Recently, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat commented on ‘ripped jeans’ while attending a workshop organized by the Uttarakhand State Commission for the protection of child rights in Dehradun. Due to this, he invited controversy over it. During the workshop, he said that “ripped jeans pave the way for societal breakdown and is a bad example parents set for children”. His views and comment over ‘ripped jeans’ didn’t go well with women across different age groups. Just after few hours, hashtags related to ripped jeans started trending online. Women from different fields started showing their strong disagreement over this; right from Bollywood star Kangana Ranaut to singer Sona Mohapatra. Apart from this, other celebs such as Gul Panag, Koena Mitra and Navya Nanda too joined this.
This issue caught fire quickly when images started flooding the social media platform with the hashtag ‘ripped jeans twitter’. Some even tagged the Uttarakhand Chief Minister in their post and put caption like “Rip misogyny”, “clothes don’t define character”, “Ripped jeans better than ripped brains” and many more such captions to show their dissent over his remark. These kinds of controversial remarks over the clothes of women have been done before too. And each time, women have given a strong befitting reply to such things. But the sad part is some people like MP minister Kamal Patel are supporting the views of Uttarakhand CM and are encouraging the wrong thinking and mindset towards women.
In simple words, clothes are not criteria for defining a woman’s character. And people should stop commenting and lecturing women on what they should wear and what they shouldn’t. Because putting unnecessary pressure over women in the name of the ‘culture’ and ‘set societal norms’ is not justified at all in any way. Clothing is a person’s personal choice, so no one holds the right to control and dictate women over this. It’s high time that people should start respecting women’s choices and let them be free. And most importantly, let them be what they are.