Dress the way you want to be addressed” is a popular saying that buttresses the fact that the way you dress speaks a lot about you. This saying has, however, been compromised in recent times by our youths. Most of our streets, public places and institutions of higher learning are now adorned with indecent dressing. Ladies are the most culpable.

A dress is simply defined by Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary as “a piece of women’s clothing that is in one piece and covers the body down to the legs, sometimes, reaching below the knees or ankles.”

But for some of our female folks, the reverse is the case. Their own definition of dress is a piece of women’s clothing that is made in many pieces and exposes the body down to the legs and most times, flying above the knees to the lap.

Some ladies have thrown away their values and our beloved culture as Africans to embrace the western ways of dressing. They seem to have forgotten that a typical African woman is cultured and is expected to always cover the sensitive parts of her body. What most of our ladies put on as skirts, especially on school campuses, is just an inch longer than the underwear they put on such dresses. They struggle to sit down let alone bend down or stretch their legs. Apart from the skimpy and tight nature of these dresses, they are also transparent; revealing certain parts of their bodies to the glare and embarrassment of decent people. It is an equivalent of what my lecturer would call “mobile pornography.”

Some students are so engrossed in this ‘dress to kill’ mentality such that they have thrown decency to the wind, and even outdo the westerners they try to emulate. This indecency was recently advertised to the embarrassment of some of us during the 2012 student’s week of the Rivers State University if Science and Technology (RSUST).

The week which featured among other things, the ‘Old school Day,’ witnessed some female students marching within the campus with their low slung knickers (bom shorts), skimpy and body exposing tops, and afro weavons under the guise of mocking the old school style. Whereas, a little retrospect into 1960’s and 1970’s, one could hardly see young ladies – who are now parents, dressed in such manner.

Newspaper reports show that some students of the Federal Polytechnic, Auchi and Ambrose Ali University, Ekpoma, who dressed indecently were recently sent back home. Some disciplinary measures had helped the two institutions to improve and instill moral on their students. The authorities of the RSUST and other institutions in the country should emulate this.

While undergraduates, especially the female ones, are free to be fashionable, this must be done with some decorum and decency. We should not forget that the primary motive of attending schools is to acquire knowledge and be exemplary in learning and character. There is nothing bad in looking good and smart, but the way we go about it matters and tells a lot about us.

Our ladies especially should strive o jealously guard their dignity. Dressing indecently does not add to one’s beauty nor makes one a ‘big girl’ as many ladies wrongly assume. It rather takes away one’s dignity and exposes one to ridicule and embarrassment.

There is no doubt that a lot of sex related problems such as rape and other forms of sexual abuse will be reduced in various institutions of higher learning and the society at large if our ladies can strike a balance between modernity and modesty.

Ibigotemiari is of the Department of Mass Communication, RSUST, Port Harcourt.

Igonikon Ibigotemiari