A part-time model is to be caned under Islamic law for drinking beer in a nightclub in Malaysia.

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno will receive six lashes with a “light” rattan cane. (AAP, 19/8/2009)

The prosecutor said, “This is a good punishment because under Islamic law a person who drinks commits a serious offence.”

Human rights activists are very hostile but, interestingly, Kartika herself is not. She has simply asked that the caning be done soon so that she can get back to her family.

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There is something to be said for corporal punishments like flogging, despite the outcry that such a suggestion might provoke.

Physical punishment is a great equaliser.

A fine can be crippling to the poor, yet a joke to the rich, who pay it out of their petty cash,  and for whom it is no punishment at all.

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One could also argue for punishment of some kind, not just for models who drink in bars, but for all models.

Models are, in general, paid for exposing themselves to a greater or lesser extent.

This is bad for public morals.

Also, insofar as they promote fashions in clothing etc., models reinforce a worldly and materialistic set of values regarding what people should crave for and spend their money on.

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When Mother Mary MacKillop started a youth group in Adelaide , she made it one of the requirements that members of the group “must dress with simplicity, modesty and neatness.”  

Remember the words of Saint Paul in the Bible, “I wish women to be decently dressed, adorning themselves with modesty.”

Pope Pius XI said, “A dress cannot be called decent which is cut deeper than two fingers breadth under the pit of the throat; which does not cover the arms at least to the elbows; and which scarcely reaches beyond the knees.”

Come off it, you might say, what about changing fashions?

Another previous Pope dealt with the question of fashions in just six words, “There is always an absolute standard.”