4 - Dress, Undress, Body, and Nation

Summary

Questions about dress and undress are charged issues. Past and present in Zambia, nudity and degrees of undress have been contentious issues when performed in public rather than when subject to the private gaze. Body baring events sexualise different body parts, making the body surface a highly charged site and turning dress and undress into powerful matters with bearing on questions about the constitution of society and women’s and men’s places in it. Spontaneous or organised by individuals or groups, bare body demonstrations have complicated implications, some protest oriented and others celebratory as illustrated in episodes from the late colonial period and more recent events. Throughout this period, the shame frontier shifted from the baring of breasts to the wearing of bras.