I like this picture from a “modest apparel” website because it a) insinuates that pre-pubescent girls are somehow in need of special protection from prying eyes, making the makers of this clothing bigger perverts than any of us could ever be and b) the ham-fisted attempt to distract from the fact that a lot of the appeal of “modest” clothing is that it restricts movement.
From Scott, I read this wonderful blog post by Cara, decrying the women out there calling themselves “feminist” but making their “feminism” about extending ridiculous claims to women that if we shut our legs and pretend our vaginas don’t exist, then we could free ourselves of being treated like objects like men. It’s a philosophy that demands you pretend that old-time patriarchies don’t treat women like complete objects, sex and baby and housework dispensing machines who may have desires of their own or not, but no one really cares because god has a role for them. The term “objectification” has lost all meaning in the common parlance—people assume it means “to be looked at lustfully”, and then wonder what’s so wrong with that, and they have a point. Gazing into your lover’s eyes and thinking about all the dirty things you plan to do is romance, baby. Asking your bride-to-be’s father for “permission” to marry her like you’re buying a horse is just as objectifying as judging a boob-comparing contest, and may even be more so, since you’re doing it to a person you know and who you supposedly love as another human being. The term “objectification” means “to regard someone as an object, not an equal”, and there are few more objectified women in the world than those in the thrall of modesty cults that view women as nothing more than a sum of sexual parts to be concealed and revealed depending on whether or not the audience has ponied up properly.
The biggest betrayal is Naomi Wolf’s, as Cara notes. Wolf has been something of a mess for a number of years, mixing up the pathos of being dumped with genuine female oppression (which all too often could be relieved by being dumped). Wolf has got into her head the modesty cult and its claim that women can control male mistreatment by parceling out our body parts according to a system, to the point where she’s actually romanticized at least the cultures that mandate hair-covering. The idea that women who are forced by religion to cover their hair or trip over long skirts are freer than the hussies in blue jeans and bobbed hair is a belief best fostered by not living near anyone in a modesty cult; having lived in places where religious fanaticism can fester, I can assure you that it’s not actually fun to have your life micromanaged by patriarchs. But Wolf has got it into her head that there’s just some magic romance’n'modesty bullet to make men be nicer to you, as Cara quotes:
As a result, Wolf believes that many young women tend to feel shame when they’re attracted to someone and have libidinous feelings. “What makes it possible to find some sort of release is to get drunk and have sex with someone you don’t know, because if you are conscious and not drunk then you have to be thinking things like — Do I like this guy?, Is this the right guy?” Wolf added, “If you’re conscious and taught to feel so ashamed about your sexuality, all of this anxiety will kick in when you’re in a sexual situation, which is so overwhelming that it’s easier to get sex with alcohol, is pretty much what it comes down to for a lot of women. It’s easier to deal with it; it’s easier to compartmentalize the emotions.”
“… When you leave here, ask someone for a date. Send someone a letter, send someone flowers. Boys, girls… invite someone to sit on a blanket with you and look at the stars,” she said to applause.
It’s tempting to believe that slowing it down or forsaking casual sex will somehow strongarm that boy you like into respecting women, and it’s true that if you zip up your pants and sit and look at the stars, you’ll probably stop him from going back to his friends and mocking your sluttiness. Instead he’ll go back to his friends and making fun of you for being such a horrible prude, generalizing about how women are crazy with all their lame romance crap, and then jerking off to a porn about a woman choking on a cock until she nearly passes out. Women cannot control men through gatekeeping the pussy. The sooner you get that into your head, the sooner you can start living for yourself instead of trying to find some way to strongarm sexist men into being not sexist. And the sooner you can move on and start looking for a man who simply is a better person and stop wasting your time trying to improve the behaviors of men who aren’t better people.
Cara then leaps all over the pathetic attempts to call Wendy Shalit—who clutches her pearls with the best of them at “The Vagina Monologues” and opposes anti-violence actions that teach women to be comfortable with their bodies on the well-established theory that it’s easier for you to articulate your desires and keep better control of your immediate sexual situations if you are in touch with them. It makes perfect sense. To a lot of us world-weary types, the emphasis on things like looking at vulvas and saying “vagina” out loud at anti-violence performances, protests, and teach-ins can seem a little corny, but to wet-behind-the-ears college girls, the permission to view your body as both something that belongs to you and something not to be ashamed of can go a long way to helping those girls wriggle out of situations where that shame and sense that women’s bodies belong to men will be leveraged against them to coerce them into having sex against their will.
Shalit’s mental voodoo, where women treating their bodies like male property to be concealed and revealed as a reward system to men who behave like good patriarchs is somehow magically freeing for women, is probably too stupid to even bother wasting my time with right now. It’s just a shame to see once-bright feminists like Naomi Wolf get sucked into the modesty craze. Consider the universal disdain for pants in these modesty cults for a moment and you’ll realize it has nothing to do with “protecting” women from male nastiness but instead relegating women to second class status.
Cara asks where all the feminists are, since she keeps reading so-called feminists running around spouting bullshit about how long skirts can magically save us from sexist piggery.
Where are all of the feminists?
I know that you’re here. And I’m here. And lots of other kick ass feminist bloggers (whom I admire greatly) are here. And I have a bookshelf filled with books by modern feminists who are here.
But where the hell are they? Because they’re sure as hell not in the mainstream media.
