Now here’s a curious item that had the Belly Achers locked in an vociferous debate. The proverbial spark to this chaos was a news report on how Cathay Pacific air hostesses feel exposed by their uniform and would like the Hong Kong airline to redesign it.

The cabin crew believe that the uniform increases their chances of being sexually harassed and to make matters worse, a worrying study by Hong Kong’s Equal Opportunities Commission in February revealed that 27 per cent of Hong Kong attendants had been sexually harassed on flights in the past 12 months. Eighty-six per cent of the 392 participants who took the study were female.

Now while we most certainly do not condone this kind of harassment (and for the record we’ve never engaged in it either!) we were a bit perplexed by the cabin crew’s earnest protestations over the ‘revealing’ nature of their uniforms. We scratched our collective heads trying to recall the uniforms – because apparently they are not very memorable, at least to us – and ultimately resorted to Google for a clearer picture on these ‘sexy’ uniforms. But nope, nada, niet, nothing on the sexy scale was the conclusion of the Belly Achers and in fact we actually reached complete agreement on one point… that being the Cathay Pacific uniforms are… well, for a lack of better word… a bit on the dowdy side! The skirts, said to be too tight by the stewardesses, go pretty much to the knees, don’t appear particularly tight fitting and certainly we cannot see any overt or even subtle sexiness… they just look sort of pleasant utilitarian in the way a librarian or bank teller would wear – at least that’s the honest opinion of the humble fashionistas at Belly Ache Central.

But this of course, is only half the story. Apparently the blouse is an issue as well. Hmm, still seems rather bland and utilitarian with a slight Asian-esque touch. So again we were left stumped.

But apparently when the flight attendants bend down, the blouse is too short and reveals their midriff, apparently sending some passengers into amorous overload, leading to incidents of harassment that include: “Patting, touching, kissing, pinching, staring in a sexual way, sexual jokes and requests for sexual favours” according to the survey. We’re not quite sure what it actually means to stare “in a sexual way”, but boy we’re sure gonna be conscious about how we look at the flight attendant on our next flight when we choose our beef or chicken just think of the sexual innuendoes there! We can’t actually think of any, but never mind.

But seriously, this list left us a bit gobsmacked… asking for sexual favours!?! Really? What year is this, anyway? This just goes to show the passport authorities are not doing an adequate job screening the Cro-Magnons from the real human beings in the crowd.

At any rate, back to the raison d’être of our verbal fracas… which basically boiled down to which airline’s uniforms were most likely to cause bad behaviour amongst male, and perhaps the odd female, passengers. After an exhaustive analysis, we came up with a short list and reached the conclusion that there are a lot of airlines that feature uniforms far more titillating than those of the Hong Kong carrier. We’ll keep our short list to ourselves – because if we don’t it will just start the whole verbal fracas again. So instead, we present you a visual sample and leave it up to you to come to your own conclusions.