Time to zip up?

On Thursdays, I like to kick back with ‘Scrubs,’ one of my favorite TV shows and drown in its delightfully nonsensical episodes. One of the lady doctors was having a hard time getting her ideas across to her male peers as they were not taking her seriously. So what she did was cover her diving cleavage to make sure that their attention was riveted on her and not her embellishments and actually that did the trick. Seriously gals, modesty turned out to be an empowering experience for her.

What I gather from this is that women all over the world want to be treated with respect and decency. Most women just want the opportunity to earn their livelihood without being disparaged, molested, taunted or teased. Our tight blouses and mini skirts are not getting us where we want to be. Sure in an ideal world it would be nice to walk around the way you want to without being discriminated upon but coming down to earth, we have to take the route that works best.

In reality, men can afford to reveal more than women without appearing to be immodest but if we look around us we will notice that men walk around in layers of clothing. Most men do not expose more than what a burqa-clad woman does but we do not go around calling a man’s attire oppressive. In fact, they seem to be quite comfortable in it. Men want to get what they want by focusing on their strengths. They do not want to be exploited. They are not throwing in any freebees.

As soon as a woman covers up, she is labeled oppressed and has to be liberated by throwing away the shawls and unbuttoning the shirts. I would say that when a woman dresses enticingly the only benefactor is a man. Is that the kind of empowerment we want?