by Rajpal Abeynayake
Almost everybody I know who cared to comment, predicted that I will be writing about miniskirts this week.
And you ask me how they got that one right?
The answer can be traced to what somebody said about the Mahinda Rajapaksa government. “As long as they are in power, there will be something to write on.”
So thanks for that. The war is over and the scribes must have fodder, and somebody has raised his hand and volunteered. We are extremely gratified. As long as they are in power certainly we would have a surfeit to comment upon — though what happens after that is an entirely different matter altogether ...
The powers that be are downplaying the skirt controversy, tugging at the hem as it were. It is as if somebody pulled the mini down and now wants to gently coax it back up. A little bird tells us that it all has to do with tourism and what not.
Miniskirts are not to be banned — how can that be done when there are so many tourists wearing those itsy-bitsy bikini things, polka dotted or otherwise? That would be seriously bad for the bottom line in a particularly growth conscious year, and any four-year old who can only see from below a mini (bless him ...) would have told you that.
But the thing is that much of a show has to be made about banning miniskirts, even though eventually there is no chance at all that this rather sparse and cloth-saving garment would be outlawed.
And making a show is exactly what happened. T. B Ekanayake, a minister with a spotless past, as any Liberty Plaza janitor would tell you, decided that he should tell a panel headed by none other than that sage and versatile professor Carlo Fonseka to look right up the miniskirt, sorry miniskirt issue I mean, and decide whether the objectionable garment is ripe for the banning.
Panellists
To this day, panellists are with magnifying glass in hand, looking at minis and micro-minis, and we hear that if they suffer any heart attacks at their age, it could verily still legally be considered as an occupational hazard.
This is why one newspaper, we hear (not of this group of newspapers) was chastised for claiming in headline that the ‘rumours about banning miniskirts are not true.’ Calling the whole exercise of deploying a panel to look into the viability of banning the miniskirt a ‘rumour’ did nothing to highlight the value of the entire show that was put on about the intended banning of the garment.
What is important is not to ban, but to say that the intent is there to send all of these viles to a place beyond Kingdom Come.
This is in the lines of mathata thitha.
Do everything possible to indicate that the state is doing the maxim to wipe intoxicating liquids off the face of the land any time now — while letting beer be, and making access to the harder stuff a lot more easier to boot.
This way you could say that these people do not merely skirt controversy — they insist on entering where angels fear to tread, and they wallow in it, be it a warehouse full of miniskirts, a beach full of umbrella lovers or a glory old piss-up in a tavern...
That way they suffer from some eternal itch, or at least the six year old itch as long (as they can technically hope to be in power for that period) — which is of course a very good thing, as it gives us practitioners in the scribbling vocation heaps to write about.
But what got up the Minister to consider telling old Prof Carlo to ban of all things the miniskirt is still a big poser. I mean it could not have been an eeni- meeni-mini-mo kind of whimsical thing, no? It would have on the contrary been a certain sort of a crusade embarked on with some significant missionary zeal.
That an ageing wizened elder such as the minister should have taken up matters against 18-year-old females, should give you an indication of the kind of things people could get up to when they possess the kind of Victorian zealotry, where they cannot see something without actually banning it. You ask me how it is that I surmise that any war against miniskirts would necessarily be one against 18-year-olds who have barely come of age?
That one is easy, because if the miniskirt ban is for those over 25 years, I would probably support it with every sinew of my being for purely aesthetic reasons, of course, with perhaps the zeal equal to my opposing the ban on miniskirts for those younger than 25 — whose right to wear anything they choose particularly if it is below the belt, I’d defend to my death.
So rest assured that miniskirts will not be banned any more than ministers would be, even though I would probably swoon at the latter proposition at the risk of being called crypto-fascist, but that is out of point ...
No, miniskirts will not be banned any more than presidential progeny will be banned from playing rugby, just for instance.
I can remember a former tourism minister Achala Jagoda saying when queried, that he will ban the bikini if he had to, because getting ‘qualitative’ high spending tourists as he explained it, was better than getting tourists who get by on a shoestring. I explained that he had to make that g-string and then I would concede he is beginning to make some sense. The argument against the bikini and the mini can be the same: that these people who skimp on clothing cannot be high spenders? But yet the authorities are still not banning either garment, so what gives?
Ah, I know — it’s not the wearers’ wallet they are after; but behind every bikini or micro-mini clad being, somebody has told the tourism minister — there’s always a very large overdressed type with a big fat wallet. So now they have realised that all is well because usually he is dressed enough for the both of them, as a rule of thumb at least.
So it turns out minister smart, but mini smarter.
 How predictable can we get? Almost everybody I know who cared to comment...){kind=link}
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