Pakistan: A man trying to improve women's underwear
bbc.com
bbc.com
The attitude is just as prevalent in the west. I remember reading a relationship advice column where a young woman was distraught because her boyfriend didn’t like her lace panties and wanted her to wear plain ones instead. She thought that only a pedophile would prefer plain over lace.
Me, I just don’t see the sex appeal of using an objectively flawed product, but that’s probably the engineer in me speaking.
Is that really true? I see a lot of girls wearing tiny, sexy underwear all the time during summer or in the gym... and at least at home, I've never had any say at all about what kind of underwear my wife should use!
Is the author nudging at the idea that Islamabad's lingerie supplies have been likely choosen by the people running the market imports?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRMBWxfA2OM
Anyway, the Taboo aspect is interesting. It's funny to see that in Pakistan they have troubles with shopping underwear, if I recall correctly the guy who created Victoria's Secret had similar issues(which made him create the company in first lace).
Take a ticket to Istanbul, an ancients city in a muslim-majority country and you would be surprised to see that underwear is not a taboo there. Yes, the current islamist government banned women in bikini to be on billboards but even in conservative neighbourhoods things like bra are traditionally sold using the words like "hats for twins", waving the bra and announcing their amazing price.
It's even a theme in local sitcoms, for example? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUh1eJtzIeQ
You can even find sexy underwear in the catalogues of discount supermarket chains with islamic affiliations.
Haha, interesting typo.
Come on, now you're just testing us.
1. Nearly 22.6 million children (ages 5 through 16) are not in school in Pakistan. In fact, 44 percent of boys and 56 percent of girls in Pakistan do not go to school. Both boys and girls are being denied the right to an education; however, girls are disproportionately affected.
2. Early marriage interrupts young girls’ education. This common Pakistani custom places intense societal pressures that restrict girls from continuing their education once married. In fact, 21 percent of girls are married by their eighteenth birthday, and three percent are married by the age of 15. For every year a girl continues her secondary education, she reduces her chances of becoming a child bride by 3.4 percent. Currently, the government is working to raise the legal marriage age to 18 in order to protect these girls.
3. The Taliban restricts girls’ rights to education.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/top-10-facts-about-girls-educ...
Western kids are just as fiercely conservative as their Pakistani peers. But in the west it was the hippie generation that accidentally created all the norms that everyone here have to conserve and conform to. We are no more free than the Pakistanis to decide for ourselves what to believe.
One would imagine that the modern age, with it's Netflix, tinder, Hollywood movies would have pushed out mediaeval era conservative ideology.
Sure, there are differences between Pakistan and the US, but I don't think the differences are as wide as you imply. Western 'hollywood' values are extremely gender-restrictive and not "open" or whatever at all.
Ranked second lowest for gender equality.
https://pakistan.unfpa.org/en/topics/gender-equality-14#:~:t....
Apostasy is forbidden, homosexuality is illegal, religious minorities are often persecuted.
Reading up on the US history, it seems like 'being' gay was only legalized/protected by the supreme court in the early 2000s. And even, "Fourteen states either have not yet formally repealed their laws against sexual activity among consenting adults or have not revised them to accurately reflect their true scope in the aftermath of Lawrence v. Texas" [1]
> religious minorities are often persecuted.
That sounds just like America to be totally honest.
> Apostasy
In the late 80's the president couldn't answer a reporter if atheists are considered citizens or not. Yes the law is different here, I know that.
But the US has a recent history (last 20 years) of banning gay activities and oppressing minorities through the use of the law.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...
Edit: The report you linked shows the US gender gap as quite large, FWIW. The US is not near the top of the list - wayyy above second-to-last, yes, but again, not exactly the top. Below Colombia, Moldova, Bulgaria, etc- a host of countries that I think most Americans would assume are not as good as the US at gender gap - but in fact we are worse according to the report you linked.
But the US still also has the death penalty and in fact uses it to kill people who are mentally ill and unable to defend themselves. I'm not sure what this all proves.
Yes, America is ahead of Pakistan on laws. But are we really that great, so great that we wonder why other countries haven't caught up?
It looks like blasphemy was at least illegal in some states into the 2000s as well. Not the death penalty, sure, but still illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_St...
I'm not trying to say that America isn't more advanced with regards to its laws. We are. But we're not soooo advanced to the point where it makes sense to look down on other countries and wonder why they haven't "caught up yet" when we ourselves were and are doing horrible acts against minorities, even bound up by law.
Your source says the last conviction was in 1928, and prosecutions had long since died out except for 3 cases. If anyone tried prosecuting those laws today, they'd just get thrown out.
There are a lot of unenforceable junk laws like this on the books because nobody has gotten around to repealing them. They are not examples of a modern medieval legal system.
There are also racist real estate covenants. They are unenforceable and hence moot today.
I think also, that we had really horrible laws in our recent past, and it's a bit silly to wonder why the rest of the world hasn't caught up to our 'modern' view of things when the last 100 years of American media dominance in the world espoused much of the hatred of minorities and restrictive laws that we see in other countries today.
The US is better with our laws, but we have a recent history of having horrible laws that were actively enforced against religious minorities and others. Systematic racism is still prevalent in the US today, despite our progress.
We have a lot of inward looking to do to improve as well. I don't think it's much of a surprise that other countries have backwards gender laws when the United States has a rich and recent history of similar laws.
The latter took centuries to form. The former was just invented recently.