Clothes of temptation
There’s an interesting verse in the bible that warns against cross-dressing: Deuteronomy 22:5: A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this (NIV). Unfortunately, the verse doesn’t define exactly what clothing is male and which is female. Traditionalists in Swaziland have in the past used the verse to support their claim that women wearing trousers or pants or jeans is somehow ‘sinful’, but the same words could also be used to claim that traditional men’s clothing (‘skirts’) is also sinful.
A clear example of how confusing this might be should be in the example of jeans, for jeans originally began as men’s working clothes. Later the cut of the cloth came with some style, and then women began wearing them too. So jeans should be a clear example of cross-dressing. They’re certainly an interesting item to consider. However, cross-dressing is all about the way we look at things, and not in the clothing itself. If men and women wear jeans differently, then we can both wear jeans and also satisfy the Good Book’s demand that men dress like men and women dress like women.
In the case of jeans, it is clear that women don’t wear them the way men wear them. Women wear jeans so tight that they have to lie down to get them on. Worn like this they quite literally reveal their body shape. They also wear jeans with no waistlines so that, conveniently or not, they often slip down to reveal a glimpse of a g-string and a crack of buttocks. They’re the clothing of temptation these days. The way women wear jeans is all about women looking like women. And when women look like women, they certainly can’t be confused with men. It’s so either body-hugging or extra cleavage, that fellow writers like Innocent Maphalala have drawn attention to what their eyes have been attending and have complained that too much is displayed in public these days and that some curves should perhaps rather be covered up than flashed in public; but as far as I can see (and sometimes that’s pretty far) jeans are a power display used by women who always know what they’re up to. I was sitting in a place once with a friend and his eyes were nearly popping out of his head because of what was perched before him on a nearby bar stool. We men are vulnerable in this way, since cleavage is not, and will never be, part of what men have to display. Jeans have become a unisex fashion for women primarily because they allow women to look like women. (Men wear ties so that they can look like men—figure that out.)
In many ways clothing started it all. As soon as Adam and Eve began wearing their unisex fig-leaves (which no doubt started a trend), God got annoyed, since the clothing made it clear that this couple had eaten the forbidden fruit. If they’d remained naked, maybe God wouldn’t have noticed anything until the baby appeared. Maybe we were meant to stay naked.
During His Majesty’s Coronation, back in 1986, I was seated next to a group of non-Swazi Africans in the stadium when a lot of tingabisa began dancing. These Africans began laughing at the Swazi maidens in their tindlamu, saying that the Swazi girls were ‘naked’. A little later, a group of Zulu girls joined them—and many Swazis in the audience began laughing, saying that the Zulus were ‘naked’! No doubt Adam and Eve in their fig-leaves would have seemed naked to us.
It seems that clothing is a very human thing, but what we wear is never the issue—what is important is always what we see in it. Clothing might be a bracelet or a pair of earrings, or a suit or a full dress: it doesn’t matter, only that there is clothing. If what we see is tempting or sinful, then we need to know that it, like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder.
posted by swazi @ 6:10 pm