Well, Katha Pollitt got her new book reviewed in the NY Times….by a former ballerina whose entrance into the world of letters was in writing a book praising anal sex as an act that’s especially submissive (and to demonstrate the utter submission and thrall to her anally fornicating master, she kept all his used condoms as tokens). All I’m saying is that if a feminist wrote a book called “The Surrender” that characterized anal sex as somehow super-intercourse because it’s more of a violation, she’d be called a man-hater and a sex-hater. But if you characterize anal sex as especially dominating of women while praising this domination, then it’s smooth sailing. We should get Wendy Shalit on this, if she’s got time left over after fainting at the immodesty of teaching college girls not to hate their bodies.
Pollitt’s new book Learning to Drive looks interesting, by the way. She’s branching out from the political column genre that made her famous and writing longer personal essays.
66 Responses to “Tripping over your skirts shall set you free”
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andPut the two together and you have it all in a nutshell. As long as women not only play sexual gatekeeper but romantic object and receiver they are contributing to their own objectification and passivity.
Sadly, most women don’t fit the feminist, independent, nonconformist, active types found on this blog. A vast number — I would argue most — women have been sold the moralistic and patriarchal models so completely that they have difficulty realizing that part of breaking those patriarchal chains is getting off their asses and doing a lot more of the romantic and sexual heavy lifting of advance and fear of rejection. To accept that you are something that must be pursued and obtained like a prize means that the “and the man WINS!” model remains firmly in place.
It’s tough, because it’s a really nasty world out there and there’s a fear that approaching men will lead to bad things, because it will—many men are sexist, they conflate “forward woman” with “easy and therefore an acceptable object to exploit”. But realizing that you can’t individually change men goes a long way to relieving those pressures. So a guy’s a pig—you learned, move on. If you are stuck in the view that you have an ounce of control over a man’s hate of women, then you’ll end up sticking it out longer than you should on the unsalvagable.
Of course, women are naturally perfectly free to retain the old concepts. They are so endowed with respect for you:
I would argue that it is incumbent on women to make asking men out so common that this sexist notion becomes quaint and dated and not something that people admit to believing out loud. The fact that such a tiny minority of women make the first overt move just gives that lie endless legs.While without more context, it’s hard to tell just from the above quotes, I don’t think Wolf is completely wrong there.
Building your sexual life with intention and making conscious choices — rather than getting smashed so you don’t have to take responsibility for your actions, which may result in good or bad sex, but either way you can deny it, and this goes for women and men — is a good idea, and dare I say it, feminist.
Where Wolf is off, I think, is that she only directs those intentions towards a slow paced, “romantic” possibilities. If I want to have casual sex with the hottie I met last week, I will do it on purpose, and I will enjoy it on purpose. If I want to more slowly build a relationship with someone based on more than how good he looks with his shirt off, I will also intentionally do that.
Thanks for the link, Amanda
Also, the modest apparel pic is rather ironic, seeing as how the girl on the ground could pretty easily look up that other girl’s dress. Silly fundies.
I think that there also might be some comfusion between cause and effect going on here. It is the case that a man who respects the woman he is with will tend to move more slowly, take the time to get to know her, have a couple dates first, etc. However the is the result of respect already created through proper cultural training and cannot be instilled through a one time external influence.
It reminds me of a story Richard Feynman used to tell of what he called the “Cargo Cult” During WW2 the allies had an air base on this island which resulted in quite a bit of spare supplies being available to the natives of that island although very little actual interaction between the people. After the war was over when the allies packed up and left the natives promptly built a new runway, complete with air traffic controllers, smudge pots to direct night landings, a radar tower, and all the other forms they had seen. For some strange reason though the planes didn’t return.
You can’t create respect by enforcing the forms of respect on people. At the best all you do is create resentment which has an unfortunate side effect of spilling over into violence. After all the gentleman took her on a date, bought her dinner, might have even given her a flower. He’s done his part now he deserves to get laid and her refusal to do so becomes a violation of the implicit contract he was busy writing in his head.
Well, I’ll say that immodest clothing also restricts movement more often than not, but we all knew that– the problem is that specially-designed ‘modest’ clothing is just as self-conscious a marketing display as ass-high skirts and five-inch heels, just geared towards a different customer.
I swear that Naomi Wolf makes my teeth itch… The Beauty Myth really was an important book, group-therapy prose style notwithstanding, but Wolf hasn’t had anything interesting to say since.
Absolutely true, although I think it’s foolish to pretend that it’s not part of a broader set of relationship negotiations, maybe even more in marriage than in dating situations. Rowmyboat’s essentially right that a bit of restraint can be useful in terms of controlling one’s destiny, after all, and spontaneous, highly romanticized sex has its own pitfalls. I’m generally for it– in fact, one of the things I mourn as I get older is the lack of sheer, raw, the-hell-with-the-consequences lust– but there are risks beyond the obvious pregnancy/STD ones that have to be managed.
You know, I hate to throw a monkeywrench into a perfectly good statement of fact, as found in the post: Men who don’t respect women can’t be made to treat women as humans as a price for the sex they want. That is true and important.
However, this is a good point that seems to be overlooked too often:
Building your sexual life with intention and making conscious choices — rather than getting smashed so you don’t have to take responsibility for your actions…is a good idea, and dare I say it, feminist.
I know that you all (straight women) carry this enormous burden that I cannot truly understand, in that you experience sexual desire for men and within this society that’s loaded with political challenges. And yet, isn’t it a good thing to encourage straight women to make conscious and intentional choices about who puts what where and when?
