Is the beauty of modest dressing vanishing?

In the early 50s down to the early 80s, the dress sense of our grandparents was elegant and classy. Attires in those days had a fashion sense to them without sensitive parts of the body being exposed. Today, fashion has gone in a direction that implies a lack of restraint. To lovers of ‘crazy’  fashion, […]

In the early 50s down to the early 80s, the dress sense of our grandparents was elegant and classy. Attires in those days had a fashion sense to them without sensitive parts of the body being exposed.

Today, fashion has gone in a direction that implies a lack of restraint. To lovers of ‘crazy’  fashion, beauty means exposing the body, walking around practically half-naked in public.

Beauty, they say, lies in the eyes of the beholder. Some  women think that skimpy dresses are fashionable, forgetting about the swingin’ sixties, whose fashion was defined by clean lines of fabric and not the curves of exposed skin.

Looking around, one will easily see many young ladies, including some adventurous old ones, appear to be in crazy competition, dressing to kill,  forgetting that the way one dresses determines the signals sent out.

Many women take pride in tempting or attracting the opposite sex with their bodies, but are outraged if they receive negative attention. Though it is often done in the name of personal freedom, many teens and adults are unwilling slaves to today’s fashion.

According to Mrs. Ayodele Micheal, an educationist and consellor, today’s wardrobe sense seems to have been taken to the extreme. “Of recent, the wardrobes of women seem to have no limits or boundaries. Exposure of sensitive areas seem to be the norm and it is no longer viewed as an issue. Most times, they feel you can dress or look seductive in your dressing and still maintain innocence or maturity. In the 80s, modest clothes still looked trendy. Beauty does not necessarily mean we have to expose ourselves,” she said.

Modesty in dressing is something that is part of us. The ways we dress instantly tell the kind of person we are or the way we think. Modesty is an attitude and a way of thinking that exhibits the values by which we live. Fashion and style in the Nigerian society have continued to follow an outragerously different path since the 90s.

“What has happened to our once precious iro and buba, bubu, maxi skirts, gele and many others? It beats my imagination when I see ladies, even mothers, goofing in the name of fashion,” says Hajiya Bilkisu Gimba. “If I may ask, have any of these ladies who make a caricature of themselves in the name of blending with trends ever taken a break to ask themselves just one question? Have they asked what the opposite sex think of them? If they are all in the world as these men claim, why have they not been made wives to such men? It’s simple; no man would possibly take such women for a wife. The sooner they come to their senses the better.”

While modesty certainly involves a way of dressing for both sexes, it begins with a way of thinking and that thinking affects what we put on. Our dressing also determines how we are treated and the level of respect we get.

It is not only the ladies who are being tongue-lashed in this modesty debate as menfolk too are not left out. For the guys, it is called ‘sagging’ when mostly teenagers wear trousers with a wide waistline, causing them to sag. Some people claim that even some dads are gradually joining the trend.

For Sanusi Gidado, it is a case of a lost generation. “It’s sad to see the level we have degenerated to in terms of our dress-sense. Africans are not known to expose their body. We tend to copy-cat everything we see on foreign actors and actresses, forgetting that these people are in showbiz and would not wear such in their normal lives. When we dress in an immoral manner, it brings our dignity and personality to disrepute.”

It is wrong for us to don clothes that bring  our morals and diginity into question and invites others to treat us with less respect. A lady’s feminine allure must always be projected in a dignified manner.

Thankfully, there still are those who respect modesty in dressing. In a society where a few people are heeding the call to modesty, let us make sure we are not on the other side of the fence. The choice of how to look and what to wear remains an individual decision fundamentally. So when next you are greeted or treated in a negative way, try to assess what you are wearing.