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A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue
Updated with a new introduction, this fifteenth anniversary edition of A Return to Modesty reignites Wendy Shalit’s controversial claim that we have lost our respect for an essential modesty.
When A Return to Modesty was first published in 1999, its argument launched a worldwide discussion about the possibility of innocence and romantic idealism. Wendy Shalit was the first to systematically critique the "hook-up" scene and outline the harms of making sexuality so public.
Today, with social media increasingly blurring the line between public and private life, and with child exploitation on the rise, the concept of modesty is more relevant than ever. Updated with a new preface that addresses the unique problems facing society now, A Return to Modesty shows why "the lost virtue" of modesty is not a hang-up that we should set out to cure, but rather a wonderful instinct to be celebrated.
A Return to Modesty is a deeply personal account as well as a fascinating intellectual exploration into everything from seventeenth-century manners to the 1948 tune "Baby, It’s Cold Outside." Beholden neither to social conservatives nor to feminists, Shalit reminds us that modesty is not prudery, but a natural instinct—and one that may be able to save us from ourselves.
When A Return to Modesty was first published in 1999, its argument launched a worldwide discussion about the possibility of innocence and romantic idealism. Wendy Shalit was the first to systematically critique the "hook-up" scene and outline the harms of making sexuality so public.
Today, with social media increasingly blurring the line between public and private life, and with child exploitation on the rise, the concept of modesty is more relevant than ever. Updated with a new preface that addresses the unique problems facing society now, A Return to Modesty shows why "the lost virtue" of modesty is not a hang-up that we should set out to cure, but rather a wonderful instinct to be celebrated.
A Return to Modesty is a deeply personal account as well as a fascinating intellectual exploration into everything from seventeenth-century manners to the 1948 tune "Baby, It’s Cold Outside." Beholden neither to social conservatives nor to feminists, Shalit reminds us that modesty is not prudery, but a natural instinct—and one that may be able to save us from ourselves.
308 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
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June 29, 2008
Shalit's book offers encouragement to women who are unhappy with the way the sexual revolution has buried the concepts of chivalry and courtship in an avalanche of low expectations, leaving women more vulnerable to sexual pressure, harassment, and objectification. She calls both conservatives and feminists equally to task. She wants conservatives to take the claims of feminists about the modern sufferings of women (anorexia, date rape, harassment, etc.) seriously, but she wants feminists to consider that these sufferings may not be the result of the "patriarchy," but of the attitudes born of the sexual revolution. She wants them to consider that "patriarchy" and "misogyny" are not synonyms, and that when the concepts of female modesty and male honor are toppled, the effect may be that misogyny actually has freer reign. Conservatives, Shalit says, want "women to be ladies while still getting to do whatever they [the men:] want." On the other hand, "Feminists hope to change the behavior of men without the women having to change…They want the men to be gentlemen without [women:] having to be ladies."
Kudos to Shalit for saying things many women believe but are afraid to say for fear of being called sexist or submissive. Those who adorn the altar of sexual choice rarely seem to understand that the sexual choices individual women make DO collectively affect the reality of how men on average treat women on average. Women, with a "cartel of virtue," can influence how the majority of men approach sex and relationships. In the absence of that cartel, however, women are subjected to increased ungentelmanlinke behavior and experience more difficulty finding men who are willing to offer any level of commitment prior to sex. "When women, as a group, forsake their natural power, it becomes difficult to reclaim that power individually." Older feminist tell young women, "You have a choice to be abstinent, why should you care what other women do?" But women of my generation didn't choose the world we live in, the world the architects of the sexual revolution created for us before we were born, a world where most men expect sex of women long before marriage and where natural modesty is often called a "hang up." We would have voted for the right to equal treatment under the law, but who's to say we would have voted to be asked for sex on the first date? Unfortunately, my generation never got a vote in the sexual revolution, and now the "guardians of the status quo" grow indignant when any of us suggests we don't care for the results.
Shalit has an interesting take on how harassment laws and dating codes developed. When society treats sexual differences and sex itself as insignificant, sooner or later, unchivalrous behavior becomes more common. If women are offended by the way men approach them, then, they must be the ones with the problem: they are prudes, or they are "uncomfortable in their bodies," or they are too intense. While the feminists don't think a man has a right to make a woman feel uncomfortable for any reason, how can men take a woman's discomfort seriously in the world created by the sexual revolutionaries, where sex is nothing special and any talk of female vulnerability is synonymous with "oppression"? So what do feminist do when they discover that a lot of women _don't want_ to treat sex with as much detachment as men? Do they encourage women to reinstate the "cartel of virtue"? Of course not. That's sexist and unthinkable. So instead they turn to written laws and regulations and codes of dating and sexual harassment, trying to enforce from above decent behaviors and attitudes that society once merely took for granted, and the result is a web of intimidation, condescension, and double standards.
Instead of telling men they are sexist if they think they owe women special treatment merely because they are women, instead of inviting everyone to believe sex is trivial and then prosecuting men when they behave as if that's true, wouldn't it be so much easier if more people just taught their sons a sense of honor and their daughters a sense of modesty, so that having sex with inebriated, half-conscious college girls and inviting strippers to your frat party and telling dirty jokes to your female co-workers were simply unthought of?
So, is Shalit advocating women be forced to wear burqas? That's not he point. Her point is that a voluntary return to modesty (which has more to do with expectations and attitudes about sex than specific dress) would be good for women, and that women benefit when the society they inhabit supports the concepts of modesty and male honor. I agree. So why only three stars? Because of several flaws in the way she presents her argument:
* She makes sweeping generalizations and speaks in frequent hyperboles. For instance, she repeatedly suggests that women can't feel safe walking alone on the streets.
* Overall, I think she gives men a raw deal. I sometimes get the sense that men are being condemned for their sexual behavior while women are merely being pitied. She tends to speak of indecent male behaviors as though they were typical, as if the losers she dated in college were entirely representative of the American male. She often speaks in a condescending way about men. For example: a return to modesty, she says, "invites men to consider, 'What's fun about forcing someone into sex in the first place?'" Now, perhaps she doesn't _mean_ to imply that most men haven't considered that rape might not be fun, but, really, how would your average man feel upon reading that sentence? This book was written shortly after Shalit graduated college, and I think she had a somewhat insular view of the world. Her view of "men," it seems, has been largely informed by college frat boys, liberal male philosophy professors, the rantings of anti-male feminists, and articles in Cosmo. I don't think a woman who had been married ten years and given birth to one or more sons could possibly write this book the way she wrote it.
* As in Girls Gone Mild, Shalit relies mostly on anecdotal evidence, using extreme examples as though they were normative. When she does use statistics, I am often skeptical of her sources, because the numbers are often suspiciously high. 78% of men have cheated on their wives? 65% of teenage boys in a Rhode Island study said they thought it was "acceptable" to "force sex" on a girlfriend after six months of dating? If your goal is to convince women that their desire for true love and commitment is not unrealistic, then it probably doesn't help to imply that the overwhelming majority of men are adulterers and rapists.
* She tends to treat her own personal experience and observations in the very liberal parts of the country in which she has lived as indicative of national and generational trends. Although I was born the same year as Shalit and attended public schools my entire life, my own observations and experiences are different. I don't recall the boys ridiculing the girls by the lockers in 4th grade after being taught how to masturbate in sex ed. My 5th grade teacher most certainly did not keep a stash of condoms in her desk drawer to distribute to 11 year olds when they asked for safety pins. Casual "hook-ups" occurred at my college, but I never had the sense they were the norm (dating was). I had never even heard the term "check up" before I read this book. I never had a female friend assume I wanted "many men" or advise me to show more skin. I'm not sure if Shalit realizes that her experiences may have been atypical of the nation at large.
* Shalit tends to blame society for all individual choices, allowing limited room for personal responsibility. At one point, she even says that the murder of a woman by her stalker should be on ALL of our consciences. I'm sure there are, as Shalit has said, women who do not know their feelings of modesty and their desire to link sex and commitment are normal. I understand that adolescence is a time where everything is dramatic, and that many young women do fear being alone and so say "yes" to sex when they don't really want to. Yet ultimately, they do have a choice to follow their feelings instead of what they believe society expects of them. Being counter-cultural isn't easy, but nor is it _quite_ as hard as Shalit makes it out to be. It's difficult to strain against the expectations of your environment, but, to some extent, people choose their environments by choosing their friends, their colleges, their extracurricular activities, and their religion. As I read Shalit recounting how she used to pretend to be more sexually experienced than she was to "gain approval," I often found myself thinking—-why don't you just find better friends who don't tell you to show more skin so you can have "many men"? Why don't you look for men to date in synagogue instead of in your Liberal Indoctrination 101 class? Shalit is lifting her voice to make the alternatives to a sex-saturated culture clear and to defend modesty and sexual restraint in a society that too often mocks them. I hope her voice will reach those young women who suppress their feelings and consciences in order to "run with the boys." Yet the final responsibility for sexual choices must ultimately rest with the individual.
Kudos to Shalit for saying things many women believe but are afraid to say for fear of being called sexist or submissive. Those who adorn the altar of sexual choice rarely seem to understand that the sexual choices individual women make DO collectively affect the reality of how men on average treat women on average. Women, with a "cartel of virtue," can influence how the majority of men approach sex and relationships. In the absence of that cartel, however, women are subjected to increased ungentelmanlinke behavior and experience more difficulty finding men who are willing to offer any level of commitment prior to sex. "When women, as a group, forsake their natural power, it becomes difficult to reclaim that power individually." Older feminist tell young women, "You have a choice to be abstinent, why should you care what other women do?" But women of my generation didn't choose the world we live in, the world the architects of the sexual revolution created for us before we were born, a world where most men expect sex of women long before marriage and where natural modesty is often called a "hang up." We would have voted for the right to equal treatment under the law, but who's to say we would have voted to be asked for sex on the first date? Unfortunately, my generation never got a vote in the sexual revolution, and now the "guardians of the status quo" grow indignant when any of us suggests we don't care for the results.
