Navel on Display: A Case for Optical Nutrition?

Today, Saturday, 25 July 2026, I went to my office to complete a task. To stretch my body after working for some time, I stepped outside and took a walk. As I walked, I found myself reflecting on Jesus’ warning against allowing what one sees to give birth to ungodly desires in the heart to take an amorous effect. In effect, Jesus rejected what may be described as “optical nutrition”, the deliberate feeding of lust through the eyes.

Likewise, Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, cautioned men to lower their gaze while walking so as to guard their moral integrity.

So, while walking to stretch my body, I had no choice but to see what was before me, yet I quickly diverted my gaze lest I lose sight of heaven.

Three young damsels had chosen to put their budding assets on public display and knowledge. Even more conspicuous was the display of their navels.

This evening, as I briskly walk home, I reflect on this growing phenomenon and offer the following thoughts on the increasingly common public display of women’s navels:

The campaign against sexual harassment on Ghana’s tertiary campuses has, over the past two decades, achieved remarkable visibility. Today, one scarcely walks across a university campus without encountering posters, banners and notices reminding students and staff that sexual misconduct has no place in academic life. That is an important achievement.

Even so, there may be an unintended tendency that deserves interrogation. In our determination to combat sexual harassment, we should not arrive at the conclusion that every encounter between men and women is necessarily one between predator and prey. Like the interface between the vulture and the carcass, male and female interaction is richer and more complex than such a binary permits.

A woman once observed that God endowed women with aesthetic appeal to men, while men were fashioned to offer functional appeal to women. Whether or not one agrees with the theological premise, the underlying point is simple: attraction between the sexes is a natural feature of human existence. It need not always be interpreted as pathology.

Recognising this mutual attraction should also discourage simplistic moral narratives in which one sex is permanently cast as victim and the other as villain. It recalls the old anonymous saying: “Men are wicked; women are fools. When wickedness and foolishness meet, they give birth to iniquity.” Cynical as it may sound, the proverb reminds us that responsibility is seldom the preserve of one side alone.

Institutions exist because human beings are imperfect. They may appear restrictive, but their absence often produces anarchy rather than freedom.

These reflections have been prompted by a fashion trend I have increasingly observed over the past four years on university campuses: the conspicuous display of the female navel.

Not long ago, many communities regarded such exposure with deep cultural suspicion. A widely held superstition warned that a woman who publicly exposed her navel risked spiritual attack and even barrenness. Whatever one thinks of such beliefs today, they reflected a cultural understanding that the body carried meanings beyond individual preference.

Contemporary campuses tell a different story. The prominently displayed navel has become an ordinary feature of student fashion. Universities have always been spaces where inherited traditions encounter modern influences, and where old certainties are questioned. In that respect, the trend is hardly surprising.

The more interesting question is not whether young women should display their navels. It is whether they have reflected on the temporary nature of bodily aesthetics. Youth is transient. Fashion is even more so.

Those with longer memories may recall the apuskeleke miniskirt craze of the 1990s. It spread with astonishing speed. Young women embraced it confidently, while many men publicly condemned it through whistles, mockery and, regrettably, even physical harassment. Yet much of that condemnation was performative. Public disapproval often concealed private fascination. The spectacle endured precisely because there was an audience.

Eventually, however, the fashion faded. Like countless trends before it, it yielded to the relentless passage of time. Nature has little regard for human enthusiasm. All generations eventually discover that ageing diminishes physical vitality rather than enhances it.

Today’s navel fashion may well follow the same trajectory. If history teaches anything, it is that no aesthetic revolution remains revolutionary forever.

This is why the current craze raises questions rather than inviting random condemnation. Is it principally an expression of personal autonomy? Is it an assertion of feminine attractiveness? Is it simply another fleeting fashion destined to disappear? Or does it reveal how social media and contemporary visual culture increasingly reward visibility over modesty?

Those who defend the trend often argue that women dress for themselves rather than for men. None the less, one philosophical question remains difficult to avoid: can beauty exist entirely without an observer? Aesthetic expression, by its very nature, seems to presume an audience, even if that audience is never explicitly acknowledged. So, should seeing for optical nutrition be sanctioned by law?

Reasonable people will answer these questions differently. But they are questions worth asking, especially on university campuses, where society’s future values are often rehearsed before they are eventually lived.

Satyagraha