Dear reader, let’s talk.
Before
we start, let’s take a breather. I’m not sure what you had in mind to read here
when you clicked, but to be on a safe side, let me first agree with you; yes!
You’re right. You can wear whatever you like. You can appear on whatever makes
you comfortable. It’s ok really. But like I always do, I try to enlighten you
on things you have probably not come across or ignored. You can now make your
choice.
There are some words I wish to bring you close to:
· Decency: a behaviour that conforms to accepted
standards of morality or respectability
· Dress: a
piece
of clothing for women, girls,
boys or men that covers
the top
half
of the body
and hangs
down over the legs.
·
Value: the usefulness or importance
of a particular item or person.
·
Attention: notice, interest or awareness.
These four words have an interrelationship that most people
are not yet aware of. By the definition of decency above, you should understand
that decency is a way of life (behaviour) that conforms to existing standards
of values (morality) or attention (respectability). One thing
that plays a great role in portraying all these words in one individual is a
dress or clothing. The reason why we all fight about who is decent and who is
not, is simply because one side seems to be priding themselves as righteous
making the other side look wayward. But the truth here is, when we look at
ourselves on a mirror, we are always the ultimate judge of ourselves. This
article is a mentality refresher on our assumptions and belief system when it
comes to appearance.
Decency should start in the mind. When you nurture unclean
thoughts in your mind, you would never see any dressing as wrong, both the one
you wear and the one worn by others. Something you value, has great importance
and usefulness to you and you are obliged to protect it by all means possible.
These days, in our quest to belong to a particular class of sociality and gain
a supposed level of attention, we devalue what demands value, and give value to
what doesn’t. I love when young people say, “It’s my body, so it is my business
what I do with it”. I’ll tell you a story;
Two young ladies live in an apartment together. One of them
A was brought up with the mind-set of dressing appropriately while the other B
was very much on the contrary. A always tried to imbibe what she learnt in her
friend to no avail. One day, they visited a restaurant to eat, when they were
done, Girl B forgot her iPhone 7 plus on the table and left. They had reached
their home when she realised her phone was missing, she screamed and called out
to her friend. They tried the number but it was already switched off. She
pleaded with Girl A to accompany her to the restaurant to see if they would
find it but she declined her request. She pleaded in tears but she refused.
Girl B got really pissed at her friend and swore right there she would never
have anything to do with her ever again. She went into her room, got dressed
and was about to leave, Girl A called her back. She asked her to sit down, “My
dear friend, why did you swear a break up with me because of a phone?”
“Do you know what that phone means to me?” replied Girl B
hotly. “That’s like my life and you know how much I value the amount I got it
for, now you won’t accompany me to find it, what good are you as my friend?”
Girl A reached into a purse beside her and brought out the
phone. “Ever since I became your friend, I’ve always helped to pick up things
that have value to you, but you’ve not been collecting them from me. I’ve
picked up your breasts when you dropped it in public for people to see, you
didn’t take it from me. I did same for your thighs and every other private body
parts of yours that you let lose, you still rejected them. Now you’ve renounced
my friendship with you because I wasn’t going to pick up your phone. So your
phone has more value than your body? You value something you were able to buy,
over something so priceless you can never be able to buy it back?”
“I hate it when people judge me because of how I look,
you’ve not even come close to me to know what I really am”, a boy once said to
me. I sat him down and told him this story I once read.
A story was once told of two friends-one, a moralist, the
other a socialite. The moralist was always at the edge for the socialite’s
perceived indecent, immoral and flamboyant dress essence. But the socialite
will rebuff claiming it is the “content” (of one’s heart) that matters and not
the “container” (the body). One day the socialite visited her friend- the
moralist and requested for a cup of water from her host’s younger brother.
The brother, smarting from his own wisdom chose to serve their “guest” water inside a potty that was both new and hygienic which Miss socialite rejected. When informed that the water was from a hygienic source and the potty new and unused, Miss Socialite simply refused the offer claiming it was served with a potty and not a glass cup. She was then reminded of her ideology of content and container and made to realise it is container that advertises content. A bad container will never sell a good content. Why? We see the container first before content.