Shalit has an interesting take on how harassment laws and dating codes developed. When society treats sexual differences and sex itself as insignificant, sooner or later, unchivalrous behavior becomes more common. If women are offended by the way men approach them, then, they must be the ones with the problem: they are prudes, or they are "uncomfortable in their bodies," or they are too intense. While the feminists don't think a man has a right to make a woman feel uncomfortable for any reason, how can men take a woman's discomfort seriously in the world created by the sexual revolutionaries, where sex is nothing special and any talk of female vulnerability is synonymous with "oppression"? So what do feminist do when they discover that a lot of women _don't want_ to treat sex with as much detachment as men? Do they encourage women to reinstate the "cartel of virtue"? Of course not. That's sexist and unthinkable. So instead they turn to written laws and regulations and codes of dating and sexual harassment, trying to enforce from above decent behaviors and attitudes that society once merely took for granted, and the result is a web of intimidation, condescension, and double standards.
Instead of telling men they are sexist if they think they owe women special treatment merely because they are women, instead of inviting everyone to believe sex is trivial and then prosecuting men when they behave as if that's true, wouldn't it be so much easier if more people just taught their sons a sense of honor and their daughters a sense of modesty, so that having sex with inebriated, half-conscious college girls and inviting strippers to your frat party and telling dirty jokes to your female co-workers were simply unthought of?
So, is Shalit advocating women be forced to wear burqas? That's not he point. Her point is that a voluntary return to modesty (which has more to do with expectations and attitudes about sex than specific dress) would be good for women, and that women benefit when the society they inhabit supports the concepts of modesty and male honor. I agree. So why only three stars? Because of several flaws in the way she presents her argument:
* She makes sweeping generalizations and speaks in frequent hyperboles. For instance, she repeatedly suggests that women can't feel safe walking alone on the streets.
* Overall, I think she gives men a raw deal. I sometimes get the sense that men are being condemned for their sexual behavior while women are merely being pitied. She tends to speak of indecent male behaviors as though they were typical, as if the losers she dated in college were entirely representative of the American male. She often speaks in a condescending way about men. For example: a return to modesty, she says, "invites men to consider, 'What's fun about forcing someone into sex in the first place?'" Now, perhaps she doesn't _mean_ to imply that most men haven't considered that rape might not be fun, but, really, how would your average man feel upon reading that sentence? This book was written shortly after Shalit graduated college, and I think she had a somewhat insular view of the world. Her view of "men," it seems, has been largely informed by college frat boys, liberal male philosophy professors, the rantings of anti-male feminists, and articles in Cosmo. I don't think a woman who had been married ten years and given birth to one or more sons could possibly write this book the way she wrote it.
* As in Girls Gone Mild, Shalit relies mostly on anecdotal evidence, using extreme examples as though they were normative. When she does use statistics, I am often skeptical of her sources, because the numbers are often suspiciously high. 78% of men have cheated on their wives? 65% of teenage boys in a Rhode Island study said they thought it was "acceptable" to "force sex" on a girlfriend after six months of dating? If your goal is to convince women that their desire for true love and commitment is not unrealistic, then it probably doesn't help to imply that the overwhelming majority of men are adulterers and rapists.
* She tends to treat her own personal experience and observations in the very liberal parts of the country in which she has lived as indicative of national and generational trends. Although I was born the same year as Shalit and attended public schools my entire life, my own observations and experiences are different. I don't recall the boys ridiculing the girls by the lockers in 4th grade after being taught how to masturbate in sex ed. My 5th grade teacher most certainly did not keep a stash of condoms in her desk drawer to distribute to 11 year olds when they asked for safety pins. Casual "hook-ups" occurred at my college, but I never had the sense they were the norm (dating was). I had never even heard the term "check up" before I read this book. I never had a female friend assume I wanted "many men" or advise me to show more skin. I'm not sure if Shalit realizes that her experiences may have been atypical of the nation at large.
* Shalit tends to blame society for all individual choices, allowing limited room for personal responsibility. At one point, she even says that the murder of a woman by her stalker should be on ALL of our consciences. I'm sure there are, as Shalit has said, women who do not know their feelings of modesty and their desire to link sex and commitment are normal. I understand that adolescence is a time where everything is dramatic, and that many young women do fear being alone and so say "yes" to sex when they don't really want to. Yet ultimately, they do have a choice to follow their feelings instead of what they believe society expects of them. Being counter-cultural isn't easy, but nor is it _quite_ as hard as Shalit makes it out to be. It's difficult to strain against the expectations of your environment, but, to some extent, people choose their environments by choosing their friends, their colleges, their extracurricular activities, and their religion. As I read Shalit recounting how she used to pretend to be more sexually experienced than she was to "gain approval," I often found myself thinking—-why don't you just find better friends who don't tell you to show more skin so you can have "many men"? Why don't you look for men to date in synagogue instead of in your Liberal Indoctrination 101 class? Shalit is lifting her voice to make the alternatives to a sex-saturated culture clear and to defend modesty and sexual restraint in a society that too often mocks them. I hope her voice will reach those young women who suppress their feelings and consciences in order to "run with the boys." Yet the final responsibility for sexual choices must ultimately rest with the individual.
October 4, 2011
A like-minded individual would love this book and question none of it. But as one of those "feminists" Shalit refers to somewhat derisively in her book, I could not help but notice Shalit's casual tossing of completely unfounded statements into the core of her arguments. She has some interesting solutions to a problem that is in fact all-too real, but her solutions fail to take into consideration 1. historical fact (for example, her oft-repeated assertion that rape, sexual assault, and harassment did NOT happen prior to the Sexual Revolution....which is blatantly false), 2. a perspective other than East Coast white elitist (Shalit seems to not be aware that modest cultures do in fact exist in the United States today, in certain immigrant communities, in certain poor and/or rural communities, in certain places in the Deep South, etc., or for that matter, all around the world), and 3. the hypocrisy of what she proposes (if we were to catapult back to a modest society such as she proposes, Shalit may have been educated, but the likelihood that she would have been allowed to employ herself outside the home, to write and publish as a woman would be decidedly slim). Shalit likes to pick and choose the aspects of modesty that appeal to her: gentlemanly behavior, chastity, conservative dress....but fails to admit that the good also comes with the bad: inequal pay, lack of opportunity, inferiority, lack of rights.... I was intrigued, but ultimately disappointed. It saddens me how many people question absolutely none of her arguments, or the feasibility of her proposals.
December 9, 2018
Despite being an easy, funny, chatty read, this book was thought-provoking. I really mean that I did quite often stop to think back over my own sexual experiences and how they might fit into Wendy Shalit's idea of what's erotic, what's modest, and how they fit together.
Shalit's argument is interesting because, in a world where everyone seems to be sneering at everyone else for either being a slut or a prude, a cad or a loser, Shalit claims that sluttery and prudery are two facets of the same thing: the denial of the erotic. Modesty is not prudish, it is the natural behaviour of one who recognises the true power and pleasure of desire and intimacy.
It's also a very feminist book, despite the fact that Shalit at times speaks approvingly of patriarchy and disparagingly of feminists. This defence of modesty is a defence of women's right to sexual satisfaction, personal dignity, and public respect. And more than that, Shalit says emotional sensitivity is a fundamental attribute of women, so a culture that pressures women to enjoy the 'zipless fuck' is a culture that is asking women to deny or deaden a part of their nature.
But are most women too emotionally sensitive for premarital sex? Too much of the book is Shalit's opinion, backed up by anecdotes, either her own, her friends, or culled from magazine articles. It seems obvious to me that there are definitely some women who would prefer to have only one sexual partner in their life: their husband, the father of the children, a man devoted and committed to them for life. I know such women and they are very happy. It's also true that there are some women who are very happy in open relationships, and who enjoy casual sex. I know women who have had many sexual partners and enjoyed it. Both groups tend to be resentful that the general public view them as fundamentally odd, and probably mentally ill. In both cases the general opinion seems to be that 'she would only do that if she had suffered some kind of sexual violation. Probably molested by her dad'. It's not true in either case.
But most of us muddle along, have a few boyfriends, eventually settle down. How many women really would be happier at either extreme? Shalit believes that most women are at the former extreme. In their hearts, they want their relationships to be forever, and they are profoundly wounded by break-ups. She quotes a little from women who marry the man of their dreams and then regret all previous sexual encounters.
She doesn't quote at all from women who marry their first love, and after their divorce wish that they'd had some more experience before leaping into such a commitment, although such women do exist. Really, there ought to be some kind of cross-cultural long term study of dating, marriage, divorce, and happiness. But even that is fraught with difficulty, as different cultures have different expectations of what happiness is and how much one can reasonably expect to have. So, alright, it's probably impossible for Shalit to prove her thesis, but I would've been interested to see her engage more with people who don't fit into her model. At times it seems like she's making the mistake of thinking that just because something is true for her, as a woman, then it must be true for women as a group.
So setting that aside, Shalit said some interesting things. She argues that there is such a thing as female modesty, it's both universal and relative. Relative in as much as each culture has its own rules on what is and isn't modest; universal in as much as every culture has such rules. As an example, almost every culture holds certain body parts to be highly erotic: American women hide their breasts, Xhosa women are happy to expose their breasts but careful to cover their thighs, Madagascans hide their arms, the Chinese their feet. The women of New Guinea, although nearly naked, flatly refuse to climb fences when men are looking and pointedly turn their backs when men stare.
Every woman feels the embarrassment that urges modesty at some point. Shalit's examples include women who wear split skirts because fashion demands it – and then when caught in the wind hunch over to hold them tightly shut! Likewise, I think everyone in England has had the experience of seeing rows of young people queuing up at nightclubs. There will always be more than one girl in such a queue wearing a tube dress that barely covers her, tugging away at her hems, nervously ensuring that her butt and boobs are still covered.
Of course, dress isn't the only area where women are modest. Shalit dwells a lot on the discomfort women feel in mixed-sex dormitories and bathrooms – no doubt because she wrote the book soon after graduating from such an arrangement.
But why should modesty be so universal – found in all women in all places? Well, according to Shalit it's because women are naturally emotionally sensitive and loving. To be soft-hearted is to be vulnerable, and modesty is a natural defence. Women are shy and conservative in their dress, their manners, their behaviour, so that only men who are gentle, loving, committed, and deserving overcome the natural feminine reserve to win their hearts.
So modesty serves a natural purpose in helping women to identify the men who can be trusted with their hearts. But more than that, it is a natural part of sexual attraction and desire. Shalit points out (quite rightly, in my opinion) that there is almost no eroticism in nudist camps. She quotes amusing anecdotes of people who took up nudism in hope of a thrill, and found the absolute opposite result. The same is true, she claims, of casual sex and easy hook ups. Where there is no chase, no mystery, no sanctity, no secrets shared, sex is nothing more than a bodily function. Or as her school sex education put it: 'orgasm is like when you sneeze, and then you sneeze.'
