Your dress should match the occasion

It is often stated that life is about choices. I cannot agree more; especially going by the way women in most urban areas dress. While it is good to be fashionable and strictly adhering to the ‘dress your body’ truism, the dress should be reasonably reasonable. I have been to many different events and many young girls and women seem to have a one-size-fits-all rule when it comes to their way of dressing. Our sisters no longer care if they are attending a wedding or a burial, the legs and the cleavage must be revealed. It does not matter if they are in a church or a club, the fabric must hug the body. The men must see and ‘feel’ it. What is the use of lighting up a lantern only to cover it with a blanket? They will argue.

I know girls are constantly fighting to be noticed, they dress to kill so that they can attract all the stares but still sneer at the men who stare at them. Haki Women! But in their pursuit to look ‘hot’ even on a very hot day they must respect certain institutions.

First and foremost, we, as true Africans, must respect death as an institution. If you can go to the trouble of getting time off from your lousy boss and drive dozens of kilometres to pay your last respect to a dear one or a close friend; you should appear in respectful attire. There are no two ways about it.A burial is supposed to be a somber and reflective affair. This is not the time to show off your leg, shoe, weave or handbag. Please, please, please I beg! What will we do with your flesh? Will it bring back the dead? Do you still want to outshine the one going six feet under? Well, why then don’t you just swap places?

Secondly, we must respect our elders. You cannot wake up in the morning and you know you are going to be in a place that you will meet/ find elders and not give a thought to what you will portray to others, your fashion sense aside. We have a saying in the pastoralist communities that a suckling calf is never shown the udder. Make no mistake, these elders have been there done that, they may have the spirit but the body cannot match the determination of the spirit and its desires. A suckling calf should never be subjected to an alluring udder, it might decide to suckle before the milking time and of course this could be disastrous to the farmer.

Finally, whatever you do, please, do not let the Sunday School classes go to waste since you are now grown up and earning your own money. There was a reason for that Sunday School coming at that stage when you knew not your left from the right hand. Oh yes! This was the time you were supposed to pick up good manners so that you can live responsibly in a society that keeps things simple and nasty surprises at bay. When the priest is working hard and saving lives from burning eternally in hell, you cannot again be the ones egging them on and urging men to contemplate ‘what if’.

If you dress provocatively to church and the priest or pastor talks about the devil in the sermon, don’t bother looking around looking for the devil!