Don’t you think that your shorts should be longer than your vagina?
So says a sign, most probably clawing at how women nowadays are becoming too bold or blasé about wearing shorts that have become to be too short for comfort, embarrassing even the usual suspect of ogres, I mean oglers.
Short shorts that show a lot of legs are nothing new. When I was growing up, there was the voluptuous Daisy Mae wearing “scandalously” short shorts or skirts.
She was a cartoon character in “Li’l Abner”, an American comics strip set in the rural United States that run from mid 30s to the late 70s.
Daisy Dukes
The naïve but scantily-dressed country girl was revived in the TV show “Dukes of Hazzards” in the late 70s, one or two years after Li’l Abner retired from the newspaper pages.
Named Daisy Duke, portrayed by Catherine Bach, the sexy girl popularized the cut-off jeans or micro denim shorts, now simply known as Daisy Duke.
How much of the legs or thighs or the singit a woman shows depends on the standards of acceptability.
You only have to look at the costume of Wonder Woman and even Darna through the years to gauge that change
In the 70s, there was also the “hot pants” of the London Look. But it looked decent by today’s taste; the inseam was two inches longer.
Still, it took a lot of courage for a woman to wear hot pants. Especially in those days when women were expected to behave “properly” by wearing dresses and not even long pants.
Daily Wear
Ironically, even if the hems were getting shorter as demonstrated by the minis, short pants were to be worn inside the house or, as in some women, beneath the minis. They were treated as undies. Before.
Today, short shorts have become a daily outer wear for women, young and tiger age, reed thin and obese. Inside malls and in jeepneys.
Women have become economically independent and are asserting more freedom: to wear what they want and be comfortable with what they wear.
Only, there is always the peril to overdo things. What women have sought to hide; they have exposed.
Pecking Orders
It is no wonder that short shorts are now called pekpek shorts. The term used to be hushed but now it is uttered matter-of-factly.
Pekpek, if you happen to be a foreigner reading this, means vagina. Filipinos say it as it is. Mind you, it is not pokpok (prostitute) shorts, thereby indicating that the wear has become acceptable to the public, and no stigma is being attached to it.
In the US, they are more coy. They call the short shorts, booty shorts, ascribing to the exposed butt cheeks.
Parents’ reaction to them has ranged from consternation to pride.
Parents Speak Up
In an NBC news report, a father from Utah resorted to wearing short shorts to telegraph to his teenage daughter that he wasn’t pleased by her wearing booty shorts.
“I was absolutely going for shock value”, said Scott Mackintosh.
With scissors, he cut his jeans crotch-high. Then in family gatherings, whether they dined out or played golf, he wore it to freak out his daughter. He said that his daughter got “better” about her choice in shorts. Temporary victory I guess.
Alyssa Royse, a writer and gym rat, didn’t know how to react when her 15-year-old daughter opted to wear booty shorts during their workout. She was worried about how other people would think about her child’s exposed “butt cheeks”.
“I love watching her work out. She’s is damned near flawless.”
“But the shorts. They are so short. They made me uncomfortable,” Royse declared.
Booty Shakes: No Shame in Being Sexy
Like Macintosh of Utah, Ms. Royse thought of going to the gym by wearing booty shorts herself to reverse psych her daughter.
But then Alyssa thought: “What would I really be telling her if I convinced her not to wear those shorts? That she should be ashamed of her body? There was really no way for me to say, ‘cover that up’ without saying ‘people shouldn’t see that’.”
“I don’t want her to be ashamed of her body. I have never seen her look so confident. So proud. So strong. And her body is magnificent. What is there to be ashamed of? Nothing.”
“She is not responsible for whatever I or some guy or girl feels looking at her. She is not responsible for other people’s shit, whether it’s horniness or shame. None of it.”
“There is nothing wrong with her being sexy. There is nothing wrong with someone feeling sexual feelings when they look at her. There is a lot wrong with my telling her that it’s her responsibility to police, control and mitigate other people’s impulses.”
“I would never ask her to cover any of it up. I would never want her to pander to my neurosis or society’s demonic need to control young women like her.”
To Wear Or Not To Wear
Pinays nowadays seem to be super confident parading in short shorts even if our women seem to be getting bigger and fatter like Michiganers, showing skin ripples and dimples.
What is positive about this is women being comfortable with their bodies, no matter what shape they are in.
My own view about this is that if you have it, flaunt it. Now, even if you don’t have it, as long as you are happy with it, strut to it.
That was how I thought about it when I was very young, and I don’t see any reason why that should change just because I am older.