This is an analysis of the virtue of modesty from one who feels, and argues convincingly, that our culture is currently deprived of it. From the demystification of sex in early sex education classes to the unisex bathrooms in college dormitories, it seems that nothing these days is left to the imagination, and men and women, but particularly women, are missing out on something.
Her interest in this question was aroused when what she perceived as the exaggerations of feminist idealogues (‘idealogues don’t question, they just look for confirmation for a set of beliefs’) she found on examination to be quite true:the contemporary woman is in a bad way. She is starving herself to death, mutilating her body and up to her eyeballs in antidepressants. But far from alleviating her woes, feminist ideology is exacerbating them. To women who want to debunk the myth that sexual freedom is the way to happiness they cry ‘repressed,’ ‘a victim of abuse’, ‘uncomfortable with her body’ and so on.
The argument ad hominum will not do for Shalit. She wants answers. She wants to know why her orthodox Jewish sisters who don’t have physical contact with men before marriage look so movingly happy on their wedding days, have such ‘twinkles’ in their eyes in the early days of marriage and look so contented. Shalit calls these women ‘modestyniks’ and notices that it is not just orthodox religious women who want this approach to courtship and marriage. Others from a range of backgrounds are embracing ‘modestynik’ with gusto. Like Shalit, they are beginning to recognise that they are being talked into behaviour that goes against their natural feelings about sexual matters and their personal dignity. Intelligent feminists are perceiving it too. Mary Pipher, for example, a feminist psychologist who treats adolescent girls, laments that today ‘they are far more oppressed’ than we were. ‘They are coming of age in a more dangerous, sexualised and media saturated culture,’ and ‘as they navigate a more dangerous world, girls are less protected.’ Enemies of the ‘modestyniks’ call them ‘abuseniks’, claiming that such ‘sick’ behaviour must be the result of sexual abuse. Some of them get quite angry at them which Shalit finds strange, even suspicious. Why is there so much strident objection to modesty?
Shalit takes us through some recent propaganda history, citing popular magazines for girls and instructions in teaching programs to show how a war has been waging against embarrassment and natural feelings of what is sacred in a person. Her description of current dating practices, while alarming, is done with a delightful humour: a relationship, she says, goes like this: there’s the hook up (ie you sleep together) a few more such encounters, then the breakup, then the checkup (the fellow rings you a couple of times to make sure you are O.K._ that’s modern etiquette!)
From a description of this, quite clearly abusive behaviour, Shalit analyses in history and culture different courtship behaviours and concludes that our current model is a very weak one, with little understanding of the needs of women or the nature and complexity of human interaction. Our culture wants to ‘cure’ women of the very thing that makes them women, hence the odd preference in fashion for the androgynous look. She sees in the affliction of anorexia nervosa a kind of perversion of modesty: a plea for people to stop looking, an attempt to disappear from view.
The desperation of this is a reflection of how pervasive the propaganda is. Even a girl’s own parents will collude to talk her out of proper judgement in sexual matters. The author sites the example of a friend whose girlfriend’s own father helped them in their first sexual experience by booking the hotel room for them and voicing his approval of her choice of partner. Now that’s sick.
The author believes that what women feel instinctively is right. Modesty is a natural reaction, a protective mechanism, a way of ensuring that the importance of sexual love and marriage is recognised and behaviour regulated appropriately.
As well as protection for women, modesty adds mystery and excitement to courtship. One of the sadder features of a culture in which nothing is hidden is that sex becomes jaded and uninteresting, almost technologised. The physical is emphasised to the detriment of the emotional, psychological and spiritual. This clearly works against women. If they allude to feeling a lack of this dimension in their ‘relationships’ they are accused of being ‘needy’, lacking independence and maturity.
Shalit analyses other cultures and times to look at how people have played the mating game and notes with typical directness a far superior understanding of the nature of human interaction than the one she sees around her. This is a courageous and convincing study that avoids prudery and oversimplification of the issues discussed. The author is to be congratulated on ‘coming out’ against the mainstream in this way and showing us that we are not as happy and liberated as we thought we were; that those misgivings and uncertainties we felt were not misplaced; that there is something important about love and marriage and this importance is expressed by people’s inherent sense of modesty.
All these things are or at least were obvious but every now and then we need someone to remind us that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, so to speak.
A Return to Modesty: discovering the lost virtue
by Wendy Shalit (Touchstone, 1999)