That’s not the same as telling girls to wait for the flowers and candy, and I’m not saying that Naomi Wolf can’t articulate the difference. All I’m saying is that there is a nugget of truth in there, which is that if you behave as if you’re valuable, you will be more likely to experience both sexual and interpersonal satisfaction. There is a feminist way to make that assertion and I think it’s not inherently sexist.
For example, when I made the leap from sleeping with all my dates because the meaning of homosexuality included ’sexual immorality’ in my mind, to being a choosy person who dated a lot of women and kissed a few but didn’t fuck any of them–I found a wonderful partner for life. We’re married and have had more sex over the past 13 years than any other couple of women we know. (Yes, that’s a low bar, and before someone asks if that means FOUR times a year, the answer is MYOB, I get laid more than either of my brothers-in-law.)
So, toward the end of getting the Pandagon Brain Trust to work for free on my problems: What are your suggestions for how to comunicate that message to my daughter, who is deeply and obviously straight? (Not asking my sisters because, well, see above: I get laid more than either of my BILs, and I want my kid to get as much enjoyment from sex as her parents do.)
It struck me recently that this idea has a quite a bit in common with the geopolitical wall-building impluse that led to the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s and Antonius Pius’s Walls in Great Britain, the Maginot Line, the Israel-Palestine wall, and the current attempts at a Mexico border fence.
All of those things were and continue to be glitterringly successful, of course.
Wait. Right?
All I’m saying is that there is a nugget of truth in there, which is that if you behave as if you’re valuable, you will be more likely to experience both sexual and interpersonal satisfaction. There is a feminist way to make that assertion and I think it’s not inherently sexist.
Here’s the speech I’m practicing for my daughter. What do you think?
Dorothy, your speech is overall very good, but don’t forget to include not pressuring others into sex. If she wants to, and her partner doesn’t, then she’s out of luck.
“Have sex if you and someone else both want to, and only because you both want to. Don’t let anyone bully or badger you into having sex, and don’t do any bullying or badgering yourself. Sex is only good when both people are enthusiastic…”
Am I the only one who thinks that perhaps the other premise of the “New Modesty” argument is the one that causes trouble?
1) Young women feel shame and guilt about wanting to have sex with someone
2) So they get drunk to turn off their internal censors
3) When they’re drunk, they sometimes make bad decisions about sex, which they may later regret.
Instead of going after 2 and 3, which a) doesn’t really work and b) renders you essentially indistinguishable from the chastity-belt crowd, why not got after 1?
It makes sense to feel trepidation about wanting to have sex with someone, the same way that you would feel it before bungee-jumping or downhill skiing. But the answer to that is to make damn sure your know what you’re doing and have checked your equipment.
I think the challenge in our culture is that sex is often defined as a means to an end instead of an end in and of itself.
Sex is for pleasure (and making babies). If you are trying to acheive anything other than those two things you should not be having sex.
If you are trying to be liked, well, then be smart, interesting and likeable.
If you are trying to hold together a failing relationship either be nicer to one another or leave.
If you are doing to prove you can, well, don’t bother because it does not actually prove anything about anybody.
If you are doing it because it is fun then go to town.
PhoenixRising, I definitely agree that my sex life became infinitely less complicated (in an internal personal/political sort of way) when I realized I was happier just sticking to women and not bothering with the men at all any more. — And btw, my partner and I have only been together 5 years, but at least so far the sex is still frequent and awesome, please can we put to rest the myth that lesbians have any more of a drop-off of sexual activity in long-term relationships than do any other type of couple, on the whole. (Besides, even if there are less “sexual events” I’ll bet that if we counted actual orgasms instead, the dykes would still come out ahead).
One thing that struck me in your post though (which you probably didn’t mean as it parses out):
hmmmm, “as if”….. This actually does show part of the problem with the whole modesty movement — the message is for women to behave AS IF they were “valuable”, but it doesn’t actually encourage a sincere belief within women that they ARE IN FACT valuable.
Hey! Not all of us ballerinas are sexual masochists or submissives! Goddammit. There’s some commenter on Amazon waxing poetic about how she waxed poetic about how ballet prepared her for pain.
Yes, ballet is painful. But not all of us think of it as some kind of delight in pain or submission to it or some crap like that.
Sorry. Tangent.
My father gave me great advice when I was 11 or 12, right on the cusp of liking boys, and it has served me very very well: Never do anything you don’t want to do. If you never do anything you don’t want to do, no one can take advantage of you.
(And I realize someone will go after me for the never and no one - I’m sure someone can come up with an exception - but the point is, sometimes we have sex with people who later turn out to be assholes or not who we thought or they don’t want what we want - that’s life. But as long as you do what you do because you wanted to, and not to make that person like you, they haven’t really pulled one over on you.)
I agree with this, but I don’t think it can happen until women really start getting the message that our worth is not dependent on how hawt we are and whether or not we have a man.
I used to have an enormous fear of rejection, to the point where I would totally clam up and not interact with guys I was interested in because I was afraid they would find out that I liked them. If they found out I was interested, then there was a chance they would reject me. Since I had very low self-esteem, I assumed that the chances of that happening were very high, so I just tried to avoid it entirely. Actually, I pretty much hated myself so much that I figured the reaction to my expressing interest in a guy would be him laughing in my face and thinking what a loser I must be to think that he’d be even remotely interested in me. (These weren’t overt thoughts that I had, but I realize now that’s what was going on.)
