When is it OK to mock someone for what they’re wearing? If your answer isn’t ‘Never’, congratulations: you’re a nasty person at an age where we’re supposed to have transcended all this.
Now think of that someone being a woman. Still not allowed? But, then, how will we survive without trolling women for what they wear, without judging their morality on how layered they are – or not? How will we even live if we can’t flex our liberalism or conservatism through the length of a woman’s shirt, pants, sleeves, back or neckline?
Why, you must be wondering, is this seemingly senior woman journalist fixating on this as the world waits – rightly so – with bated breath for some form of a ‘deal’ between Iran and the US?
It’s not that crazy a reason. The past weekend saw All Eyes on Islamabad literally, as American and Iranian delegations tried to come up with an agreement to end the US-Israel-imposed war on Iran. Again: nothing much to do with clothes, right? Wrong. Someone saw a woman journalist’s clothes, decided they weren’t morally or ethically or fashionably acceptable and thought she should be mocked for wearing them. And that’s where it all started.
The journalist became the subject of posts on Facebook page after Facebook page, tweet after tweet, YouTubers, commentators – no one wanted to let go of the gravy train that was one woman’s choice of clothing. The irony of her not even wearing anything objectionable by conventional standards isn’t even a talking point here because it seems it just doesn’t matter.
You can come up with a myriad of excuses: I hate this person; their politics are awful; there are ethical questions around them. But the fact is simple – you choose to hurt women where you know they are most vulnerable. The policing of women’s bodies – whether through fat-shaming or through fashion – is the easiest way to shut them down. Too old for this; too fat for this; too ‘formal’, not formal enough; hair up; hair down; heels; no, no heels; Western; no way – Eastern. It’s endless and there is no winning this battle.
None of this is rocket science. And none of this is new. As Samantha Laine Perfas wrote her piece for the Harvard Gazette in September 2025, “Fashions have changed over the centuries, but one thing has not: attempts to police what women wear”. She quotes curator Christine Jacobson, who puts it even more bluntly: “I hope people realize for as long as women have been using fashion and clothing as a method of self-expression, it has also been a source of criticism and derision… It’s unfortunate how little has changed”.
I also have another peeve: we tut-tut over the Great Unwashed all the time – the sad incels, the badly spelt trolls, the predictable online rage. But what about those whom elite men and women protect? Those within our own spaces? Men and women who will applaud and cheer ‘their women and girls’ for their accomplishments, but feel little shame in pulling down women they think have class vulnerabilities that make them fair game for these attacks.
And just be clear: this is not confined to this one incident. I have spent the past few years arguing with older feminists about their entirely bizarre obsession with clothes too. What was once liberating – the act of, say, not wearing a dupatta – has, in many ways, shifted into something else entirely: another standard to be enforced. My students – many of them bright young women who wear the hijab – can take on the world. Their notions of freedom are far more expansive than mine were at their age. Which is why the mere idea of policing a woman for wearing or not wearing certain clothes is genuinely beyond me.
Maybe, instead of policing women’s clothing, we should be asking men (and women) to do better. We should expect better instead of telling our daughters and our colleagues and our students to appease warped ideas. That, though, is harder work and it is always far easier to measure hemlines than take on troll armies.
As for ‘appropriate’ clothing, I’m not sure what business anyone has telling reporters covering events that they can’t wear a pair of slacks, a top and sneakers – which, for the record, were the clothes in question. Expectedly, none of the men last week were put through the wringer this way. This points to a larger debate on women on TV which I hope one day to write about. My friend Bilal once told me that one of the reasons he quit journalism was the insistence by TV management to hire women based on how they looked rather than anything else.
Men, though, rarely seem to face this pressure. Their clothes don’t trend. Their bodies are not debated. Let’s face it, folks: clothes, when it comes to women, are never just clothes. They are a weapon to undermine and remind women where they stand.
So maybe next time you’re telling yourself how progressive you are, ask yourself why you choose to stay quiet when something isn’t trendy enough to be outraged about. Ask yourself why it is easier to scroll past or, worse, join in when the issue is the clothes of a woman you disagree with.
I’ll end with journalist Mehmal Safraz on last weekend’s storm in a teaspoon: “The reason for such moral policing, even by those considered ‘liberal’, is because people don’t like an opinionated and independent woman, especially if her opinion does not match yours”.
The writer heads the op-ed desk in this newspaper and teaches college and university students. She says stuff on X @zburki and can be reached at: [email protected]
