Are we sexual beings or women?

with brains, a heart and a beautiful mind...

A friend and I were discussing how uncomfortable she feels while wearing dresses but loves wearing them. She said, “If I start driving, and don’t use local transport, I will wear dresses all the time!” This made me think of the time I wore shorts for an early morning walk with my husband in Dar-es-Salaam. I was catcalled by so many people, including a few guys who screamed out from the car on Ocean Road and I swore I would never wear those shorts again. My inherent patriarchy told me, that my dressing was the problem.

Another time, I was wearing a super long skirt with a sweater in Sri Lanka walking happily to my hostel. A car stopped in front of me and one of the guys came out of the car said something and just as quickly got back into the car. They drove off laughing and I was left there stunned! Only when I saw the car turn back towards me, I was shaken to my senses to get away from there. This was in broad daylight around noon.

Now I chose my battles. The day I feel confident and strong, I wear whatever I want to wear and do not bother about catcalling or telling people off. When I don’t feel like fighting, I will overthink all my clothes to make sure I do not attract attention to any body part.

I just read on Ovah Tanzania’s social media a story of a university-going student who went from long skirts to adding a scarf to wearing a full coverup and yet being touched, catcalled, and harassed, every single day from the buses to bodas to bajajs. That also reminded me of the time when I was hanging out with a guy and he would immediately turn heads if he saw someone in a Hijab. It was like his fetish and he would stare them down enough to make the girl uncomfortable.

I know a lot of you will come at me telling me how the Hijab helps in reducing the catcalling and elicits respect. Unfortunately, I have been harassed in both shorts and a fully modest dress or coverup. No! The problem is not the dress! The problem is how we are looked at, and sexualized. The problem is how every woman is looked at as a sexualised piece of meat instead of a human. The problem is how every woman has to look in the mirror every single day and think, will I get catcalled in this outfit? Will I be safe? When little girls get raped, do we think of what they were wearing? When school-going children, in their uniform get raped, do we think it’s because of what they were wearing?

The idea of sexualising women is part of rape culture - which also includes how we bring up our girls, how we tell them that showing certain parts will attract men, or how social media and magazines show us these hyper-sexualised images of women. It doesn’t help when the very popular songs of our country encourages this further. If we need to bring up a safe society and tackle rape culture, we will need to change the way we view bodies. Instead of looking at bodies sexually, if we look at them as vessels carrying our wonderful brain, mind and heart, we would make such a huge difference to society.