R.I.P petticoat, sorry it was genocide

I dare say that petticoats -- or slip skirts -- are facing genocide. These fine under-dresses have met their untimely demise without the benefit of a funeral, a burial or even marking of their graveyards.

It is maddening and saddening because nobody is mourning.
When did the petticoat get lost? Who is responsible for it? Did anybody intervene to stop the mass slaughter, which now threatens conventional underwear, paving the way for the thong and other queer assortment of petite lingerie?

The answers are: I don't know; I don't know and no.

Why did Kenyan fashion houses pull them off the shelves and replaced them with queer sorts of swimsuits called bykers and other ugly clothings that make Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist clerics puke. I need somebody at the Deacons to explain.
This debate has eluded the public, but it keeps on simmering in single-sex clubs, mostly where women gather to discuss their sexual escapades every Friday evening. These are unmarried lawyers, journalists, accountants, secretaries. But not pilots, doctors or engineers.

Facts: Women who do not wear petticoats have false hair, false nails, false eyelashes and their skins are covered by a thick layer of make-up. They look awful, just like a characters in a human-horror movies.

Fact: Women are increasingly desperate to get husbands, but the rules of natural justice won't allow. That is why they ditched petticoats and thought it was a vogue thing to do. I do not know how true that is because I do not wear one.

Fact: Women come to bars wearing bikinis ad miniskirts, not have fun, but to hunt for men. (my Otto Bakano colleague calls it Mkengele). Hey, it is time the hunter became the hunted.

"All disciplined women or girls ... those who do not like bitching around still wear petticoats. They love them because they know their purpose in society," my hometown neighbour Evans told me one day in a debate in the Graveyard, a drinking hole where broken hearts gather.
Evans and many like him, are convinced that the death of petticoats is to blame for the breakdown of self-confidence and perhaps discipline among women; traits that are essential among those who want to be successful mothers.

This is debatable, though, but Evans had a point. He argues that petticoats are a sign of decency and discipline in women. Their absence means we have lost a key pillar of the society, without the benefit of a fair hearing. Just look at primary teachers and deaconess in rural areas.

Let's start with the history of petticoats.

Wearing these undergarments was well underway by the 14-15th century, long before our African ancestors even knew underwears and knickers existed. But when Christian Dior, a well-known designer, re-invented and mordenised them at around 1947, they became an instant hit in the West, especially among teenage girls.

Historians argue that the intimate lingerie -- as they are called in the gossip pages -- were designed to improve the shape of a woman and restore a sense of confidence that is usually tampered with by behavioral change during pregnance or when their sexual hormones riot.
Any woman who wore a petticoat was respected by the society as true woman and accorded full credit. She was not treated like a sex object. If you doubt this, look at modern-day Tinseltown.

Petticoats, then were made of stiff/tough material so as to hold out and mantain the shape of skirts and dresses. ( But today, they are made of satin or cotton.) This created a dome effect around women's clothing. No wonder morden women, so imbued by hipsters and spaghetti tops, lack confident.
At that time, nobody ever thought of looking at the booty of a woman -- which today can get a woman a free beer and a taxi home. The petticoats did the trick and gave women some degree of dignity and decence.
In addition, they would be a complement for a desired large bust or hipsize. A massive, umbrella-like petticoat that was used in movies to depict Victorian fashion, was not just a trick to hide women's limps -- modern-day sex symbols. But when women realised the trick behind attracting men -- and getting a free lunch at Trattoria and coffee at Java House-- was in exposing the legs, the size of the petticoat started to reduce.

Yet again, when they realised the thighs could do the trick, these decent pants started vanished from upmarket stores. But women have never conceded that their desire to be sexual was also to blame for the loss of petticoats.
"Our modern dresses has an inner linings. We do not need petticoats anymore," one erudite lawyer told me recently, insisting to remain unnamed because she did not want her parents to know that she did not wear that revered piece of clothing.

Over the past decade, I hopelessly and needlessly watched girls refuse to wear petticoat, just like they refused to accept that feminism was a platform for ugly women to get to the mainstream.

Now, they said it was time to be sexy. The pill and demale condoms had come, so they had a right to spill their cleavage, shave eye-lashes, pubic hair and apply some brown powder onto their faces.

It is time to explore, expose and unwittingly dispose their anatomy. I remember the yellow silk or nylon petticoat that young girls wore at my elementary school somewhere in the White Highlands, when we were out for Physical Education (PE). They were fine young girls. They looked, acted and behaved like wanna-be decent women. Most of them passed their exams, got educated, got married, raised families and still go to church. I meet some of them these days and they are just the decent women. They are not by deluded by the pretentiousness of modernity. The trick is the petticoat.
But of late, things have changed, just as several people have spurned several theories about the petticoat.
In addition, women say they do not feel sexy in a petticoat. Like fish, men are attracted by bright objects. The more the brightness, the more and more men are attracted.
R.I.P madam petticoat, you were a fine undergarment, once upon a time.