December 27, 2007

Wendy Shalit's "A Return to Modesty" : A Critique

The basic premise of conservative Wendy Shalit's A Return To Modesty is that women are personally responsible for the bad behavior of men largely because women don't hide their bodies or remain virgins until marriage.

According to Shalit, if women would only hide their bodies from the male gaze, men would treat them better. And women would therefore naturally remain virgins, because heaven knows, they don't have sexual urges of their own. Everything from rape to coed bathrooms would be eliminated, if women would just behave themselves. (And I don't know whoever came up with the stupid idea of coed bathrooms, but it wasn't this feminist.)

First of all, have we even established that women have departed from modesty at all? Modesty for Shalit appears to be largely centered in what females wear. As for young women, it's true some misguided teenagers consider Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan role models, but aren't these the same young women who in another era would have chosen someone equally odious as their heroes? There is no accounting for taste in any era, and some people are just born with more common sense than others - that's a fact of life. I fail to believe our era is that much different than others, human nature being human nature - we are just more open about it all.

As for young women baring all to Girls Gone Wild, didn't Marilyn Monroe pose nude as a teenager? There have been young women doing dumb things like giving up their personal dignity for a buck or two, or a fleeting moment of male approval, since time began, the only difference is now, any two bit sleazeball can buy a video camera to capture it in living color for all eternity.

Is the fashion trend (one that echoes many such trends throughout history) of adult women showing a little cleavage immodest, and therefore bad, as well? Who decided women's bodies are "bad" - and what's wrong with taking a little of that back from men, by displaying our breasts with a little interestingly draped fabric? How simplistic to assume that a woman can't show self-respect, but also celebrate her female form at the same time.

And what of societies where women wear very little clothing at all? Perhaps clothing isn't the important thing here?

I agree that that our culture has been overly saturated with sex, sex, sex - kids are exposed to too much too soon. I'm uncomfortable with all of that, as well. We are in an age of incredible openness, largely due to advances in technology coupled with our fundamental right to free speech. Most of us want to protect kids, so wouldn't the logical next step be to take common sense measures to address the problem?

For instance, parental controls on cable TV is a great solution. But instead of focusing on solutions most people agree about, instead of using technology to solve the problems of technology, Shalit fast forwards to a conservative religious agenda fraught with illogic.

Like the irrational position that by making condoms available to teens, they will have sex, whereas if we don't make condoms available, they won't have sex. What's wrong with making them available to sexually active teens? But not pushing them on teens who don't want them. Is there no way to achieve balance without going to extremes?

If Shalit can come up with a way to stop sexually active teens, who are hell bent on ignoring their parents' advice to wait (and I have yet to see a parent tell a child not to wait), from going at it, more power to her. But once that bottle is opened, as parents from the beginning of time have found it's hard to put the genie back in. And human nature being what it is, it's not difficult for two hormonally charged teenagers to figure out how to go at it, even without being formally taught the mechanics.

So I don't see how keeping teenagers in the dark and keeping contraception out of their hands will solve anything. But I can see how this could cause more problems (for instance, the U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the western world).

Shalit's conclusion that women - not men - covering themselves from head to toe, will heal societal ills, as well as women returning to past behavioral constraints she doesn't even historically fully explore, is disturbing. And she wholesale dismisses the lessons many women learned, even the "modest" ones - did Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique come out of nowhere? In fact, Mystique was a meticulously researched piece of objective journalism. Unlike Shalit's hodgepodge of nonexistent "trends" (journalist Katha Pollitt polled universities, including the Rabbi at Shalit's college, and came up with no support for the "modestynik trend") and random quotes from Glamour and Seventeen fashion magazines.

In some sections of the book, Shalit rhapsodizes about Muslim women wearing veils. But she neglects to mention that for many Muslim women, wearing a veil, some of which leave no part of their body visible (the burqa), from the time they are girls until they die, is not a choice. Rather, wearing the burqa is forced upon them by males in their societies (even though it is not supported by the teachings of Mohammad) and to reject the practice is to risk death.

And Shalit rhapsodizes about Orthodox Jewish women wearing ankle length skirts. But she neglects to mention that most Orthodox women, from the time they are first married until they die, wear wigs every day of their lives, even in the heat of summer and at home. It is forbidden for anyone except their husbands, including their families, to see their real hair. Again, this male-imposed mandate is based on one obscure line of scripture that has been twisted to oppress women.

Shalit proclaims that in the Victorian era, women had it made, because being fully clothed from head to toe was sexy - men were forced to notice the twinkle in their eyes. No mention of the ribcage-crushing corsets women wore underneath that distorted their figures into shapes to please men. No word about how women frequently fainted under the weight of all that body-covering fabric, nor about the limited opportunities for exercise. And men, what did they wear? Comfortable trousers and jackets.

And she neglects to mention that Victorian women were often married off at young ages to older men they didn't love, not given the full rights of citizenship, not able by law to inherit or own property or heaven forbid even vote, forbidden to be doctors or lawyers or even attend most colleges. And those sexy (but modest!) women died young after bearing a child each and every year, because the men in power decided nice "modest" women didn't have a need for birth control.

I suppose Shalit was so busy attending her Young Republican meetings on campus that she skipped a few English classes, and never got around to reading literature actually written by real women in the "good old days" - for instance, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Or The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

There is always a reason for change - but Shalit neglects to explore those reasons, and I must conclude her excuse is either an inability to write and reason well, or that she is promoting a conservative political agenda for which controlling the bourgeoisie is critical. Or both.



"When someone judges me, or anyone, or anything, I ask: Compared to what?... When I fear conflict and comdemnation for acting a certain way, I think: What peace or praise would I get if I didn't?" ~ Gloria Steinem

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