Even co-habiting can kill the attraction. Shalit quotes Jewish law on marital relations, which I found very interesting, as I knew nothing about it. Jewish law specifies when a couple can and cannot have sex, certain times of the month are forbidden, but also certain states of being: drunk, uncertain, or during a fight. In her argument, which I find persuasive, these rules, by intermittently making sex forbidden and separately the couple, help to keep the passion alive. This seems so intuitively true, and there are so many aphorisms to support it – 'familiarity breeds contempt' 'forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest', that I am very inclined to agree.
But more than protecting women's hearts, and increasing their sexual allure, modesty in women brings out modesty in men. Men who must earn the love and trust of a woman learn to be gentle, considerate, and courteous. They become better people in their morals and their manners. In short, they become chivalrous. Shalit quotes at length, and with some obvious admiration and longing, from old conduct manuals, illustrating a bygone time when sexual harassment never happened and all women were treated with a level of respect unknown to current society.
At which point, I'm starting to roll my eyes. Shalit's imaginary world of modesty is beautiful and romantic: a world where every woman is a lady and every man a gentleman – but it was never so.
Look, I can believe that women, on average, like casual sex less than men, I can believe that women are, on average, more shy than men. I can believe that a little mystery in a marriage keeps the passion alive.
I do not believe for a minute that there was no sexual harassment prior to the sexual revolution.
It's certainly possible that Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson (quoted by Shalit) were gentlemen who would always protect a lady – but Samuel Pepys also kept a diary and he was perfectly clear about his attempts to touch up strange women in church, and that he frequently molested his housemaids. In 1903, a time in which Shalit believes sexual harassment was rare, women defend themselves with hatpins against 'mashers', men who groped women on public transport. Sexual harassment has always been with us.
Richardson's Pamela from a time when no-one was ever sexually harassed.
Shalit also refers approvingly to the modest dress prevalent in Islamic and Orthodox Jewish societies. This is a huge tactical mistake, although to be fair she was writing in the 90s. Mona Eltahawy has written a lot about the epidemic of sexual harassment in Egypt, despite unbiquitous hijab. Likewise, in Iran, women wear the hijab because it is the law. They protested against it in their millions when it was brought it, and they are still doing so. I think Shalit's argument in favour of modesty as naturally emergent femininity which inspires devoted civility in men would've been stronger if she'd stuck to 18th century English gentlemen as her examples.
Women protesting forced modesty in Iran
But Shalit isn't only arguing in favour of modesty, and a modest culture. She's also arguing against the modern culture of permissiveness and casual sex. Most of her examples centre around American university campuses, which often seem strange and parochial to me. For example, she has a great deal of amused contempt for the confusing etiquette of modern hook-ups, in which the boys are required to 'check-up' on the girls after intercourse. Girls are proud to 'still be friends' with all the guys they slept with, and there is some disapproval of men who fail to perform the 'check-up'. And yet, at the same time the check-up must be swift and superficial, because it would be very wrong to imply too much affection and 'send the wrong message'. But as Shalit points out, why worry about 'sending the wrong message' if nobody is in danger of emotional harm from 'misunderstandings'? And what's the use of a 'friend' who scrupulously avoids too much contact and intimacy? This seems like weird Americans to me. When I went to university in the UK, we all just drank a lot and muddled into sexual relationships via awkward conversations.
More worrying is Shalit's description of the pressure she came under as a girl who was openly refusing to date and have sex. At school she would deliberately pretend to have a penchant for older men, and lie about her fictional 'older' boyfriend, simply because a reputation for liking older men meant that boys her own age didn't bother her.
When she did date, boys would try to pressure her into sex by implying that her preference to wait was a 'hang up'. An unreasonable barrier probably due to a psychological defect. Something negative that she should overcome.
When she decided to be open about her preference for modesty at university, writing articles against mixed-sex bathrooms, the response was campus-wide harassment: hate mail, mice left in her room, stares, taunts, and insults from strangers, eventually she had to be moved to private accommodation for her own safety.
This is all horrible depressing stuff. Can American campuses really be so horribly conformist? We certainly gossiped about other people's sex lives, but I can't imagine why anyone would bother to harass a stranger simply for not having sex. Is this widespread behaviour? Shalit has anecdotes from other girls who wrote to her or spoke to her privately to confess that they felt the same way she did, but not much idea of how widespread the problem, and not much to say about why people should be so inexplicably keen to oppose virginity. It's very odd and it's very nasty.
Shalit's also of the opinion that many of the modern mental illnesses found in teenage girls are a side effect of this promiscuous culture: anorexia, self-harming and cutting, and 'depression'. Girls are naturally sensitive and emotional, but they are now living in a world which requires them to be hard and unfeeling. Anorexia and self-harm can be ways to deaden one's natural intensity. Likewise, girls are given prozac when their natural sensitivity is misinterpreted as a disorder. Simply put, there is nothing wrong with girls, there is something wrong with society for insisting that they feel nothing while engaging in casual sex.
Once again, I start off agreeing with Shalit, but I feel that she over-reaches. I can certainly agree that one ought to be free to remain a virgin until marriage or forever. This is not unnatural, or unhealthy, and does not deserve bullying. Men certainly shouldn't bully their girlfriends into sex. Single sex dormitories and bathrooms should be available for anyone who wants them. But can sex and boys really be the biggest problem, or the only problem, for girls? Are all girls really so sensitive that they suffer immense or permanent emotional damage from break-ups? When I think back to school days it seems to me that there were plenty of girl's who were the heart-breakers, and boys who were the heart-broken.
When Shalit speaks so often from her own personal experience, I find myself comparing it to my own personal experience. For example, when speaking of boyfriends who pressured her for sex, she quips that if he needs to have sex to know if they're compatible then they're not compatible! But for me the opposite is true. I'm very grateful that I live in an age in which one can cohabit before marriage. My first boyfriend was a passionate and romantic man whose courting behaviour was utterly devoted – but we were sexually incompatible, and he was a nightmare to share a kitchen with. I'm very grateful that I discovered those truths before we had children! I'm skeptical that if we'd waited until marriage the ring would've made a difference to his personality. We broke up when he fell in love with someone else, but my heart is not shattered by the experience. Am I the outlier?
I keep coming back to this question: What proportion of women are like Shalit? What proportion are promiscuous? What proportion are like me, in the middle?
It's a question that matters because, as Shalit points out, social norms make it harder for some people to behave in their preferred way. Shalit thinks that most women want to be like her and save intimacy for marriage. It's very difficult for such women in modern society because a man will hardly commit to her when he can have companionship, sex, and cohabitation with any number of other women. Shalit speaks wistfully of the days when female solidarity – a 'cartel' – held all men to high standards of courting and chivalry. Should we live in such a world? I don't think it ever existed and I'm not convinced it would be good for women to try to create it – but certainly, if it were possible, I would like to live in Shalit's utopia, where every man is a gentleman, all interactions are courteous, and everyone gets a generous and devoted husband for life.
Shalit's argument is interesting because, in a world where everyone seems to be sneering at everyone else for either being a slut or a prude, a cad or a loser, Shalit claims that sluttery and prudery are two facets of the same thing: the denial of the erotic. Modesty is not prudish, it is the natural behaviour of one who recognises the true power and pleasure of desire and intimacy.
It's also a very feminist book, despite the fact that Shalit at times speaks approvingly of patriarchy and disparagingly of feminists. This defence of modesty is a defence of women's right to sexual satisfaction, personal dignity, and public respect. And more than that, Shalit says emotional sensitivity is a fundamental attribute of women, so a culture that pressures women to enjoy the 'zipless fuck' is a culture that is asking women to deny or deaden a part of their nature.
But are most women too emotionally sensitive for premarital sex? Too much of the book is Shalit's opinion, backed up by anecdotes, either her own, her friends, or culled from magazine articles. It seems obvious to me that there are definitely some women who would prefer to have only one sexual partner in their life: their husband, the father of the children, a man devoted and committed to them for life. I know such women and they are very happy. It's also true that there are some women who are very happy in open relationships, and who enjoy casual sex. I know women who have had many sexual partners and enjoyed it. Both groups tend to be resentful that the general public view them as fundamentally odd, and probably mentally ill. In both cases the general opinion seems to be that 'she would only do that if she had suffered some kind of sexual violation. Probably molested by her dad'. It's not true in either case.
But most of us muddle along, have a few boyfriends, eventually settle down. How many women really would be happier at either extreme? Shalit believes that most women are at the former extreme. In their hearts, they want their relationships to be forever, and they are profoundly wounded by break-ups. She quotes a little from women who marry the man of their dreams and then regret all previous sexual encounters.
She doesn't quote at all from women who marry their first love, and after their divorce wish that they'd had some more experience before leaping into such a commitment, although such women do exist. Really, there ought to be some kind of cross-cultural long term study of dating, marriage, divorce, and happiness. But even that is fraught with difficulty, as different cultures have different expectations of what happiness is and how much one can reasonably expect to have. So, alright, it's probably impossible for Shalit to prove her thesis, but I would've been interested to see her engage more with people who don't fit into her model. At times it seems like she's making the mistake of thinking that just because something is true for her, as a woman, then it must be true for women as a group.
So setting that aside, Shalit said some interesting things. She argues that there is such a thing as female modesty, it's both universal and relative. Relative in as much as each culture has its own rules on what is and isn't modest; universal in as much as every culture has such rules. As an example, almost every culture holds certain body parts to be highly erotic: American women hide their breasts, Xhosa women are happy to expose their breasts but careful to cover their thighs, Madagascans hide their arms, the Chinese their feet. The women of New Guinea, although nearly naked, flatly refuse to climb fences when men are looking and pointedly turn their backs when men stare.
Every woman feels the embarrassment that urges modesty at some point. Shalit's examples include women who wear split skirts because fashion demands it – and then when caught in the wind hunch over to hold them tightly shut! Likewise, I think everyone in England has had the experience of seeing rows of young people queuing up at nightclubs. There will always be more than one girl in such a queue wearing a tube dress that barely covers her, tugging away at her hems, nervously ensuring that her butt and boobs are still covered.
Of course, dress isn't the only area where women are modest. Shalit dwells a lot on the discomfort women feel in mixed-sex dormitories and bathrooms – no doubt because she wrote the book soon after graduating from such an arrangement.
