Ugly Burma Pants

One time, an evangelist told my mother that her daughters were wearing shorts outside the house. Ooh the scandal! My mother said yes, she knew. Then the evangelist said: why do you make your grown-up maiden daughters wear shorts? My mother, confused, said: “I didn’t make them wear shorts; they wore it themselves.”

My parents have never really had much concern for how we dressed up. And none of us dress up very much so perhaps that was the reason for the non-concern. They don’t like short skirts and dresses though, which is not an issue because we don’t like them much either, except on very special occasions. My mother had to be told by well-meaning church ladies a few times to make her daughters start to wear puan to church. If we got to church, she was pretty much fine. But apparently, that was not fine for GCBs.

Clothes are always a big topic of discussion, even in the 21st century. Especially with women. We are supposed to dress a certain way and even when it has no real bearing on our safety, we are expected to be on the right side of the discussion, should our safety be compromised. The onus is always on us. Even on good days, on ceremonial days, I’ve noticed women being asked to dress up to the nines in high heels and full make-up and heavy traditional clothes and still be “ushers on duty”. I don’t think it works. Perhaps to many people, we are best fit to look the part and not much else.

And shorts. Somehow we are supposed to not wear shorts. Like I mentioned above, this was not something I learned from my parents. So I have never really bothered “covering up” especially on hot days. Shorts are fun to wear and very un-complicated. They’re also easy to maintain and if they have pockets, bless them!

In some parts of Mizoram, because grown-up maidens are encouraged to not wear shorts, they wear those really loose, free-hanging, cotton-lycra blend, tie-dye looking quarter-pants we get from China via Burma that are a veritable eyesore. I hate them. They are so ugly. For things that do me no harm, I really hate them. 

But people swear by them. They seem to like them. And I admit they feel nice and cool perhaps. But exactly nobody looks good in them. Not even remotely nice. They make good women look like peasants in some sad Chinese agro-historical movie. The worst part is people think they are perfectly fine to wear outside! Where there are other people. This really, inordinately, pisses me off. I mean, go out in boxer shorts instead if it’s so hot out. They’re not the best options but they have pockets and they have shape, and on women, they’re really not underwear so much. Those quarter-pants though… 

On the upside, they wear out really fast which gives people a chance to do better soon. But they never learn. They just keep buying new ugly pants.

I feel like a fashion snob for suggesting this to people, but please, throw them out kindly.

NB: I realize I talk about my parents often like they’re liberal in their worldview. They really are not. They are as conservative as they come. Neither of them are the most conventional though, which often mis-aligns with their world-view. The reason they seem liberal when I talk about them is just that as we were growing up, they failed to see us as boys and girls. They simply taught us how to survive, eat well and be Christian. Anything else was secondary. Once we were all grown and they realized that we weren’t very conventional at all and have indeed not grown up to be lovely and sweet-temperamental maidens, alas, it was too late!