Weird Swazi king: "The Bible says curse be unto a woman who wears pants, and those who wear their husband's clothes. That is why the world is in such a state today."
Yes, we need to crack down on those women wearing their husband's clothes. For the love of God, leave the skirts to the menfolk! Leave them their sarongs, and their kilts, and their fustanellas, their caftans. The Marshall Islands must keep their
in off their women! The bubu, dashiki, djellabah, Galabiyah, Gho, kikoy, Lungi, the Männerrock - all their masculinity ridiculed by women wearing skirts! Not to mention the holy cassock, which should prove that the Lord intends women to decently abandon skirts inthe name of God with certainty!
(Actual quote at issue: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God." Deuteronomy 22:5. Hebrew men wore skirts: "a man shall not take his father’s wife, nor discover his father’s skirt" Deuteronomy 22:30; "David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe privily" 1 Sam 24:4. God himself wears skirts: "I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine" Ezekiel 16:8. I just had time on my hands and wanted to look it up.)
Also, on the whole dressing down for summer thing, an article by Judith Martin:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003May31.html
"By Judith Martin
Sunday, June 1, 2003; Page D02
Respectable people did not used to appear any the less respectable as a concession to summer heat. They had summer wardrobes made of lighter materials, but these featured the same items as their winter counterparts, including ties and jackets, long skirts and stockings.
Of course, that was back before air conditioning. Now we have desperate and indignant pleas that human survival would be at stake if anyone had to stagger from air-conditioned transportation to air-conditioned buildings wearing more than tank tops, shorts and sandals.
Miss Manners does not mention this out of any yearning for the fortitude of yore. Those people must have been nuts.
But she finds the relationship between the progression of technology and the progression of style to be curious. As the methods of producing clothing went from tedious handwork to mechanized mass-production, tailcoats and embroidered, elaborately draped dresses were abandoned for jeans and basic-black shifts. In architecture, for that matter, increasingly powerful equipment and more flexible materials marked the change from an immense variety of fanciful buildings to the ubiquitous unadorned box.
Ah, well. Miss Manners doesn't pretend that hers is the prevailing taste. If it were, the bustle would be back, and ladies could use their stair machines to practice walking with a train.
All she asks is that some effort be made to conform to the standards of our own times, which still distinguish between dressed and undressed. There must be a summer compromise between running around in practically nothing in order to stay cool and looking dignified while passing out.
But attempts to loosen easily definable dress codes always bring more problems than they solve. No sooner are concessions made than they are abused. When word goes out that ties and jackets are no longer required, out come the T-shirts and jeans. If those are permitted, out come the tank tops and shorts.
Part of this stems from confusion. Most people have a pretty good idea what business dress is, but -- as is obvious at any informal social event -- everyone has a different definition of genuine casual, and, even after all these years, no one has ever found out what "business casual" means.
The rest is bolstered by argument, mostly about creativity and comfort. Miss Manners doesn't mind the visual part of the summer slops nearly as much as having to listen to versions of "Nobody can tell me what to wear because I'm grown up now and I won't wear any of those grown-up clothes that would make me look old."
She would have thought that at least she would be spared the summer buzz of complaints about how tourists and co-workers dress, but strangely, even the self-proclaimed rebels care about such things. As it is difficult to proclaim independence for oneself but not others, they put it in different terms: Those half-dressed people are fat, sweaty, provocative, showing off, smelly, hairy, threatening-looking and so on.
Yes, those are some of the things that benefit from a few bits of light cloth. Unless these people are on the beach, where it is inoffensive because that is the dress code."