But why should modesty be so universal – found in all women in all places? Well, according to Shalit it's because women are naturally emotionally sensitive and loving. To be soft-hearted is to be vulnerable, and modesty is a natural defence. Women are shy and conservative in their dress, their manners, their behaviour, so that only men who are gentle, loving, committed, and deserving overcome the natural feminine reserve to win their hearts.
So modesty serves a natural purpose in helping women to identify the men who can be trusted with their hearts. But more than that, it is a natural part of sexual attraction and desire. Shalit points out (quite rightly, in my opinion) that there is almost no eroticism in nudist camps. She quotes amusing anecdotes of people who took up nudism in hope of a thrill, and found the absolute opposite result. The same is true, she claims, of casual sex and easy hook ups. Where there is no chase, no mystery, no sanctity, no secrets shared, sex is nothing more than a bodily function. Or as her school sex education put it: 'orgasm is like when you sneeze, and then you sneeze.'
Even co-habiting can kill the attraction. Shalit quotes Jewish law on marital relations, which I found very interesting, as I knew nothing about it. Jewish law specifies when a couple can and cannot have sex, certain times of the month are forbidden, but also certain states of being: drunk, uncertain, or during a fight. In her argument, which I find persuasive, these rules, by intermittently making sex forbidden and separately the couple, help to keep the passion alive. This seems so intuitively true, and there are so many aphorisms to support it – 'familiarity breeds contempt' 'forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest', that I am very inclined to agree.
But more than protecting women's hearts, and increasing their sexual allure, modesty in women brings out modesty in men. Men who must earn the love and trust of a woman learn to be gentle, considerate, and courteous. They become better people in their morals and their manners. In short, they become chivalrous. Shalit quotes at length, and with some obvious admiration and longing, from old conduct manuals, illustrating a bygone time when sexual harassment never happened and all women were treated with a level of respect unknown to current society.
At which point, I'm starting to roll my eyes. Shalit's imaginary world of modesty is beautiful and romantic: a world where every woman is a lady and every man a gentleman – but it was never so.
Look, I can believe that women, on average, like casual sex less than men, I can believe that women are, on average, more shy than men. I can believe that a little mystery in a marriage keeps the passion alive.
I do not believe for a minute that there was no sexual harassment prior to the sexual revolution.
It's certainly possible that Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson (quoted by Shalit) were gentlemen who would always protect a lady – but Samuel Pepys also kept a diary and he was perfectly clear about his attempts to touch up strange women in church, and that he frequently molested his housemaids. In 1903, a time in which Shalit believes sexual harassment was rare, women defend themselves with hatpins against 'mashers', men who groped women on public transport. Sexual harassment has always been with us.
Richardson's Pamela from a time when no-one was ever sexually harassed.
Shalit also refers approvingly to the modest dress prevalent in Islamic and Orthodox Jewish societies. This is a huge tactical mistake, although to be fair she was writing in the 90s. Mona Eltahawy has written a lot about the epidemic of sexual harassment in Egypt, despite unbiquitous hijab. Likewise, in Iran, women wear the hijab because it is the law. They protested against it in their millions when it was brought it, and they are still doing so. I think Shalit's argument in favour of modesty as naturally emergent femininity which inspires devoted civility in men would've been stronger if she'd stuck to 18th century English gentlemen as her examples.
Women protesting forced modesty in Iran
But Shalit isn't only arguing in favour of modesty, and a modest culture. She's also arguing against the modern culture of permissiveness and casual sex. Most of her examples centre around American university campuses, which often seem strange and parochial to me. For example, she has a great deal of amused contempt for the confusing etiquette of modern hook-ups, in which the boys are required to 'check-up' on the girls after intercourse. Girls are proud to 'still be friends' with all the guys they slept with, and there is some disapproval of men who fail to perform the 'check-up'. And yet, at the same time the check-up must be swift and superficial, because it would be very wrong to imply too much affection and 'send the wrong message'. But as Shalit points out, why worry about 'sending the wrong message' if nobody is in danger of emotional harm from 'misunderstandings'? And what's the use of a 'friend' who scrupulously avoids too much contact and intimacy? This seems like weird Americans to me. When I went to university in the UK, we all just drank a lot and muddled into sexual relationships via awkward conversations.
More worrying is Shalit's description of the pressure she came under as a girl who was openly refusing to date and have sex. At school she would deliberately pretend to have a penchant for older men, and lie about her fictional 'older' boyfriend, simply because a reputation for liking older men meant that boys her own age didn't bother her.
When she did date, boys would try to pressure her into sex by implying that her preference to wait was a 'hang up'. An unreasonable barrier probably due to a psychological defect. Something negative that she should overcome.
When she decided to be open about her preference for modesty at university, writing articles against mixed-sex bathrooms, the response was campus-wide harassment: hate mail, mice left in her room, stares, taunts, and insults from strangers, eventually she had to be moved to private accommodation for her own safety.
This is all horrible depressing stuff. Can American campuses really be so horribly conformist? We certainly gossiped about other people's sex lives, but I can't imagine why anyone would bother to harass a stranger simply for not having sex. Is this widespread behaviour? Shalit has anecdotes from other girls who wrote to her or spoke to her privately to confess that they felt the same way she did, but not much idea of how widespread the problem, and not much to say about why people should be so inexplicably keen to oppose virginity. It's very odd and it's very nasty.
Shalit's also of the opinion that many of the modern mental illnesses found in teenage girls are a side effect of this promiscuous culture: anorexia, self-harming and cutting, and 'depression'. Girls are naturally sensitive and emotional, but they are now living in a world which requires them to be hard and unfeeling. Anorexia and self-harm can be ways to deaden one's natural intensity. Likewise, girls are given prozac when their natural sensitivity is misinterpreted as a disorder. Simply put, there is nothing wrong with girls, there is something wrong with society for insisting that they feel nothing while engaging in casual sex.
Once again, I start off agreeing with Shalit, but I feel that she over-reaches. I can certainly agree that one ought to be free to remain a virgin until marriage or forever. This is not unnatural, or unhealthy, and does not deserve bullying. Men certainly shouldn't bully their girlfriends into sex. Single sex dormitories and bathrooms should be available for anyone who wants them. But can sex and boys really be the biggest problem, or the only problem, for girls? Are all girls really so sensitive that they suffer immense or permanent emotional damage from break-ups? When I think back to school days it seems to me that there were plenty of girl's who were the heart-breakers, and boys who were the heart-broken.
When Shalit speaks so often from her own personal experience, I find myself comparing it to my own personal experience. For example, when speaking of boyfriends who pressured her for sex, she quips that if he needs to have sex to know if they're compatible then they're not compatible! But for me the opposite is true. I'm very grateful that I live in an age in which one can cohabit before marriage. My first boyfriend was a passionate and romantic man whose courting behaviour was utterly devoted – but we were sexually incompatible, and he was a nightmare to share a kitchen with. I'm very grateful that I discovered those truths before we had children! I'm skeptical that if we'd waited until marriage the ring would've made a difference to his personality. We broke up when he fell in love with someone else, but my heart is not shattered by the experience. Am I the outlier?
I keep coming back to this question: What proportion of women are like Shalit? What proportion are promiscuous? What proportion are like me, in the middle?
It's a question that matters because, as Shalit points out, social norms make it harder for some people to behave in their preferred way. Shalit thinks that most women want to be like her and save intimacy for marriage. It's very difficult for such women in modern society because a man will hardly commit to her when he can have companionship, sex, and cohabitation with any number of other women. Shalit speaks wistfully of the days when female solidarity – a 'cartel' – held all men to high standards of courting and chivalry. Should we live in such a world? I don't think it ever existed and I'm not convinced it would be good for women to try to create it – but certainly, if it were possible, I would like to live in Shalit's utopia, where every man is a gentleman, all interactions are courteous, and everyone gets a generous and devoted husband for life.
December 26, 2013
Skylar's excellent review of this book did make me view it a bit more critically, but for the most part, I think Wendy Shalit has portrayed American society with dead-on accuracy. Her main contentions are these:
1. If women would hold themselves to higher standards of modesty and men would hold themselves to higher standards of honor, we would have a much healthier society overall.
2. The reason for such problems as anorexia and cutting amongst girls is not because the girls themselves are sick but because they are reacting to a sick society which pressures them to become sexualized before they really want to.
3. No change in the current climate will come about unless masses of young women begin saying "no" proudly. Otherwise, they'll always be thought of as "weird," "hung up," "repressed," etc.
Shalit defends each of these claims with extensive citations from psychological studies, headlines in women's magazines, personal anecdotes, Victorian literature, Western philosophy, classical and modern feminist thought, and Torah sources. Her target audience is secular, so she defends modesty by pointing out in painful detail the damage excessive immodesty has done to marriage, love, and relationships. As she admits herself, her discussion of modesty is NOT modest. So this is not an uplifting book on tznius like Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore? or Outside/Inside. This is a scathing look at secular culture in the post-feminist era. Sheltered FFB women would be shocked. BTs will see a familiar world and be all the gladder they left it behind. May Hashem help that young secular women get hold of this book and be strengthened to take a new kind of feminist stand.
1. If women would hold themselves to higher standards of modesty and men would hold themselves to higher standards of honor, we would have a much healthier society overall.
2. The reason for such problems as anorexia and cutting amongst girls is not because the girls themselves are sick but because they are reacting to a sick society which pressures them to become sexualized before they really want to.
3. No change in the current climate will come about unless masses of young women begin saying "no" proudly. Otherwise, they'll always be thought of as "weird," "hung up," "repressed," etc.
Shalit defends each of these claims with extensive citations from psychological studies, headlines in women's magazines, personal anecdotes, Victorian literature, Western philosophy, classical and modern feminist thought, and Torah sources. Her target audience is secular, so she defends modesty by pointing out in painful detail the damage excessive immodesty has done to marriage, love, and relationships. As she admits herself, her discussion of modesty is NOT modest. So this is not an uplifting book on tznius like Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore? or Outside/Inside. This is a scathing look at secular culture in the post-feminist era. Sheltered FFB women would be shocked. BTs will see a familiar world and be all the gladder they left it behind. May Hashem help that young secular women get hold of this book and be strengthened to take a new kind of feminist stand.
