The Right to Bare Arms

I remember hearing from two of my friends who had recently come back from a stint living in Shanghai, that there were signs in the subway cars notifying commuters that short shorts were not permitted.

Shanghai is the sixth largest city in the world and so as you would expect, rush hour on the subway is similar to being a greasy little sardine amongst millions of wee fish, jam packed into a barreling tin can. Short shorts - the kind that you wouldn't want to bend over in - worn by Shanghaiing women apparently aroused the tightly packed Shanghaiing men so terribly that they had to be banned from public transport altogether.

Short shorts here in Korea are not banned from subways and are a very popular form of clothing for Korean women during the intensely hot summer months. A Korean kindergarten co-worker of mine once came to work in a pair of purple silk mini overalls, so translucent, short and disco purple were they, that I remember seeing our male manager standing huddled in the corner of the office, seemingly in some kind of short shorts trance, hypnotized, spell bound by the partial bum cheeks which dipped like grapes from the silky material. This woman was a kindergarten teacher! I remember thinking that if someone wanted to put their hand right up into her knickers, they wouldn't have much trouble.

Another time I was on my way to meet a friend on a Saturday and as I ascended the subway stairs into the hub bub of daylight I realised that it was not, in fact, the sun I was looking up toward, but instead right up the pants of the woman in front of me. I gasped, staggered and gawked. I could see *almost* everything.

This was one of many many thousands of women in Korea who wear these intensely short shorts. It is accepted and acceptable to wear shorts which skim the most private and sexual part of a womans body, yet strangely, wearing tank tops / singlets is considered somewhat risque and more sexual.

It is May here and Korea, I am SURE, is actually a large chicken inside an oven, and God is a very busy housewife who is slowly but surely turning up the ovens temperature day by day, and in her flurry is totally unaware that she is about to roast a mini universe, not a fat little fowl. And so a part of me can very much understand the need to take off a large percentage of ones clothing. But how did it come about that airing your ass is less provocative than airing your armpits? I have never met anyone who wanted to make love to my armpit.

If I were living in New Zealand right now I wouldn't be thinking twice about wearing singlets in the kind of temperatures that we have here in Korea. I would have been in sleeveless tops long long looooong ago. But here in Korea I feel a real sense of shame at baring my arms and even a small part of my chest, and I am not even too sure where this 'shame' has come from. No one has specifically *told* me that showing my arms is somehow sexually suggestive. I guess over the past year I have subconsciously noted that Korean women in summer as a rule do not put their arms or decolletage on show and have, like a monkey who uses a stick to fish ants from a hole copies this technique from another monkey, adapted myself to suit the cultural climate.

On a hot night my friends and I were going out for dinner and some drinks. I decided to brave it and wear my new dress which had a low cut neckline and shoe string straps. All was going swimmingly until we arrived at dinner where I sat down and removed my cardigan. Suddenly our table had a small pool of young women around it (like those fish that nibble on Whales) one of whom started to stroke my arms and collar bones and declare 'ooooh, ooooh, sexy...... (stroke stroke) ....... sexy.....(stroke stroke) but you must be cold, are you not cold? Yes, I think you must be cold. Here..... put this back on...' and kindly smothered my entire front in the cardigan that I had only minutes ago removed. I felt like I had just been sexually assaulted and given a motherly telling-off at the same time. It was a confusing kind of feeling.

It doesn't really make sense to me, and this contradiction is something I notice a lot in Korea. For example the Buddhist origins of Korean culture which would put detachment from desire, materialism and vanity at the fore, yet Korea is one of the MOST vain and materialistic countries I have even encountered in my life. People are obsessed with appearances, with being slim, having small faces, skinny bodies, eye-lidded eyes, highly bridged noses and large breasts. Plastic surgery is a massive industry here and half of the 22-32 year old teachers at my school have had some form of plastic surgery. Half.

Yet while they seem to care about 'appearances' (in more ways than just ones own body) above all else, Koreans seem to have a weird detachment from the sexuality that is produced by appearance. Young children are presented in overtly sexual clothing on Korean talent style T.V programs gyrating and pumping their hips in a way that westerners are only used to seeing pop culture entertainers do. The first few times you see it you think it is wrong, and then you forget that it is not 'normal' on what is normal in the scale of your life pre-Korea, and you clap and sing along as a three year old contestant humps the leg of the 40 year old host in a bid to win the belly dancing stage competition. No Koreans seem to see this kind of performance as sexual. It is more a mimicry of Western culture and ideals, but hollowed out and used in its most empty way. For pure entertainment value lacking all cultural background.

Anyway, I am rambling.

It is May here in Korea and things in this wee oven are only going to get hotter and hotter. I do not plan to keep cool this summer by baring my bum to the old men on the subway and in the streets who already stare at me and my girlfriends as if have a birth given entitlement to look (and occasionally touch) any part of our body that they fancy. If they stare at my arms and chest at least I wont be restricted by sleeves and this will make it easier to flip'em the bird or swing a punch. Rantings on sexism in Korea to come later.