In orthodox circles there is lot of concern (though perhaps more in the USA than here) about modesty. My attention was drawn to the subject today by this parody of conservative Christian concerns about female modesty. I recommend you read it. It is very amusing. The implication is that conservative Christian male critiques of female modesty are irrational projections onto women of their own suppressed guilt concerning their impurity and lust. Surely there is a great deal of truth to this. However, one must accept that men have a different psychology of bodily attraction to women independently of their personal moral responsibility. This male psychology is certainly an occasion of sin but it is a reality.
I suspect that standards of modesty are essentially relative. On a Polynesian island climate dictates that people wear very few, if any, clothes. Because this is obviously rational and necessary this is not a moral problem for the inhabitants. In temperate or colder regions a much heftier weight of clothing is required. Conventions and assumptions and a body-language of clothing develop from this physical necessity. Consequently when a (male) inhabitant of a temperate zone visits a tropical island it has historically been a problem. It is said that when Franco’s Spain sought revenues from tourism and its beaches became populated by scantily clad foreign females, Spanish young men (used to a society of comparatively austere modesty) suffered real psychological difficulties. My great grandfather found the sight of ladies’ ankles (not seen in his youth) very difficult.
In this light it must be recognised that it is possible and not uncommon for a woman to reduce the total area of her body covered by clothing to significantly below the social norm so as to arouse male interest. This is not to say there are objective standards of modest clothing but rather the subjective standards may be used to achieve this effect. Perhaps it is even legitimate to a limited degree in certain formalised ‘courtship’ contexts like balls. The manipulation of the immoral sort assumes the concupiscence of the men in question but it is a reality. That the male concupiscence in question can be and is awakened without any such manipulation does not abolish the possibility and reality of manipulation.
The question arises of whether, as a consequence of the sexualisation of western culture, the form of manipulation mentioned above has become normalised and that consequently standards of modesty in clothing are in perpetual decline. Because modesty is relative, the effect of this would be that clothing considered immodest a generation earlier will become modest (because of the decline in general morals) without any immodesty necessarily implied on the part of those wearing them.
It is hard to see any appreciable decline in the modesty of clothing in Britain between the ‘seventies and the present day, despite the undoubted general decline in public morals. I suspect that this is because the transformation was so radical between the ‘fifties and the ‘seventies that we crashed into the objective factor of climate. Wear less than a certain amount in Britain and the manipulation becomes patent because you must be freezing. Conversely, one suspects the stuffiness of Victorian modesty was a reaction to a similar decline in the eighteenth century and to the ensuing political upheavals on the continent.
Perhaps this is one reason why the concern about modesty among conservative Christians is so much greater in the USA than in the UK. The USA is a vast country with every imaginable climate and yet it is one country and so it has to some extent one culture. Thus the subjective cultural factor is more in tension with the objective climatic consideration than in a smaller state. The other reason of course is that there are a lot more conservative Christians in the USA than in Britain.
What should one do then? Men should practice custody of the eyes and get over themselves. On the other hand, given that there are no objective standards of modest clothing and that men will succumb to lust whatever women do, women who are not intending to manipulate male concupiscence have already done enough and ought not to be subjected to transferred scruples by men. The only person in a position to warn an adult woman that she may (in some particular culture) cause a reasonable chap some difficulties by her outfit is another woman (or perhaps a foolhardy husband) when invited to do so by the woman in question.
July 9, 2014 at 2:45 pm
‘Men should practice custody of the eyes and get over themselves.’ Alas, yet another writer who completely ignores evolutionary psychology (and perhaps even Christian charity) in the name of…of what? Charity towards women? Towards other cultures? There is no trouble branding the USA as puritantical here, so I doubt the latter. The former? There is no need to brand immodestly dressed women as impure themselves. Most of them are simply ignorant concerning the power of their bodies and but need enlightenment, *not* enabling. Objective guilt does not entail subjective guilt.
And modesty is not strictly speaking ‘relative’. Non-western peoples of southern climes actually dress very modestly (ankle-length cotton garb in Africa for example) after they realize the danger of concupiscence to their spiritual welfare.
Laughing at parodies of Christian concerns may make a person wordly and sophisticated; it does not make him wiser or even nicer, though. Pax.
July 9, 2014 at 4:35 pm
“Laughing at parodies of Christian concerns may make a person wordly and sophisticated; it does not make him wiser or even nicer, though.”
Laughing about ourselves, and thus about parodies of certain excesses (and I would maintain that, while the question of modesty is a valid concern, there *are* some excesses regarding this topic) can help us to get the issue itself clearer in our own minds. For me, this is the case even if I might not agree with the author of the linked article on the topic of modesty.
July 9, 2014 at 3:21 pm
Climate is just an excuse. A modest person will dress modestly no matter what the climate.
July 9, 2014 at 4:44 pm
So would you maintain that the large majority of indigenous cultures of tropical areas are inherently immodest?
For me, the issue of “ankles” has always argued strongly in favour of a certain subjectivity of modesty: I do not doubt that seeing female ankles could be problematic for European men of past generations (and that showing ankles was provocative clothing on the side of females). Still, to my knowledge, there is hardly an advocate of modesty nowadays who demands that women should wear ground-length skirts. (Or is there???)
July 9, 2014 at 5:27 pm
Your analysis of the different aspects of modesty is one of the more balanced I’ve seen (taking into account both the reality of differences in male and female attraction, and differences in convention.) But your concluding paragraph rather makes it sound like the only options are “Men, get over it” or “Men, rush in where angels fear to tread and tell any woman whom you think dresses immodestly exactly what you think of her.”