March 7, 2009
I originally read this book when it first came out. I was a 19 year old and very earnest new feminist and women's studies major. Everyone around me told me this woman was laughable--and at the same time, incredibly dangerous. Perplexed, of course I had to take a look. I was stunned to find that I agreed with her on many points, and shared her discomfort with the way certain things are foisted on us nowadays--advanced sexual knowledge before puberty, "being comfortable with your body," mixed gender bathrooms at college, etc. I also greatly appreciated her respect for traditional religions. I felt that she was a feminist voice--not doctrinaire leftie feminist, not conservative reactionary, but her own person arguing a point of view that generally cared about the well-being of womankind. I chose to present a book review for one of my Women's studies classes, and was "flamed" so badly I still have singe marks. It was incredibly painful and humiliating. Not content to simply disagree with my intellectual arguments, the class turned on me as a person, and attacked what they speculated were my personal "issues." I was henceforth a leper in that crowd. Ironically, they pretty much proved a lot of what Shalit says in the book.
I re-read the book this week and was surprised anew by how original, true, and brave Shalit's ideas are. I urge women to read this book with an open mind, rather than with that cynical sarcastic sneer that we all have in this age of "snark"--right wing or left. Don't make up your mind before you read it, pretend you have never heard of her before. She has something good to say.
I re-read the book this week and was surprised anew by how original, true, and brave Shalit's ideas are. I urge women to read this book with an open mind, rather than with that cynical sarcastic sneer that we all have in this age of "snark"--right wing or left. Don't make up your mind before you read it, pretend you have never heard of her before. She has something good to say.
October 2, 2007
I had very mixed feelings about this book. I agreed with just about everything Shalit had to say, and I really enjoyed reading about Orthodox Jewish practices and laws, having had almost no prior exposure to them. Her analysis of the culture is dead-on, and I completely agree that modesty is in danger of dying out -- and that abandonment of it is what has placed us in such an amoral state.
That said, however, I just didn't care for the writing style. I felt out of breath every time I picked it up -- she crammed so many quotes, references and rhetorical questions into each paragraph that it felt very disjointed. Other than the general idea of "Wow, society is screwed up -- if we could all be more modest, maybe we'd be happier!" I just didn't get her point most of the time; she offered little in the way of practical advice, just conclusions.
So, I guess I thought the book was timely and important, but I ended up skimming through a lot of it just to get finished, because after a few paragraphs I had a pretty good idea of where each chapter was going . . .
That said, however, I just didn't care for the writing style. I felt out of breath every time I picked it up -- she crammed so many quotes, references and rhetorical questions into each paragraph that it felt very disjointed. Other than the general idea of "Wow, society is screwed up -- if we could all be more modest, maybe we'd be happier!" I just didn't get her point most of the time; she offered little in the way of practical advice, just conclusions.
So, I guess I thought the book was timely and important, but I ended up skimming through a lot of it just to get finished, because after a few paragraphs I had a pretty good idea of where each chapter was going . . .
April 10, 2008
Hoorah for Wendy Shalit! I'm glad someone out there has made a great case for not only modesty in dress, but more importantly, modesty in behavior! In a world that tells us that we are equal to men, in every way except anatomy, I'm glad that Wendy was brave enough to uncover the truth. Through extensive research and often-times shocking anecdotes we discover the disintegration of the virtuous woman, and the great need for women young and old alike, to unite forces and dispel the "popular" version of what womanhood is supposed to be. "Popular" being hooking-up, shacking-up, and a complete disregard for anything lovely, virtuous, of good-report, or praisworthy. A virtuous woman has the power to demand respect from her male counterpart, and come on ladies...isn't that what we want?!?!?
June 22, 2008
Another of my all-time favorites. I read this book as a college student in a 'clothing' class (not just a sewing class, but so much more...), and was so immediately struck by how much it helped me to explain my own feelings about modesty in a world where that word has almost no meaning anymore. I really, really think this should be required reading for all teenage girls; unfortunately, there are probably many people in this world (including women--who must not really respect themselves for who they are)that think this book is very 'old-fashioned', very 'prudish', and 'smothering' to young people. I challenge all the women reading this review to read the book and realize that it makes perfect sense to respect your own self first if you want others to respect it also.
December 20, 2010
Modesty – whoa, there’s a loaded topic.
Modesty is loaded for me in a particular way. As a graduate of an orthodox Jewish girls’ high school where I felt modesty was needlessly shoved down my throat, I tend to have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I keep all the modesty rules I’m supposed to keep, but without the enthusiasm or zealousness my teachers preached. And I often see other graduates of my school fudging or even abandoning these rules, which I tend to interpret as a direct reaction to the overemphasis on detail that we were subjected to in high school.
Happily, Wendy has shown me the other extreme and offered me a reason these rules might be useful after all. According to Wendy, the secular world actively destroys people’s (women’s in particular) natural modesty tendencies, implying that these tendencies are unhealthy, outdated, socially inappropriate, you name it. If you don’t want to dress like a slut, use a co-ed bathroom, or be promiscuous, society tells you there is something wrong with you when, perhaps, the problem actually lies with society. Using intelligent arguments and multiple sources, Wendy advocates for reclaiming the sexual revolution and turning it on its head; returning to a norm where female modesty is respected and chivalry is not dead. She feels this needs to begin with women as a group choosing to behave in a more modest manner.
My perspective on this book is naturally colored by my background, and I would be very interested in the reaction of a person living a mainstream secular lifestyle. I will say that, because Wendy is speaking to a non-Orthodox audience, her arguments in favor of modesty come across as less rhetorical than the ones my teacher used in high school (although it may, in part, be my maturity and increased awareness that’s allowing me to hear them that way). Her train of thought and writing is very impressive for a college kid; I understand that this book came from her senior thesis and that she was in her early 20s when it was published. The fact that the book often reads like a senior thesis is both a good thing and a bad thing – the tone feels more scholarly and therefore more credible; at the same time, it’s a slow read at times.
I do think Wendy was very brave to voice these arguments in a world which appeared to be almost unanimously against them. She grew up being thought a prude for her views and enduring censure for her “hang-ups,” and still had the courage to advocate for her perspective. If the book is to be believed, though, Wendy has actually given voice to others who feel the way she does and are afraid to speak up. It will be interesting to see whether Wendy’s book has any palpable influence on reversing social norms.
Modesty is loaded for me in a particular way. As a graduate of an orthodox Jewish girls’ high school where I felt modesty was needlessly shoved down my throat, I tend to have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I keep all the modesty rules I’m supposed to keep, but without the enthusiasm or zealousness my teachers preached. And I often see other graduates of my school fudging or even abandoning these rules, which I tend to interpret as a direct reaction to the overemphasis on detail that we were subjected to in high school.
Happily, Wendy has shown me the other extreme and offered me a reason these rules might be useful after all. According to Wendy, the secular world actively destroys people’s (women’s in particular) natural modesty tendencies, implying that these tendencies are unhealthy, outdated, socially inappropriate, you name it. If you don’t want to dress like a slut, use a co-ed bathroom, or be promiscuous, society tells you there is something wrong with you when, perhaps, the problem actually lies with society. Using intelligent arguments and multiple sources, Wendy advocates for reclaiming the sexual revolution and turning it on its head; returning to a norm where female modesty is respected and chivalry is not dead. She feels this needs to begin with women as a group choosing to behave in a more modest manner.
My perspective on this book is naturally colored by my background, and I would be very interested in the reaction of a person living a mainstream secular lifestyle. I will say that, because Wendy is speaking to a non-Orthodox audience, her arguments in favor of modesty come across as less rhetorical than the ones my teacher used in high school (although it may, in part, be my maturity and increased awareness that’s allowing me to hear them that way). Her train of thought and writing is very impressive for a college kid; I understand that this book came from her senior thesis and that she was in her early 20s when it was published. The fact that the book often reads like a senior thesis is both a good thing and a bad thing – the tone feels more scholarly and therefore more credible; at the same time, it’s a slow read at times.
I do think Wendy was very brave to voice these arguments in a world which appeared to be almost unanimously against them. She grew up being thought a prude for her views and enduring censure for her “hang-ups,” and still had the courage to advocate for her perspective. If the book is to be believed, though, Wendy has actually given voice to others who feel the way she does and are afraid to speak up. It will be interesting to see whether Wendy’s book has any palpable influence on reversing social norms.
August 29, 2022
An excellent analysis of the harms caused by the sexual revolution, and the benefits of living a modest lifestyle. This is a must-read!
July 7, 2015
Poorly presented and shoddily researched straw man arguments that amount to little more than victim-blaming ("If women would just be more modest, men would stop raping them!" Um, NO.) I actually assent to a lot of what Shalit says about importance of respect between genders, disgust at horrifying stories of rape culture, etc, but I both start and end in an entirely place from her in regards to where I think these issues come from and what ought to be done about them. Shalit relies too heavily on the idea of women as sexual gatekeepers (a pretty misogynist view in and of itself -- if men will only treat modest women with respect, then that implies any "immodest" woman [immodest how? by whose standards?] "gets what's coming to her." Yuck.), as well as on generalizations (often one anecdote gets extrapolated to represent the views of "all women," "all college students," "all fifth-graders") and wrongful fetishization of the Victorians and colonial America as a kind of utopia for women, sexually. (As another reviewer pointed out, Shalit seems not to recognize that 1. women were raped before the 1960s, and 2. a lot of the codes of conduct that she writes so rapturously about were the direct results of societies that condoned men treating women as property.)
There's is also an infuriating amount of mental health privilege in this book -- Shalit implies, if not outright states, that if society just "let women be women" (i.e. emotional, overly sensitive) then women wouldn't get depressed at all. Totally ignores depression as a neuro-biological illness.
There's very little about male modesty -- does it exist? What might it look like? Why is that important? Shalit never says, which contributes more to the victim-blamey aspect of her book and is a real blind spot in her writing.
Finally, there's a tendency to rely overmuch on the most horrifying/extreme stories to make her case, which I find intellectually dishonest in writing on either side of the modesty/chastity debate. (Conservative books tend to rely on hyperbolized accounts of college hook up culture, as though that's the only context in which premarital sex ever takes place, while liberal books tend to point to "icky purity balls" as representing all conservative religious culture.) I certainly couldn't recognize my own teenage and college experiences in Shalit's account (most people I knew wanted/were in longterm exclusive dating relationships). There's a tendency in the book to assume that all premarital sex is unwanted/forced/hook up sex, which ultimately makes the argument difficult to follow and makes the refusal to see rape culture/patriarchy as a real problem even more baffling.
There's is also an infuriating amount of mental health privilege in this book -- Shalit implies, if not outright states, that if society just "let women be women" (i.e. emotional, overly sensitive) then women wouldn't get depressed at all. Totally ignores depression as a neuro-biological illness.
