Kenyan Youth Despondency and the Question of Female Nudity

An anonymous woman in a miniskirt. Just how short is too short? Image courtesy fashionbyhe.com

That a group of young people, can for whatever reason, conspire to undress a woman is not only evil but highly reeks of hopelessness and a lack of excitement in the perpetrator’s lives. The creepy allure to humiliate an innocent woman and violate her privacy is something I find completely incomprehensible. Inasmuch as we would like to heap all the blame on the women for their strange choice of dress that barely leaves imagination any chance, the fact that some men think it’s their prerogative to set the dressing standards for ladies casts the entire society in very bad light and brings to question the community’s values.

Me thinks the real issue is not with the dressing; actually, this whole lunacy has all the hallmarks of a corrupted mind that has taken more than its enough share of beatings from a defunct social system. From grinding unemployment to lack of proper role models, the life of an average Kenyan youth has barely nothing to smile about. And so, what we are witnessing now is just a regurgitation of what the society fed its youth—when we think it’s funny to be caught with another man’s wife in some dingy lodging, then we outrightly lose the moral ground on which to stand and guide ‘the lost generation’ that is now disrobing our mothers and sisters in matatu termini in broad daylight while gladly filming and sharing the disgusting clips on phones and the internet.

Unless we identify and listen to the voice of reason amongst us again, then what we are seeing is just but the beginning of the beginning—the end is certainly nowhere near sight. Soon it will be women taking men’s trousers off in our markets. And where will this place our children? They will probably grow to think that dysfunction is normal; in other words, I won’t be shell shocked if people in the foreseeable future resort to walking all naked and showing their you-know-what because we’re a society so much preoccupied with matters erotology!

But there is still room for retribution and redemption. Let’s just reverse our social system back to where it ought to be. Let’s create more jobs than scandals and empower our young men who idle about bus stops preying on curvy women whose only crime is being successful and sophisticated. It’s time we put this negative energy into some good use.