A few days ago, my mum and I went to the park for a walk in the evening. We noticed that the ratio of men to women was not to our liking. I guessed that it must be 75/25, and in order to give weight to this intuitive judgment, we started to count. Mum counted the women, I counted the men. By the end of it, she had 40 something women, and I had 130 something men. Close to my initial estimate; a little more than 1/4, a little less than 1/3.
I was walking with a friend at the same park the other day, and remarked on how I wished I could dress differently (than my usual big t-shirt and leggings) for my park runs because the weather is so hot and muggy lately. The last thing I need is extra polyester on my skin. A few minutes later a girl we both recognised walked in in shorts; something girls generally don’t do in public parks here. She plays football, and is probably used to wearing shorts everywhere, and that was my mental ‘justification’. This happened on a different day, too, with another friend of mine; we were talking about something similar, and another girl we both know passed us by running comfortably in her shorts.
While I don’t want to discount the confidence/bravery/years-of-sucking-it-up of the girls that do get away with showing more skin in public, I do think there’s something to be said about body types. Both the friends I was talking to this about agreed that having a more ‘feminine’ body and overall appearance makes us more squeamish about dressing in ways we might prefer, while appearing more androgynous kind of allows you to ‘get away’ with it. This means not only being skinnier and smaller, but also presenting in such a way that the feminine parts of you aren’t, somehow, obvious.
It’s easy for me to be inspired by women who shake up the status quo by walking the streets of Karachi dressed more or less how they would like, but it also comes down to what battles you’re willing to fight. What I wear to the park has always been a point of contention. Just the other day I wore a t-shirt that was just a little too short and my mum told me not to. This has been happening for as long as I’ve looked somewhat ‘like a woman’ - so, say, since age 12. What this basically means is walking around with a keen awareness that I am being perceived sexually, regardless of what clothes are being worn. By monitoring so closely what I wear, I am affirming this, and therefore always conscious of it. By keeping my eyes down when I walk, by wearing baggier t-shirts that hide all semblance of shape and a cap on my head so I don’t need to make eye contact with anybody and seeing all of these things as liberation, what I’m saying is that femininity = unfreedom. For my friend and I to momentarily wish we had less feminine physiques presented a strange realization that I suppose I’ve known since I first got my period. The real lament by hating my growing hips was actually a resentment of my femininity, and womanhood, because I was increasingly seeing that this meant diminishing freedom.
In recent months, I’ve started to wear sleeveless shalwar kameez more on an everyday basis. I never used to when I was younger, always being hyper-conscious of my more muscular arms (that boys my age made fun of in middle school). Here is a perception of masculinity I wanted to hide. I’m a lot more okay with my body now, and it’s nice to feel more like myself as I walk around. Because a kameez still comes under the bracket of ‘eastern’, I get away with it. But I don’t think I would yet dare to wear a sleeveless top to the park for a run, knowing I would breathe better if I did.
It’s interesting how I play to my own feminine or masculine strengths depending on when it suits me. I embody my feminine power in a sleeveless shalwar kameez, and I embody my masculine power in the park, when I don’t want to be perceived. Either way, I don’t really want to be perceived at all. I just want to be.
To be able to be sometimes means not having to put up a fight. Other times, perhaps even most times, it means having to put up a fight all the time. It’s an internal fight really - everyone on the outside is upholding something that doesn’t really exist. I am not primarily a sexual being, but it is likely that the suppression of this particular untouchable component of our humanness has caused it to rise up and swallow us whole. Step 1 perhaps would be to de-objectify myself. This is not easy, and there’s nuance to the topic of dressing how we may, particularly in the context of Karachi, Pakistan. Many of us would love to get up and go somewhere else in the world, but wherever I go, there I am. People may stare at me less, but I’d still be carrying with me what I’ve carried since the age of 12 - that stuff doesn’t disappear with a change in geography.
It’s not quite as simple as to say f*** it all and do what I want, wear what I want. I need to be sensitive to where I’m situated - and I am that; most of us are in fact hyper-sensitive to our context. Perhaps what it boils down to is the agency of it all. To not be told to change my clothes before going out; but to change if I think it’s sensible.
I’ve been speaking to a bunch of women for my research project on autonomy, and I’ve picked up on a similar running thread, to the effect of: don’t tell me what to do. I’ll figure it out. And maybe sometimes it’s just as simple as that.