The Manda Reconsiders Tube Dresses

On CNN this evening I saw a piece about Slut Walk in New York City. And I knew this was a phenomenon taking place in other cities around the U.S. and Canada, but it got me thinking about a post I wrote from Las Vegas this summer in which I was harshly critical of the fashion choices of female patrons of casinos on The Strip on a given Saturday night.

How do I reconcile my support of the Slut Walkers out there with my use of the term "grievous skankage" to describe the yellow tube dresses of the world?

Perhaps what follows from here will be a thin rationalization meant to justify some inherent hypocrisy in my own thinking. But I stand by my observations in Vegas. I take great umbrage at living in a culture that tells women their primary currency lies in wearing stiletto heels and a tube dress (and/or their ability to bake brownies, for that matter).

I take even greater umbrage at living in a culture that tells women that their primary currency lies in putting their sexuality on display and then punishes those women for doing so by telling them they were "asking for it" when some violent pervert assaults them.

From the standpoint of logic, that's a slippery slope. It starts with a tube dress and ends with the cut of a black t-shirt. It implies that sexual assault is about sex when it's actually about violence and domination. And it's the kind of thinking that assaults victims all over again.

I may dislike the tube dress on aesthetic grounds. I may dislike the tube dress as a result of my cultural concerns. I may make catty comments about the tube dress because the wearer of one of them nearly accidentally set me on fire in a bar. But I defend the right of the wearer to don the tube dress and drink until she can't see her own face AND STILL make it safely home at the end of the evening.

And if by some chance she doesn't make it safely home at the end of the evening, I expect law enforcement officers to treat her with respect and courtesy regardless of her fashion choices. I don't think it's too much to ask for in a free society that we can wear whatever we like without endangering our bodies or our access to justice. The worst thing a woman in a tube dress should have to fear is smartass remarks from people like me.