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When parents tell their kids they’ll “always be our little babies”, it’s understood to be a show of affection — for most people at least. Enter Nadia Khan, who seems to think it means parents can, will and should tell their adult children what to do, where to go and what to wear.

On Thursday, she sat down with Parishae Adnan — the CEO of fashion house Aamir Adnan who just got back to Pakistan after closing a show during New York Fashion Week — for her show Rise & Shine. One pressing question Khan had for the designer was whether her parents were okay with the way she dressed going to the gym.

Yeah, the internet made quick work of Khan and her views, with Parishae firing a shot herself by posting a reel of the interaction. Her face shows just how uncomfortable she was with the host’s line of questioning.

Khan can be heard asking how Parishae convinced her parents to let her wear what she does and her co-host Zohaib Hassan even makes a remark about her body — the designer responded to that in a separate video.

Others joined in too, with influencer Zoya Zaidi doing an impression of Khan and her questions on the show, constantly shifting her point from parents to society and back.

Another social media creator, Aisha Yousuf, pointed out how there was so much for the hosts to ask Parishae about her work and her journey but they could only seem to focus on what she wore and log kya kahen ge (what will people say)?

Ramsha Waseem, known for her comedic skits, acted like the person who had the most difficult job in this entire situation: Khan’s PR manager who told her to talk about the designer’s “clothes” — the joke being that she meant the clothes the designer makes, not the ones she wears.

Telling her not to accept fault over her comments or apologise, the ‘manager’ said her client should double down and say she was trying to protect society’s morals because “we have enough loud men and misogynistic women who will support you”.

In her caption, she said, “No matter how successful a Pakistani woman becomes, there will always be someone waiting to reduce her to her clothes, her age, her relationships or the choices she makes.”

But while all these other creators were calling out Khan, Yashal Shahid had a more solution-oriented approach which she described as “kambalon se dumbbellon tak (form blankets to dumbbells)”.

She demonstrated her idea to the audience, lifting weights while draped completely in a blanket, because apparently that’s what you need to do nowadays if you don’t want to be asked about your clothes on national television.

Jokes aside, Khan’s questions and the attitude behind them are unfortunate, especially when they come from a woman who has built a career herself.

Treating women differently and focusing on their personal choices rather than celebrating their achievements — which, in this case, was a win for the entire Pakistani fashion industry — will only push us back to a point where women are no longer comfortable being themselves and building themselves up in public.