A Return to Modesty

I recently read A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit. A friend lent it to me quite a while ago actually, and it was in my ever growing pile of books to read for longer than I'd like to admit. I am fascinated by non-fiction, but will almost always pick up a novel or a memoir over anything else if given the choice.

A Return to Modesty is a cultural history of women's sexual modesty. It was published in 1999 (which seems like it shouldn't be more than a decade ago), but it is still pertinent. Shalit sees herself as falling somewhere in between "conservatives" and "feminists" (her terms) on the issue of modesty. She believes in equality of the sexes, but thinks society has warped this to mean that the two sexes should be the same. My pastor lent me several books when Jason and I got married that addressed differences between the sexes. Men and women are equal, but we are not the same. Certainly all members of one sex cannot be painted with the same brush, but there are traits that tend to belong to each males and females. Unfortunately, I think that some of the traditionally female traits have been seen as worth less than traditional male traits, so women have felt the need to act like men in order to succeed.

Shalit sees this need for sameness as taking away from women's ability to be feminine, including exercising modesty in dress and in actions. Revealing clothing and premarital sex are now the norm. Shalit connects this to problems in our society such as harassment, stalking, and rape (which made the first section of the book, "The Problem," difficult for me to read). Shalit says that when she was in high school, being modest wasn't cool. I think that often this is still the case, which breaks my heart.

"Respect for modesty made women powerful," Shalit says. "Women who dress and act 'modestly' conduct themselves in ways that shroud their sexuality in mystery. They live in a way that makes womanliness more a transcendent, implicit quality than a crude, explicit quality." Modesty in dress doesn't mean that you can't be fashionable, and modesty in action doesn't mean that you must be a prude or a bore. I feel that modesty is really about self-respect, and I like the way that Shalit phrases this idea: "So one of modesty's paradoxes, then, is that it is usually a reflection of self-worth, of having such a high opinion of yourself that you don't need to boast or put your body on display for all to see."

A Return to Modesty isn't a page-turner, but it is interesting, and I think that Wendy Shalit raised good questions and made interesting points. And, I think, she showed that modesty is sexy.