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SMNTY Classics: Is modest hottest? · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stephane.
0:08
Speaker 1: Ever told you, but actually I heart radio. Would you
0:19
Speaker 1: describe yourself as modest, Samantha, I will say that I'm
0:23
Speaker 1: very self conscious, so it's not necessarily about modesty but insecurity.
0:28
Speaker 1: But I think overall, yes, my dress is typically modest. Yeah,
0:35
Speaker 1: I probably am. I went to your period where I
0:37
Speaker 1: was really trying to push out of my comfort zone
0:40
Speaker 1: and I was gonna like crop tops, short shorts, and
0:43
Speaker 1: I look back on that period fondly, But the whole time,
0:46
Speaker 1: I was like so tense. When I did, I felt
0:48
Speaker 1: so nervous and uncomfortable, and I was like constantly straightening
0:52
Speaker 1: things out, wondering what I looks like. So I I did.
0:56
Speaker 1: I did struggle with that, and when I was growing up,
0:59
Speaker 1: it was very difficult for me to go outside of
1:02
Speaker 1: that boundary. Will Like my grandmother used to say, you
1:04
Speaker 1: have an excellent figure, and it would like bring me
1:06
Speaker 1: to tears since I was embarrassed. Yes, yes, but because
1:13
Speaker 1: we were recently talking about the editing of yearbooks to
1:16
Speaker 1: get rid of any sign of cleavage or shoulder, it's
1:20
Speaker 1: just something I've been thinking about about that kind of
1:22
Speaker 1: line where you can't win of either yeah, you're to
1:26
Speaker 1: modest and prude or the opposite of that, and and
1:31
Speaker 1: how there is this morality attached to modesty. But it
1:34
Speaker 1: also made me think about forever ago, and we did
1:36
Speaker 1: that many where we read the sex words how to
1:39
Speaker 1: write sexy. Modesty is a word that is often used
1:46
Speaker 1: for like nudity, like you cover your modesty or you
1:50
Speaker 1: hide your modesty, which always kind of cracked me up.
1:56
Speaker 1: It does seem really official. Yeah, it's just to me,
2:00
Speaker 1: it feels like another example of how we're so uncomfortable
2:04
Speaker 1: talking about sex. Yes, you gotta keep your modesty covered,
2:09
Speaker 1: and it's usually typically always referred to for women. Yes, yes, Well,
2:14
Speaker 1: we wanted to bring back this plastic episode looking into
2:17
Speaker 1: the history of of modesty, So please enjoy. Welcome to
2:24
Speaker 1: Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stup works dot com. Hello,
2:33
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
2:36
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're talking about modesty. And
2:40
Speaker 1: before we get into the research that we found, we
2:43
Speaker 1: first wanted to share what some of you think about
2:48
Speaker 1: this issue of modesty. Um As we were researching, we
2:51
Speaker 1: took to the Stuff Mom Never Told you Facebook page
2:54
Speaker 1: and said, hey, what what are your thoughts on this
2:58
Speaker 1: issue about telling girls to cover up? Um, about this
3:02
Speaker 1: so called modesty movement taking place, and here are just
3:07
Speaker 1: some samples of what some of you had to say. Yeah,
3:10
Speaker 1: I have a note here from Elise, who brings up
3:13
Speaker 1: weather and body image all in one fell swoop. She
3:17
Speaker 1: says modesty is just a social construct. There's nothing inherently
3:21
Speaker 1: wrong with bare skin. It is simply too hot where
3:23
Speaker 1: I live to be fully covered all the time, and
3:25
Speaker 1: I hate the double standard that allows men to go
3:27
Speaker 1: shirtless while women cannot. That said, I personally tend to
3:31
Speaker 1: wear a bit more clothing because society has successfully made
3:34
Speaker 1: me ashamed of my five pounds overweight body. Caitlin brought
3:38
Speaker 1: up something that a number of women also mentioned, which
3:42
Speaker 1: is the issue of boobs. Especially if you have ample boobs,
3:47
Speaker 1: it can be harder to adhere to certain modesty standards,
3:52
Speaker 1: So Caitlin writes, I personally choose to dress more modestly.
3:56
Speaker 1: I'm a bigger girl with a quote ample bosom, so
4:00
Speaker 1: even the less revealing outfits can make me look a
4:03
Speaker 1: him endowed. I have zero problem with women my size
4:06
Speaker 1: or any size, wearing whatever they feel comfortable in. Though,
4:09
Speaker 1: one of my dear friends, who is a little smaller
4:11
Speaker 1: than me but still curvy, wears things that are so
4:14
Speaker 1: low cut they would make me blush, but they look
4:16
Speaker 1: amazing on her and she has the confidence to that
4:19
Speaker 1: is the key. Yeah, and Jamie adds to this, talking
4:23
Speaker 1: about how difficult it is to wear a skirt when
4:25
Speaker 1: you are above average height. She says, even when I
4:28
Speaker 1: stick with a knee length skirt, I've been accused of
4:30
Speaker 1: showing too much. This is in the professional setting where
4:33
Speaker 1: others are wearing much shorter skirts. Plus I'm on the
4:35
Speaker 1: busty side, so I can't win either way. Yeah, as
4:39
Speaker 1: a five nine almost five tin woman, I can definitely
4:43
Speaker 1: empathize with the leg length issue. Jennifer McPherson, though, made
4:48
Speaker 1: me laugh with her comment. Maybe this is why in
4:51
Speaker 1: all of the quote future movies everyone pretty much just
4:55
Speaker 1: wears the same jumpsuit problem solved. I used to have
4:59
Speaker 1: a jumpsuit. I would totally wear a jumpsuit if a
5:03
Speaker 1: it wasn't challenging to find one that fit because I
5:06
Speaker 1: have a super long torso, and b if I could
5:09
Speaker 1: actually pull off a jumpsuit, well yeah, no, mine was
5:11
Speaker 1: definitely not like a fashion jumpsuit. Mine was part of
5:13
Speaker 1: my April O'Neil Halloween costume. It was bright yellow. So
5:17
Speaker 1: if that's if that's in in the post apocalyptic future,
5:20
Speaker 1: then I'm all set and yeah, you're ready, You're ahead
5:23
Speaker 1: of the curve. Well. I do think one thing that
5:26
Speaker 1: was interesting about all of the comments, because there were
5:30
Speaker 1: a lot of them in response to that question about modesty,
5:33
Speaker 1: was how varied everyone's opinions were. We had a lot
5:38
Speaker 1: of women firmly in the camp of modest as hottests,
5:42
Speaker 1: and other women saying, you know, modesty is basically a
5:45
Speaker 1: social construct, and other women saying, you know what, let's
5:50
Speaker 1: just take all of our clothes off because this is ridiculous.
5:53
Speaker 1: What's what's your opinion? Do you feel like people should
5:56
Speaker 1: sew a certain line or just dress however makes them happy,
5:59
Speaker 1: even if that's just like a big bikini top. What
6:01
Speaker 1: do you think do you think? I think that there
6:04
Speaker 1: are certain situations that call for certain types of outfits. Obviously,
6:10
Speaker 1: if you want to wear a bikini top to a
6:13
Speaker 1: job interview, you're probably not going to get that job,
6:15
Speaker 1: unless you're interviewing for a lifeguard position or something like that.
