The One Thing I wish I had that Men have
The ability to wear what you want is essential to comfortably navigate the world
In January of 2024, I moved to the small town of Alipurduar in West Bengal for my first posting as an IPS probationary officer. It is a primarily rural district, bordering Bhutan and Assam. I didn’t know what exactly to expect when I got here, but I thought that I wouldn’t get too many opportunities to wear my ‘fancy’ clothing. It was a small town, after all, and bound to be a little conservative. Being in a Sarkari job meant that Indian ethnic clothing is often the default option for social gatherings. And being in the Indian Police Service means wearing a uniform most of the time. So I packed accordingly. Little did I know how wrong I was.
My district’s location bordering Bhutan and Assam means there’s a lot of variety in ethnicity which brings with it variety in clothing. Bhutanese and North Bengali women wear fashion which would not look out of place in Tokyo. Bengali women wear their characteristic bright red sindoor, red lipstick and kajal. Contrary to what urban India might believe, not only jeans but fashion such as coord sets and knee-high boots have reached the small towns of India. On ‘Bengali Valentine’s Day’, local women wear bright sarees and sleeveless blouses and confidently move about, unaccompanied by anyone. Small-town fashion is definitely not what I expected it to be.
So it turned out that I was too conservative in my expectations about what women in small towns wore. It was the first time that I had felt that as a person from an urban, English-speaking background, I was being regressive. At the first party I attended in ‘civvies’, or non-uniform, I was the only person in a sari. Everyone else wore jeans and jackets. I was mildy embarrased.
A common joke made about women is how long they take to get ready, and how many clothes they have. And yes, women do take longer to get ready. But that is because the expectations of how a woman and a man should look are drastically different. Women have to do their hair, make-up and accessorise to meet the minimum required standard for events. Whenever we have a wedding to attend, I am often doing my hair and make-up for over an hour. Sometimes, I even call a parlour lady beforehand to help me get ready. My husband can just walk in 15 minutes before the event, change into his outfit and then wait patiently for me to finish blending my eyeshadow to perfection. The same goes for the variety of clothing we have to own. Because we have so many basic categories of things to wear, we end up having more clothes.
The dress code for men is universal. At the office, it’s a shirt and pant combination, maybe with a blazer if it’s a formal day. A kurta at festivals. A bandhgala or suit at a wedding. Women have so many kinds of outfits, and each outfit has so many styles that we ourselves cannot keep up. It’s definitely fun, and I fondly remember the chaotic hours spent with my friends dressing up before a party. Fashion pundits go gaga over what women can wear. Sarees come in endless colours and designs. Skirts come in mini, midi and maxi, not to mention the endless materials. Women can even wear clothing originally meant for men — boyfriend jeans or shirts. It’s endless and beautiful but also sometimes exhausting.
Yes, men can ‘Ranveer Singh’ it up, and when they do, they face the consequent remarks. But they don’t have to. Yes, women can dress simply. But they often hear personal comments about their ‘dressing sense’ when they do. I remember being exhausted from a long journey, and I’d forgotten to wear any jewellery when I was visiting some family. Someone commented — “You’re still looking like a college student, not a married woman!”. Yes, it was a good-spirited jibe, but it was something they noticed. Whether it’s telling someone to be conservative or liberal, Indian or Western — it’s a comment nonetheless.
There is an invariable tag attached to women’s clothing. If a mini-skirt means a woman is liberal or maybe of a ‘loose character’, a kurta means she is conservative and ‘gharelu’. Some see a saree as a return to our Indian roots and some see it as a restrictive and a bastion of purdah days. Religion also comes through strongly in women’s clothing — a long skirt often means Christian while a headscarf or sindoor indicates a Muslim or Hindu woman. Men just don’t have the same tags attached to their clothing. They can choose to wear religious or funky clothing, but they can also choose not to. I won’t even get into the fringe of society who blame women’s inappropriate clothing for them getting raped and murdered. That’s certainly a major problem, but we all agree it’s a major one. The unacknowledged problem is that a large part of society thinks it’s acceptable to have expectations from a woman about how she should dress. It seems impossible for a woman to be nondescript, even if she wants to be.
It’s a problem that even many so-called feminists fail to answer adequately. As I grew out of my rebellious teenage phase, I started to wear what I perceived to be more mature clothing. It actually made me feel more comfortable in my own skin. But even here, I could not win. I remember a friend commenting on one of my dresses and saying that I looked like an aunty. Globalism and feminism have indeed paved the way for women to dress in a greater variety of clothing than the generations before they could. But it has not managed to free women out of unsaid, unclear and ambiguous standards. Even those who believe that they are liberal, have some expectations of how a woman should look, and that is the core of the problem.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy dressing up. I actually love it, and my huge wardrobe is a testament to that fact. And yes, when I get annoyed with people telling me what to wear, many well-wishers have suggested that I ‘stop caring about what others think’. That is precisely my point. I have to make an effort to stop caring about what people think, precisely because so many people have thoughts about what I should be wearing.
In the larger struggle for gender inequality, fashion might seem to be a drop in the ocean of greater injustices. Shouldn’t women just forget about fashion and go do something more ‘serious’? But choosing what to wear is a task that we do every single day. The struggle to perfectly match the expectations of others is a constant narrative in our minds. And it does have real economic and social consequences. Isn’t the pay gap much worse than, if women have to spend even more for basic necessities? Doesn’t spending time every day getting ready add to our unequal burden of expectations as much as unpaid labour?
It may not seem as important as dowry, child marriage and a host of other issues. It (mostly) doesn’t harm us, but it does make us feel some discomfort. And I’d argue that the goal of every society should be to make people feel comfortable being themselves. So that we can wake up one day, and not have to think about what we should wear.