Granted, there is not some unchanging “modesty code” that will tell you, e.g., exactly how many inches of skirt will keep you modest; but it still behooves the thoughtful woman to consider what, in the time and circumstances she finds herself, is consonant with the virtue of modesty, rather than simply saying, “It doesn’t matter what I wear, because I don’t mean to lead anyone astray.” She can’t just go by the cultural/fashion standards, because largely those fashions are explicitly ordered towards sexual provocation. So, an attempt to educate people about the impact of their clothes is not necessarily a sexist attempt to blame women for one’s own problems. In many cases, its aim (largely successful when done with intelligence and charity) is to help people choose to dress in way consonant with their own dignity and the dignity of others.
It’s true, of course, that the best place for modesty education to take place is in the home. I think of my own parents, who had strict modesty standards, which were firmly set in a framework of appreciation for the beauty and importance of physical creation. I’ve never forgotten my father’s telling me: “Dressing beautifully is an act of love.”
July 9, 2014 at 6:00 pm
I should hesitate to say that the variety of custom proves that there is no objective and absolute standard. It could be that there are forms of public dress and undress which are intrinsically immodest, in that they would tend always to stimulate concupiscence in someone who had the virtue of chastity.
The fact that it might be the custom in some islands to wear almost nothing doesn’t prove that that is modest for those places, even if people are not specially moved to concupiscence thereby, since it could be that they don’t have the virtue of chastity in the first place, and therefore their reactions can’t show us the standard. I think Catholic missionaries would traditionally have told such people to put some clothes on.
July 9, 2014 at 7:41 pm
Admiratioformosa you write “it still behooves the thoughtful woman to consider what, in the time and circumstances she finds herself, is consonant with the virtue of modesty” I agree entirely. A woman who does not intend to manipulate male concupiscence will presumably ask herself what would cause a reasonable chap some difficulties and avoid that. But it is not the place of someone (especially a man) to offer unsolicited advice on that front. We are poor judges of our own reasonableness especially when it is so entangled with our own moral failings.
Cordatus, it seems to me the objective standard is climate and reason which insofar as they give birth to social convention demand that such convention be respected. What is absolute and objective depends on this climatic factor. The missionary, it seems to me, may have to be stricter precisely because his very existence implies that the society in question has now become part of a broader social reality stretching over many climates which will now need to interact.
July 9, 2014 at 8:04 pm
I quite agree that a man shouldn’t walk up to a woman and start giving her modesty advice. (Definitely.) But I was trying to point out that that’s not the only way a man (or a woman, for that matter) can offer opinions on modesty in women’s fashions. Even the spoof article that you posted wasn’t spoofing that — it was spoofing a blog format, which (while not immune to problems, of course) is definitely not the same thing as confronting a woman about her individual dress. The fact that it’s possible to be foolish and offensive in offering personal modesty advice doesn’t mean that no one can offer it in any context.
July 9, 2014 at 8:14 pm
But it seems that hitting the virtuous mean is so dependent on context and circumstances that sounding off online is far more likely to induce scruples or cause offence than to do any good. As in common law the ‘reasonable man test’ is the best.
July 9, 2014 at 8:40 pm
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “sounding off”. If you mean a rant, I’m more in agreement with you. If you mean expressing any opinion…well, that would mean that we shouldn’t blog or give public talks about any sensitive subject whatever.
July 9, 2014 at 8:54 pm
No it wouldn’t mean that. This is a particularly delicate subject because the judgements involved are morally important but very determined by circumstance and the difficulty of making a true judgement particularly for men is exceptionally high. This is both because it is hard for them to distinguish between their own fault and what is reasonable objectively and because that distinction is not so cut and dried anyway. For example what it might be prudent to wear in bar full of dodgy sailors and what it might be prudent to wear at a family wedding might be very different precisely because of the disordered inclinations anticipated. Thus a general statement online when one by definition has no access to the circumstances and context of the people reading is particularly likely to be misleading. Much of the right answer will also depend on custom which will vary from place to place and social group to social group.
July 9, 2014 at 8:28 pm
The reference to climate makes it sound as if the only rule was ‘provided you’re not getting too cold or wet, you are not immodestly dressed’.
July 9, 2014 at 8:32 pm
But if the measure is reason then the ‘end’ of clothing must ultimately be what determines modesty. Immodesty precisely operates through advertising a willingness to ignore the demands of reason.
July 9, 2014 at 8:35 pm
But avoiding the cold and the wet is not the sole end of clothing.
July 9, 2014 at 8:39 pm
Yes…..?
July 9, 2014 at 9:45 pm
Another end is suitably to conceal those parts of the body more related to sex, so as to limit concupiscence. And what ‘suitably’ means here is not necessarily limited solely by convention. There could be forms of dress which a virtuous person would be wrong to get accustomed to seeing.
July 9, 2014 at 11:54 pm
Well this is certainly true but it seems that the climatic considerations would almost always require more coverage than the covering of the sexual organs.
July 10, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Yes, but without wanting to dwell on the subject the ‘suitable’ covering is not only a matter of what is covered but also can refer to the manner in which. Someone could be suitably covered in view of the climate but unsuitably as regards the manner. However I don’t want to say any more so feel free to have the last word..
July 11, 2014 at 12:22 am
I think there is a minimum level of concealment required in the nature of the case but, as with the considerations of climate, immodesty can be achieved simply by falling slightly short of convention. Although in both cases there is an objective core the subjective element is so important that it overwhelms the objective. This is why I think the intention of the woman is so important and men are so poorly qualified to make a sound judgement in this area.
July 11, 2014 at 1:07 pm
Ahem. http://www.seraphicsinglescummings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/a-modest-proposal.html