INDECENT DRESSING AMONG STUDENTS OF TERTIARY INSTITUTION

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DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
FACULTY OF SCIENCES
FEDERAL UNIVERSITY DUTSE
COURSE CODE:
GST 112
ASIGNMENT TOPIC:
INDECENT DRESSING AMONG STUDENTS OF TERTIARY INSTITUTION
COMPILED BY
SADEEQ AHMED GUMEL
FSC/EMT/14/0044

SUBMITTED TO:
DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL STUDIES
JANUARY, 2015
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TABLE OF CONTENT
TITTLE
1. Introduction - - - - - - - - - 1
2. Conceptional Analysis - - - - - - - 2
3. Argument - - - - - - - - - 3
4. Ethnical value - - - - - - - - - 9
5. Conclusion - - - - - - - - - 10
6. Reference - - - - - - - - - 10
INDECENT DRESSING AMONG STUDENTS OF TERTIARY INSTITUTION
INTRODUCTION
Globalization and modernization‟s effect in the third world countries has permeated almost all facets of indigenous values and norms. It has become so obvious that if you don‟t behave, dress or speak like the Europeans, you are seen as primitive, unexposed, and sometimes a deviant. One major social category that the craze for modernization has transformed is the youths. The youths in Africa now want to be exactly like their European counterparts in dressing, speaking, and behavior, etc.
This undoubtedly has several implications on the indigenous culture and social values as well as the health wellbeing of the people. Most worrisome of these however, is the adaptive culture of the youths, manifested in indecent dressing both in public gathering and around their environment which is strongly contrary to the traditional socio-cultural values of dressing. Indeed, the dressing pattern of undergraduate youths in Nigeria has gone from bad to worse as each year passes by. Most of them seem to have become addicted to indecent dress patterns. This act is fast spreading to even the prospective University undergraduates who have joined in the millennium fashion of crazy dressing pattern. Formerly, female youths were seen to be the worst gender among whom indecent dressing is found (Anadi, Egboka and Aniorobi, 2011; Igbinovia, 2005), but recently, their male counterparts are trying to meet up with them as the male are going almost naked too calling it the fashion of „Sagging‟. Yet, the health implications to those who engage have not been understood.
In Nigeria for example, „sagging‟ is a recent phenomenon. At the down of the 21st century, there was hardly anything like „sagging‟ of pants. But from around 2009 to date the dress
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pattern seems to have overtaken the youths in Nigeria especially those in the higher institutions of learning. From observation, out of every ten young people in the street, 2 to 5 sag their trousers (pants). This has led to cultural adulterations it erodes our moral values and norms which is the very essence of the African society. The trend is fast spreading to even the secondary school students in both private and public schools. This trend is fast threatening the values of Nigerian society as the youths are the major drivers of development in all ramifications. If the youths continue to go naked in the street, the Nigerian government may have more problem at hand than trying to solve the problems of unemployment or poverty due to its health related consequences. Writing on this, Igbinovia (2005) in a study stated that 60% of female undergraduate students of the University in Nigeria dress indecently. Similar to this, Anadi, Egboka and Aniorobi (2011) opined that it is the overwhelmingly indecent dresses of the girls that attract much public concern and emphasis on the part of the girls.So also, Ogidefa (Cited in Anadi, Egboka and Aniorobi 2011), carried out a research on indecent dress on Nigerian campuses, including types of dress and effects of the exposure, etc. Yet, little or no study has shown much concern on the linkage between indecent dressing habit and the tragedy of body deformity especially on „sagging‟ as a dress pattern.
CONCEPTIONAL ANALYSIS
WHAT IS INDECENCY?
