Cover that flesh_New Vision Newspaper_3 April 2015

Name of article: Cover that flesh

Name of Publication: New Vision Newspaper

Date: 3 April 2015

Country:  Zambia

The story with pictures of women wearing mini skits and dresses has a headline that in essence it order women to cover their bodies and it uses a derogatory word “flesh”.

It further has a caption which says that things have gone haywire in Zambia because of the way women dress by exposing their bodies. It accuses women to have brought about moral decay in the Zambian society today.

Nevertheless, does women’s dressing have anything to do with things going wrong in society when most of the culprits involved in serious criminal activities are men? That is a topic for another day.

It is their bodies and they have every right to wear or dress the way they want and what they want as long as they do not walk naked?

The article is one of the stories, which reinforce blatant stereotypes in that it demonizes women and demeans them by bringing their integrity into question.

It reinforces cultural believes that women’s bodies are under the control of society or men meaning, women cannot dress that which is not okay by society. It sends a message that the women should not expose in public because it is a taboo.

However, when it comes to male dressing nobody bothers about the way they should dress because they are in control of everything including on how women should be dressed.

When one looks at the headline “cover that flesh” it is like the flesh for women is something very bad or poisonous which should not be exposed”. It can even give some men with weird mind to find reason to want to sexually abused women dressed like that because they think it is a taboo for them to expose their bodies.

They depict the pictures in such a way to send a message to society that the women in pictures are prostitutes who if they do not cover their bodies, should not be part of the society.

The articles goes further to accuse the church of allowing such things to happen but the question one would want to ask is whether the church’s role is control on how women should dress and not men?  Many a times we find men and boys on the street scantily dressed exposing their bums but no one makes it an issue.

The issue of how women dresses reinforces how women are socialized in society from the time they are born and how they are expected to dress until they die. It is Africa society’s expectation that women are supposed to cover their bodies no matter what because exposing their bodies is uncultured.

The story also accuses women of deliberately wearing short things in order to entice their bosses (bosses in this case are to be male because they are the ones who usually hold decision-making positions in organizations).

There, there is a connotation that bosses or leaders are only supposed to be men and not women. That is why the story says women dress in order to entice bosses to sleep with them.

  It also sends a message that women are initiators of illegal sexual relationships because of the way they dress in the presence of their bosses who are expected to be men.

Worse still, the article is quoting three sources who are all women and condemning fellow women for wearing short things. Just because the aim of the article is to bring the name of ‘woman’ into ridicule and contempt, the reporter deliberately goes to look for female sources so that they can attack their fellow women. No, wonder some people believe that women are enemies of themselves. They are good at throwing mad at one another.

Further the picture of the women is placed on the front page of the newspaper as a way of attracting  people to buy the newspaper confirming the all along believe that women’s bodies are good at selling products such as newspapers.

These are rare times when women‘s images or voices find themselves on the front page of the newspaper and going by this article, it is all because the message which is being conveyed is in bad taste.