense argument is the most compelling one. Of course, you can wear what you like. Of course, you can go where you like while you’re wearing it. And of course, nobody has the right to molest or rape you because of the way you’re dressed. But there is such a thing as ‘appropriate dressing’, and we would be fools to deny it just to sound politically correct. For instance, I still wouldn’t wear a short skirt to a political press conference. And I certainly wouldn’t wear a skimpy top while reporting from a rural area.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that clothes are really not that important. Because what you wear is not who you are. So, let’s not make the mistake of believing that our identity is wrapped up in our clothes. It is possible to be a feminist in a sari as well as a skirt – and we should never forget that.