Decent dressing can be explained as the proper way of dressing or the generally accepted way of dressing without exposing vital parts of the human body. According to Yahaya (2013) a decent dressing, of course, is part of human life, because it elicits respect and protects the person‟s dignity. Decent dressing by students attracts respect from lecturers, guards, classmates and most significantly protects you from being the target of rape and failure. Indecent dressing on the other hand is the improper and provocative way of dressing relative to the society or culture in which it is being perpetrated. This is to say that indecent dressing cannot be properly defined in isolation of the societal norms. What is indecent to you in say Nigeria is decent elsewhere. This brings to the fore the assertion of some schools of thought that indecent dressing is mainly due to “foreign culture.” Meaning this way of dressing is alien to the Nigeria culture and is therefore an affront to our very existence and identity. Egwim (2010), referred to indecent dressing in a more specific term as the attitude of someone, male or female that dresses
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to showoff parts of the body such as the breasts, buttocks or even the underwear particularly those of the ladies that need to be covered. In addition, there are those who believe that indecent dressing bothers so much on morality hence they ascribe some moral meanings to it. They say “indecent dressing is any type of dressing that the society abhors.” According to Olori (2003), this form of dressing is provocative, improper and morally unacceptable. These dress patterns are morally offensive and reveal the high rate of moral decadence in the society of our time. According to a submission by Oyeleye et al. (2012), indecent dressing simply means the deliberate exposure of one‟s body to the public. This practice is contrary to the acceptable norms and values of the society. Adeboye (2012) defined indecent dressing as the wearing of clothes that are not appropriate for a particular occasion or situation. She further explained that, it is not indecent to go naked in the bathroom, in labour room or in the bedroom with your partner. Answers .com (2013), describes indecent dressing as a way of dressing that is likely to shock or offend people. Indecent dressing can be understood based on the prevailing norms and acceptable ways of dressing relative to the society in which it is being perpetrated. It is therefore clear and lucid that the explanation of indecent
Dressing is subject to societal expectations. According to a submission by Oyeleye etal (2012), indecent dressing simply means the deliberate exposure of one‟s body the public. This practice is contrary to the acceptable norms and values of the society. Moral decadence onthe other is a reduction in the level of morality in the society. Adeboye (2012) defined indecent dressing as the wearing of clothes that are not appropriate for a particular occasion or situation. She further explained that, it is not indecent to go naked in the bathroom, in labour room or in the bedroom with your partner. Answers .com (2013), describes indecent dressing as away of dressing that is likely to shock or offend people. The statement further stated that parts of the body (usually sexual organs) that normally should be covered for girls would be their breasts, thighs and buttocks.
ARGUMENT
In this segment we are going to study the argument against of indecent dressing on the following view, the effect on academic performance and social effects.
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Education is concerned with the development of total personality of students and positive changes in their behavioral patterns. The attainment of the lofty aims and objectives of education cannot be realized unless we have in our university an environment that is conducive for effective teaching and learning. Discipline is absolutely essential ingredient of such an enabling operational climate. The attitudes and values of students constitute the critical factor in the level of discipline in the university. There is need for students to be aided in clarifying their values and modifying their attitudes so as to be able to make rational decisions in socially, relevant acceptable way (Nwagwu, 2000).A dress code is a set of rules governing what garment may be worn in a specific setting. For example, there are garments appropriate for sporting, some for going to parties, some for staying at home, some for going to lectures etc. It deals with a modest and good dressing in conformity with the environmental acceptable values. There is a saying that “YOU ARE ADDRESSED BY THE WAY YOU DRESSED Researchers like Adams, Mcpherson etc have shown that a student‟s conduct and performance are related to his or her clothing; therefore the university is concerned with the student‟s clothing. A student‟s clothing should not be a distraction or disruption to learning environment. Appearance should not distract classmates from important task of learning.
The problem of dress code is not new in Nigerian universities. Some faculties like Law and Medicines etc have dress codes in many universities. However, many faculties do not have any dress code. There is a need to create public awareness and to remind all students that they are expected to dress in an acceptable way in the university. A student coming into the university should realize that he or she is in an academic environment which is characterized with decency, peace, harmony and hard work. The student should realize that there is a set of rules although may be silent governing what garment must be worn. According to Rykrsmith (2012), what you wear affects others perception of you. The clothes we wear put us on a different mindset. It is therefore necessary to dress in the image one wants to portray oneself. Freeburg, Workman, and Lentz-Hee (2010), suggested that through dress code, the universities establish rules governing students‟ appearance. Adebayo (2013), advised that the African society is founded on a moral heritage that must be preserved and so the dress code should be observed with sheer determination and moral will. Dress Code has so many advantages some of them are: instilling discipline in the students; helping to preserve moral standard by lowering sexual abuse and harassment; creating less distraction to both the students and the lecturers; the much
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expected classroom order is made possible by helping the student to concentrate in his or her academic work; it shows sense of responsibility on the part of the students Decency, reputation and character formation are other benefits of dress code; it is all about acceptable image and prepares the student for labor market by instilling in them the habit of good dressing. Students are taught what sort of dress will serve them best professionally and socially. The university attaches importance to modest and good dressing. Many stakeholders have complained that many students both male and female are guilty of indecent dressing in the university. Dressing is not just a matter of taste, comfort and convenience. When a student dresses up, he or she should ask himself or herself if the dressing meets the following criteria:- decency, socially acceptable, not too expensive, not distractive or disruptive etc. Many students copy the ghetto mode of dressing. They pull down their pants and skirts below the waist showing their inner boxers or pants. This is what they call sagging. Some males plait their hair, some wear earring on one ear. These students do not know that no professional will dress in that manner and it is very unprofessional. Students in the universities are being prepared to be great future professionals. If the student‟s indecent dressing is not checked, by the time he or she leaves the university and goes into the labor market to look for a job with one eared earring if you are a man or sagged trouser or bushy hair and unshaved mustache, the student will find it difficult to get a job. The employers will see him as irresponsible. The same treatment will be meted to a lady who dresses as if she is going to a party with very big earring, transparent blouse or dress, very loud make up, skirt or dress above the knees etc Decent dressing deals with clean, neat and presentable clothing. This includes dresses, shirts and blouses with sleeves, clean pants including plain black or blue jeans with clean T-shirt that covers below the waist, skirt suits, dress or shirt with blazer, clean Nigerian attires, French suits, etc. The clothing should cover body parts including stomach, belly button, back shoulders, chest, and the legs below knees. Small earrings and light make up, low heeled noiseless shoes, clean hair are all parts of decent dressing. Indecent dressing is the mode of dressing or appearance that is disruptive and distractive. This mode of dressing or appearance includes: -
 Trousers and skirts worn below the waist (sagging)
 Singlet, spaghetti blouses, low neck blouses exposing the breasts
 Skirts with slit above the knees
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 Transparent dresses, shirts and blouses
 Attire printed with offensive or obscene wordings
 Revealing attires mini-skirts etc
 Bathroom slippers or bare foot
 Clothing including T-shirts which displays sex, violence, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, death, gang or hate
 slogans or picture.
