A voyeur in Tbilisi

Walking in front of Parliament in Tbilisi, there were scores of policemen and an escorted motorcade carrying the leaders of Azerbaijan and Turkey who were in town for a regional summit. However, what was really catching was this young woman's Fall fashion statement: black woolen leggings, miniskirt and cherry-red belt. A Venus-Pan hybrid, might you say?

The leggings are suggestive of a certain untamed bestiality with proximate pagan undertones, while the miniskirt attracts attention for obvious reasons, and exposes a lot of bare flesh that cuts a sharp contrast to the dense hair of the leggings below. This contrast is made all the more shocking by the fact that normally, human body hair tends to lessen at the extremities of the hands and feet, and we are thus drawn to the counter-intuitive inverted order of this outfit. At the same time, the woman's hair color neatly matches the leggings, thus creating a sort of lateral symmetry between her head and feet.

The bright red belt is useful in drawing attention to the waistline, providing a visual highlight which serves to accentuate the relatively exaggerated biomechanics of the female pelvic girdle. Generally speaking and ignoring considerations of flexibility and muscle tension, broader hips tend to create a larger range of motion with each step, as the distance between the axis (the hip above the planted foot) and the moving outer hip (the hip above the stepping foot) is greater, and thus, broader hips cause the outer hip to pivot across a larger arc with each step.

Moreover, broader hips cause the outer hip to drop a greater distance downward when the supporting foot is lifted for stepping and all of the body's weight is transferred to the planted foot. In this motion, the outer hip dips downward as the body weight is transferred from the stepping foot to the planted foot, and the depth of this drop will be greater for broader hips due to the higher leverage exerted on the pivot point. Conversely, the upward motion of the outer hip will be greater in completing the stepping cycle, rising again as the stepping foot is replanted and the stepping leg straightened to support the body as the opposite foot is then lifted for the next step. Furthermore, a greater hip-to-waist ratio tends to amplify the apparent pivot-and-drop motion of walking, as a smaller waist and broader hips allow the hips to protrude a greater distance from the midsection, making this motion more observable. Of course, all of this is completely obvious to anyone who looks the red belt shown above.

The leggings are called "untebi," and I am told that they are not uncommon in this region. While, I clearly found this interesting enough to clandestinely snap this photo like some dirty old pervert and then write-it-up, I would posit that any woman who is dressed like this is in all likelihood not shy and probably would appreciate the attention of a stranger taking her photo. But why bother asking?