The brother, smarting from his own wisdom chose to serve their “guest” water inside a potty that was both new and hygienic which Miss socialite rejected. When informed that the water was from a hygienic source and the potty new and unused, Miss Socialite simply refused the offer claiming it was served with a potty and not a glass cup. She was then reminded of her ideology of content and container and made to realise it is container that advertises content. A bad container will never sell a good content. Why? We see the container first before content.
Many youths today have found themselves with the wrong group
of people all because they want to dress in a way that accords with behaviour
of that group. As a man, when you dress in tattered jeans for instance, you can
never pass the right message to an onlooker neither is your worth appreciated.
Same with ladies, when you wear clothes that expose a lot of you to the public,
you cannot convince a responsible human being that you have good morals, you
lose your worth on first sight. Morality is the centre and core of our
existence. Don’t doubt me and then go ahead to judge the government when they
loot money from the economy. That government staff you’re against simply has no
morals and therefore does not value human life. I always say this when I speak
to people, imagine you were in a barbing salon as a guy and there sat two other
men in the shop. One of the men dressed in a nice shirt and trouser, has a good
haircut while the other wore a very rough haircut, tattered sagged jeans and a
ripped singlet. Before you could go over to the barber’s seat, you accidentally
left your expensive phone on your seat, when you were done and back, your phone
was missing. Be honest with yourself, these two men still sitting in that shop,
who would you tag the thief first? It could be the man dressed nicely who stole
the phone, but you would judge the ill-dressed person first before the other.
Decency as described earlier conforms to a standard of
morality and respectability, it is not the standard and respect of a state, or
a country, or even a continent; it is your own standard and respect that is in
play here. What is your standard for morality? How much can you do for the sake
of your quest for respect? What value do you attach to your sanity and private
sections of your body? Stop looking at what others are doing and start asking
yourself questions like, why exactly am I wearing this skirt, or this jean? How
much does it affect this standard of value I have for myself? It is not just an
issue of religion, it is a frame of mind of an individual. It is your comfort,
very true, but you don’t really need to be selfish about it; pleasing your
‘conscience’ and denying the people around you the comfort of their minds due
to your provocations. They have to look away because it is not their business
what you wear, but then you stand up against immoralities happening in our
environment. I keep hearing people standing up to be activists for rape and
screaming, “No reason justifies rape!”
Appearance is one. You call men dogs, no problem, why linger a bone in
front of a dog and expect the dog not to attack? I am not saying rape is right, neither am I justifying a man who raped an innocent woman, but if we honestly wish to fight it and not just look for an avenue to tarnish
the image of other responsible men on earth in the name of female chauvinist;
then we should realise that the way we appear goes a long way in appealing to
the sexual desire of any gender. Trust me when I say this, if women had the
equal physical strength of a man, this question of rape would be addressed from
a different perspective. But I digressed…
Please dear reader, this article is appealing to you, not
just for your sake but for the sake of our young ones. You can appear
beautiful, hot, without being indecent. Yes! Your dress can say it all
without a finger pointing out a sense of moral decadence or looking offensive,
that way, your container presents the content better. If we can have all that
without being indecent, then where is the sense to provocative dressing? Why
choose to instill a wrong mentality to our growing children?
Remember, I am not against the way you dress, or your
comfortability; I am saying, let’s all address our sense of morality better. A
better sense of morality says you respect yourself and you respect your immediate
environment as well, and trust me, what you give is what you get. When you walk
in public, you represent yourself and where you come from, the way you dress
determines to a large extent if people would respect everything we represent.
As I hope you stand
up to indecency, I say, so long dear reader.
Thank you so much for
reading.😊
🍸Just sipped a bitter truth that must be swallowed. Bitter because virtually every lady has dresses or clothings she would tag 'not that bad' which actually 'is bad'. So it's not about having a box full of decent wears and a few 'rock your body wears' it's about, Keeping up with Morality.
ReplyDelete👍 This is a piece worth reading.
I love this😊👍🏽
ReplyDelete