Wardrobe Woes

 Wardrobe malfunction, the term arouses interest and voyeurs immediately start scouting for the graphic details. Well well, it is just a piece of cloth and not the complete wardrobe by any account, then why this term? A distant cousin of the celebrity term wardrobe malfunction is the "wardrobe dilemma". You must be wondering as to how come this sudden interest in wardrobes and their functions. Actually it was one of those evenings when we were getting dressed for a party and typically the mistress of the house was aghast that she did not have one piece of clothing which fitted the bill. I normally steer clear and stay out of harm's way on such occasions but then sometimes one's brain decides to play the fool and then we land up in a mess of our own creation. So I piped in, you have hundreds of saris, scores of dresses and suits and still the wardrobe plays truant with you. May be you are spoilt for choice, we men folk just pick up whatever, with no qualms about matching colours or combinations and walk out in a jiffy. An overflowing wardrobe and still the appropriate dress for the occasion is nowhere to be found. Reminds me of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Rime of Ancient Mariner", "Water water everywhere not a drop to drink!" While I was getting into a literary mood, the better half wanted to get physical, the Newton's Third Law kicked in immediately and the rebuttal which followed was something like this, "You have spent all your life in uniform, when you didn't have to make any choices, you were ordered to put on a particular dress and you followed it in letter and spirit. So much so that for even social occasions there is a diktat in terms of the attire so what do you know about the "wardrobe dilemmas". It is not just the dress, the matching accessories and the fact that the item should not have been worn in this station, else it will be construed that the lady has a very limited choice and is forced to repeat her dresses. Now that suggestion itself is calamitous, so we have no choice but to be extra cautious and then the poverty is attributable to you directly as you haven't provided me with even these bare necessities of life. So to keep your honour in tact we have to choose wisely."

I was chastised and wiser, should have kept my mouth shut, forgetting  that 'wisdom is better part of the valour'. Having beaten a hasty retreat, I thought this wardrobe malfunction needs to be researched a little, no not the episodes which are dime a dozen and more often than not these are typically publicity stunts. I was keen to study the coinage of the term and how come it was adopted when it is just a piece of stitched cloth which has failed in its duty to cover a vital part of the human anatomy. It was 2004 and during Grammy awards it was Justin Timberlake who subjected Janet Jackson to this ignominy. Not that the performance was effected, just that the viewership went up couple of notches. But mind you this was not the first occasion when the slip slid away, this was the first time that the term was used and adopted thereafter by the media. It seemed more fashionable than a mere 'tear in the dress' or as I said earlier 'slip sliding away'. 

Our Wardrobe woes are of a different kind, brasso and polish, medals and ribands, ceremonial attires so on and so forth thankfully there is no scope for dilemmas or  malfunctions.