The bare cheek of it

19 September 2008.

Two separate but related international stories broke today: Firstly, an Australian bar has come under scrutiny after running a “No Undie Sundie” promotion in which women receive free drinks in return for the removal of their undercrackers. In Uganda, meanwhile, the ethics minister wants a ban on mini-skirts because they are dangerous to male drivers.

Why should there be any consternation over these subjects? What right do “authorities” have in prohibiting women wearing (or not) what they want? If women are willing to rid themselves of their laderhosen then so be it – that is their human right. It is not like these women are running through Melbourne’s streets like Frank the tank, or facilitating organised naturism.

In any case, there are some fairly high profile and successful bars around the globe where the main attraction is girls wearing a lot less than simply no underwear. Indeed, these women get paid for doing so in the form of cash rather than simply alcoholic beverages, yet these rarely attract the attention witnessed today.

Or, to view the consternation from another angle, I’d happily shed my boxers if a bar was offering free pints of San Miguel in return for me freeing up the crown jewels. Unfortunately, a promotion of that nature is about as likely to eventuate as Osama Bin Laden walking out from his cave waving a white flag while singing God Save The Queen.

An Australian observer commented that a girl removing her thong in a bar is tantamount to an invitation to sexual assault. Forgive my reckless understanding of legislative terminology but if there is an invitation involved how can any act that follows constitute an assault?

Similarly, the Ugandan ethics minister stated that the women wearing mini-skirts are essentially naked. Now perhaps Uganda has a unique slant on the English language but surely someone is either naked or not. If someone has donned a mini-skirt they are not naked in my book. It equates to describing something as slightly random or partially impossible. There is no continuum with naked at one end and clothed at the other.

Or perhaps our Ugandan friend has adopted an unusual take on the classic psychological debate about whether the glass is half full or half empty. Most people would classify a lady in a mini-skirt as being half-dressed, but in Uganda they are half-naked.

Now I’m not denying that there are plenty of people in this world that should not be allowed to wear mini-skirts. The sight of such people does about as much for the health of others as a wrongly-produced MMR injection which actually contains MRSA, C-difficile and E.coli. In fact, I’d rather be forced to stare at my own scrotum for four days solid. To condemn or legislate against it, however, is disgraceful.

If there is to be legislation prohibiting the presence of mini-skirts, surely there first needs to be an act which ensures people’s eyesight is retained through the criminalisation of builder’s bum, teenage boys walking around with their hand down their pants, and botched cosmetic surgery.

Moreover, if bars want to clean up their act, they should first ban morbidly obese people after 10pm on Friday and Saturday nights. In a crowded venue, it is inevitable that, en route to the toilet, some drunken fatty brushes their sweaty bingo wings all over you. Those lucky enough to escape that fate will, upon reaching the gents, be subjected instead to some drunken idiot swaying like the audience during Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms with the result that their urine ends up on your best shirt and jeans.

The usual rubbish about the conduct being offensive to other people has been spouted. That view carries about as much weight as the excretion that flows from the mouths of the presenters of Psychic TV. Only the people that go to the Australian bar in question can have an opinion on the matter, yet there was no word of discontent from either the females who were given free drinks in this time of bare economic hardship or the males who were watching the women get plastered quicker than a wall on DIY SOS.

That may be somewhat attributable to those who frequent the bar being too sozzled to construct a simple sentence (much like Shane McGowan all day every day), but the crux of the matter is that these people had some cheap fun and that is about as common in this day and age as Kenzie turning down a part in a dreadful reality TV show.