6:20
Speaker 1: And I'm all for women dressing in a way that
6:23
Speaker 1: makes them feel comfortable and confident, whether that is a
6:26
Speaker 1: turtleneck and a floor link skirt or a crop top
6:31
Speaker 1: and short shorts. Um. I think what's maybe more important,
6:35
Speaker 1: and what we'll get into more in the podcast, is
6:38
Speaker 1: just checking ourselves on the way that we talk about modesty,
6:42
Speaker 1: specifically to girls, Because even though there might be a
6:46
Speaker 1: lot of good intentions with talking to girls about the
6:49
Speaker 1: importance of covering them up, covering themselves up, and you know,
6:52
Speaker 1: leaving things to the imagination, a lot of it is
6:55
Speaker 1: often just framed as ultimately making sure that they are
7:00
Speaker 1: appealing sexually. Two men. Right, what do you think, Caroline?
7:06
Speaker 1: I mean, I I share, I share your opinion. I
7:09
Speaker 1: think there's a time and a place for everything. I'm
7:11
Speaker 1: not going to wear my pajama shirt to a job interview,
7:14
Speaker 1: you know, or a tank top because I do have uh,
7:19
Speaker 1: I am blessed in the bubular area, and so a
7:23
Speaker 1: shirt that I might wear and find comfortable could actually
7:27
Speaker 1: look to some people inappropriate in the workplace. Yeah, that's
7:31
Speaker 1: the thing. Once we get into the lines of like
7:34
Speaker 1: what is professional, that's when it does get hard because
7:37
Speaker 1: you can say I should be able to wear whatever
7:39
Speaker 1: I want. But then but also yes, like I I
7:44
Speaker 1: hear that statement, and then I also think, well, there's
7:49
Speaker 1: the whole argument and modesty, which will we will obviously
7:51
Speaker 1: get into in this podcast talking about like, uh, covering
7:55
Speaker 1: up for men or around men um, but also with
7:59
Speaker 1: my clear leavage, I also want you looking at my face,
8:03
Speaker 1: you know. So it's not even so much that I'm like,
8:05
Speaker 1: I better protect myself by covering up. It's more like
8:09
Speaker 1: I just don't want my boobs to be an issue
8:11
Speaker 1: in every conversation I have. But is that then a
8:14
Speaker 1: double standard if for someone like me who cleavage is
8:19
Speaker 1: rarely an issue because it's mostly invisible, in which case
8:24
Speaker 1: I could wear the lower cut top to the office
8:26
Speaker 1: and people would probably still be looking me in the eye,
8:31
Speaker 1: even though as a tall woman, if I'm wearing he
8:32
Speaker 1: might be face to face with my boobs. But you
8:36
Speaker 1: know what I mean, does that ever feel like a
8:39
Speaker 1: frustrating double standard that if you are a more curvacious woman,
8:43
Speaker 1: whether it is in the boobular region which is the
8:47
Speaker 1: scientific term for it, or a little lower down in
8:49
Speaker 1: the butler region, that issue becomes a lot more challenging
8:54
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, then, what what am I supposed
8:55
Speaker 1: to wear? Do I have to just cover up my
8:57
Speaker 1: entire figure in order to be d A appropriate? I know,
9:02
Speaker 1: I I I hate it. Yeah, I mean I will
9:05
Speaker 1: it being all of it, the conversation about it, the
9:08
Speaker 1: fact that we have to work so hard every morning
9:11
Speaker 1: to pick out something from our closet to go to
9:14
Speaker 1: work that's not in a pro And I don't mean
9:15
Speaker 1: like Kristen and I going to work, I just mean
9:18
Speaker 1: work in general. Yeah, you know, like it's it's such
9:20
Speaker 1: a challenge, and women are told from the time they're
9:23
Speaker 1: itty biddy little kids that they have to watch what
9:28
Speaker 1: they wear and and watch how they dress around people,
9:30
Speaker 1: especially boys and men. Yeah, and this entire head scratching
9:36
Speaker 1: issue of how do we even talk about it? How
9:39
Speaker 1: do we hash all this out? Is why we wanted
9:41
Speaker 1: to do this episode in the first place, because clearly,
9:45
Speaker 1: like I said, judging by the outpouring of Facebook commentary,
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Speaker 1: this is something that a lot of other women have
9:52
Speaker 1: dealt with as well. So let's go way, way way
9:58
Speaker 1: back in time. And first of all, I'll say that
10:02
Speaker 1: when it comes to this very brief historical snapshot of modesty.
10:07
Speaker 1: We're not really going to get very much into religion. Yeah,
10:10
Speaker 1: that could be a whole other topic unto itself. There
10:13
Speaker 1: were a lot of women on Facebook who brought up
10:17
Speaker 1: things like, you know, veiling, traditional veiling in Islam, also
10:22
Speaker 1: head covering in Judaism and even in some Christian denominations.
10:27
Speaker 1: But that's not really what we want to get at. Yeah,
10:31
Speaker 1: we're we're kind of gonna be focusing more in this
10:34
Speaker 1: episode on the sniping that goes on between and among women,
10:40
Speaker 1: more more so in a secular kind of viewpoint. Yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: not not to say that there aren't certainly religious undertones
10:47
Speaker 1: to a lot of aspects of what is referred to
10:49
Speaker 1: as the modesty movement. In my personal upbringing in an
10:54
Speaker 1: Evangelical Christian home, modesty was a huge thing that was
10:57
Speaker 1: always talked about. Um. But yeah, we're going to stick
11:00
Speaker 1: to the more secular And we found this paper called
11:05
Speaker 1: let Modesty Be Her Reignment by Tamina Tariq from two
11:09
Speaker 1: thousand and She talks about the tradition of veiling in
11:13
Speaker 1: the pre Christian Classical era, so focusing on like fourth
11:17
Speaker 1: and third centuries BC, And it turns out that for
11:22
Speaker 1: well to do women. In ancient Greece and Rome, veiling
11:27
Speaker 1: or covering their hair was a way of a transporting
11:30
Speaker 1: the private domestic space or the proper place for women
11:34
Speaker 1: into the public, and doing so in a way that
11:38
Speaker 1: protected the honor of her male guardians or father's husband's brothers,
11:44
Speaker 1: and finally outwardly symbolizing the value of her virginity. I
11:50
Speaker 1: think it's interesting that from the get go you have
11:53
Speaker 1: something that a woman wears being tied into the honor
11:56
Speaker 1: of a man that she is with um. But at
12:00
Speaker 1: also this this isn't necessarily all women in these cultures.