The way to get over the fear of rejection is to learn to love yourself and to believe that you really don’t need a man. Once I learned those things, asking guys out or initiating interactions of whatever sort became very easy. It’s a simple fact that not every guy is going to be interested in me, just as I’m not interested in every guy I meet, so I really shouldn’t take it so personally if they reject me. It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me. It’s not a personal failing. Once I really got that, making the first move became no problem.
The thing is, women/girls are constantly bombarded with messages that we have to be hawt and that our true mission in life is to find a man, get married, and have babies. So, expecting women to just start making the overt move so that it becomes more “normal” is kind of asking a lot, until those messages start changing.
Well, I’ll say that immodest clothing also restricts movement more often than not, but we all knew that– the problem is that specially-designed ‘modest’ clothing is just as self-conscious a marketing display as ass-high skirts and five-inch heels, just geared towards a different customer.
Oh, no kidding. I live in a part of Brooklyn that has a lot of women who dress modestly. They just don’t advertise that they’re DRESSING! MODESTLY! Either they’re wearing salwar kameezes, or simple long skirts with long-sleeved tops, or that kind of matronly tailored suit that a lot of the Hasidic women wear. The only time I really notice is in hot weather, when the long-sleeved tops look really uncomfortable, and the suit jackets stay on (and I can’t imagine how hot it gets wearing a wig in August in NYC). Or when there’s a group of women all wearing the same wig.
Of course, I also see plenty of non-religious modest garb as well. It’s called dressing in a way that makes you comfortable, and if you’re not comfortable showing a lot of skin, you don’t. The MODESTYWEAR people want to make sure everyone knows JUST HOW MODESTLY THEY’RE DRESSING.
Which kind of defeats the point, no?
Dorothy -
Your speech is fine. However, as the recipient of a similar speech who somehow got pressured into her first sexual encounter against her will, I’d have loved it if my parents had ended that with ‘and if anything does happen to you, we’ll be there to back you up against anyone and anything.’
My teenage mind automatically appended an ‘and if you do [let yourself be bullied and badgered], it’s your fault and don’t come crying to us about it,’ which is silly but could have been prevented.
I think what Naomi Wolf said has been over-simplified. The quote about date, letters, flowers, etc. seems to be less in response to the hooking-up and more in response to the ubiquitous nature of pornography in today’s culture. Earlier she had said this:
and this:
I don’t read judgment and shaming into that. She’s observing a phenomenon where the pendulum has swung from a point where porn was highly stigmatized and young people went through elaborate, romantic rituals to get sex to a point where porn is ubiquitous and sex has been completely divorced from emotional intimacy. It strikes me as more a call for balance than prudery. (And yes, I’m over-simplifying now, but I’m trying not to be hopelessly long-winded.)
yeah — I’m a very modest dresser, but it’s more about comfort and wearing something that fits more than wanting to strut around and proclaim my virtue.
It’s too bad these patriarchs dressing their daughters in floor-length skirts can’t remember back to their own teenage boy days, when the more prudish a girl was, the more of a challenge she was and there was a scramble amongst the boys to see who could nail her first. If they could remember what that was like, maybe they’d be a little more easygoing about what little Suzy wears.
Building your sexual life with intention and making conscious choices — rather than getting smashed so you don’t have to take responsibility for your actions, which may result in good or bad sex, but either way you can deny it, and this goes for women and men — is a good idea, and dare I say it, feminist.
That’s not what she said. In fact, she offered the opposite, that there’s a script you can follow (romance, gazing into stars) that will relieve you of responsibility for your decisions, just not with alcohol, and will buy you respect. Sorry, not buying it. You can have well-thought out, intentional, conscious sex that incorporates casual sex and yes, even incorporating some libations and partying. It’s all about thinking through your actions, not romance or not romance, etc.
But here, she’s basically lying to women who really want to be told that there’s a way to get that boy you like who doesn’t respect you to respect you by controlling access to the pussy. You can’t. In fact, I would advise some women that it’s a far, far better thing to fuck and run with the boy you lust after who doesn’t respect you than to get yourself weighed down trying to change him with some moonlight and gazes into the eyes. If you think the fuck and run is humiliating, the having someone laugh at your earnest romantic inclinations is a lot worse.
So, I think we agree. She means well, but she’s completely lost the boat. She keeps thinking there’s some personal behavior women can engage in that will change men, and there’s just not.
I’d add to Dorothy’s speech:
And because you have sex with someone does not give him claim to you or your body. Or vice versa. If you sleep with a man and he turns out not to be what you wanted, you cannot change him, so move on. And don’t feel like you have to stick it out with him, no matter what he says.
I don’t think casual sex is the problem—even the ladies at IWF have to rely on examples of women who cling to casual sex partners to show that it’s a problem. It’s the clinginess that’s the problem. It’s the trying to make bad guys good. It’s trying to stick it out because you don’t want to be a slut. Women who bolt at the first sign of piggery are shamed as sluts, but they don’t have these problems of women who hang in, trying to make something work that won’t.
I have 7 and 8 year old daughters. While we don’t shop at modestyisus.com for our girls, it is surprising to me how hoochie the clothes designed for young girls truly are. Designs meant for adult women simply get downsized. A trip through Target or Old Navy leaves me thinking my daughter have 3 choices: Dress like a 16 year old boy in hoodies and oversized jeans, dress like Laura Ingalls Wilder in full length uncomfortable dresses, or wear clothes that sexualize them at a very young age and are featured prominently on the cover of Sunday circulars. I don’t give a rip what 18+ year old women want to wear. It is theie perogative to welcome attention via their clothing choices in any way they choose. I would, however, like my daughers to be able to purchase comfortable, age appropriate (both in style and modesty level), cute clothes without having to spend a week seeking it out in 20 retail and online stores. Any sources for such clothing would be appreciated.
