When The Linen Is At Stake

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.

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.😊

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