There's very little about male modesty -- does it exist? What might it look like? Why is that important? Shalit never says, which contributes more to the victim-blamey aspect of her book and is a real blind spot in her writing.
Finally, there's a tendency to rely overmuch on the most horrifying/extreme stories to make her case, which I find intellectually dishonest in writing on either side of the modesty/chastity debate. (Conservative books tend to rely on hyperbolized accounts of college hook up culture, as though that's the only context in which premarital sex ever takes place, while liberal books tend to point to "icky purity balls" as representing all conservative religious culture.) I certainly couldn't recognize my own teenage and college experiences in Shalit's account (most people I knew wanted/were in longterm exclusive dating relationships). There's a tendency in the book to assume that all premarital sex is unwanted/forced/hook up sex, which ultimately makes the argument difficult to follow and makes the refusal to see rape culture/patriarchy as a real problem even more baffling.
August 15, 2008
Actually, the sexual revolution was co-opted by the Patriarchy. The entire purpose of the revolution was to acknowledge that a) women have sexual desires and b) the only person who should decide how a woman's sexuality expresses herself is that woman.
Once again, as in this book, it is somehow the responsibility of women to be the gatekeepers and guardians of how men respond to them. "Dress modestly and men will take you more seriously!" it promises, when in all actuality it is putting the onus on the woman to somehow erase their visible femaleness (impossible) rather than simply be respected regardless of what they are wearing or how they behave in their private lives, as men are.
Men don't have to "dress modestly" or hide their sexuality or play games with it in order to be taken seriously. It simply doesn't matter if they are celibate or sleep with every woman they come across.
Because dressing modestly is different from dressing professionally and when people say "be modest" what they are actually saying is "hide your sexuality". As if one's sexuality is the cornerstone indicator of one's moral and ethical convictions. Pfft.
Once again, as in this book, it is somehow the responsibility of women to be the gatekeepers and guardians of how men respond to them. "Dress modestly and men will take you more seriously!" it promises, when in all actuality it is putting the onus on the woman to somehow erase their visible femaleness (impossible) rather than simply be respected regardless of what they are wearing or how they behave in their private lives, as men are.
Men don't have to "dress modestly" or hide their sexuality or play games with it in order to be taken seriously. It simply doesn't matter if they are celibate or sleep with every woman they come across.
Because dressing modestly is different from dressing professionally and when people say "be modest" what they are actually saying is "hide your sexuality". As if one's sexuality is the cornerstone indicator of one's moral and ethical convictions. Pfft.
July 17, 2007
Another book I really enjoyed was A RETURN TO MODESTY: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit. Published in 2000, I found her insight prescient and a refreshing counterweight to bombardment of exposed flesh that seemed to have reached a crescendo in the summer of 2004. In commenting on this book I must walk a careful line between sounding like a religious zealot demanding women be covered from head to toe and a letch lurking outside the local high school leering at the teenage girls.
Shalit writes intelligently about modesty and the effects of its absence. The effects she addresses in the book (according to my memory; please correct me if I am wrong) are mostly concerned with the trend of immodesty and the misery it brings to young women. I would have liked her thoughts on the effects all that skin has had on the male population as well. Either way, I think this is a book dealing with an important issue in a way that is both philosophically robust and approachable.
Shalit writes intelligently about modesty and the effects of its absence. The effects she addresses in the book (according to my memory; please correct me if I am wrong) are mostly concerned with the trend of immodesty and the misery it brings to young women. I would have liked her thoughts on the effects all that skin has had on the male population as well. Either way, I think this is a book dealing with an important issue in a way that is both philosophically robust and approachable.
August 9, 2016
Abusenik. Modestynik. Twinkly. Barely 5 pages in, I asked myself: This woman has a degree from one of the most prestigious colleges in the US? Really? How? It isn't just her simplistic, silly language. Her reductionist assertions and sweeping generalizations create a book awash in trivialities and bizarre statements.
I find it problematic that she wishes society wouldn't judge women who choose modesty and sexual purity so harshly when she condemns women who have had affairs or engaged in "hook ups." I agree that we shouldn't consider women who dress modestly or want to want for marriage to engage in sexual contact as repressed, uptight, hung up,or frumpy throwbacks. Likewise, I think her implicit comments that bare-legged, sexually expressive women are somehow the reason rape, harassment, anorexia, whirlpooling exist is incredibly and dangerously reductive. As scholars ranging from Sandra Bartky to Joan Jacobs Brumberg and Susan Bordo have shown, anorexia (for example) is a complicated condition. Certainly the sexualization of women and girls and the immense pressure to meet standards of beauty and thinness are factors (see Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs and Bordo, Unbearable Weight). Shalit prefers to reduce the cause of a complex condition down to women. And that's just the first example of victim blaming Shalit trots out in her book.
Mind, Shalit likely wouldn't admit she's blaming victims. She'd probably say "no, see, look at page 10, I don't blame victims. I'm blaming society and how society has lost respect for female modesty." But the problem is, she can't actually verify that women, modesty, or women's modesty was actually ever respected or valued. Let's see. No woman was ever raped before the sexual revolution! No woman was ever abused or undervalued! No no! Even some of Shalit's examples lay bare the problem. A woman talks with some cops and a serial killer gets away? Because the cops flirted with her (145-146). the issue isn't the officers lost respect for modesty. THE ISSUE IS THAT THEY SAW AN ATTRACTIVE WOMAN WITH AN EXOTIC ACCENT AND OBJECTIFIED HER, RATHER THAN TAKE HER SERIOUSLY.
And therein is the problem. It isn't that some respect for women's modesty was lost-- a respect that protected women. The problem is that respect for women as equal participants in the world hasn't been achieved even though legal barriers to women's participation in a range of activities have fallen. In other words, women are out there and independent. But many people and their ideas really don't women to be out there or independent. Instead, they pick up the banner of gender/ sexual essentialism, as Shalit does. Some of her sillier gender essentialist statements: (and did I mention Shalit's world is about as heteronormative as they come?)
Women have secrets! Women both revel in and recoil from their secrets! Women are obsessed with secrets-- theirs and other people's!
Men have secrets. They just don't care! Unless the secrets are about women!
Men really are crude pigs. Jerry wouldn't help Elaine with groceries!
Women really DO want to be coddled and protected and have men cater to us! Elaine was mad Jerry wouldn't give up the first class bump!
Shalit is absolutely right that a woman should be respected and her sexual choices should be her own. But it should cover ALL women. Not just those who cover their knees and cross their legs until their wedding nights.
I find it problematic that she wishes society wouldn't judge women who choose modesty and sexual purity so harshly when she condemns women who have had affairs or engaged in "hook ups." I agree that we shouldn't consider women who dress modestly or want to want for marriage to engage in sexual contact as repressed, uptight, hung up,or frumpy throwbacks. Likewise, I think her implicit comments that bare-legged, sexually expressive women are somehow the reason rape, harassment, anorexia, whirlpooling exist is incredibly and dangerously reductive. As scholars ranging from Sandra Bartky to Joan Jacobs Brumberg and Susan Bordo have shown, anorexia (for example) is a complicated condition. Certainly the sexualization of women and girls and the immense pressure to meet standards of beauty and thinness are factors (see Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs and Bordo, Unbearable Weight). Shalit prefers to reduce the cause of a complex condition down to women. And that's just the first example of victim blaming Shalit trots out in her book.
Mind, Shalit likely wouldn't admit she's blaming victims. She'd probably say "no, see, look at page 10, I don't blame victims. I'm blaming society and how society has lost respect for female modesty." But the problem is, she can't actually verify that women, modesty, or women's modesty was actually ever respected or valued. Let's see. No woman was ever raped before the sexual revolution! No woman was ever abused or undervalued! No no! Even some of Shalit's examples lay bare the problem. A woman talks with some cops and a serial killer gets away? Because the cops flirted with her (145-146). the issue isn't the officers lost respect for modesty. THE ISSUE IS THAT THEY SAW AN ATTRACTIVE WOMAN WITH AN EXOTIC ACCENT AND OBJECTIFIED HER, RATHER THAN TAKE HER SERIOUSLY.
And therein is the problem. It isn't that some respect for women's modesty was lost-- a respect that protected women. The problem is that respect for women as equal participants in the world hasn't been achieved even though legal barriers to women's participation in a range of activities have fallen. In other words, women are out there and independent. But many people and their ideas really don't women to be out there or independent. Instead, they pick up the banner of gender/ sexual essentialism, as Shalit does. Some of her sillier gender essentialist statements: (and did I mention Shalit's world is about as heteronormative as they come?)
Women have secrets! Women both revel in and recoil from their secrets! Women are obsessed with secrets-- theirs and other people's!
Men have secrets. They just don't care! Unless the secrets are about women!
Men really are crude pigs. Jerry wouldn't help Elaine with groceries!
Women really DO want to be coddled and protected and have men cater to us! Elaine was mad Jerry wouldn't give up the first class bump!
Shalit is absolutely right that a woman should be respected and her sexual choices should be her own. But it should cover ALL women. Not just those who cover their knees and cross their legs until their wedding nights.
April 8, 2008
This is a book I just finished reading by a 27 year old woman, Wendy Shalit. I thought it was a really fascinating book. It was based on a theory of sorts that immodesty is at the root of many of the problems in todays society. She discussed the importance of gender roles and how it's important to recognize and accept the differences between men and women and not try to make them the same. She uses a lot of articles and letters from popular women's magazines to drive her point home, exposing how ridiculous so much of the "expert advise" really is and how much of a double standard the magazines seem to have. I thought it was a breath of fresh air to read something that challenges sin and society. I didn't always agree with her reasonings for everything and how she continually brought up how "conservatives" just say "boys will be boys" and don't oppose rape and bad behavior (this probably bothered me because I consider myself a conservative.) Also, her attempts at humorous sarcastic dialogue were not as humorous as they could have been. The book, though, is still quite good.
January 3, 2008
As much as I appreciate the rewards of the feminist upheaval - my education, my career in a male-dominated profession, coming into my marriage as an equal - I often think about whether or not there were losses as well. I didn't ask to give up chivalry; and I hate how some men use the idea that courtesy equates to misogyny to slam doors in our faces or even minimize rape into "just a type of bullying".
Wendy has answers for how our culture has become both increasingly free for and antagonistic towards woman, and also how we can turn the cultural tide back towards a deeper respect for women. What she has to say about the old-fashioned concept of "modesty" is cerainly counterculture... and she does so in a bouncy, enjoyable reading style. This book is easy to read but with much content to think and digest... highly recommended.
