Women (Un)covered!!! 

There are certain issues that really pinch me to such an extent that it becomes inevitable for me to contain it to me. Once I was traveling through a leading shopping mall in Gulberg-2 Lahore named as Men’s store and there I saw an advertisement in which a lady was scantily dressed and definitely that particular women qualified every definition that could lend her as “alluring”, and notion flashed in my mind that why such marketing strategies are exercised, and nobody bothers to object, though I accept that it is democratic right of every human to express in a way one likes, but still I think that perhaps this is not the right way. One can easily get flabbergasted why NGO’s are not taking up this crucial issue that has direct relation with the dignity of women. It is there strange behavior that on the issue on infamous “Mukhtaran Mai” there was such a great degree of hue and cry and on this issue no one dares take up this matter, perhaps we have certain paradigms that would interpret such acts as something modern, but I don’t think that this is modernism, this is unabated imposition of western values in an effort to have a universal civilization, here at this point I would like to quote my favorite author Samuel P.Huttington the author of much publicized “Clash of Civilizations and Emergence of New World Order”, who opined that any effort to westernize non-western societies would result in powerful backlash that can be easily seen in the form of religious political parties taking the stage of political power as seen in Iran, Pakistan and few months back in Turkey. I was thoroughly shocked when I came to know in order to promote soft image of Pakistan, a women in bikini paraded in front of Pakistan’s democratically elected dictator Gen.Musharraf, in his previous visit to US. Judging women on the basis of her skin is against the stature of women which is given by the nature to her, this is nothing but the exploitation of women by male chauvinistic society. It was an occasion of mere coincidence that when one of the provincial assembly of Pakistan take up this issue, one of the NGO in US also take up this issue in Congress against widely broadcasted Miss World competition, citing it as against the dignity of women. Even Sameena Peerzada, famous Pakistani actress and director of movie “Inteha”, in her interview clearly expressed her outrage and said that she would not like to be judged by men on the basis of her skin. According to one survey, published in the leading local newspaper, female celebrities show alomst 66% of their flesh in the mega events. Though there is definitely certain degree of acceptance of this very phenomenon in some quarters of our society who in my opinions are not feminists but pseudo feminists.

Written By

SHOAIB IKRAM AHMED

BSc.Hons Textile Science, Textile Institute of Pakistan, Karachi