What's Missing from Modesty
Out of nowhere, this popped into my head, and well, I felt like stepping in it.
Modesty.
In the interest of playing my hand open as I write, I’ll just begin with an honest admission: I hate the word modesty.
Just hearing that word makes me cringe. It conjures images of perfectly curated social media squares of lithe women wearing long flowy dresses against the ethereal backdrop of a perfectly lighted window. Often such images are coupled with thoughts about how the woman in the picture wasn’t truly a woman until she began dressing this way, followed by her conclusion that because this is true for her, it is true for all women. In a word, it feels performative, as most of social media admittedly tends to be, but it takes on a thoroughly off-putting flavor when it is veiled in the guise of authenticity.
The word also provokes memories of being told to dress a certain way so as to cover my body because it is causing my brother in Christ to sin. A woman’s body, many of us were told, is a trap that causes temptation and loss of control in our male complements. The message communicated is often one of shame and self-loathing, a rejection of the fact that the female body was created by Love himself, and is thus a reflection of his goodness. Modesty in this case is nothing more than a cell where we are both prisoner and warden - if someone breaks in, it must have been our fault.
Is it any wonder that our relationship with clothing and our very bodies is so confusing!
I think many women share these sentiments. But even as what I have said thus far may resonate, perhaps even strongly, there is one major problem: modesty is a virtue, and virtues are good. Something has gone very very wrong in the way we think of and express this virtue for its mere mention to shake the earth with eye rolls and heaving sighs, mine included.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to inBox Whine to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.