Wendy has answers for how our culture has become both increasingly free for and antagonistic towards woman, and also how we can turn the cultural tide back towards a deeper respect for women. What she has to say about the old-fashioned concept of "modesty" is cerainly counterculture... and she does so in a bouncy, enjoyable reading style. This book is easy to read but with much content to think and digest... highly recommended.
February 7, 2013
2.5 stars.
I read 100 pages, skipped 85 pages, and felt like Shalit was still arguing the same point. This book was overlong, a bit I overwrought and naïve, a polemic lacking scientific rigor, relying on assumptions, anecdotes, philosophers and fashion magazines to persuade. Regardless of it's limitations, I do agree with the book's main themes and feel that her writing may provide an invaluable service encouraging scholarly research on young adulthood. I'll admit I'm a religious person and believe in the virtue of modesty through my faith and instinct, but I would like some science to back up my inklings. And Shalit's.
I read 100 pages, skipped 85 pages, and felt like Shalit was still arguing the same point. This book was overlong, a bit I overwrought and naïve, a polemic lacking scientific rigor, relying on assumptions, anecdotes, philosophers and fashion magazines to persuade. Regardless of it's limitations, I do agree with the book's main themes and feel that her writing may provide an invaluable service encouraging scholarly research on young adulthood. I'll admit I'm a religious person and believe in the virtue of modesty through my faith and instinct, but I would like some science to back up my inklings. And Shalit's.
Read
June 29, 2021[redacted]
June 14, 2020
“A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue”
Wendy Shalit
I accidentally came across this book whilst flicking through Instagram. Surprisingly, it was on a brother’s story and he was raving on about it, so obviously my interest piqued.
Wendy Shalit's matter-of-fact cultural essay makes the shocking proposal that modesty might not be such a bad thing after all. Humorously written and insightful, Shalit makes a plethora of sharp observations vis-à-vis modern liberal America. I will be shining a light on the arguments that I found most thought-provoking.
First, published in 1999, ‘A Return to Modesty’ challenges the propaganda peddled by progressive liberals, that the ‘sexual revolution’ empowered women. Shalit boldly states:
“there was a certain misogyny behind the sexual revolution. Yes, dear, you can be a bitch, you can be a slut, you can sleep around as much as you want, and you can pretend to be a man, but you’re not allowed to be this (modest).”
Having spent the last year researching the evolution of Muslim feminism and women's rights, I fully appreciate how incendiary this statement is. Refreshingly, the author doesn't shy away from critiquing sexual liberation. She is willing to think outside the box and has a keen sense of the fault lines in an argument.
“We want our dignity back, our “feminine mystique” back, and, along with it, the notion of male honour. Our mothers tell us we shouldn’t want to give up all the hard-won “gains” they have bequeathed to us, and we think, what gains? Sexual harassment, date rape, stalking, eating disorders, all these dreary hook-ups? Or perhaps it’s the great gain of divorce you had in mind?”
I agree with the observations she makes; society has become less civilized. The sexual revolution did more harm than good. It ushered in the normalisation of pornography, increased public immodesty and acceptance of relationships outside of marriage.
Obviously, Wendy Shalit was attacked for daring to question liberal values “(Shalit wants) to send women back to the dark ages.” a “twit” who ought to make “new spandex chadors for female Olympians,” This was the first book I had read that confidently criticized both feminists and conservatives. Her overriding motivation was her genuine concern for the well-being of young women.
She dedicates a lot of ink to the subject of promiscuity, providing pages of evidence from women, illustrating the inhumane treatment they receive.
“Today men expect to be able to treat single women like prostitutes, only without just compensation, and the virgins are the ones who are now stigmatized,”
Every stroppy Muslim teenager who believes her parents are ‘ruining her life’ because they won’t let her have a boyfriend should read those chapters.
Wendy Shalit also makes a strong case against one of the fundamental pillars of liberalism: gender equality. Liberalism and feminism are committed to a distinct set of beliefs: Secularism, Individualism, Freedom & Equality. These beliefs have achieved some benefits for some women. However, as Shalit points out
“Many young women now have a vastly inaccurate picture of what is normal for them to think or to feel. They have been trained to accept that to be equal to men, they must be the same in every respect; and they, and the men, are worse off for it.”
“If we admitted that women can be physically more vulnerable than men, that would be sexist and compromise their independence.”
Moreover, as a liberal project, feminism has contributed to the breakdown of the traditional family.
“Simone de Beauvoir talked so much about how one “becomes” a woman, and then it turned out her ideal woman became most womanly when she rejected being a wife (a “parasite”), being a mother (“a discontented woman”)…“What is extremely demoralizing for the woman who aims at self-sufficiency is the existence of other women . . . who live as parasites.” Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root: “Since housewifery and prostitution have the same structure, it is hypocritical to outlaw one and not the other.”
By calling for equality between men and women, the net result has been, instead of just the father going out to work, we now have both parents out at work, leaving the kids to be raised by day-care or devices. As a stay at home mother, I was pleasantly surprised when the author defended marriage and motherhood.
I want to suggest Islam as an alternative remedy for the injustices both men and women face. Islam provides a clear and just solution to ensuring justice and has no need for feminism’s attempts to reinvent the wheel that Islam set in motion over 1400 years ago.
Justice and self-worth come only by submission to Allah and all that He commands. It is not feminism and gender equality that will bring about harmony between men and women in any society – but a clear understanding and agreement between a man and a woman as to what they expect from each other, and recourse to justice when those expectations are not fulfilled.
In my continuing research into alternatives to the promiscuous liberal world, we live in. I feel very grateful to have encountered A Return to Modesty by Wendy Shalit.
The book reveals that so much of the state of male and female relationships in secular liberal America is misogynistic, not because of the invisible hand of the so-called 'patriarchy' but because of 'progressive' ideals that no one is allowed to question i.e. the right to sexual freedom, individualism, no biological difference between men and women and therefore women have no vulnerabilities and require no protection or special treatment. As Muslims we disagree with these 'truths' we believe it's not sexist to admit this fact.
Just in case your still umming and ahhing over whether to read the book, the negative reactions she got to this book inshallah will help you decide.
“The New York Times Book Review scoffed that I “declare [myself] the tip of an iceberg no one else can see.” Playboy featured my book under the alarmist tag “A Man’s Worst Nightmare.”
How can you not want to read a book that the customers of 'Playboy' detest?
About Farhat Amin
https://farhatamin.com/muslim-podcast/
Farhat Amin is a proud Muslim mum. She is the founder of www.farhatamin.com, a site for creatively designed Islamic parenting resources. She also has a weekly podcast called 'A Muslim Mom' The podcast & blog is all about helping Muslim mothers and women understand their Islamic identity.
The inspiration for the podcast was Surah Asr
"By Time. The human being is in loss. Except those who believe, and do good works, and encourage truth, and recommend patience.”
Wendy Shalit
I accidentally came across this book whilst flicking through Instagram. Surprisingly, it was on a brother’s story and he was raving on about it, so obviously my interest piqued.
Wendy Shalit's matter-of-fact cultural essay makes the shocking proposal that modesty might not be such a bad thing after all. Humorously written and insightful, Shalit makes a plethora of sharp observations vis-à-vis modern liberal America. I will be shining a light on the arguments that I found most thought-provoking.
First, published in 1999, ‘A Return to Modesty’ challenges the propaganda peddled by progressive liberals, that the ‘sexual revolution’ empowered women. Shalit boldly states:
“there was a certain misogyny behind the sexual revolution. Yes, dear, you can be a bitch, you can be a slut, you can sleep around as much as you want, and you can pretend to be a man, but you’re not allowed to be this (modest).”
Having spent the last year researching the evolution of Muslim feminism and women's rights, I fully appreciate how incendiary this statement is. Refreshingly, the author doesn't shy away from critiquing sexual liberation. She is willing to think outside the box and has a keen sense of the fault lines in an argument.
“We want our dignity back, our “feminine mystique” back, and, along with it, the notion of male honour. Our mothers tell us we shouldn’t want to give up all the hard-won “gains” they have bequeathed to us, and we think, what gains? Sexual harassment, date rape, stalking, eating disorders, all these dreary hook-ups? Or perhaps it’s the great gain of divorce you had in mind?”
I agree with the observations she makes; society has become less civilized. The sexual revolution did more harm than good. It ushered in the normalisation of pornography, increased public immodesty and acceptance of relationships outside of marriage.
Obviously, Wendy Shalit was attacked for daring to question liberal values “(Shalit wants) to send women back to the dark ages.” a “twit” who ought to make “new spandex chadors for female Olympians,” This was the first book I had read that confidently criticized both feminists and conservatives. Her overriding motivation was her genuine concern for the well-being of young women.
She dedicates a lot of ink to the subject of promiscuity, providing pages of evidence from women, illustrating the inhumane treatment they receive.
“Today men expect to be able to treat single women like prostitutes, only without just compensation, and the virgins are the ones who are now stigmatized,”
Every stroppy Muslim teenager who believes her parents are ‘ruining her life’ because they won’t let her have a boyfriend should read those chapters.
Wendy Shalit also makes a strong case against one of the fundamental pillars of liberalism: gender equality. Liberalism and feminism are committed to a distinct set of beliefs: Secularism, Individualism, Freedom & Equality. These beliefs have achieved some benefits for some women. However, as Shalit points out
“Many young women now have a vastly inaccurate picture of what is normal for them to think or to feel. They have been trained to accept that to be equal to men, they must be the same in every respect; and they, and the men, are worse off for it.”
“If we admitted that women can be physically more vulnerable than men, that would be sexist and compromise their independence.”
Moreover, as a liberal project, feminism has contributed to the breakdown of the traditional family.
“Simone de Beauvoir talked so much about how one “becomes” a woman, and then it turned out her ideal woman became most womanly when she rejected being a wife (a “parasite”), being a mother (“a discontented woman”)…“What is extremely demoralizing for the woman who aims at self-sufficiency is the existence of other women . . . who live as parasites.” Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root: “Since housewifery and prostitution have the same structure, it is hypocritical to outlaw one and not the other.”
By calling for equality between men and women, the net result has been, instead of just the father going out to work, we now have both parents out at work, leaving the kids to be raised by day-care or devices. As a stay at home mother, I was pleasantly surprised when the author defended marriage and motherhood.
I want to suggest Islam as an alternative remedy for the injustices both men and women face. Islam provides a clear and just solution to ensuring justice and has no need for feminism’s attempts to reinvent the wheel that Islam set in motion over 1400 years ago.
