Two links:
On Feministing, a moderate flamewar between two bloggers caused the following:
Dawn took down this picture of me from her post after a commenter complained that I was “immodestly dressed.” Shoulders, apparently, are the new cooter.
My response was that I, too, had been told off for baring my cooter shoulders. Frequent readers will know that my sister calling me a whore doesn’t even scratch the surface (apostate, which I’ve never actually been called, I’m sure is worse in their minds).
Meanwhile, over at dooce, a fleeting memory of BYU’s “honor code” (BYU’s Student Honor Association’s site has been effectively dooced, though more in the sense of being slashdotted, rather than the actual definition of dooced; if you can get through, kudos to you…you may want to wait a few days) and an entertaining fashion tip.
A while ago, I ran across the Jewish concept of frum, which effectively means “modest in dress”, at least when talking about women. The fashion tips for frum women (it’s always women…we’ll get to that) look great for cold-weather style but honestly, most days in LA people are lucky I don’t walk around naked. It’s just too damn hot to wear long skirts, shirts, & leggings. As such, my heart bleeds (or, more precisely, my armpits sweat) for women in black chardor/abaya/jilbab/hijab/burqa.
Modesty, I’ve decided, is in the eye of the beholder. It is also in the attitude of the wearer, but I’ve been in completely non-sexual encounters with completely naked people and at the same time found fully-clothed people unaccountably sexy (what is it about the black turtle neck?!). Forced modesty, however, fosters a sense of control. And that’s what disturbs me the most about all of this (from BYU’s alleged codes: what do they do to you if they catch you unshaven? to the Vatican’s denial of entry to people in shorts). Just about all the arguments that I’ve heard about why one should dress modestly come down to “because God tells you to” (we won’t get into the argument of “because God tells you that men are dogs”, which is another common one). And that’s where I get confused. If God gives us free will & beautiful bodies that can be sexual or a-, why can we not celebrate both? Why is a t-shirt, a bathing suit, a skirt, a tank top, a beard, visible hair, considered immodest?
What kinds of atheistic morality can we come up with that allows for dressing appropriately, certainly, but also comfortably (you’ll not catch me in a tank top in the dead of winter, but you might catch me in a skirt with leggings) that does not appeal to God, sex, or men’s untamed libidos?
And for anyone whose been to BYU: what do the fashion police do if they catch you?
4 responses so far ↓
1 C. L. Hanson // Nov 30, 2007 at 1:04 am
When I was at BYU, I didn’t see any patrols catching people who violated the dress code, but logically you could get sent to the Honor Code Office. The more mundane means of enforcement was just a question of blocking people from access to various administrative offices if their dress was not up to code. In particular, exams are given at a central “testing center” and if you’re not properly dressed, you can’t take your exam. This includes guys getting turned away for stubble — not having shaved recently enough to be considered clean-shaven — and sometimes missing a test and getting a zero as a result if it had to be taken during a particular time block and the person didn’t have time to go home and shave.
I think dressing for one’s own comfort ought to be the measure of modesty. It’s true that what counts as modesty is cultural, and as soon as everyone is baring body part X (like shoulders), then body part X becomes no big deal, but everyone having to cover body part X turns it into a big deal and a sexual cue. I think every culture does cover at least a little in order to hide sexual signals, but precisely what needs to be covered is cultural and can go all the way down to covering genitals only in come cultures. In every culture one can get sexual attention by deliberately showing a little more than the cultural norms allow, but insisting on more covering in general will never make sexual cues and arousal go away — it just changes what signals are potentially arousing.
I read in a novel by a woman from Iran that high heels aren’t allowed because the sound they make when walking is potentially arousing (and muslim men need to be protected from it). She pointed out that men walking around in NYC hear these potentially-arousing clicks all day long and think nothing of it. So increasing covering (for every woman in a society) in a futile attempt to protect men from ever getting aroused leads to nothing but more restrictive covering.
I talked about this in my post topless on the beach, and you can see a little more discussion of cultural modesty norms in my review of the film Kirikou.
2 Elaine // Nov 30, 2007 at 9:05 am
To answer your last question first: I only lasted 2 months at BYU (back in the day when I don’t think they were quite so obsessive/compulsive about dress codes), and those two months were January and February, so it was too cold to dress where anything they might object to showed.
I always thought it would be interesting to know what they would have done, however, if they had known how one of the women who lived in my building really dressed for her early morning class. She would put her underwear, including slip and pantyhose on, and nice shoes, then button her very nice knee-length coat on and button it and go off to class…sans dress. As it was too cold in the classrooms at 7 am to even unbutton, much less take off, the coat no one ever found out as far as I know. I only knew because I asked her one morning how she could stand to get so dressed up so early in the morning and she told me her secret.
As far as men and facial hair goes, at BYU and in Mormondom in general, as far as I understand it that isn’t a matter of immodesty, but that when a man wears facial hair it is considered to be a sign of a rebellious nature, which is a big no-no among Mormons.
More generally, it has always infuriated me that women are supposed to dress so that men won’t get all hot and bothered and not be able to “control themselves”. The problem with this, as I see it, is that while many (probably most) men can and do control themselves just fine around a woman in skimpy dress, the culture (and by that, I mean most cultures) teaches them either implicitly or explicitly that if they can’t control themselves that’s kind of all right because it was the woman’s fault and they were helpless in the face of their biology. Which is, of course, a bunch of crap and mostly a way of controlling women. Because, as you say xJane, it’s always the women who are expected to cover up.
As it happens, I’m fairly used to seeing Muslim women completely covered. The local mosque here in town is just down the block from my apartment and I see women walking there all the time. And if they feel called to dress that way that is fine with me. But it bugs the crap out of me if they dress that way because they are guilted into it or forced by their fathers/husbands/clergy because not to do so would make Allah mad at them or because it would rile up the men or something.
3 Chris Rusch // Dec 4, 2007 at 7:26 am
xJane. I am going to BYU right now. So far I have noticed that no one cares and nothing is done about it. I regularly go to class without shaving for days at a time and have not had a haircut since August and no one has said anything to me nor do I know anyone else who has gotten in trouble with the “fashion police” though I am sure that there are those who have.
No, BYU these days is not what it was twenty to thirty years ago. If you are looking for the hardcore hardline authoritarianism that you would expect at BYU, just drive four hours north and visit BYU-Idaho. They really go out of their way to make sure that people are in compliance with the dress code.
4 Privacy | Mind on Fire. // Dec 13, 2007 at 2:21 pm
[...] L. Hanson linked me to a discussion of topless beaches in Europe which got me thinking about the amount of time I spent [...]
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