Dr T —
Do what us older young women do, buy boy’s clothing. A t shirt and jeans will do. Or buy the t shirts from the girl’s sections if you wish. It works even better fro young children than for post-pubescent women, cause little boys and little girls are still the same shape.
DT:
Lands End worked pretty well for my daughters at that age. I also started going to a lot of consignment shops, which soon became Daughter #1’s preference as she moved toward her teens. Daughter #2 is much more trendy, which can be a problem. Many of this fall’s clothes came from Macy’s, though only after a *lot* of sorting through. And we always have to have a “London France” patrol, in which she squats or bends down in the jeans and I tell her if her underwear shows.
Old Navy is usually not worth the trip, but Sears can be quite reasonable.
First, let me say that I completely agree with everything Amanda said in her post.
Then, let me say that the issue of modest apparel is a difficult one for me, because I’m usually a modest dresser. And I get a lot of flack for it. Seriously, a woman at work threatened to submit my name to What Not To Wear because she feels the way I hide my figure is unflattering. Nevermind that in an office that’s usually about 65 degrees, a girl who was born in Florida needs big bulky sweaters. I wasn’t wearing tight clothes, despite being skinny, and that was clearly a fashion don’t.
So I have some sympathy for the people who go to those websites looking for someone who’s on their side, and thinks it’s acceptable to cover their legs. At the same time, I think Zuzu is right, and there’s a big difference between women who happen to dress modestly and women who want everyone to know they dress modestly.
And, needless to say, there’s a big difference between women who choose to dress modestly and women who dress modestly because it’s what their husband or father wants. Since my husband would like me to dress less modestly, I feel pretty comfortable that I’m making my own choices.
Though, sometimes my choices are formed by wanting to be able to walk through downtown with my son without being catcalled every ten feet. Seriously, don’t these men notice or care that I’m with my child? Even if they can’t respect me, can’t they respect that I’m a good little mother, just like the patriarchy wants me to be?
Here’s the speech I’m practicing for my daughter. What do you think?
“Respect yourself, and respect others. Make your decisions from your strength, from your sense of what you want to be, rather than from your weakness, from what you fear yourself being. Do not play with other people’s hearts, do not accept them playing with yours. Learn to forgive yourself your mistakes, remember the good times, and move on when it is over. And always remember I will have your back and love you regardless.”
Good luck.
And always remember I will have your back and love you regardless.”
“Except if you vote Republican - then I’m changing my name and pretending you’re an orphan.”
It’s tempting to believe that slowing it down or forsaking casual sex will somehow strongarm that boy you like into respecting women, and it’s true that if you zip up your pants and sit and look at the stars, you’ll probably stop him from going back to his friends and mocking your sluttiness. Instead he’ll go back to his friends and making fun of you for being such a horrible prude, generalizing about how women are crazy with all their lame romance crap, and then jerking off to a porn about a woman choking on a cock until she nearly passes out. Women cannot control men through gatekeeping the pussy. The sooner you get that into your head, the sooner you can start living for yourself instead of trying to find some way to strongarm sexist men into being not sexist.
Goddamn, no one sums this shit up better than Amanda.
a point where porn was highly stigmatized and young people went through elaborate, romantic rituals to get sex
A point which women were not at all better off. Worse off, in a lot of ways, because if you’re a sexist douche who’s gone through a lot of romantic bullshit to get some pussy, you’re going to even be less likely to care what the pussy thinks about it when the time comes.
Phoenician, we tell out (too young to understand us) son that we’ll support him if he’s gay and we’ll even support him if he’s a republican, but we don’t think we can support him if he’s a gay republican, because that’s just too self-hating and weird.
If you’re anything other than an obscenely rich straight white male who can talk Jesus without throwing up, being a Republican just means you’re a sucker.
I feel like there’s issues here I don’t completely understand - or maybe it’s because I’m someone who doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, but while reading this post I was thinking things like about how some women (like me) don’t enjoy casual sex and don’t want to have sex right away - and in those instances it’s about finding a man who respects that about you. I don’t have casual sex because of how well I know myself and what I’m comfortable with and what I want and what I enjoy.
Further, some people are genuinely more comfortable in more “modest” clothing - and there are a lot of “modest” options that are designed for movement. For example, a bathing suit that’s shorts instead of briefs. I feel like it’s considered weird, as a woman, to wear swim trunks, but then I don’t have to shave, so that’s what I like to wear.
A lot of what I read over on the “modest” side of the Internet is genuinely about women who aren’t interested in casual sex or who are interested in dressing “modestly” feeling comfortable and strong about their personal choices.
And some of what they say isn’t for me. Often, I disagree. But then, I certainly feel that way here sometimes, too.
All the additions to my “speech” are excellent–thank you!
(Speech isn’t the correct word: it needs to be a conversation.)
Dr. T,
You can always take your girls to a mid price store–like Penney’s or Sears and let them pick out what they want. Some girls are the T-shirt/jeans sort and some are the frilly dress type; give them a preset limit on what you’re willing to pay; 100$ or 200$ for each, or whatever your budget allows, and go from there.
Of course, what they want may be a source of puzzlement/frustration/humor to you. My little niece once picked out a pink Pink Floyd t-shirt with the rainbow pyramid because it was pretty–she couldn’t understand why her Auntie thought that was so hilarious.