12:04
Speaker 1: People who were in the lower classes, including slaves and
12:07
Speaker 1: peasants and others deemed inferior, would not have veiled their
12:11
Speaker 1: hair because nobody cared whether they were of honor or
12:15
Speaker 1: whether they were virgins. But if he were a woman
12:18
Speaker 1: of means, you would certainly cover your hair with different
12:22
Speaker 1: kinds of head coverings at the time that were called
12:24
Speaker 1: faros him and nations and pep loose, and all of
12:28
Speaker 1: this was really to prevent the possibility of men looking
12:34
Speaker 1: at the sensualized parts of her body, because in addition
12:37
Speaker 1: to veiling, she would also wear what we would think
12:39
Speaker 1: of is very modest clothing, but it was important that
12:42
Speaker 1: the hair also be covered because that was also a
12:46
Speaker 1: highly sensualized part and still is of the female body.
12:50
Speaker 1: And by essentially blocking those off from view, the thought was, well,
12:56
Speaker 1: then that would lower the chances of him fantasizing about her,
12:59
Speaker 1: which even just in the fantasy realm, would demean her. Well, now, Kristen,
13:04
Speaker 1: you wrote about this whole hair issue on stuff I
13:07
Speaker 1: Never told you dot com, and I think it's interesting
13:10
Speaker 1: to bring up why hair was so sexualized during this time. Yeah,
13:14
Speaker 1: if you go back to ancient Greece, Hippocrates, for instance,
13:18
Speaker 1: had this theory that when men and women had sexual
13:25
Speaker 1: intercourse that his semen would actually be directed into a
13:30
Speaker 1: woman's hair. So our long flowing hair is just a
13:36
Speaker 1: mass of semen magnets and that, and so in that way,
13:43
Speaker 1: women's hair was seen as a symbolic extension of our genitalia.
13:48
Speaker 1: That is just so weird and like the opposite of
13:50
Speaker 1: Okham's razor, Like why is semen filling up your hair?
13:53
Speaker 1: Like the simplest explanation for I don't know, because where
13:57
Speaker 1: else would it go? I guess I needed us that
14:00
Speaker 1: need at someplace, Yes, where else would it else couldn't
14:03
Speaker 1: go But this is also side note, and I feel
14:06
Speaker 1: like we need to do a whole podcast on this
14:08
Speaker 1: because I want to learn more. This also was very
14:10
Speaker 1: much linked to the tradition of a bride wearing a
14:14
Speaker 1: veil because she, you know, has her face covered by
14:18
Speaker 1: the veil. She's walking down the aisle, and in that way,
14:20
Speaker 1: her sexuality is still intact and preserved, but then broken
14:26
Speaker 1: when the husband lifts it up just to gaze on her.
14:29
Speaker 1: It was the power of the male gaze. They got
14:31
Speaker 1: the power of the mail gaze all the way back
14:32
Speaker 1: in ancient Greece and Rome. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know,
14:35
Speaker 1: we already talked about how women would wear headcoverings to
14:38
Speaker 1: go out to protect their honor and everything when they
14:40
Speaker 1: went out of the house, to extend that private sphere
14:43
Speaker 1: into public. And so why wearing that veil. The bride
14:47
Speaker 1: is being protected if she's handed off from the one
14:49
Speaker 1: man in her life to the other man in her life. Well,
14:52
Speaker 1: in addition to us walking around with these uh all
14:56
Speaker 1: these seamen magnets on our head a k air hair,
15:00
Speaker 1: this was also a time when women were people were
15:04
Speaker 1: very concerned about protecting women's honor and sort of covering
15:07
Speaker 1: up all signs of our sexuality, because this was also
15:10
Speaker 1: an era when women were presumed to be sexually aggressive
15:14
Speaker 1: and prone to hysteria, and we would essentially go wild
15:19
Speaker 1: if we weren't being physically attend to do well enough. Well, so,
15:24
Speaker 1: in that argument, it only makes sense that women should
15:26
Speaker 1: dress modestly. If we're so aggressively sexual and we're always
15:30
Speaker 1: trying to trap a man into having sex with us
15:32
Speaker 1: and like doing things to our hair and whatever, well,
15:35
Speaker 1: obviously we should veil ourselves and cover ourselves up, right. Yeah, yeah,
15:41
Speaker 1: there are There are all sorts of conflicting messages. That's
15:44
Speaker 1: still though, echo today in a lot of the modesty
15:49
Speaker 1: messages that girls and women are being taught. And there
15:55
Speaker 1: was a quote from to Minatrig's paper that jumped out
15:58
Speaker 1: to me. Uh. She said, neither the veil nor its
16:02
Speaker 1: usage has ever been monolithic. The discourse of modesty, shame,
16:06
Speaker 1: and protection, however, has always been present. Uh. And and
16:11
Speaker 1: those three things, modesty, shame, and protection are very much interwoven.
16:16
Speaker 1: In that relationship between those three factors, I think is
16:20
Speaker 1: a big reason why we have all of these sort
16:25
Speaker 1: of questions about modesty today. Well, yeah, and speaking of
16:28
Speaker 1: the modesty movement today, when you move into the late
16:32
Speaker 1: nineties and early two thousands, you start to see a
16:35
Speaker 1: lot of literature being published on women remaining modest, dressing
16:40
Speaker 1: modestly and how that will benefit them both out in
16:43
Speaker 1: society and in their relationships with men. Yeah, there's Wendy Shallotte,
16:48
Speaker 1: whose name comes up all the time. She's actually been
16:51
Speaker 1: referred to as the mother of the modesty movement, and
16:55
Speaker 1: in her first book, A Return to Modesty, she wrote
16:59
Speaker 1: many of the problem ONMS we hear about today, sexual harassment,
17:02
Speaker 1: date rape are connected to cultures attack on modesty. And
17:07
Speaker 1: I believe that came out in And I remember this
17:11
Speaker 1: clearly because I was in high school and this was
17:13
Speaker 1: the era of low rise jeans and Britney Spears at
17:19
Speaker 1: her peak before she shaved her head, and specifically Britney
17:23
Speaker 1: Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards wearing those low
17:29
Speaker 1: slung pants, sparkly pants with the thong visible pulled out
17:35
Speaker 1: from it, and how horrified everyone was by this. And
17:38
Speaker 1: I remember also having like a conversation after conversation with
17:42
Speaker 1: my mother about why it should be okay for me
17:45
Speaker 1: to wear thongs and how horrified my mother was at
17:47
Speaker 1: low rise jeans. There was a lot of modesty panic
17:50
Speaker 1: at the turn of the millennium. Interesting. Yeah, I had to,
17:54
Speaker 1: I definitely had to start buying thongs and buy I
17:58
Speaker 1: I mean my mother bought them for because the jeans
18:01
Speaker 1: I was wearing were so tight. See, my mother never
18:04
Speaker 1: would have because I gave her, of course, the argument
18:07
Speaker 1: of but visible panty line, and she said, no, no, no, no,
18:12
Speaker 1: thongs are for sexual activity and you will not be
18:15
Speaker 1: wearing them. But she finally broke down. I think, like
18:18
Speaker 1: my junior year and I just bought one. Huh. And
18:21
Speaker 1: it's funny now that that as a thirty year old woman,
18:23
Speaker 1: I'm like, I would never wear a thong anymore. I
18:25
Speaker 1: wear I wear the laser cut like really super thin
18:29
Speaker 1: boy boy shorts instead. Listeners are learning a lot about us.
