Shumu Haque
LIFE EDITOR

While half the world’s women are struggling for basic rights such as education, political participation or access to rudimentary health care, some of us are getting into the debate over which is the right shade of lipstick to wear or whether or not a certain style is in this season.

There is nothing wrong with loving fashion or being into make up. My fascination with clothes, fragrances, and accessories probably runs deeper than my desire to eat or drink. But I would have to say that it does not define me as a human being or as a woman – there are other aspects of life that keep me grounded.

Every time I turn on the television, except for a few news channels, every program is obsessed with a woman’s image, as objects whose principal use is to sell products, and look beautiful for the benefit of men.

Not even pre-pubescent boys or girls are getting away from the assault of the hyper-sexualized agenda of the media and the fashion industry.

Think it’s an overstatement? Try watching an episode of Toddlers in Tiaras.

As that reality show demonstrates, we live in a society where mothers take their pre-teen daughters to shop for padded bras, tweens take part in fashion shows where they dress provocatively with heavy makeup and revealing clothes, and girls as young as four- or five-years-old dress in provocative costumes for Halloween.

This seems a world apart from the days when women would struggle for the right to vote, or even when today they still fight to have a voice on their own reproductive life.

I think about the days of the women’s suffrage movement to gain the vote and feel that at that point, at least the women had a distinct goal against a very identifiable enemy.

Today, women’s enemies are hiding behind giant corporations that are trying to make profit out of our insecurities about our body images, or are trying to turn us into commodities under the guise of a fashion forward society.

If there is one thing that all this hyper-sexualization of women is succeeding in doing, it is diverting our attention away from the basic rights that are not only necessary to live our lives fully as women, but as human beings.  And that is the catch.

We live in a society where young women don’t have an issue with products being sold using women’s scantily-clothed bodies as a motivator, while some do have an issue with giving others a right to decide on their own reproductive life, a shocking example of which is the number of young women holding the placards at anti-abortion rallies.

Not knowing about our past or how hard our predecessors had to fight for each of our basic rights, often makes us take our rights to vote, go to school or to even wear anything we want as women for granted.

Maybe we should take a look at ourselves and think for a moment.

Is it for these images of womanhood that sprawl across billboards, that generations of women all over the world have given their sweat and blood?

Is it really that important for us to force ourselves to fall into the stereotypes of womanhood dictated by the fashion industry?

Or is it more important to become complete people, with an inner beauty that stems from education, intellect, knowledge and self-assurance, rather than superficial physical beauty alone?