Dr. T, have you tried the clothing that’s intended for school uniforms? Both Target and Burlington Coat Factory carry a lot of very preppy shirts, skirts, shorts and pants for girls who want to dress like a girl but not like a hoochie mama. They don’t look like Catholic schoolgirl outfits, they just look professional.
As for modesty, the mistake that proponents of modesty often make is the belief that modern feminism is somehow about shaming women into wearing skank-wear. It’s true that there is cultural pressure to make girls dress like they’re walking the street, and it’s true that many girls wish to resist this pressure and dress more modestly. And this is fine, as an option. The problem is the slut-shaming attitude that goes with it — “I don’t show off my belly button, so I am a better person than you.” Actually if a woman wants to wear low-rider jeans and deep cleavage and show off her belly button, she has that right. And if a woman wants to wear a loose flowing skirt and a blouse with a high-neck collar and long poofy sleeves, she has that right. And if a woman wants to wear a hoodie, jeans and Doc Martens, she has that right. And really, nobody ought to be in the business of telling any of those women that they ought to wear something else. So the positive, “I don’t want to be a sex object and I’ll wear what I want” message of the modesty movement gets mixed up with the negative “Girls who wear sexualized clothing are sluts, and sluts aren’t really human.”
There’s also a conflation of “I have power over myself and I choose my own sexuality” with either “I play gatekeeper and make men jump through hoops to have sex with me” *or* “I have lots of casual sex”, depending on who’s saying it. I personally do not do casual sex. I have had sex with two men in my life. The first one, I dated for two years before I felt I trusted him enough to lose my virginity to him. The second one, I hopped into bed with on the second date, and I waited *that* long only to get permission from the wife who was trying to leave him (had he been trying to leave *her*, I would not have touched him, but she broke up with him first — but legally they were still married, so I wanted to make sure she was okay with it.) People would say I was a prude for the first guy, and a slut for the second guy, but it’s all about who *I* want, who *I* trust enough to have sex with. As long as a woman is doing what *she* wants — and she’s not hurting anyone by doing it — nothing else matters, but there’s too many women who sleep around because they feel like they have to and too many women who stay virgins because they feel like they have to, and the world would be a better place if women just did what they *wanted*, not what they thought the world expected of them.
Dr T, run don’t walk to LandsEnd.com. You can do it on the couch without chasing your kids through the girls’ department as this weekend’s quality time, for one thing.
You can buy clothes that don’t ‘ho up the place (no, I am NOT buying my baby her first leopard print belly shirt, that’s for her to do later with her own money) for the same price as Target if you shop the closeout departments. Their little girls’ clothes run through size 14.
If I had a nickel for every time I walked out of Sears, Jaques Penney or Target after asking the manager how to contact the regional buyer, I’d have a big flippin’ stack of nickels. And I’d spend them at Lands’ End buying my kid a practical corduroy skirt with shorts liner and pockets on all sides that hold rocks and sticks and notes from her friends.
That is all I have on this tangent.
Dr. T, my friends with young daughters have been fairly effusive about Hanna Andersson. It wears really well, too.
I wasn’t trying to imply that was better, just that it was the opposite extreme. Extremes are rarely healthy.
Balance. An acknowledgment that sexuality and emotion and human connection are all interwoven. But without denying pure physical pleasure or stigmatizing the casual encounter.
On the advice, Thanks to all. Dorothy kicked it off perfectly and the followups are helpful as well.
And always remember I will have your back and love you regardless.”
“Except if you vote Republican - then I’m changing my name and pretending you’re an orphan.”
You know, for the three years in which our neighbor state of OK refused to honor the kid’s birth certificate, we refused to set foot there, on the reasoning that no one should have to be orphaned by more than one set of parents. It’s just wrong. Our parental love for her in unconditional and will withstand even Republicanism. (Yuck!)
But we kid, we kid about the odds that she’s going to stand up to us by joining a snake-handling church and being a Teen for G-d. As long as she grows though that before she can vote, I think we’re going to be just fine. In our unintentionally modest outfits.
I must be getting more with it — my first thoughts were, “Oh, aren’t those dresses cute? But the skirts are so long, why would they make it so hard for little girls to run around and play?”
I feel like there’s issues here I don’t completely understand - or maybe it’s because I’m someone who doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, but while reading this post I was thinking things like about how some women (like me) don’t enjoy casual sex and don’t want to have sex right away - and in those instances it’s about finding a man who respects that about you. I don’t have casual sex because of how well I know myself and what I’m comfortable with and what I want and what I enjoy.
No one is having an issue with that. Seriously, what anyone else does shouldn’t change your behavior. If you don’t call other women sluts or sit around judging people who have something different that works, then there’s no issue.
My issue here is that women who fall for this line that modesty or romance will somehow control male behavior are being sold a bill of goods. You cannot make a man respect you. Can’t. Do. It. If a man disrespects you for sleeping with him right away, that’s his problem, not yours. He’s the asshole, and he would have been the same asshole if you’d not slept with him. Sleep with someone, don’t, whatever. Dress how you want. But don’t expect that to change men one whit. Men can only change themselves and their own beliefs about women.
*wild applause* This post was absolutely brilliant, Amanda. (Then again, most of your posts are
)
Consider the universal disdain for pants in these modesty cults for a moment and you’ll realize it has nothing to do with “protecting” women from male nastiness but instead relegating women to second class status.
Do you have an example or a link? I didn’t know they didn’t like pants!