 Tight trousers, shirts, dresses or skirts.
 Boggy trousers
 Non-natural colored hair
 Hats, caps, sunglasses
 Body piercing jewelry except the ears for women
 Chains, hand bands
 Tattoo with provocative writing or picture
 Noisy shoe heels etc
The list is actually in exhaustive. A student‟s dressing directly affects the way he or she thinks, feels and acts. Every student should always aim to be addressed as a professional and should dare to keep it up. An unsolicited and unwelcomed sexual behavior has been with us right from the time man appeared on earth. It is called harassment because the consent of the partner is often not sought or obtained. With the advent of modernity, sexual harassment has assumed different forms or methods. There has, recently been an increasing attention given to sexual harassment most especially among undergraduate students all over the world. Several underlying factors have been held responsible for this. There is consensus among researchers that sexual orientation and behaviour constitute the major factors in the etiology of sexual harassment. Equally Employment Opportunity Commission (2002) defines sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favours, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual‟s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual‟s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment. Generally put, sexual harassment could be done by a supervisor, co -workers,
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classmates, stranger, a friend, a client, a family member etc. several theories have been proposed to explain the concept. The sociological perspective holds that men are biologically programmed to be sexually aggressive and that sexual behaviour in work place is one aspect of that biological inheritance. This perspective therefore considers sexual aggression as biologically normal. The patriarchy perspective holds that the cultural structure of patriarchy (Rule by the Fathers) is the root cause of sexual harassment. Within this social structure, men have social, political, and economic power over women, who are defined by the system as sexual in nature. Discursive perspective holds that communication creates and shapes social reality. Those communication activities reproduce and sustain oppressive conditions such as sexual harassment. This perspective implies that to remedy sexual harassment, the way discursive practices sustain oppression must be analyzed and work toward changing those practices by changing the laws and norms of behaviour. Recently however, several factors are held as culprits of sexual harassment; these includes gender, dress pattern, physical attractiveness etc. Gender has been implicated in sexual harassment. For example, Studd $ Gattiker (1991) explained from a more biological perspective that sexual harassment is a natural outcomes of men‟s stronger sex drive and their roles as the sexual aggressors. Some researchers also perceive sexual harassment as a product of gender socialization process that facilitates marginalization of women both at work and in the society generally. For instance, Whatiel and Wasieleski (2001) found marginally significant gender differences in sexual harassment where female participants reported more gender harassment than male participants. Apart from gender being a factor in sexual harassment, Foster (1996) found indecent dressing to be another major factor. He found that girls who frequently wear indecent dresses perceive themselves as special, thus their predisposition to be sexually harassed. Similarly, Buunk, Siero and Vanden Eijnden (2000) found indecently dressed persons to be involved in the behaviour as a reaction to more beautiful persons in order to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Bojos and Marquet (2000) investigated common types of indecent dresses on campuses i.e the elitist, the amorous, the unprincipled and the compensatory indecent dressing. The elitist seductive dressers are usually from privileged and economically empowered background. They often flaunt their salient features like the breast, and pubic in attempt to promote themselves which make them very prone to sexual harassment. Bojos, Marquet and McPhal (2000) found that most of such students‟ parents are in the upper classes. That they always try to maintain an above average
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academic performance as part of the seduction. Amorous indecent dressers are sexually seductive, but often avoid real intimacy. They simply play games by deceptively seducing their preys for economic purposes. The unprincipled indecent dressers on the other hand are unscrupulous, deceptive, arrogant and exploitative. In contrast to the others. The compensatory indecent dressers do so to cover up for their feelings of inferiority. They only try to create illusions of being superior and exceptional on campus by dressing indecently. One major finding about indecently dressed females is that, they have maladaptive ideas about themselves particularly the belief that they are pleasurable and deserve to be treated as such. Carvajal, Garner and Evans (2005) in their study found support for this hypotheses. They found such beliefs by the females to hamper their abilities to perceive their experiences realistically and that they often encounter problems when their indecent dressing clash with an experience of relationship failures. The twenty-first century heralded the emergence of the obnoxious purported sexual harassment of female students by some lectures in tertiary institution in Nigeria, Yobe State University inclusive. The complaint was that some male lectures demanded sex from female