18:33
Speaker 1: They are I do not like a thong. Um. But yeah,
18:37
Speaker 1: so Shallotte's book, I return to Modesty, and then her
18:40
Speaker 1: two thousand seven follow up, Girls Gone Mild. We're accompanied
18:45
Speaker 1: by Don Eden's two thousand six book The Thrill of
18:48
Speaker 1: the Chased. A lot of wordplay going on here, finding
18:51
Speaker 1: fulfillment while keeping your clothes on and Laura's Session Steps
18:54
Speaker 1: two thousand eight unhooked how young women pursue sex to
18:58
Speaker 1: lay love and lose it oath. And that's sort of
19:01
Speaker 1: a huge part of this modesty discussion among a lot
19:04
Speaker 1: of these authors, basically saying, like, part of the problem
19:07
Speaker 1: is that when young women are dressing really provocatively and slowly,
19:12
Speaker 1: and they're feeling forced into dressing that way and engaging
19:16
Speaker 1: in sexual activity, and we should empower our young women
19:20
Speaker 1: to wear a turtleneck. Yeah, And there were a lot
19:24
Speaker 1: of common culprits repeated over and over again in these
19:28
Speaker 1: kinds of books. So, for instance, Britney Spears comes up
19:31
Speaker 1: over and over again. Uh. There's also the so called
19:35
Speaker 1: mom's gone wild who are you know, moms who we
19:38
Speaker 1: hear about who dress even wilder than their daughters. And
19:42
Speaker 1: along with that permissive parenting, sex educators, feminists, I mean,
19:48
Speaker 1: apparently feminists are very much to blame. Uh, and of
19:51
Speaker 1: course hook up culture as well. And and the big
19:54
Speaker 1: argument with these modesty books is that it's not just uh,
19:59
Speaker 1: girls sexual purity at steak, it's also self esteem. That
20:03
Speaker 1: by dressing this way we are degrading ourselves and thus
20:07
Speaker 1: um just eroding our collective female self esteem. And then
20:12
Speaker 1: on top of this, we have a very male Harvard
20:16
Speaker 1: professor Harvey Mansfield who wrote Manliness, which urged women to
20:21
Speaker 1: cover up. He said that women play the men's game,
20:24
Speaker 1: which they are bound to lose. Without modesty, there is
20:27
Speaker 1: no romance. It isn't so attractive or so erotic to men. Yeah,
20:32
Speaker 1: and that kind of leads to the whole modest as
20:34
Speaker 1: hottest sort of thing of, Well, if you really want
20:37
Speaker 1: to be as sexually attractive as you can possibly be,
20:40
Speaker 1: then cover up so that you leave something to the imagination,
20:43
Speaker 1: make him wait for it, make him win it, I
20:45
Speaker 1: guess by marrying you, and then everything will be fine.
20:50
Speaker 1: Which that that's not a perfect message to deliver either,
20:55
Speaker 1: because ultimately it's like, wait, wait, I thought the point
20:58
Speaker 1: of this was to build self esteems outside of their
21:01
Speaker 1: sexual desirability. Oh wait no, you're telling them to cover
21:04
Speaker 1: up as a way to amplify their sexual desirability. Yeah,
21:10
Speaker 1: I know it. It gets it gets super sticky because
21:13
Speaker 1: I mean, they're accusing feminists of ruining young women's lives,
21:19
Speaker 1: but they're people like Shallot are making the assertion that
21:22
Speaker 1: feminists as a whole as this monel Lithic group are
21:26
Speaker 1: telling young women, you've got to go out there and
21:28
Speaker 1: have lots of sex with lots of people, or else
21:30
Speaker 1: you're not a real woman or a real feminist. And
21:32
Speaker 1: it's like whoa, whoa, pump the brakes. That's not what
21:34
Speaker 1: feminism is about. Feminism is about choices, right, and about
21:38
Speaker 1: supporting women and doing what they choose to do. And
21:41
Speaker 1: so while I feel that you should absolutely have the
21:44
Speaker 1: choice and the option to dress as modestly as you want,
21:49
Speaker 1: I think that we forget that women are sexual creatures too,
21:52
Speaker 1: and this whole discussion about modesty often circles around women
21:57
Speaker 1: covering up to protect themselves from men, because feminists have
22:01
Speaker 1: been telling us that we should go out and have
22:03
Speaker 1: all the sex and no, no, but that's bad for society.
22:05
Speaker 1: It's more like, well, no, I mean, I think that
22:08
Speaker 1: just means that for once, people are remembering that women
22:11
Speaker 1: are sexual creatures to just like men are, and that
22:14
Speaker 1: we should have the choice if we so desire, to
22:17
Speaker 1: dress however we want and have sex if we want
22:19
Speaker 1: or not exactly well, and I think that's the big
22:22
Speaker 1: thing that or not is what's often left out of
22:27
Speaker 1: these conversations. There's never the assumption that it's also or not. UM.
22:32
Speaker 1: And on top of these books, they're also around this time,
22:35
Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's and still today, lots of
22:38
Speaker 1: pro modesty websites popping up clothing lines. There's even fashion
22:44
Speaker 1: magazine called Eliza that is all about modest fashions, how
22:49
Speaker 1: to look pretty and fashionable while still covering up. Um.
22:53
Speaker 1: There's even something called the Pure Fashion Training Program, which
22:57
Speaker 1: we started in two thousand and five to essentially teach
23:00
Speaker 1: girls how to dress modestly. I mean, it's it's all
23:05
Speaker 1: kind of different versions of the same thing. A lot
23:07
Speaker 1: of it does have a Christian, very Christian undertones. Um.
23:12
Speaker 1: And as we have I'm sure very clearly hinted, not
23:17
Speaker 1: everyone is a huge fan of this modesty movement. Particularly
23:21
Speaker 1: when uh Girls Gone Mild by Wendy Shallotte came out
23:25
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, there was a lot of
23:28
Speaker 1: conversation about it and a lot of critique. Yeah, around
23:33
Speaker 1: this time, the critiques that were coming out were were
23:36
Speaker 1: so I thought they put things pretty darn well, especially
23:40
Speaker 1: when from Shia Tarrant over at Bitch Magazine, where she
23:43
Speaker 1: talks about how girls and women this is a quote.
