AS I have threatened before, were I in much better shape I would venture to tear off my clothes at the power and light company in protest against my escalating utility bill, but my lame attempts to bare a little flesh — a blouse with the last few buttons undone to allow a sneak peak at my abs-in-progress — are usually met with strangers of all kinds asking me to ‘button up, please’.

But showing a little belly fat and showing off your behind are two completely different things, I think.

So I can’t help but betray my conservative sensibilities when I observe a trend looming on the horizon which leaves me more than a little alarmed at the thought that soon our city streets will become the promenade for a lady’s wardrobe which leaves little to the imagination and me at odds with planting my behind on public seating.

As usual, the ladies wear their leggings — a very fitted type of clothing covering the legs — but of late their leggings appear to be of the thin and sheer variety, through which you could clearly see the wearer’s unmentionables. Normally, I would ascribe this to a kind of casualness — something akin to throwing on a baseball cap on a bad hairday, or not caring over much about VPLs (visible panty lines).

But it was when I was nearly blinded on Sunday in Old Harbour after the sun broke through a woman’s chocolate brown leggings and glanced off her reflective silver French cut undies that I realised a fashion statement was being made. Clearly the woman couldn’t claim that the leggings had worn thin in the rear, or that she didn’t have a mirror or cared enough to look in the mirror before she left the house, because otherwise she was all done up: tumbling hair, long nails and eyelashes, groomed eyebrows and big jewellery. And because it was still a little early, I couldn’t tell if she was coming from the club or going to church. But needless to say, her dress, or lack thereof, was deliberate.

No longer are we content to wear the tightest and tiniest of garments to outline our figures, or even be coy about our g-strings peeking out from the top of our low riding jeans (the ‘whale-tail’ as it is officially known), no Siree. These days we’re wilfully engaging in a game of ‘the Emporer’s new clothes’. And even if the ‘whale-tailing’ trend for women might have waned when clothing designers shifted their focus from low-slung jeans to high-waisted trousers, it appears as though the fashion rebels among us have found a new way to ensure that our panties remain provocative garments intended for public display of our barely clothed behinds.

And so I wonder, is this the women’s version of the ‘belt-under-batty’ look that our men have been championing over the last few years? The fashion historians will tell you that “sagging” is wearing pants below the waist, and therefore revealing much of the underwear. Lee D Baker, dean of academic affairs at Duke University, believes that sagging was adopted from the United States prison system where belts are sometimes prohibited to keep prisoners from using them as weapons or in committing suicide by hanging themselves.

The style was later popularised by hip-hop artistes in the 1990s and has since become a symbol of freedom and cultural awareness among many youths or a symbol of their rejection of the values of mainstream society.

But what of our women? And what, may we ask, is the baring of our g-strings a symbol of? Not since Monica Lewinsky revealed her g-string to then president of the United States, Bill Clinton, have we been largely inundated by something so little. Once the domain of bodybuilders and strippers, the g-string has become a lingerie staple over the past few years and in that it is very democratic — one size truly fits all — almost every grown woman can claim to own one.

While I am all for clothing being an outlet for the expression of one’s individual style, the lack thereof, I am afraid, has little to do with women’s rejection of mainstream society’s mores and norms. This overt calling attention to one’s naked booty has me wondering what’s going to happen next.

On another note, the police commissioner’s office just released new figures that indicate an increasing trend in violent crimes against women. There were 748 reported cases of rape last year, 44 more than in 2010 and 47 more than in 2009.

Ladies, please, let’s keep our clothes on.

scowicomm@gmail.com