Stop Shaming Women for Not Wearing Dupattas

Stum­bling upon a blog post titled “How can I com­plain about men star­ing at me when I’m not wear­ing my dupat­ta?” I some­what knew what I was going to read upon click­ing. It wasn’t because I am a clair­voy­ant, but because such nar­ra­tives have been so tire­less­ly ped­dled in our soci­ety, one can see them com­ing from a mile away.

The author of the blog asserts that “dupat­tas are an inevitable part of our cul­tur­al dress code” and women who choose not to wear dupat­tas are doing it “due to peer pres­sure or mis­guid­ed desire of being called pro­gres­sive”. Like many oth­er guardians of our cul­ture out there, she request­ed women not to aban­don their dupat­tas or else they would be pro­mot­ing a for­eign cul­ture at the cost of their own.

It is not just dupat­tas, women have been judged for step­ping out­side their homes and for hav­ing their own opin­ions for so long that even women have start­ed to blame them­selves for dar­ing to act upon these fun­da­men­tal human needs. And when our ‘sci­en­tists’ are not busy get­ting cars run­ning on water, they are research­ing on how women’s attires can prompt earth­quakes. Such research­es are amply cit­ed on the loud­speak­ers at our local mosques. I still won­der what caus­es quakes on Mars though, humans haven’t even moved there yet.

We are so often told to respect and hold onto our cul­ture like it is some invari­able enti­ty. But it is not cul­ture that yields soci­eties, but the oth­er way around. Cul­tures trans­form and are rede­fined as soci­eties evolve. You can­not tell a woman to stick to wear­ing a dupat­ta in the name of cul­ture for the same rea­sons you can­not tell a man to stick to wrap­ping a dhoti around his waist like men from the Indus Val­ley Civ­i­liza­tion used to. Had humans stuck to what they used to wear in the name of cul­ture or medieval mytholo­gies, we’d all be walk­ing around with leaves around our naughty bits and noth­ing like our cul­tur­al dress­es today would have had the chance to exist.

As for peo­ple who are insis­tent on defin­ing cul­ture as a sta­t­ic and invari­able way of liv­ing, you might not like acknowl­edg­ing it, but places like Heera Man­di remain as star­tling frag­ments of our cul­ture and so do prac­tices like hon­or killings. The lat­ter, how­ev­er, is a hor­rid cul­tur­al trend still per­sist­ing in var­i­ous parts of Pak­istan and it right­ly deserves our con­dem­na­tion. Glad­ly, cul­ture is not a stag­nant code of life that must be respect­ed at all costs and I hope that ours evolves for bet­ter.

Besides the cul­tur­al asso­ci­a­tion of pro­scrib­ing jeans and favor­ing dupat­tas, there are clichéd notions of vic­tim blam­ing that hold women respon­si­ble for being stared at or harassed by men. Although it must not come as a sur­prise in a male dom­i­nat­ed soci­ety, but it is dis­ap­point­ing to see well edu­cat­ed peo­ple fail­ing to see the fal­lac­i­es that lie with­in such argu­ments. If you think a woman who does not wear a dupat­ta has lost any right to com­plain about sex­u­al harass­ment, because after all she was the one ask­ing for it, I hope you also have very good expla­na­tions for child abuse and sex­u­al harass­ment of boys. The sit­u­a­tion of vic­tim blam­ing has got­ten so worse in our soci­ety, that upon read­ing the news of necrophil­ia cas­es, I fear that some­body might blame the dead bod­ies of the girls buried deep into the ground to be provoca­tive or not buried deep enough.

Peo­ple who hold and per­pet­u­ate such abom­inable opin­ions often neglect the plight of women who resort to wear­ing burqas due to peer pres­sure or for avoid­ing pry­ing eyes and worse – harass­ment. I am yet to meet a woman in Pak­istan who has man­aged to avoid such instances of intim­i­da­tion by men in pub­lic spheres by wear­ing dupat­tas or even burqas. Hav­ing lived in cities like Quet­ta, it no longer sur­pris­es me to see men ogling entire­ly cov­ered women as if, in their imag­i­na­tions, they’re try­ing to solve mys­ter­ies of what lies behind the thick dark cloaks that were some­how sup­posed to make them look the oth­er way.

We are out­raged when a coun­try bans women from wear­ing burqas, but we’re com­plete­ly fine with cer­tain attires being enforced upon them in our own coun­try. In the end, aren’t we both doing the same thing – tak­ing away the lib­er­ty of women to choose what they want to wear?