23:47
Speaker 1: Girls and women are charged with being the gatekeepers of
23:49
Speaker 1: what's sexually appropriate, but what's judged inappropriate is measured by
23:55
Speaker 1: the effect it has on men. And I think this
23:58
Speaker 1: is the key to understanding the art human against this
24:01
Speaker 1: particular modesty movement, because it's a catch twenty two because
24:06
Speaker 1: we are the gate keepers of our own sexuality, but
24:09
Speaker 1: we are also responsible for men's reaction to us. Y
24:17
Speaker 1: um well and something that Joshua Zeitz, who is the
24:20
Speaker 1: author of Flapper, A mad Cap Story of Sex, Style,
24:23
Speaker 1: Celebrity and the Women who made America Modern, was also
24:27
Speaker 1: talking to Newsweek about this whole modesty movement, and he said,
24:33
Speaker 1: the thing is, this is really nothing new. They have
24:37
Speaker 1: always been culturally conservative reactions to spikes in outward expressions
24:44
Speaker 1: of women's sexualities. As during the era of the New
24:48
Speaker 1: Woman and the Flapper, people were horrified by it. And
24:52
Speaker 1: he says that quote the concern at the time was
24:54
Speaker 1: that the culture was sexualizing young girls, and we're talking
24:58
Speaker 1: about back in the twenties. And he says that the
25:01
Speaker 1: backlash then came during the Great Depression, when you see
25:04
Speaker 1: a movement to get women back into the home in
25:06
Speaker 1: part to correct this culture of licentiousness. So, I mean,
25:10
Speaker 1: and you can. I feel like any time you have
25:14
Speaker 1: a progressive cultural movement, especially one that trends more liberal,
25:18
Speaker 1: there's always the flip side to it. There's always the backlash.
25:21
Speaker 1: There's always the fear and the panic that that the
25:24
Speaker 1: status quo is being challenged a bit too much, and
25:27
Speaker 1: it will all lead to us going to you know,
25:30
Speaker 1: just hell in a handbasket. Yeah, So what do we
25:32
Speaker 1: have now? We have more women in the workplace, more
25:34
Speaker 1: women as bosses, we have the gay rights movement, more
25:37
Speaker 1: and more states okay in gay marriage. There's a lot
25:40
Speaker 1: of one would say cultural change going on. Well, and
25:45
Speaker 1: more women having sex more openly, and by that I
25:48
Speaker 1: mean not like out in parks, but being more open
25:54
Speaker 1: about their sexuality, about choosing yes, about choosing to participate.
25:59
Speaker 1: And going back to that quote from Share Tarrant at
26:02
Speaker 1: Bitch Magazine talking about how we're the gate keepers of
26:05
Speaker 1: what's sexually appropriate, but we're also um being judged for
26:09
Speaker 1: it um and Kareem at The l A Times wrote
26:13
Speaker 1: something similar. She said, it's not a lack of female modesty,
26:17
Speaker 1: but a sense of male entitlement that leads to sexual violence.
26:20
Speaker 1: So if we're looking at the modesty movement as a
26:23
Speaker 1: way for women to protect themselves and to remain pure
26:28
Speaker 1: and all of this stuff to remain safe, I don't
26:32
Speaker 1: think the modesty movement, And obviously and Kareem does not
26:35
Speaker 1: either think that this is the way to do it. People.
26:39
Speaker 1: It's not that wearing a turtleneck and a long skirt
26:41
Speaker 1: it's going to prevent rape from happening. Yeah. And that
26:44
Speaker 1: quote from and Kareem was in direct response to Shallots
26:49
Speaker 1: quote in a Return to Modesty saying that many of
26:51
Speaker 1: the problems we hear about today sexual harassment and date
26:54
Speaker 1: rape are connected to our cultures. Attack on modesty and
27:00
Speaker 1: saying that how you dress will determine whether or not
27:04
Speaker 1: you will be raped is completely victim blaming and is
27:08
Speaker 1: disproven by statistics and also disproven by just taking a
27:14
Speaker 1: walk down the sidewalk in some sweatpants you'll still get
27:17
Speaker 1: cat called. It just happens. Um. So obviously there are
27:21
Speaker 1: lots of problematic messages that are tied up with this
27:25
Speaker 1: when when ultimately the message should be. There are certain
27:30
Speaker 1: times and places when certain uniforms are called for as
27:34
Speaker 1: in the workplace, sometimes in in schools, et cetera. But
27:38
Speaker 1: beyond that, you know, women should be taught to value
27:42
Speaker 1: themselves and have self esteem outside of their bodies as
27:47
Speaker 1: sexual commodities. Um. Absolutely, But when women are being told
27:53
Speaker 1: address a specific way, specifically so that they will not
27:57
Speaker 1: you know, attract sexual assault, then that just doesn't even
28:04
Speaker 1: it doesn't even make logical sense. And just for one
28:08
Speaker 1: side note on all this, one thing that's often tied
28:12
Speaker 1: up with the modesty movement is virginity pledges, and studies
28:18
Speaker 1: have found that kids who do take virginity pledges are
28:22
Speaker 1: just as likely to have pre marital sex and have
28:25
Speaker 1: higher rates of STD transmissions, probably because, uh, they might
28:29
Speaker 1: not have received as comprehensive of sex education and they're
28:33
Speaker 1: doing things in secret. So something's not necessarily working by
28:38
Speaker 1: just saying nope, let's just just didn't just shut off
28:42
Speaker 1: your sexuality and everything will be fine. Well, Kristen, you
28:45
Speaker 1: mentioned dress codes and schools a second ago, and we
28:48
Speaker 1: are going to talk more about that whole issue when
28:51
Speaker 1: we come right back from a quick break. Now, I've
28:58
Speaker 1: talked about dress codes before or on the podcast. We
29:01
Speaker 1: dedicated an entire episode to this, So this is a
29:05
Speaker 1: little bit of rehashing, but it's important to talk about because,
29:10
Speaker 1: especially when we're looking at modesty in more secular settings,
29:14
Speaker 1: school dress codes are the prime place where this happens.
29:20
Speaker 1: Where these messages of girls, you your bodies are just distractions.
29:26
Speaker 1: Then this isn't this is where it's happening. It's happening
29:29
Speaker 1: mostly in the classroom, and there are plenty of reasons
29:35
Speaker 1: why kids should be expected to dress certain ways in school.
29:41
Speaker 1: I do think that there's a lot to the idea
29:44
Speaker 1: of dressing for success, and when you are, you know,
29:47
Speaker 1: dressed in a certain way, it kind of helps you
29:49
Speaker 1: feel better, it helps you pay more attention. However, a
29:55
Speaker 1: lot of dress codes take it too far and end
29:58
Speaker 1: up penalizing certain types of body types. Yeah yeah, well,
30:02
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same thing that we talked about
30:04
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the podcast. With any girl who
30:07
Speaker 1: is slightly curvyer, or bigger in any way than what
30:12
Speaker 1: is considered like a safe body almost is penalized, like
30:16
Speaker 1: something will look too low cut or too short or
30:19
Speaker 1: to this or to that. God forbid, You're tall and slim,
30:22
Speaker 1: and your shorts are the exact same shorts that your
30:25
Speaker 1: friend is wearing, but they just look longer on her
30:27
Speaker 1: and shorter on you. You know, it's like it's a
30:29
Speaker 1: lose lose proposition when it comes to getting girls in
30:33
Speaker 1: trouble for what they're wearing. And and I totally agree
30:36
Speaker 1: with you that, yes, there obviously should be guidelines. I
30:38
Speaker 1: went to school with a strict dress code. Um. But
30:41
Speaker 1: when you get into the argument that girls have to
30:44
Speaker 1: dress a certain way so as not to distract the
30:47
Speaker 1: other half of the population at school, I think that's problematic. Yeah.
