Put on some clothes!
Revealing clothes, to the level of partial nudity, are annoying, blatant and vulgar
First of all, an announcement: The goal of my column is not to make you religious, not a homage to the Iranian chador, and not a manifesto to turn Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv into Rabbi Akiva Street in Bnei Brak. This is a simple request from me to you. The truth is that it isn’t so pleasant for me to ask this, but it’s better for me to do it through my column, anonymously, than directly to your face.
Maybe that way there’s a chance that you’ll hear me out before you begin screaming about attacks by the religious or shouting “religious coercion,” which we haven’t heard since the early '90s. And a word to my religious readers: Unfortunately, in this column I’m going to have to be blunt. If you feel uncomfortable, you’d better stop here and now.
And so to the matter at hand. I and a good friend, non-religious (I need to note that here) went on a short round of clothes shopping. It’s summer 2007, and the stores are full of beautiful, modern collections. And while I’m teaching my friend several necessary shortcuts, like how you get an exact count of the inventory of skirts in a store within 10 seconds, her eyes settle on an advanced clothing development, i.e., nano-clothing.
I see them hanging on the hanger, miniature models of human clothing, and I ask myself and the local beside me if there is someone who wears them other than on the beach. While my friend is searching her memory to check if she has seen any of her friends wearing miniature clothing, the answer marches right in front of us. As we gave our legs a chance to rest in the nearby cafe (don’t worry, it’s kosher!), we watched the show, flabbergasted.
Believe me, you would have needed a magnifying glass to discover any items of clothing there. It isn’t nice to say, but the girl was more undressed than dressed. Yes, she was wearing shorts, but you could barely see them. And only a token narrow strip of fabric remained that attempted, unsuccessfully, to cover what was necessary of her upper body. For a moment I thought that only I and my religious women friends would find this excessive exposure difficult to bear, perhaps a bit of minor culture shock. But a look around showed me that other people, glatt-kosher secular people, were moving uncomfortably in their chairs.
Save it for the beach (photo: AP)
Of course no one dared say a word, Heaven forbid, lest they appear primitive. But two minutes later the young mothers with their strollers asked for the check, and the older couple at the table on the other side made sure to look only at their Greek salad.
Save nano-clothing for the beach
No, this isn’t sexism. Excessive exposure by men is also inappropriate, especially when it comes with no prior warning, but many other people get angry about this, and amazingly, they aren’t ashamed to say something or to give very broad hints.But for some reason, when it comes to the fair sex, there’s a kind of tacit agreement among the secular that only when the woman is not an exact copy of a top model is it okay to object to excessively revealing clothing. But if the woman has the necessary measurements, she must share them with the entire world, with everyone and his brother in the most blatant way, the more the better.
So I've decided to raise the gauntlet. I don’t like looking at revealing clothing on the level of partial nudity. It’s annoying, it’s blatant, it’s vulgar. Please save nano-clothing for the beach and the pool. For a mall or restaurant put on a shirt, and pants or a skirt that doesn’t show your entire leg, with the emphasis on “entire.”
And to you, anonymous woman, you’re pretty, you’re amazing, you’re something else. Believe me, if you wore just a smidgen more clothing — not modest, just clothing — it would not hide your beauty. They say that clothes make the (wo)man, but if there is no clothing, what’s left of the second part of the saying?
