Womens Clothing

If I told you the streets of Masaka are lined with fabrics of every colour, texture and cost from across India and Africa would you be interested? What if I also told you the cost of the most expensive silk you could find would run you about $20 at most and to have a custom tailored dress made from it is only another $15, would you be interested?

I had two of these dresses constructed and I’m not entirely happy with the results. The fabric is beautiful, don’t get me wrong but the measurements were not taken accurately. What I ended up with was one dress that was too large (a 34 inch waist instead of a 29 inch one) and another dress that didn’t accommodate my broad shoulders. Luckily I spent a few extra hours in town and had them fixed that day.  I felt fitted fashions for female friends and family a fabulous idea but faulty measuring would render the whole enterprise futile. A woman I work with, Naomi, recommended another tailor so perhaps in the future I will contract them for future design work.

An alternative to having a dress made for you is to buy an already made item from the many stalls in the clothing market. Much of the clothing is imported from China but occasionally you can find traditional Ugandan clothing made from tree bark. There is a fashion designer named Stella Atal, a young woman born in northern Uganda who famously uses the caramel brown fabric to create much sought after original pieces of clothing. The clothing is bought by local Ugandan celebrities, South African entertainment artists and the U2 singing sensation Bono.

If you are really looking to fit in you will want to wear a traditional dress known as a Gomez. This dress is made of silk, ribbon and two buttons and is characterized by puffy sleeves. The women that wear this dress signify a generation gap, the older generation and women in rural areas favour this dress for everyday wear, while the younger, urbanized and educated elite prefer to wear heels, jeans, skirts and blouses. There is one rule that everyone lives by here though, and that is no knees showing.  Legs, rather than breasts are considered erotic, more commonly women wear low cut blouses and tight tops and wear very long skirts to their calves or ankles, shorts are considered indecent.

I would like to take a moment to stand on my soap box and share what I have learned about women’s clothing from being in Uganda. All countries have their own culture; this culture is like a pair of sunglasses with which the citizens view the world. Many things are involved in making these sunglasses: religion, the history of the country, any violation of rights to any of the citizens, in addition to other things. Now that I am living in Uganda, I am starting to see the different parts that make up their pair of “cultural sunglasses,” and here too, there is a protocol around women’s clothing.

In my personal experience, Canadian nightclubs flaunt many women with short, too tight dresses and push up bras. Sorry ladies, I’m just calling it like I see it.  As a postmodern feminist myself, I realize women have fought for the right to equality and equity and if we choose to dress in a non-conservative fashion, we are within our rights and expect to be treated as an equal, regardless of the clothes on our bodies. Yet even with three waves of feminism in our past, as a woman, I still know how it feels to walk through a crowd of men, to ignore cat calls and stares with my head up and eyes stiffly focused ahead.

I remember talking with a friend about her hijab, and what it meant to her. She said it wasn’t so much about religion or social pressure to wear it, she wore it so that men would notice her mind before her legs, her eyes before her breasts and her worth as a person instead of whistling at her while she walked down the street.

In Canada when I used to go out dancing, I would compliment a friend for having nice legs instead of noticing how short her skirt was, and that is a cultural context for Canadian clothing in a nutshell: women are conditioned not to value conservative clothing or to have ways to determine if a dress is inappropriate. While women may view their clothing as normal and not attention seeking, I know that many men assume the women are dressing in away to attract male attention, leaving both genders confused. The rules of Uganda are explicit and easy to follow: no knees showing and no bikinis.  Everyone in the country knows these rules and if you break it, it is clear you are willing to receive attention, whether it is negative or positive.  My questions are where the line of decency is, or is there no line of decency anymore? Does that lack of boundaries make us liberated, is it just our culture or does that expectation to bare our bodies deal a blow to the feminist movement?