30:52
Speaker 1: I mean because tossing that too the fact that girls
30:54
Speaker 1: bodies are developing at different times, and when you are
30:58
Speaker 1: stay an eleven, twelve, thirteen year old girl, and you
31:02
Speaker 1: got boobs out of nowhere, you got a butt or
31:05
Speaker 1: both out of nowhere, and you're kind of dealing with
31:09
Speaker 1: how you know the world around you is now responding
31:13
Speaker 1: to this more womanly body while you're still dealing with
31:17
Speaker 1: the fact that you have an adolescent brain. Is confusing
31:20
Speaker 1: and confounding enough to begin with, But to then have
31:24
Speaker 1: adults tell you that your body is a dangerous distraction
31:29
Speaker 1: for yourself and for other people is certainly harmful. Um.
31:35
Speaker 1: And there are all sorts of examples of modesty and
31:40
Speaker 1: dress codes kind of gone wild. Uh. There was one
31:44
Speaker 1: incident that went viral that a lot of listeners have
31:47
Speaker 1: probably heard about during prom season earlier in when a
31:53
Speaker 1: girl went to a homeschool prom and she wore a dress.
31:57
Speaker 1: It was short, but she double checked that it was
31:59
Speaker 1: going to be fingertip length even with her super high
32:03
Speaker 1: high heels on, and she was eventually kicked out of
32:08
Speaker 1: the prom because she was told by a female chaperone
32:12
Speaker 1: that she was distracting male chaperones who were watching her
32:17
Speaker 1: and watching her dance, to which she wrote a blog
32:21
Speaker 1: post about it and was enraged by understandably, and it
32:26
Speaker 1: went completely viral, right, yeah, And she was basically arguing
32:30
Speaker 1: that she was within the stated dress code, that it
32:33
Speaker 1: was fingertip length, and more so, what are these male
32:38
Speaker 1: chaperins doing looking down at all of us and judging
32:41
Speaker 1: what we're wearing and determining whether it's inappropriate. Well, not
32:45
Speaker 1: not even just judging, but actually saying that they were
32:48
Speaker 1: becoming too aroused by the sight of this like fifteen
32:52
Speaker 1: sixteen year old girl, so she needed to be removed.
32:55
Speaker 1: They didn't need to do anything with checking their own
32:58
Speaker 1: thoughts and fantasies. It was her as the gatekeeper of
33:01
Speaker 1: her own sexuality and apparently the reactions of everyone else
33:04
Speaker 1: around her, she's the one who needs to be punished
33:08
Speaker 1: for that. And um, even I mean I feel like
33:11
Speaker 1: things like that when when people are like, oh, well
33:13
Speaker 1: it's a homeschool prom, of course that's going to happen,
33:16
Speaker 1: because it's just a bunch of evangelical Christian nuts. That's
33:19
Speaker 1: where the only place that happens. No. No, As a
33:23
Speaker 1: past former evangelical homeschool, I feel okay saying that. And
33:27
Speaker 1: also there have been issues in public schools at proms
33:31
Speaker 1: with girls who have dresses that meet the dress code,
33:36
Speaker 1: but their bodies are simply deemed like too busty. Nope,
33:40
Speaker 1: we can see too much of your boobs, we can
33:42
Speaker 1: see too much of your butts. Go cover up. Mm hmm.
33:46
Speaker 1: But I mean talking about school, it's not just happening
33:48
Speaker 1: at high schools or elementary schools or whatever. It's also
33:51
Speaker 1: happening at nursing school. If we look at U T. Austin,
33:55
Speaker 1: they had a modesty promoting sign hung up in an
33:58
Speaker 1: elevator I think it will us or somewhere in the
34:00
Speaker 1: hall that basically was like, hey guys and gals, you're
34:05
Speaker 1: at nursing school now, so don't dress in appropriately. And
34:07
Speaker 1: it's like if they had just left it at that, well,
34:10
Speaker 1: it specifically said no cleavage, yeah, but they didn't just
34:14
Speaker 1: leave it at that. They listed like no cleavage, no
34:16
Speaker 1: short skirts, no short shorts, no this and that, and
34:18
Speaker 1: so it was obviously targeting women and women's bodies, but
34:22
Speaker 1: the sign was removed thanks to social media. The sign
34:25
Speaker 1: was removed within twenty four hours. Yeah. And the thing is,
34:29
Speaker 1: this is where we get into the difference between intent
34:32
Speaker 1: and impact, because you could say that the intent of
34:35
Speaker 1: all of these messages is perfectly fine, well and good,
34:39
Speaker 1: because the intent is for girls to have a healthy
34:43
Speaker 1: self esteem, for them to you know, not experience sexual
34:48
Speaker 1: harassment or sexual assault, uh, to create more positive and
34:54
Speaker 1: effective learning environments, all perfectly good intentions. But the problem
35:00
Speaker 1: is the impact is not that because a lot of
35:03
Speaker 1: times the messages the girls are being delivered is that,
35:07
Speaker 1: you know what, the fact of the matter is, you're
35:10
Speaker 1: living in a rape culture, so you better cover up
35:14
Speaker 1: because if you don't, you will be considered as someone
35:18
Speaker 1: who is fine to sexually assault. And that sounds extreme,
35:23
Speaker 1: but when you break down those kinds of messages because
35:26
Speaker 1: it's well, I mean, boys will be boys, so you'd
35:30
Speaker 1: better cover your boobs or else are gonna want to
35:32
Speaker 1: honk them like it just doesn't. It's insulting to girls,
35:37
Speaker 1: But it's also insulting to boys, yeah, because yeah, you're
35:41
Speaker 1: telling girls that your body is dangerous. You're going to
35:43
Speaker 1: distract everyone, and it will be your fault if you
35:45
Speaker 1: get assaulted. But you're delivering the message to boys that well,
35:49
Speaker 1: it's fine, boys will be boys. You obviously can't control
35:52
Speaker 1: your animal sexuality, so if you do assault that girl,
35:56
Speaker 1: you know, it's just of course. Yeah, And there was
36:00
Speaker 1: one thing that I wanted to look into, which is
36:04
Speaker 1: kind of debunking this whole boys will be boys nonsense,
36:09
Speaker 1: because I do think that that a lot of it
36:12
Speaker 1: just strips everyone of agency because essentially we're all powerless
36:18
Speaker 1: over our own bodies. Girls are powerless over, you know,
36:22
Speaker 1: the messages that their cleavage might deliver, and boys apparently
36:26
Speaker 1: are powerless over the messages that their penises deliver to
36:31
Speaker 1: their brains because a lot of times the comments that
36:35
Speaker 1: you hear is that, well, boys and men are just
36:37
Speaker 1: visual creatures and you can't you know, we we really
36:42
Speaker 1: do need to just protect what they then see. But
36:48
Speaker 1: when you look into studies on the sex specific responses
36:53
Speaker 1: to visual stimuli, yes, men are completely visually stimulated, absolutely, um,
37:00
Speaker 1: but a so are women. And also the specific response
37:04
Speaker 1: to the sexual messages that men infer from said stimuli
37:10
Speaker 1: do have beyond biological influencers. And what we're talking about
