Sexual liberation comes out of the closet in Pakistan

It sounded good on paper. But I didn’t grow up in Pakistan, and that was all I could say to justify it afterwards. And it did: mini-skirts, bar dancing, sweaty men with chiselled bodies: a sexual revolution in the making! Why not? Screw the ramp, the prima donnas that hardly made the height standard, this was performance art. This was fun. And Levi’s 501 was all about fun, right?

We were launching the new Copper Collection recently in Karachi, getting hot and dirty and sweaty: what Dolce and Gabbana did with bikinis back in '99. But their willowy models were alone in a desert landscape in a stripped down jeep. We bronzed our bodies and stripped down in front of an audience of (frustrated) men, sans ramp, platform or stage: just a spotlight to keep the potential groping at bay.

Choreographer Fareiha Altaaf was there, along with her rival Imran Kureishi, to see Fahd Husseyn’s choreography debut. The fashion show was set up at Yousaf Bashir’s industrial art space The Commune. Once an LA-based designer and personal friend of Madonna, Sheryl Crow and Claire Forlani, Yousaf Bashir returned to Pakistan after a degrading interrogation under Homeland Security: he caught their suspicion when he didn’t show up at the 2002 Oscars.

Yousaf was determined to create a platform for emerging artists, which was exactly what The Commune was, except that it was totally dry. I had to rub down a sexy man’s sweaty body in front of 400 people, without a single drop of booze in my blood. The night was opened by Co-ven, an angry underground band from the 90’s, who have re-emerged on the rock scene a decade later, sounding softer, looking cleaner and practicing health consciousness. And then came the school girl strip tease. I also laughed and hooted, like everyone else.

It didn’t hit me until I watch the Coyote Ugly sequence. Two girls in halters and mini’s do a bar number a la Jessica Simpson, slutty stilleto boots and all. And then a couple is sitting on the floor. He gets up, zips us his fly and winks at her. She smiles and rubs something off the corner of her mouth. This wasn’t about fashion or performance or art or even about fun. This was about filling up the fantasies of every brand manager, security guard, photographer and architect in the room. You see, sex is great, as long as it’s at arms’ length: performed by white people on TV or behind tightly closed doors. But bring it out in the open, throw it in people’s faces, and you’re either facing an arrest warrant like poor Richard Gere or receiving “make friendship” requests on Orkut the next day. So, we’re swinging, and in more ways than one. We’re swinging away from the past, away from Zia and fundamentalism and guilt, into a “liberal” future: another extreme which is hardly moderate or enlightened, yet.