When I see those little dresses I remember being 8 or 9 years old around the time of the bicentennial. The ‘prarie’ dresses were very in at that time as there was a lot of pioneer costume and period clothing interest.
The best ones were made from the old type of patterns, the way some of the American Girl stuff is - gusseted underarms, darts to take in or let out, growth stripes, etc. Authentic stuff wasn’t restrictive – it was made to work in, move in, and grow in for girls who were fully expected to do all three on a daily basis in agrarian life. The stripped down and simplified stuff that *looks* old fashioned but is really shapeless? That will hinder movement and broadcast piety.
Called out by Phoebe Fay:
and
Well, what do you think the abstinence pushes encourage?
Balance. An acknowledgment that sexuality and emotion and human connection are all interwoven. But without denying pure physical pleasure or stigmatizing the casual encounter.
I think all this is beside the point, which is that the game is rigged so women can’t win. The more you sit around worrying if you’re having too much sex or not enough, doing it too soon or not soon enough, or whatever women are being encouraged to be neurotic about this week, the more time you’re wasting on that pointless game.
Amen.
Something that contributes to all of this is that great sex and great emotional/intellectual connection are seen as mutually exclusive things. My cousin use to scoff at her parents highly sexual (and admittedly devoid of any other connection) relationship, saying “I don’t want sex; I’d rather have a good, long conversation.”
Like, if you have great sex, that must be because your relationship is all about sex, and you’re either unwilling or unable to hold a conversation. And if you’re a woman involved in a sexual relationship, that makes you something of an exclusive whore, since we all know that women don’t *really* want to have sex.
Whereas if you have a relationship where you have a strong emotional and intellectual conversation, you must be taking the almost priest-like “high road” of eschewing those dirty earthly pleasures altogether in favor of more erudite pursuits. And, of course, any guy who falls for that is, for all intents and purposes, a eunich who emasculated himself for his touchy-feely wife/girlfriend.
Screw that. I want great conversations followed by great sex. Or vice versa. I want physical *and* emotional/intellectual connection.
The difficulty in moving on from the ‘gatekeeping the pussy’ role in sex (or lack thereof) is that there are women feel like they’ve got to be able to throw up the barricades. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating modesty or abstinence, but while so many men show so little respect for women and their right to make decisions about their sexual activities, there are women who are going to be gatekeeping, not because they think it will teach a man respect, but because it’s the only way they can assert bodily sovereignty. Sometimes a woman can be in a situation where ‘no’ is not enough and she literally has to clamp her legs together, or use her hand as a physical barrier, to show an inconsiderate asshole where her boundaries are.
It’s one hell of a balancing act, trying to get your head around all this kind of stuff. Personally, I’d like my sexual role to be about more than just allowing a man access to my orifices, but while I’ve got the ability, I’ll always be the gatekeeper to my pussy in some sense.
Daisy, those little girls aren’t exactly in baggy pants are they? You should read up on Shalit’s stuff; she’s big on “feminine” clothing, not just covering yourself up in a potato sack. What a weird thing to deny. As if you can find one modesty cult that “lets” women wear pants, and the general rule of how they push a very feminine attire falls apart.
Daisy, if you want to read some jaw-dropping essays on modest clothing and why pants are inappropriate, check out Ladies Against Feminism. Despite initial appearances, it’s not a parody site.
Yeah, my last Brooklyn address was Boro Park, a huge Hasidic community. Those girls were living the modesty dream, and their days seemed to consist mostly of chasing swarms of younger siblings in long, awkward dresses while waiting to be sold off when they came of age. They didn’t seem liberated so much as tired.
I often wondered, with the subway and freedom right there, how many of them just ran off as soon as they could. Because that was their choice; marry some guy and have lots of kids, or run off and be disowned by your family. Woot. Freedom.
it’s true that if you zip up your pants and sit and look at the stars, you’ll probably stop him from going back to his friends and mocking your sluttiness.
Actually, you might get called a slut whether you unzip or not. But, I agree that it is too often getting labeled slut or prude either way.
Amanda, deny what? I was just asking a question. I am completely unfamiliar with the writing of these “modesty advocates”.
Sniper, I was once affiliated with Ladies against women so that name IS kinda disturbing to me! I was unaware of this, thanks for the info.
Hmm, I wonder if Ladies Against Feminism is aware that the site they link to for buying bloomers is now offering crotchless pantaloons!
I’m glad Andrea piped up — if talking and sharing intellectual energy weren’t hot, I probably never would have had any sex at all.
PhoenixRising,
Another key thing in teaching your children about sex, is for parents not to hide their perfectly healthy sex life.
Understanding that sex is an intimate part of healthy adult relationships, is crucial to being more sexually secure.
The flip side of that, of course, is that just because you can have sex, doesn’t mean you should have sex.
Perhaps I am strange, but I find talking and sharing intellectual energy far hotter than physical attractiveness.
a lot of the appeal of “modest” clothing is that it restricts movement.
Bingo! I heard that there was a custom in Japan where anyone who went to see the Emperor would be required to change into extra-long pants which were impossible to run in so that they couldn’t kill him and get away successfully.
Men can only change themselves and their own beliefs about women.
“The lightbulb has to WANT to change.”
My mothers’ advice in this area was along that line.
“You can’t just fuck them, you have to be able to talk to them afterwards.”
is for parents not to hide their perfectly healthy sex life.
Discretion is more advisable. I would say that parents shouldn’t hide their physical affection from their children to some extend, as a way of modeling behavior. I had a girlfriend who never saw her parents
do more than hold hands, if even that, and along with being raised Catholic probably contributed to some of her complexes.
