In a culture where one-night stands, reality porn and Playboy logos on kids’ stationery have all become shrug worthily normal, it takes quite a leap of imagination to be sexually subversive. Take up pole dancing? No, that’s so commonplace that women organise group lessons for hen parties. Threesomes? No longer noteworthy. Faux-lesbianism? Yawn …
A growing number of American women believe they have the answer. Through books, websites and clothing ranges, a new breed of modesty-loving gals is spreading the word: chastity is chic! While most young Americans are keen to forget their abstinence education by their 20s, these women choose to take it a whole lot further, saying that not only are premarital and casual sex a bad idea, but that modesty — in sexual behaviour, dress and comportment — is, in fact, essential for building strong relationships.
Although returning to a long-discarded form of femininity might seem truly retrogressive, many of these women assert the opposite. They are, they say, sexual revolutionaries.
Arguably the best known proponent is Wendy Shalit, who first burst on to the scene in 1999 with her book, A Return to Modesty. Writing about the benefits of chastity, Shalit quickly became a kind of professional virgin on the media circuit. It turns out that the modesty trend is popular enough to sustain a whole publishing career. Shalit’s latest ode to chastity, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good, is due out next year.
Last year, Shalit also founded the Modesty Zone website and its blog Modestly Yours. The website is billed as ”an informal community of young women who don’t have a voice in the mainstream media … Whether you’re a virgin waiting until marriage, or just against casual sex … you can find a safe harbour here to share your ideals, interests and goals for the future.”
And while it is not clear how many women are buying this message, a large swathe of products has cropped up for those who are. ”Pure Fashion” shows are being put on in US citiesÂÂ, and companies that sell modest clothing seem to pop up every day. One company, WholesomeWear, sells modest swimwear. This layered — yes, layered — swimsuit is made up of spandex and nylon and covers most of the body. A bit like a waterproof kaftan.
But being modest does not end at your wardrobe. Alexandra Foley, a 34-year-old mother of four who blogs at Modestly Yours, says: ”A woman can be modestly dressed, but not carry herself in a modest way.”
Foley recently wrote about the Middle East edition of Elle magazine, remarking on a close-up of a model wearing a headscarf. She said the model had a ”Take me” face, ”the slightly pouty, slightly angry, bold stare into the camera with the seductively half-opened mouth that whispers to a man, ‘Take me.”’ She continued that, despite the modest clothing, ”the Elle model remains a poster girl of immodesty regardless of how many square yards of fabric she is draped in”. What does a girl have to do to get the modesty stamp of approval? Headscarf, bodysuit and a blank face?
Allison Kasic, a member of the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), organises Take Back the Date, a campaign that seeks to ”restore chivalry” on university campuses. ”Young women still overwhelmingly want to get married, but they are not engaged in the traditional courtship that leads to marriage,” says Kasic. ”This can have dangerous consequences and long-term effects on marriage.”
It is not exactly news that most young women want to get married. But implying that any premarital action will somehow render you incapable of finding a spouse is not just outdated — it is wrong.
Dawn Eden, a writer who is currently penning a book called The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfilment While Keeping Your Clothes On, says casual sex is ruining young women, fatally skewing our attitudes to men. ”[W]hen you become chaste, you’ll notice for the first time that women who have sex outside of marriage don’t really appreciate men,” Eden writes.
Don’t get me wrong, reviving romance sounds great. But can you base a movement, a revolution even, on the idea that women’s life goal should be marriage? Because, while it focuses on traditional gender roles and norms, the Modesty-Zone also positions itself as rebellious. In some ways, this seems fair: after all, keeping your clothes on does seem like a novel idea these days. But this modesty revolution seems like the same old thing in brand new rhetoric.
Another retrogressive aspect of the movement is its disconcerting message that women are responsible for men’s behaviour. The notion of dressing modestly comes partly from the idea that men can’t control themselves; by telling women that they have to dress a certain way to quell men’s desires, modesty advocates are sending a message that the onus is on us to control men’s sexual actions.
Revamping outdated notions of femininity and positioning them as cutting edge may be a smart way to sell a glut of baggy bathing suits then, but it sure doesn’t sound like a revolution. — Â