Even as every self-respecting fashionista (thank God, this year the wretched ‘recessionista’ is out!) around these parts tries valiantly to contain the corseted hysteria that bubbles within our breasts at the anticipation of that force of nature that will be Fashion’s Night Out, we’re reminded almost daily that the world’s women aren’t all faring as well as we’d have hoped they would in 2010.

The recent disturbing Time magazine cover depicting 18-year-old Aisha, the Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband while her brother-in-law held her down, keeps popping up in my head every time I sit down to add another item to the ever-expanding list of goodies I want to shop for come September 10, or as I like to call it: My Black Friday. Odd that such a capitalist concern like FNO brings out the humanitarian in me. But I see Aisha often now in my mind’s eye, headscarf slightly back, revealing lustrous black hair, gazing boldly at me, slightly sideways, daring me to flinch, to look away from her ravaged beauty. And I think about the freedom I have to make decisions about my life — even mere fashion ones. The fact that I can look forward to a shopping spree underscores how good I have things. This is the universe’s little memo, I suppose, its reminder to me when I’m prone to complain, about how lucky I am to be a woman living in this part of the world.

Listen, one can get bogged down in a debate about whether or not that arresting cover featuring the noseless Aisha was manipulation by a struggling Time, a desperate cry for readership in the face of declining sales, but the fact is the girl’s savage mutilation, occasioned by the simple fact that she tried to escape her in-laws’ oppression, is an uncomfortable reality and part of the regular occurrence of violence aimed at women under the Taliban’s brutal rule. As Nader Nadery of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recently told the New York Times, there has been “a big increase in intimidation of women and more strict rules on women” in that country.

As unfathomable as it is to me, there are women in parts of the world who don’t have the luxury of making a simple decision about how they live, let alone something as negligible as the clothes they wear, and consequently, can’t look forward to a simple and fashionable night out shopping with friends, spending their own money any way they choose to. Shopping, which is as much a rite of passage for some women as childbearing is for others.

The incredible energy and excitement generated by it aside, Fashion’s Night Out is, for me, about the orgasmic clothes- and shoe-shopping experience of all those big fashion destinations of the world, transplanted here on The Rock. No surprise since I’m the girl who, in third form, during career day discussions, made potential life-altering career choices based on whether or not I’d be forced to wear a drab uniform. Clearly I thought then, as I do today, that a woman’s clothes ultimately express who she is.

Tala Raassi, a young fashion designer in the US, shared what motivated her to leave her home in Iran in the May issue of Marie Claire magazine. It was her 16th birthday and she’d gone to a friend’s house to celebrate with about 30 people, both male and female. She wore the traditional clothes an Iranian young woman would wear: scarf, black coat, pants under her skirt. Only, when she reached inside the house, she shed her layers, opting to remain in a black T-shirt and miniskirt. Suddenly, the religious police, government-funded groups that enforce Islamic morality, burst into the house, guns flailing. In Iran, “indecent” clothes like miniskirts are illegal. So is listening to music not approved by the government and partying with the opposite sex.

I know, right?

Raassi panicked and ran out the house, knocking on neighbours’ doors seeking refuge, but was hunted down by officers who angrily tossed aside the copy of the Koran she always carried with her, as though she’d blasphemed, before handcuffing her and carting her and her friends off to the local jail. After five days of being locked up under less-than-desirable conditions, her punishment was handed down: 40 lashes.

I’ve seen women in miniskirts that are crimes against nature, I’ll give you that. But the idea of the state telling a woman, let alone a 16-year-old girl with the legs and body for it, that her fashion choice, even behind closed doors, is a crime is unimaginable to me. When will the ninnies of the moral majority finally understand that you can’t legislate a person’s integrity?

I was brought up in a conservative Christian household. The women didn’t wear trousers, no-sleeved clothes, any form of jewellery except wristwatches. (I mean, I didn’t get my ears pierced until I was in my twenties. Which probably explains why I ended up with five holes, instead of a perfectly acceptable two.) This was all to benefit our modesty. Or so we were told. But as someone who was always quietly in love with clothes and fashion, how could I reconcile myself with that? The truth was, I couldn’t. Like Raassi, I did switcheroos in the ’80s. I remember sneaking red nail polish from home, during my first year of university, and polishing my fingernails there, under a tree. In the evenings before I went home, I’d work feverishly with loads of remover to get rid of that obdurate Brucci stain to the surface of my nails. Amid the wayfarer Blues Brothers sunglasses rage of the day, and (gasp) the travesty of acid-washed jeans, I folded over the waistband of my jeans skirt so that it would transform into a miniskirt because, really, what 18-year-old girl doesn’t want to show off her legs? And I bought clip-on earrings and an ankle bracelet as thick as a slave’s shackle I’d slip on as soon as I was out of my parents’ eyesight. Here’s the thing: the repression imposed on me didn’t make me any more devout; it merely caused me to become more adept at scheming. How free I felt for those few hours that I broke the rules. I had, even then, a strong sense of who I was meant to be, fashionwise. I didn’t need to dress like a nun to respect the tenets of the personal spiritual beliefs I was committed to, which differed wildly from those of my faith. But I also knew instinctively then what Tala Raassi came to discover after escaping Iran: when it comes down to it, fashion — not a bunch of rules — equals freedom.