by Maria C Collins

Created on: September 30, 2008

We, the women of the World have tottered about on platform shoes, breaking our ankles by falling off them. We have looked like pantomime boys in knee breeches, we have looked like expectant mums in smocks and babies in pastel mini dresses. Perhaps it is time to call a halt to the madness that is dictated by merchandisers and designers and passes for fashion.

Fashion can be fun but sometimes it can be dangerous. In France one of the fashions this summer was for women's' trousers that look like very exaggerated harem pants with the part of the garment which joins the two legs together just above the knee. This means that a woman or girl wearing this item could not possibly run away from any danger. Did we older women really fight all the battles for equality so that our granddaughters could hamper themselves in this manner? At least when we wanted to run all we had to do was slip off our high heels.

Some fashion trends take no account of the suitability of outfits for weather conditions. The fashion for very short tops which leave the midriff and lower back uncovered coupled with jeans which only reach the hips are not practical wear for winter. Yet one sees teenaged girls, shivering and blue with cold, dressed like this when there is snow on the ground. Presumably they dress in this way to appeal to teenaged boys but it does not seem to occur to them that blue is not an attractive colour for skin.

Why is it that so many people follow fashion so slavishly even when they patently look ridiculous in the latest idea of the fashion gurus? Some fashions are only for the youngsters for example very short shorts are lovely on teenaged girls but gravity strikes the older woman and they look awful on a woman of sixty. I can vouch for that I saw a lady who must have been at least sixty-five wearing a pair of short shorts and, trust me; it was not a pretty sight.

The fashion collections shown at the great fashion shows in London, New York and Paris are sometimes ludicrous. If any ordinary person were to wear some of these creations in the street, the police would arrest them and take them to the local home for the mentally bewildered as being in need of care and protection.

Some designs are not for real women at all but for anorectic ten year olds. The fashion world has caused so much harm amongst teenaged girls by constantly showing models that are underweight for their height. We have all heard of disreputable model agencies that put normal healthy and already slim young women on terrible diets in order to make them the non-shape that some designers prefer.

Why should women slavishly follow what some merchandiser has decided they should buy this season? Why do not women say "enough is enough" and refuse to be taken in yet again. Let us rebel against fashion, and then we can all wear what suits our particular shape and height and what appeals to us. Our teenaged girls can grow up healthily without trying to mould themselves to an impossible and dangerous ideal. Just think what a riot of ideas there would be although it would be interesting to see what happens to those who would not know what to wear without someone else telling them. Let fashion anarchy rule.

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