A woman wearing ripped jeans cannot be a good role model, not for her own children or for society, so opined a certain Chief Minister in a remark that soon went viral. The storm that erupted on social media over the minister’s outrage over ripped jeans is a reminder of the excessive importance given to clothes, especially women’s clothes and what constitutes decent attire for women. Outrageous and offensive though the remarks were, they have rekindled debates on what women should and should not wear.
As elsewhere in this volume of essays, we shall attempt to view this debate through the mirror of Urdu poetry and seek answers in the words of male Urdu poets, both past and present, to glean a “majoritarian” view on libaas (dress/clothes) and what women should, and in some cases, should not do with it. As always, the views range from provocative to traditionalist, sometimes operating from a space of benign patriarchy to, occasionally, inciting outright rebellion against accepted best practices; but this essay will be confined to the male gaze, to how men see women and, more to the point, how they would prefer to see them dressed. As to how women see matters of dress, let’s keep that for another occasion.
Let us begin with the aanchal, especially the udta hua aanchal (the billowing veil) that both conceals and reveals tantalising glimpses, that is at once a sign of modesty and a source of much speculation as to what lies behind, is the subject of profuse amounts of Urdu.