37:17
Speaker 1: is coming from a two thousand seven meta analysis called
37:19
Speaker 1: sex specific content Preferences for Visual sexual Stimuli, a review
37:24
Speaker 1: by Kim Wallen and Heather Rupp, and in looking at
37:27
Speaker 1: how men sort of uh respond when they are viewing
37:32
Speaker 1: a woman or women interacting with women, they found that
37:37
Speaker 1: that sort of almost rape cultural response that we expect
37:41
Speaker 1: that we think, oh, well, if a woman's exposed, that's
37:44
Speaker 1: her fault and she's just arousing all of the men folk,
37:48
Speaker 1: that that response is actually minimized in men who have
37:52
Speaker 1: more exposure to women, have been in experience coeducational experiences
37:57
Speaker 1: with them. Um, basically, as I would interpret it, men
38:02
Speaker 1: who respect women as people more. Yeah, there is clearly
38:05
Speaker 1: a strong correlation between the interactions that men had with women, essentially,
38:09
Speaker 1: like the more they were simply seen as people rather
38:13
Speaker 1: than sex objects, and the the inference from seeing a
38:19
Speaker 1: sexual stimuli as an invitation and open invitation for them
38:24
Speaker 1: to approach and interact at will. Because the thing about
38:27
Speaker 1: it is, I don't see anything wrong whatsoever with men
38:31
Speaker 1: or women. That's another thing in all of this. Women
38:33
Speaker 1: are also visually stimulated. But anyway, I see nothing wrong
38:38
Speaker 1: with men or women seeing another body and being sexually
38:45
Speaker 1: aroused by that. That is simply going to happen. I
38:48
Speaker 1: don't think the the ultimate purpose of watch what You
38:51
Speaker 1: dress is to try to like shut down our complete
38:53
Speaker 1: and total sexual responses. It's more when we get into
38:57
Speaker 1: the rape culture territory, it's more that visual stimuli and
39:01
Speaker 1: that thought of huh, wow, that's a very attractive person,
39:04
Speaker 1: and even to the point of that's a very attractive person,
39:06
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't mind being naked with them. That line
39:09
Speaker 1: then going into and you know what, I'm just gonna go,
39:14
Speaker 1: you know, get naked with that person, whether he or
39:16
Speaker 1: she likes it or not. Right, So, then the researchers
39:20
Speaker 1: were also talking about how this whole stereotype of men
39:24
Speaker 1: being so visually stimulated and women not apparently being visually
39:27
Speaker 1: stimulated at all according to just stereotype. They were talking
39:31
Speaker 1: about how because there's that expectation and that stereotype that
39:35
Speaker 1: exists that women are less likely to say that they
39:39
Speaker 1: are sexually stimulated because of visual cues. Yeah, I mean
39:44
Speaker 1: a lot of times we're not supposed to obviously, Like
39:47
Speaker 1: women have for so long been the gatekeepers over and
39:52
Speaker 1: over again of sexual propriety. You know, women don't. That's
39:56
Speaker 1: why you know, the popularity of fifty Shades of Gray
39:58
Speaker 1: so mind blowing to people because it's women openly saying like,
40:03
Speaker 1: oh wow, I'm really into this, and because it's sexually arousing.
40:07
Speaker 1: Apparently women talk like this too. And when it comes
40:12
Speaker 1: to sexual objectification, which obviously is a big piece of
40:16
Speaker 1: this of seeing women not as people but as sex
40:20
Speaker 1: objects therefore their gratification, one two thousand eight study found
40:26
Speaker 1: that there is a learned part of that that's not
40:31
Speaker 1: just some natural, as we often call it, instinct of
40:35
Speaker 1: a visual creature. No. It found that men are often
40:39
Speaker 1: taught from an early age to emphasize physical appearance, and
40:44
Speaker 1: that they tend to be more aroused in context in
40:47
Speaker 1: which they can objectify another person, and that that tendency
40:50
Speaker 1: is often learned because we're societally we cater to that interesting.
40:59
Speaker 1: And while that might like we have a hopeless situation,
41:02
Speaker 1: that's actually good news is the fact that, oh no,
41:04
Speaker 1: there's actually a lot of learning and socialization involved with this.
41:09
Speaker 1: I think it's highly possible. In the same way that
41:11
Speaker 1: we want to teach girls to refocus their self esteem
41:15
Speaker 1: away from just the value of their bodies, we can
41:17
Speaker 1: also teach boys to refocus the value that they see
41:20
Speaker 1: in women beyond just being potential sex objects. Right, it's
41:25
Speaker 1: unlearning that entitlement we talked about earlier that actually is
41:28
Speaker 1: what leads to the danger of rape and sexual assault,
41:31
Speaker 1: not what a woman is wearing exactly. And I want
41:34
Speaker 1: to underscore again that this isn't an argument for just
41:39
Speaker 1: let people always, in every single context, dress however they want. Um.
41:46
Speaker 1: I think that it would be foolish to say that
41:49
Speaker 1: that that the way you dress will you know, shouldn't
41:52
Speaker 1: have to shouldn't make any kind of impact on what
41:54
Speaker 1: other people think about you. There are issues when it's
41:59
Speaker 1: good to dress professionally, or where it's good to dress
42:02
Speaker 1: in clean, neat clothes, where you know, there's definitely an
42:06
Speaker 1: interaction between how we dress and how we feel. Because
42:11
Speaker 1: I do think there comes a time for a lot
42:13
Speaker 1: of girls, especially when we hit puberty. At least I
42:16
Speaker 1: can just speak for myself, when you start getting curious
42:18
Speaker 1: about what it is to feel sexy and feel desired,
42:22
Speaker 1: and you want to dress in provocative ways and you
42:25
Speaker 1: want to test those boundaries, and it's like, okay, Well,
42:29
Speaker 1: the question then becomes how how do we talk to
42:32
Speaker 1: girls about this? How do we And because I think
42:36
Speaker 1: just telling girls no, no, no, just don't do that
42:39
Speaker 1: you'll be asking for it isn't going to solve anything
42:43
Speaker 1: at all. Even if she does say okay, it's nothing
42:46
Speaker 1: but overalls and turtlenecks from here on out. It's not
42:49
Speaker 1: really that's not really teaching her anything beyond just what
42:55
Speaker 1: to put on. That's not you know, that's not really
42:58
Speaker 1: building up um, building up this self esteem. Yeah, I mean,
43:03
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it goes back to the
43:05
Speaker 1: choices that we talked about earlier, the choices of dressing
43:07
Speaker 1: modestly if you so choose, and not tying sexuality or
43:13
Speaker 1: or the potential for danger just to a woman's body. Yeah,
43:18
Speaker 1: I mean, because the taking this back a few levels,
43:24
Speaker 1: it's not so much about the clothes. It's the fact
43:27
Speaker 1: that ultimately you know that the best thing a girl
43:31
Speaker 1: can be called in our culture is beautiful and desirable.
