For nine long months, Europeans live wrapped up in wool and fur, layered like onions to survive their unforgiving winters. Hats, gloves, scarves—the full armor. Then, for a brief three-month summer when the temperature hesitates around 19 or 20 degrees, the same people shed it all and bare their skin to the sun. Perfectly natural—they are, after all, starved for warmth and vitamin D.
But then came migration. When Europeans moved to America, they carried this short summer fling with them. Only there, it was no longer seasonal—it became a permanent culture. Skimpy clothing stopped being about “catching the sun” and turned into a lifestyle. And soon after, the lifestyle was cleverly sold as ideology.
Hollywood packaged it. Fashion industries monetized it. Media romanticized it. And before long, the rest of the world was told that a woman’s freedom could be measured by how much of her skin she reveals.
Here’s the irony: the very people who spend most of the year covered head to toe in coats and boots are the ones who convinced the rest of the planet that liberation lies in undressing. A seasonal necessity turned into a cultural export, and then into a moral yardstick for the entire world.
And the truth? This was never about freedom—it was cultural colonization dressed up as liberation. The West simply shoved its seasonal eccentricity down the world’s throat and had the audacity to call it “women’s empowerment.”