There’s a story floating around the media about the death of Pakistani celebrity Qandeel Baloch at the hands of her brother in an ‘honour killing‘.

That is, a family member kills another because they believe the victim has dishonoured the family name.

Qandeel Baloch

Miss Baloch, aged 26, had become known as ‘Pakistan’s Kim Kardashian’. No lurid sex tape, no ridiculous nude selfies, of course, but some ‘racy’ (in the context of Pakistani society) photos and and a talent for self-publicity that ran counter to the country’s deeply patriarchal society.

She is not the first Pakistani to taunt conservative patriarchs, Veena Malik previously becoming embroiled in such ‘scandals’, and indeed Ms. Malik’s exploits were one of the first stories I covered on ‘SL Naturist’ away back in 2011!

Ms Malik appears to have got married in the interim, had a couple of children and, probably for her own safety, moved away from Pakistan.

Veena Malik

If anything, Ms. Malik was possibly more outrageous in her pushing of the boundaries, as with her infamous photoshoot in which she posed with a grenade and the letters ‘ISI’ (the Pakistani security services) drawn on her arm.

While this story isn’t directly ‘naturist’, it demonstrates how far behind some countries are in their acceptance of women as equal citizens, how the patriarchy fear a strong woman’s capability to have any sort of power  or independence (notwithstanding the fact that Pakistan previously elected Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister, with her subsequent assassination believed by some to have been ordered by then President Musharraf).

Benazir Bhutto

In many parts of the world, women continue to be ‘a threat’ to some societies and cultures, and the thought of a naked women -or a woman using her nudity- is anathema, with women always, always, always being subjected to lesser freedoms than the male of the species. It’s not even an eastern/Muslim/Hindu -don’t forget that the rape of young Indian women or tourists is a recurring theme in that part of the world– developing world phenomenon. While the west may be a little more enlightened than to indulge in ‘honour killings’, never forget that top freedom is anathema to many parts of the west, and nudity on social media is a taboo, while the same social media are content to permit depictions of medieval practice, such as beheadings.

All of this is filtering into the articles I’m currently working on, and it seems that parts of these now very long posts will have to be filtered off into standalone posts to ensure that the message isn’t lost.

Ella