students in exchange for better grades. The media reported many students complaining of being routinely propositioned by lecturers during working hours. Baine (2008) explained that sexual harassment is basically about power, that is, it depends on who has more power. By implication, a female student can equally sexually harass a lecturer in the way she dresses. Indecent dressing that expose the breast, buttocks and thighs constitute some forms of sexual harassment. Physically attractiveness is another factor in sexual harassment. Evolutionary Psychology posits that physical attraction in human is related directly to sexual selection and reproductive success. This is why humans have viewed certain features as attractive because these features are evident in healthy individuals (Fink and Penton Voak, 2002). Researchers also show that males are more influenced by looks. Researchers such as Feingold (1990, $ 1991) and Sprecher (1994) found males to value the physical attractiveness of the opposite sex. Even though there are advantages of being beautiful and attractive, atfield and Sprecher (1986) reported that there is also an ugly truth about beauty. Those exceptionally attractive individuals are prone to unwelcome sexual advances or resentment from persons of the same sex. According to Dion, Benscheiid and Walster (1992) physically attractive people are perceived in a positive fashion than the physically unattractive defendant. It is common knowledge that attractive men do not need to sexually harass women. They can always get all
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the sex they need without resorting to harassment. In most instances, sexual advances by attractive men are unlikely to be taken as harassment. Similarly, men would most unlikely be motivated to harass unattractive women.
ETHNICAL VALUE
Africa has a very rich culture that she needs to be proud of and preserve for posterity. But the unfortunate situation is that most cherished African values are fast fading due to non-patronage and modernization or acculturation. Today‟s youths cannot tell very well what these values are. For instance, the beautiful hair braiding typical of African ladies are being traded for hair “roasting” in saloons, modern and dignifying dress patterns are giving ways to the skimpy, transparent and provocative dresses found all around today. Many of these youths that dress immodestly may not even know what is wrong with the way the dress because nothing suggests to them that is wrong. Their parents applaud them in those dresses, do not even ask how they came about those dresses and when they appear in public, they are cheered by their mates and friends and to make the matter worse, all around them, what they see on people is not reasonably different from what they wear. Their home videos, televisions and Internet providers do not differ either in the contents of what they relay as programs. How can these youths be different when the society has no good moral values as legacies to bequeath to them? It is odd for a vulture to look different in the midst of other vultures. Skimpy, transparent and or body exposing dresses are known in ancient Africa to be the dress pattern of prostitutes or whores. Most ladies found in such dresses are always negotiated for sex or social intimacy because they are most times thought to be without husbands. Apart from this notion, most campus ladies that dress this way engage in prostitution and commercial sex to be able to sponsor and sustain these forms of dresses. The cumulative effect of this is unwanted pregnancies, HIV/AIDS infection and death There is the likelihood that ladies who dress indecently or provocatively could be prone to sexual harassment and or rape. These forms of dresses suggest that such ladies need attention and that they are irresponsible and so there are always irresponsible men to dialogue, lure or force them to bed for sex.
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CONCLUSION
From the research findings, it is obvious that the absent of dress code has created the high rate of indecent dressing. This had manifested in forms of distraction, lack of academic focus, sexual harassment, cultism, loss of integrity etc. There is a high indication that many stakeholders are worried and would like the way forward. The higher institution should be ready to legalize and implement dress code and students have shown willingness to observe it when it is legalized. An institution is a place for effective teaching and learning. It is highly capital and labour intensive. It‟s a place for hard work, peace and respect for one another. Therefore, there is need to put in place all that will help the stated goals of the institution to be achieved so that the grandaunts will sincerely be found worthy in character and knowledge. In order to curb indecent dressing on campuses, very practical initiatives must be embarked upon to educate the student populace about the potential dangers associated with it. This is necessary to prevent further decline in the academic performance of the institution. Recommendations aimed at addressing indecent dressing should be directed towards finding a lasting solution to this menace. Since it is evident that indecent dressing bothers so much on morality, it will be prudent that students are taught lessons on morality and the strict adherence to our cultural norms. The elucidation of the good aspects of the culture by scholars to students will also go a long way to help in eliminating indecent dressing from campuses, because indecent dressing is partly caused by the infiltration of foreign culture into the country.
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