Skirting the Law

I haven't posted a story about the history of the skirt in a while, but this item is too good to pass up. Yesterday the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, a southern Italian resort town, "has ordered police officers to fine women who wear short miniskirts or show too much cleavage, as part of a battle to raise what he describes as the level of public decorum," according to an article in the Guardian today.

Banning short skirts and arresting women for the length of their hemlines began long before the miniskirt was introduced in 1964, though Tunisia was the first country to ban the skirt altogether, soon followed by other African and Muslim nations, including Malawi, Madagascar and Swaziland. Twenty-six years later miniskirts were again outlawed in Swaziland in 2000 when it was believed that wearing them encouraged the spread of AIDS. Many men vocally defended the ban, vowing to rape any women they saw wearing miniskirts, saying, "They want to be raped and we're giving them what they want." The classic "they're asking for it" theory often comes up when a skirt ban is on the books. One example is from 2006, when then South African deputy president Jacob Zuma allegedly raped a 31-year-old AIDS activist because she crossed her legs in a knee-length skirt, signaling her desire to be raped, according to Zuma. "In Zulu culture you can't leave a woman when

Skirting the Law!

I'm a week behind on this story but it's so crazily skirt-centric I had to comment! Kyla Ebbert, a 23-year-old college student and Hooters employee, was nearly kicked off a Southwest airlines flight for wearing a white denim miniskirt a flight attendant deemed too short. She was removed from the plane, lectured in earshot of the passengers, advised to buy a less-revealing outfit from a gift shop, and then allowed to reboard anyway, as long as she tugged down her skirt and pulled up her scoop neckline. Shortly after that, another woman got the same humiliating lecture on a different SW flight, and was made to cover up with a blanket before takeoff. Un-be-lieveable. The women obtained legal counsel, natch, and appearances on the Today Show and Dr. Phil. But I think they need to rally the enthusiasm along the lines of Zoe Hinkle, the 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl who protested her school's Draconian dress code last year and marched in a blue denim miniskirt while waving a sign that read "Style is Freedom!" No doubt this story will be passed off as a joke (the airline issued a mock press release on the subject in what must be an attempt to steer public opinion into thinking the two women are flakes), but I think it's a story worth watching. Will Southwest Airlines start an official dress code? Can a flight attendant have absolute power to determine clothes appropriate for a "family airline" (the reason given for Kyla's reprimand) and not?