Justice and self-worth come only by submission to Allah and all that He commands. It is not feminism and gender equality that will bring about harmony between men and women in any society – but a clear understanding and agreement between a man and a woman as to what they expect from each other, and recourse to justice when those expectations are not fulfilled.
In my continuing research into alternatives to the promiscuous liberal world, we live in. I feel very grateful to have encountered A Return to Modesty by Wendy Shalit.
The book reveals that so much of the state of male and female relationships in secular liberal America is misogynistic, not because of the invisible hand of the so-called 'patriarchy' but because of 'progressive' ideals that no one is allowed to question i.e. the right to sexual freedom, individualism, no biological difference between men and women and therefore women have no vulnerabilities and require no protection or special treatment. As Muslims we disagree with these 'truths' we believe it's not sexist to admit this fact.
Just in case your still umming and ahhing over whether to read the book, the negative reactions she got to this book inshallah will help you decide.
“The New York Times Book Review scoffed that I “declare [myself] the tip of an iceberg no one else can see.” Playboy featured my book under the alarmist tag “A Man’s Worst Nightmare.”
How can you not want to read a book that the customers of 'Playboy' detest?
About Farhat Amin
https://farhatamin.com/muslim-podcast/
Farhat Amin is a proud Muslim mum. She is the founder of www.farhatamin.com, a site for creatively designed Islamic parenting resources. She also has a weekly podcast called 'A Muslim Mom' The podcast & blog is all about helping Muslim mothers and women understand their Islamic identity.
The inspiration for the podcast was Surah Asr
"By Time. The human being is in loss. Except those who believe, and do good works, and encourage truth, and recommend patience.”
May 4, 2010
Four and a half stars, really. I think in some ways the title of the book is misleading, because it makes you think that it will discuss modesty in terms of dress. That is just one point in the broader scheme, which is women and standards, or boundaries, or reserve... sometimes referred to as modesty. It was a fascinating read because it was argued from secular feminist perspective rather than a religious perspective.
Shalit's argument is essentially for the value and freedom of women. Her underlying point is that when the 60's woman's lib movement fought for the freedom of women, they fought the wrong way and essentially made it WORSE for us in the end. She says that today women are less valued, more trapped, more depressed than ever. She argues that the way to regain the value of women is through reclaiming an appropriate feminine reserve. Reserve in our dating relationships, reserve in our sexuality, reserve in our dress, reserve in our speech, reserve in our marriages....
"I'm not a happily married woman or a spinster who now wants to spoil your fun. I'm writing because I see so much unhappiness around me, so many women settling for less, because I don't' want to settle for less and because I don't think you should have to, either. I don't want to have sex because "I guess" I want it. I want to wait for something more exciting than that, and modesty helps me understand why.
What would happen, I wonder, if women, instead of seeing their romantic hopes as "hang-ups" to get rid of, instead of being ashamed of themselves for being women, would start to be proud of their hesitation, their hopes, and their dignity? What would happen if they stopped listening to those who say womanhood is a drag, and began to see themselves as individuals with the power to turn society around?"
Shalit's argument is essentially for the value and freedom of women. Her underlying point is that when the 60's woman's lib movement fought for the freedom of women, they fought the wrong way and essentially made it WORSE for us in the end. She says that today women are less valued, more trapped, more depressed than ever. She argues that the way to regain the value of women is through reclaiming an appropriate feminine reserve. Reserve in our dating relationships, reserve in our sexuality, reserve in our dress, reserve in our speech, reserve in our marriages....
"I'm not a happily married woman or a spinster who now wants to spoil your fun. I'm writing because I see so much unhappiness around me, so many women settling for less, because I don't' want to settle for less and because I don't think you should have to, either. I don't want to have sex because "I guess" I want it. I want to wait for something more exciting than that, and modesty helps me understand why.
What would happen, I wonder, if women, instead of seeing their romantic hopes as "hang-ups" to get rid of, instead of being ashamed of themselves for being women, would start to be proud of their hesitation, their hopes, and their dignity? What would happen if they stopped listening to those who say womanhood is a drag, and began to see themselves as individuals with the power to turn society around?"
July 7, 2013
A Return to Modesty is unlike much feminist literature I have read. I really enjoyed the book and the author has made an intriguing contribution to the sex/gender debate. The main issue I have with the book is with Wendy Shalit's use of historial material. She is often very optimistic in her interpretation of men's "chivalry" and protection of women's modesty in previous ages. But nobody really wants to go back to those times. Women have always been subject to pressures due to their perceived inferiority. This does not mean that the cultural attitudes of prior ages should not be listened to, but they need to be amalgamated with our current ideas to take society forward. I am fairly sure the ideal society does not involve women looking up to porn stars/playboy centrefolds, wanting to look like Barbie and targeting very young children in a sexually explicit way through advertising, television, clothing etc. Has the sexual revolution gone too far? How can we amend relations between men and women to create a more equal and just society? More books on this subject, please.
August 21, 2012
She exposes "sexual liberation" for what it is and how it has disillusioned, confused and harmed women. She swiftly tackles the myth that women were sexually oppressed before the 1960's, she exposes feminist writing that are inherently sexist. No where else in literature will you find as much hatred for women as in the feminist literature, yet feminists perceive to be "helping" women. All that feminism has done is harmed women, its all about destroying the family ladies Wake Up! In summation I want to quote a fantastic quote from this book that I think quite well sums up what this book is about.
" We want our dignity back, our "feminine mystique" back, and, along with it, the notion of male honor. Our mothers tell us we shouldn't want to give up all the hard-won "gains" they have bequeathed to us, and we think, what gains? Sexual harassment, date rape, stalking, eating disorders, all these dreary hook-ups? Or perhaps it's the great gain of divorce you had in mind? We look to a different, more romantic, generation for our role models. " (Wendy Shalit 140)
" We want our dignity back, our "feminine mystique" back, and, along with it, the notion of male honor. Our mothers tell us we shouldn't want to give up all the hard-won "gains" they have bequeathed to us, and we think, what gains? Sexual harassment, date rape, stalking, eating disorders, all these dreary hook-ups? Or perhaps it's the great gain of divorce you had in mind? We look to a different, more romantic, generation for our role models. " (Wendy Shalit 140)
January 27, 2021
This book is be read with a few grains of salt handy, but it’s one of the most thought provoking perspectives I’ve ever read on modesty. It does have some pretty heavy content in it and it can become a bit hard to get through at times, but goodness it packs a punch. Even though I’ve always considered myself pretty conservative, Shalit’s view of the sexual revolution is so contrary to our current society’s that it kept catching me off guard. And I especially loved all of the advice columns on modesty she included from the early and mid 1900’s.
At the end of the day, it’s clear that biblical womanhood and manhood is the one true solution for the self-destructive lifestyles that are praised and accepted today. This book has definitely made me think about modesty in a different light and has renewed my motivation to live those convictions out.
At the end of the day, it’s clear that biblical womanhood and manhood is the one true solution for the self-destructive lifestyles that are praised and accepted today. This book has definitely made me think about modesty in a different light and has renewed my motivation to live those convictions out.
September 9, 2010
This book clearly articulates so many of the concerns I've had about the negative impact the sexual revolution has had on women. I LOVE that she links modesty to male honor and the lack of fidelity and longevity in marriage. This IS NOT a book about hemlines and sleeves, but a thoughtful and powerful book about the way popular culture is destroying our young women. A must, must, must read for anyone who is concerned about the general psychological, social, and emotional well being of society. Thanks Ashlee for making such an excellent recommendation!!!
April 18, 2009
Shalit takes on the storm of sexuality in our culture and exposes many of its deceptions and the agendas behind them. An extraordinary book. She is always clear, concise, and spot-on. My only critique is that she places too much of the onus of societal change on the women; men need to do their part also.
Longer review: http://ahabsquest.wordpress.com/2007/...
Longer review: http://ahabsquest.wordpress.com/2007/...
August 18, 2020
I rated this one star because zero stars was not an option.
This book made me even more of a raging feminist than I already am, if that was even possible.
This book made me even more of a raging feminist than I already am, if that was even possible.
December 15, 2008
I loved the ideas presented in this book. The main idea of the book is that the sexual revolution - teaching sex education younger, making women feel at liberty to express themselves in dress and conduct - has really made society worse off than it was before. I thought she had some great points she made throughout the book - we're a society that expects the men to be gentlemen without the women having to be ladies; and the return to modesty won't work with just a few isolated women thinking and behaving that way - it has to be a cultural shift. Which made me laugh as I read it because I have a feeling that me, and probably a lot of other people who would read that book are the ones who already feel that way. But it was probably good for me to read because at first I thought she was exaggerating how bad things were, but then I realized I grew up in a society that respects modesty, so things probably really are like that other places.
Having said how much I like the ideas presented, it wasn't a real page-turner. I believe it was written as a thesis, so of course, it was filled with studies, case studies, etc. It felt a little repetitive at parts and I found myself skimming it a little thinking, "Ok, yeah I get this point." Still an interesting read though.
Having said how much I like the ideas presented, it wasn't a real page-turner. I believe it was written as a thesis, so of course, it was filled with studies, case studies, etc. It felt a little repetitive at parts and I found myself skimming it a little thinking, "Ok, yeah I get this point." Still an interesting read though.
May 7, 2008
This book is not what it appears to be from the title. We read it for book club and had a great discussion. It doesn't have anything to do with how someone dresses but covers a more broad idea of what modesty is. The book explores the idea that modesty is disappearing in society and what the result from this trend are. It was written by a young (I want to say 27 year old) Jewish women. It definitely caused me to consider ideas I hadn’t thought of before. I thought she was a bit redundant however. I think it is an interesting book for a parent to read and even though it refers to modesty as a feminine trait, I think parents with boys would especially benefit from reading it.
March 5, 2008
Just finished this book and found it compelling from page 1. My generation, the Baby Boomers, (or should I say Baby Bloopers?) were the first American generation to ditch the ideal of modesty en masse. I remember sitting in high school and college class and steeling myself against embarrassment when the conversation became, shall we say, "immodest." I worked to overcome the God-given attitude of modesty so that I would fit in with my culture! In this book, Wendy Shalit calls us all back to the natural ideal of modesty. And, no, this is not just about covering skin!
September 12, 2011
A shocking but brilliant book which shows that the desensitisation inflicted by our culture damages our ability to love.
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