43:36
Speaker 1: And I think that that's where we get into the trouble.
43:40
Speaker 1: It's not that girls want to wear thongs when sometimes
43:45
Speaker 1: it's completely unnecessary, which brings up my follow up question
43:48
Speaker 1: of is a thong ever necessary? Really? Um more so
43:52
Speaker 1: than the clothes. I just think that it's the issue
43:57
Speaker 1: that we need to take a closer look at of, Well,
43:59
Speaker 1: why is it that the highest compliment you can pay
44:02
Speaker 1: to a girl in our society is that she's beautiful?
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Speaker 1: Is that she is desirable? Is that you know? And
44:09
Speaker 1: and why for boys is obtaining a girl, of having
44:14
Speaker 1: sex with a girl some kind of prize to chase down?
44:20
Speaker 1: And there there was one Facebook comment that jumped out
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Speaker 1: to me from someone who is arguing in favor of
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Speaker 1: dressing modestly because we have a natural line of decency,
44:33
Speaker 1: to which I say, but then why is it that
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Speaker 1: if you travel around the world to some areas, it's
44:40
Speaker 1: natural in quotes for women to be topless, for women
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Speaker 1: to be far less modest than we are in Western society.
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Speaker 1: All of that, really, to me is evidence that modesty
44:53
Speaker 1: in many ways is a construct and we just need
44:58
Speaker 1: to pay close attention to what we are really saying
45:01
Speaker 1: when we are saying be modest. Yeah, I'm definitely interested
45:07
Speaker 1: to hear from people once. You know, we prompted people
45:10
Speaker 1: before this episode to tell us what they thought. I'm
45:13
Speaker 1: interested to hear it. The same people respond once they've
45:16
Speaker 1: heard us, especially if you have girls. This is the
45:20
Speaker 1: thing that I still don't I still don't know how
45:22
Speaker 1: to talk to a girl about the issue of dressing
45:27
Speaker 1: without alienating her from her own body, if that makes sense.
45:33
Speaker 1: So if anyone has cracked that code, please let us know.
45:37
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at how Stuff Works dot comm is where
45:39
Speaker 1: you can send your letters, and I know we're gonna
45:41
Speaker 1: be getting a lot of them. You can also message
45:44
Speaker 1: us on Facebook or tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast,
45:47
Speaker 1: and We've got a couple of messages to share with
45:49
Speaker 1: you that have nothing to do with modesty. Right now. Well,
45:57
Speaker 1: I've got an email here from Becky about our Women
46:00
Speaker 1: Traveling Alone are Women's Wanderlust episode. She writes, thank you
46:05
Speaker 1: so much for your podcast about women traveling Alone. I
46:07
Speaker 1: too travel to Italy on my own to study abroad. Well,
46:11
Speaker 1: it was pretty nerve racking to fight international on my own.
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Speaker 1: The freedom I felt was amazing. It's also the best
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Speaker 1: feeling in the world after small victories like finding somewhere
46:19
Speaker 1: decent to eat on your own, finding your plane, making
46:22
Speaker 1: it through a day without feeling like you want to
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Speaker 1: cry a little. It's been five years since i went
46:26
Speaker 1: to Italy, and I'm looking forward to going back again.
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Speaker 1: This podcast gave me an extra nudge to make that
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Speaker 1: goal of reality. Whether I go by myself or with
46:33
Speaker 1: another female companion. It makes me scared that I forego
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Speaker 1: my travel dreams, as corny as that sounds, just because
46:40
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of experiencing things alone. So thanks for the
46:43
Speaker 1: encouragement and thank you Becky. Alright, I have a letter
46:49
Speaker 1: from Rochelle. She said that our Wanderlust podcast made her
46:54
Speaker 1: long for her first solo travel trip to the States
46:57
Speaker 1: ten years ago. She says, I'm from Perth, Western Australia,
47:01
Speaker 1: and I've since been back to America two more times.
47:04
Speaker 1: Back in oh four, I was twenty two and I
47:06
Speaker 1: had signed up to work in an American summer camp
47:09
Speaker 1: in the Poconos. I had a little time before camp
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Speaker 1: started to see New York and lots of time afterwards
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Speaker 1: to see the rest of America. My parents were very concerned,
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Speaker 1: and my dad even gave me a rape whistle, which
47:19
Speaker 1: I assured him I wouldn't need. Traveling alone, I had
47:22
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting experiences that I wouldn't have had
47:24
Speaker 1: if I was traveling with someone. My first interesting experience
47:27
Speaker 1: happened when I got off the subway in New York
47:29
Speaker 1: after flying in. I had booked a hostile a little
47:32
Speaker 1: further out than I thought. I thought i'd booked somewhere
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Speaker 1: on the Upper West Side, and it ended up being
47:35
Speaker 1: in Harlem. When I came up from the subway, a
47:38
Speaker 1: guy approached me and asked if I needed help with
47:40
Speaker 1: my luggage. He could have been just being a complete gentleman. However,
47:43
Speaker 1: I said that I was fine and carried on to
47:45
Speaker 1: my hostel. It's very true that you were approached more
47:48
Speaker 1: often when you're alone. In New York, I was approached
47:50
Speaker 1: by another tourist asking me for directions, and in l A,
47:53
Speaker 1: I was waiting at a bus stop when an ausee
47:55
Speaker 1: couple asked me the difference between dimes and nickels. After
47:58
Speaker 1: a minute of talking, they really lies. They frequented the
48:01
Speaker 1: store where I worked. Back home. Very small world I
48:05
Speaker 1: also had the interesting experience of staying in a unisex
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Speaker 1: for bed dorm for two weeks, and the whole time
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Speaker 1: I was the only female in the room while the
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Speaker 1: men came and went. I never felt threatened. I ended
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Speaker 1: up being taken under the wing of a slightly older
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Speaker 1: German dude who took me on all sorts of crazy
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Speaker 1: adventures I never would have gotten into had I not
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Speaker 1: been traveling alone. UM So, Rochelle, I'm so glad you
48:25
Speaker 1: had some amazing solo travel experiences. I um just had
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Speaker 1: my own to a Ruba not too long ago, and
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Speaker 1: it was awesome and I I definitely felt like I
48:35
Speaker 1: press pressed the reset button. I think traveling alone is
48:38
Speaker 1: something that you, the general, you should all do if
48:41
Speaker 1: you get the chance. And thanks everybody who's written into
48:44
Speaker 1: us Mom stuff at how Stuffworks dot com is our
48:46
Speaker 1: email address, and you can also find all of our
48:49
Speaker 1: social media links, as well as all of our blogs, videos,
48:54
Speaker 1: and podcasts, including this one, which will also include all
48:57
Speaker 1: of our sources, so you can follow along with us
49:00
Speaker 1: over at stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for
49:07
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
49:10
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com