women's shoulders more regulated than guns
Missouri lawmakers are really out here.
Missouri has some of the worst gun laws in the country and currently leads in unintentional child shootings, but don’t worry its government got right to work, passing a bill that bans adult women in the legislature from wearing sleeveless tops.
The two-thirds male Republican-majority legislature came back from their break with their priorities straight: straight into women’s business. A dress code, that for some reason (cough, sexism), excludes any explicit or detailed prescription for what men should wear, forces women to sport “dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots.” It was later amended to include women’s human right to cardigans, after Democratic state representative Raychel Proudie pointed out that pregnant women can’t physically fit into a dumb blazer anyways. Who would have known that the easter egg in taylor swift’s cardigan song was that it was a feminist anthem about a woman’s right to choose her own knitwear, wow. Perhaps the UN could do us a solid, and consider revising the Beijing Declaration to enshrine women’s right to panty lines and above-the-knee pencil skirts, in case Republicans make that their new cause célèbre.
As I’ve mentioned before with abortion laws, to us regular citizens, this story is about sexist politicians making stupid laws, but to women who work in the Missouri state legislature, these are their coworkers. “Do you know what it feels like to have a bunch of men in this room looking at your top trying to determine if it’s appropriate or not?” Democratic state representative Ashley Aune said while the bill was being debated. Imagine just trying to do your job, where you’re already vastly under-represented, where your bodily autonomy is a recurrent topic of debate, and now the most annoying guys you work with, got together and voted so they can decide what kind of blouse you’re going to wear at work now? It’s bewildering.
Imagine if lawmakers were as interested in protecting women’s bodies, as they were in controlling them? What if their passion for surveillance of female fashion, could translate to more important matters, like I don’t know ak-47s? Missouri doesn’t come first in much, but it does beat almost every record when it comes to men’s lethal violence against women. And as it turns out, all those guns that lawmakers seem so unbothered by, have a lot to do with it.
While Missouri won’t allow women to open and carry shoulders, it allows anyone, without a permit or safety training, to carry a loaded rifle. Domestic abuser? No problem! The people who make the laws trust you, and even recently made it impossible for the police to intervene if they think you’re too dangerous to own a gun. As it is currently law, Missouri trusts a convicted domestic abuser with a gun, more than a female legislator with her shoulders. Which begs the questions, if women’s bodies could kill, would Republican lawmakers quit trying to legislate them? How does the right to bear arms, exclude women’s right to bearing their actual arms?