Fashion must have limits

Sunday started off on a lively note for the man who brings home the unga. I woke up at the crack of dawn, had a shower, shaved and jumped into a clean suit in readiness for church.

Mama Jimmy followed suit, and, after spending her customary two hours in the bathroom, she finally swaggered into the living room.

“Wow, you look dashing!” I hooted from my position on the couch, and her cheeks immediately turned red with blushes.

It was one of those moments I feel tremendously proud of my madam. She had on a lovely dress, a pair of heels and an exquisite array of jewels.

The previous day, she had been at Irene, the hairdresser to have her hair cooked, and the result was mind-blowing. I took one look at her hair and liked it immediately.

“Oh, thanks, dear,” she swooned while drawing a map of Kenya on the floor with the tip of her shoe. I even saw her naming a number of rivers on that map.

Everyone treated her with the respect befitting a queen. Maggy the mboch took one look at the outfit and almost screamed out in Chinese, yet she does not know a word of the language. My boys, too, were positively impressed, and so was Little Tiffany.

“Wow! Unakaa poa sana mum!” she said, after which she hurriedly opened the door for her like it was made of hot coals. We then stepped out of the compound and came across some of our neighbours as they trooped to church.

The men were dressed to the nines and the ladies looked dashing, but the same could not be said of their teenage daughters.

One such girl was my neighbour’s daughter, Tracy. She was togged up in a skin-tight, sleeveless dress that seemed to hug her in all of the wrong places. She completed the look with a pair of cowboy boots and a more-than-generous coat of lipstick.

“Hello Tracy. Where are you going?” I saluted the girl, while struggling to not stare at her “wealth-declaring outfit”. Let’s just say I experienced a “nude awakening” of sorts.

“Naenda church,” she responded coyly, looking completely unaware of her fashion faux pas. She then traipsed off, oozing the kind of confidence that is normally associated with catwalk models.

Considering she was heading to church, this ensemble was anything but godly. We then came across Mama Benta flanked by her two daughters, Benta and Sharon.

Mama Benta was clad in a lovely kitenge, along with a pair of stilettos and shiny hoop earrings. “Tunaenda church,” she informed us in her usual cheer, her lips parting to reveal her set of milk-white teeth. The sight of her two daughters, however, almost froze my veins. You would have thought they were headed to the beach. Benta was decked out in a mini skirt over a pair of fishnet stockings, crowning this ensemble with a tank top and a pair of sandals.

Her sister, Sharon, was none the better. Her peep-toes looked fine all right, and her jewellery lent her an extremely posh aura, but the tank top and figure-hugging slacks left her looking like something else.

We then encountered Njeri, who is Jimmy’s classmate. She had on a sketchy, low-cut top that did a lot of injustice to her petite figure. Her figure-hugging dress almost made me want to alert the authorities. With a heavy heart, I turned to Mama Jimmy.

“Surely, these girls can do better. Do their parents supervise them at all?” I gasped. Whenever teenage girls bail out of their homes looking like hip-hop video vixens, I often blame their parents for the wardrobe malfunctions.

“Ah, they are young children, Baba Jim. The girls are dressing their age,” she said reasonably, but I did not agree. Call me old fashioned, but I will be the last parent to let my daughter dress like that.

Granted, I would like my little angel to look nice and “chick” whenever she leaves the house, and I would really want her to be the eye candy of the county, but there are limits to how skimpily one should dress for a religious event.