Because a freedom policed beyond the ambit of the section 36 limitations clauseⁱⁱ is neither reasonable, nor justifiable. The Johannesburg taxi men of 2008 beat and stripped a woman for wearing a miniskirt, parading her naked around the taxi rankⁱⁱⁱ. Six years later, Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, signed into effect the ‘Miniskirt Law’, while the then Minister of Ethics, Nsaro Buturo, could be heard sincerely remarking that the “vice of miniskirts” was a traffic hazard that must be put to a stop^iv. Everyone now openly knows that, from the moment that they are born, girls are forced to submit to patriarchal creeds and convictions without question, whilst “boys will be boys” persists as an antique anthem celebrating the quality of a blithe-like freedom that is deceptively intrinsic to the nature of males. In short, boys are not forced into dresses and the beings who are shape-shift into a strange and erotic thing. Simidele Dosekun captures this phenomenon perfectly when she writes:

It is an identity that is violently foisted upon the child-bearing faction of the human race. However, on the other end of the spectrum, an uncomfortable event occurs when a man decides to bind himself in a dress, turning himself into the effeminate image of gay pride, or a “moffie” (often a disrespectful word) as he is popularly referred to in certain coloured communities of South Africa. This event highlights an important perspective: that a woman is a lesser being and wanting to be like her, or exhibiting traits that are considered feminine, signals the depreciation of masculinity in an individual who must not be taken seriously; it is like the telling of a self-deprecating joke that completely misses the mark and lands in cringe-terrority. Men displaying “womanish” traits are not considered “King”, even by their female counterparts. Empathy, compassion and meekness do not fit into a pair of chinos.

A woman acting and dressing like a man, however – regardless of her sexuality – is a dangerous and threatening subject. In 1912, a woman could be jailed for wearing trousers and Luisa Capetillo became the first woman in Puerto Rico to land this achievement^vi. Before that, Elizabeth Smith Miller acquainted Amelia Bloomer with the freedom of the “Turkish dress” – now known as the Bloomer due to Bloomer’s fierce promotion and advocacy for the garment^vii; and then there is Mary Edwards Walker, well ahead of her time in 1913, who gets arrested a second time for wearing trousers at the modest age of 80, adding onto the growing list of significant triumphs in American fashion history. Everyone loves how women’s continued disobedience and rise to power was successfully tailored by Coco Chanel^viii and the irreverent Les Smoking Suit of Yves Saint Laurent^ix. ‘The Menswear Phenomenon’ taking hold of the West enforced the image of a masculine woman who was mentally superior to the commodified observation of her body and who demanded to be recognised, because she is an equal.

In Africa, with her multi-layered influences of traditional, colonial, domestic, international, and neo-colonial fashion, women striding into trousers, though widely accepted as a norm, is still an on-going event. There exists an abnormal number of fossilised commandments. Schools, particularly those with a strong religious fixation, command that girls wear skirts.

Culture commands that women wear skirts at cultural events and gatherings. Fathers command that their daughters never walk under their roofs in trousers. It is in this context that common sense arguments for the practicality of trousers turn into political defiance when women, disregarding juridical and legal sanctions of their image, seek to destroy their objectified identity through wearing the pants and a matching blazer that emotes rigid, padded shoulders.

And what does it mean to wear a suit; to wear a subverted statement of our sexuality and gender? On August 7^th, my sister’s head caught the buzzcut season’s flames. In minutes, she was completely bald and then, excited and inspired by her culturally taboo bare- headedness and the African les sapeuses of the fashion religion known as La Sape, we had the idea to celebrate our womanhood by taking pictures for women’s month – but in trousers and jackets. We raided our closets for our finest threads and went marauding – a complete success when we found the horses, too.

The freedom to execute masculinity on our female bodies was an interesting experience. Women’s fashion has the most varied tastes, operating under heavy codes of moral correction vis-a-vis the fetishised and mannequin-ised form of the wearer. In a dress or skirt with a longer hemline, a woman is wife material. In the miniskirts and skimpy clothing of what Ariel Levy aptly refers to as “raunch culture”^x, she is the self-liberated WAP. In trousers, she marched into the workforce at the advents of both World Wars, conducting hobble skirt races for leisure and laughing with derision at the hazardous insistence that her legs stay tied together.

I believe that our shared experiences as women have allowed us to curate an identity that is both masculine and feminine: the andr and gyne, a theme that was progressively celebrated by Zanele Muholi’s observation of lesbian pageants through her photography. The series, titled Miss Lesbian, reconstructed the visibility of the rare stages where beauty is performed on masculine female bodies^xi. However, being androgynous and wearing clothes is not an innate characteristic of one’s sexual experience of themselves. The androgynous being is powerful and empathetic, compassionate and assertive, the strong and silent type of 1956 when they marched to the Union Buildings in protest against the proposed amendments to the Urban Areas Act^xii, because being about ending the silence hanging over the suffering that women’s bodies and identities are subjected to is far too important. The trauma caused by the “gendering process” proves that it was never necessary to wrap ubiquitous habits of self-emmolation around the feminine psyche.

In the air-brushed society of fashion and HD, conversations about femininity continue to reach for the blurry ideal that conjures up the personality of the trouser alongside that of the dress – which is also beginning to show teasers of debuting its return in menswear fashion, nestling itself into the cracks of society’s collective cognitive dissonance. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, the realisation that we were wrong about ourselves and one another, but it is a wrong that must be burned at the pyre and transcended.

The present-day message is clear: modest or raunch, women are asserting the right to build their own identities that are independent of phallic narratives. Arguments for or against being “girly” or “boyish” are being deconstructed to reveal social constructs that exist due to centuries of conditioning. A well-rounded woman (and man) is left to be comfortable with who she is, not forced to repress aspects of her personality. Suits and dresses are both symbols of power, illustrating women’s depth, adaptability and multi- faceted characters and experiences. As Niariu of Les Amazons remarks, “Femininity [and masculinity] are in everyone, male or female.”^xiii

After all, a girl on fire is not just a girl.