I’m not sayin’ do it in the living room, while they are are awake. But physical displays of affection should not be hidden, and if your kid catches you, deal with it.
We are big on roughhousing, body slams on the bed are routine in our house, as is wrestling, and toting each other around over our shoulders. Seeing this, then discovering that your parents have a more intimate form of “wrestling,” takes a lot of the curiosity away, which is what leads to a lot of bad sexual decisions.
I said this at the LAF site:
“This is either incredibly hilarious or horrifyingly depressing. Please tell me you guys are a parody. Please.
Assuming you are women who do this and this is serious, how can you have a blog if you think women should be illiterate? How can you hold protests and talk about sperm if you don’t think a women should speak out about what she believes and be at all interested in sex?
The best way to explain this would be to just say you’re a hypocrite. Or that this really is a parody site and someone is pulling my leg.
A tangent, but somewhat related. Ever hear about those people who thinks that men are are wild animals at heart and just need a good woman to tame them? Following this logic, why are they leaders if they are clearly unstable? Why aren’t men the ones locked up in the kitchens and taking care of children while women, who are unaffected no matter their relationship status, making laws and running our governments?
Let me stress that I do not think that any man or woman has certain qualities just because of what’s between their legs. People are people. Some are good, some are bad. All deserve equal rights and treatment.
That’s the message behind ‘love thy neighbor’. And no one can argue that. There’s a reason that it’s the only rule known as “golden.” ”
Yay run on sentences! lol
“…a lot of the appeal of “modest” clothing is that it restricts movement.”
I’ve hiked in jeans and I’ve hiked in long loose skirts, and the skirts were much easier to get around in. In fact, I’ve found that modest clothing generally is a lot easier to get around in than the non-modest kind, though I’ve worn both varieties. However, I must say that I get the idea that purveyors of modest clothing you point to here are not so much in the business of providing clothing that is modest as of providing clothing that is “modest”, if you see what I mean. These gowns–at least the two that are shown here–are meant more to convey the idea of modesty than to perform the chore of hiding a kid’s body from an invasive gaze.
Why do I think this? Well, a couple of reasons. First, these girls are shown in clothing that would not restrict their movements at all were they running or hiking. If the girls in the picture were running or hiking, what they’ve got on would be less restrictive than jeans. (Understand that I’m not talking here about a long or strenuous run or hike.) But they’re not doing either of those things in this photo. Instead, they look like they’re going to try to do one of the things they can’t do very well in the clothes they’ve got on, which is: climb trees. (Maybe they’re just considering it, or maybe they’ve considered it and given up.) If those girls try to climb that tree in those dresses, they will very soon find that they are revealing far more than they would if they were wearing tube tops and shorts.
Second: why are these dresses white? It’s their whiteness far more than their cut which renders them impractical. In fact I can’t help thinking the little girl who’s actually perched in the tree stands a good chance of having to clean herself up when she gets a chance, which would not be the case if her dress were gray, brown, or green. The girls are barefoot and situated in the outdoors, but they can’t do very much, barefoot and in the outdoors, because of the clothes they’re wearing. They can’t climb the tree they’re hovering around because of the cut of their clothing and because of its color. They can’t loll around on the ground, not because of the cut of their dresses, but because their dresses are white and they’ll get their dresses dirty if they do that. And they can’t gallop around, not for any significant distance, because of their bare feet.
IOW, these kids are shown in a position and a situation which would make the casual observer think that they were going to play, but a very little thought will show the same observer that they can’t play, not in the outfits they’ve got on. There are lots of physical activities which can be performed in “gunny-sack” dresses, but since these are gleaming-white gunny-sack dresses, all those physical activities are out. The two gowns that are displayed here look like playclothes, at first glance, but they can’t be used as playclothes, for various reasons. Would it be going too far to add that, in an exactly similar way, they look modest but aren’t?
(Tracksuits now, those are modest…but they carry with them connotations, racial and otherwise, which may not render them acceptable to the ‘modest clothing’ crowd. But I don’t know that to be true–just guessing.)
BTW–can’t help thinking of that old canard according to which men are allowed to dress in an instrumental manner whereas women are expected to dress in a way which signals their social position (age, class status, virgin or not, and the like). I can’t help thinking of that old canard because these two girls, as I see it, are not so much dressed innocently as dressed to look innocent…& there is a difference.
PS, Dr.T (and do you have 10,000 Fingers?)
If you don’t like dragging the kids to the mall (and who does?) you can always try Garanimals online. (Maybe they’re still sold in stores too, but I’m not sure. it’s pretty straightforward; Monkey tops go with Monkey bottoms, Panda tops go with Panda bottoms*, etc. Yeah, the girls’ selections tend to run heavily to the yellow and pink, but hey, there’s no reason why girls can’t wear the boys’ Monkey and Lion stuff.
*No obscene jokes from the peanut gallery, please.
bekabot: I’ve hiked in jeans and I’ve hiked in long loose skirts, and the skirts were much easier to get around in.
Probably depends a lot on what you’re used to. The accidents and misfortunes I had trying to do anything but stand around and look bored in long skirts would fill a short slapstick movie.
why are these dresses white?
Easiest to get clean without damaging them, I would think. I got stains out of white sturdy cotton or linnen that would have been forever in any other kind of cloth. Of course, unless you do not mind how you look, you’ll have to get into fresh clothes at least once a day, and the coloured sleeves and ribbons on those dresses might be a problem.