“DON’T TELL US WHAT TO WEAR, TELL THEM NOT TO STARE”
Pic.: Sudha Ahuja
“DON’T TELL US WHAT TO WEAR,
TELL THEM NOT TO STARE”
“Girls invite their own trouble.” Yes, this was the topic for
debate, today, in our PD session. Surprisingly, the very first girl, a
seventeen-year-old, spoke in support of the topic. The rest of the girls were
angry… When eighteen-year-old Pranav began to justify his stand in support of
the topic, the young-ladies were all up against him…
“If boys can wear anything and go out
anytime, why can’t girls?” they were asking angrily. “Don’t boys invite their
own trouble, when they wear whatever they like and go wherever and whenever
they wish?”
Eighteen-year-old Aditya spoke against
the topic. Instead of trying to impose restrictions on the way girls dressed or
on where and when they went, he vehemently argued, that boys should grow up and
change the way they view and treat girls. “During the Nirbhaya rape-protests in
Delhi, a young girl was carrying this poster – ‘DON’T TELL US WHAT TO WEAR…
TELL THEM NOT TO STARE,” he recalled, “I truly believe that in those words lie
the real remedy for this ‘mental illness’…”
Women are not abused and rapes don’t happen just because they go
about wearing skimpy clothes or go out late in the night… It is perfectly fine
for majority of men. Those who abuse, harass and rape women need not pick the
ones with skimpy clothes or the ones who move around late. They abuse and rape even
when women are dressed most decently and do not venture out late or walk into
shady places… Abuse can happen right within the confines of four walls of a
house… and, yes, shamefully, in the hands of nearest and dearest men!
Where is the question, therefore,
girls inviting their own troubles just because they out in the night and they
wear whatever they like?
Yes, it is time to tell boys ‘not to
stare’… and stop telling girls ‘what to wear’…
GERALAD D’CUNHA
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