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Clothing arguments
By Tudor Welikala
When I read Carlton Samarajiwa’s article entitled ‘Fearless loss of femininity’ in The Sunday Times of January 18, I was at a loss to comprehend what "lajja bhaya" meant. At first it looked like a Spanish phrase. I didn't think that an English writer would use a foreign phrase in writing to a newspaper like the Sunday Times, which has an international readership, without any explanation of the meaning of the phrase. Was he writing only for the Sinhala literate readers of the newspaper?

The writer, a self professed man in his ‘declining years’ to whom the display of erotogenic zones is repugnant complains that he is always “assailed by the feminine figure” on bill boards and TV etc.

He says that 50 years ago eyebrows were raised at the introduction of the Bikini. He writes of "only the tits being hidden". Doesn't he know that 'tit' is a vulgar term for breast? He claims that Sri Lankan women are known for modesty and passivity. It appears to me that what he calls modesty is shyness, and one doesn't want a passive woman in bed!

By dwelling on waist lines and hemlines, necklines and crotches, mid riffs, bum cleavages etc. he displays the shortcomings in his learning. He relates the 'vulgar comments' made by his elderly taxi driver who was ogling women as they drove along on Galle road. It is likely that both the elderly men were ogling though the writer puts the blame on the taxi driver.

The writer asks about laws against sexually provocative exposure. Does he want a kind of radical Islamic dress code for women enforced here?

He has thrown in names like Yves St. Laurant, Dr. William Dickey, Playboy Magazine and even Enron in a pretentious way. To impress whom?

He forgets that a hundred and fifty years ago Sri Lankan peasant women wore nothing to cover their breasts. It was only women of the aristocracy who covered their beasts. The peasant women usually wore a loin cloth to cover their nudity. And the bum cleavage that he speaks of was accentuated by the flimsy threadbare loin cloth.

It is interesting to note here that in nearby Pakistan boys are banned from playing football in shorts, lest someone sees the erotogenic aspect of their legs.

Think of our mural paintings; aren't most of the women depicted in them bare breasted? Sri Lanka did not have a puritanical culture. I thought the title of his article was a learned one, but then I realized that it is ridiculous in today’s context.

To begin with, mankind did not wear clothes. And why pick on women? Haven’t we seen men in 'span cloths' (Amude) working in rice fields, and men in bathing trunks at the beach?

It is much better for a man in his declining years to meditate on hell or heaven or even extinction rather than on the parts of the human body. Is Carlton Samarajiva scorning women like the fox in Aesops fables, because they cannot be had?

The writer sounds like a male chauvinist Ayatollah trying to dictate to women what they should wear. To quote Dr. Sigmund Freud, none of these barriers existed in the beginning. They were gradually erected in the course of development and education.

Has any grannie complained about an emaciated body displaying the male erotogenic zones? Does Carlton Samarajiwa think that only women have erotogenic zones?

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