Thursday, May 25, 2006
Western attire and how it got to be so immodest...
I thought today might be a good day to explain for some of my readers who don't know this bit of history, how the attire of Western people got to be so immodest.
The West has not been really recognized as a place of extremes in dress, but in fact it was in the period of the late 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century.
Women's dress included huge hats with big feathers and birds and such, they had corsets that cinched their waists in so much that it was a danger to health. Some women even had their two lowest ribs removed in order to be corsetted yet tighter.
They wore hoop skirts and high heels, and fainted easily. They wore excessive jewelry.
There is a big difference between being both beautifully and modestly attired and excess. Excess always comes from the fashion industry, serious excess is not a thing normal people will do.
The original Rational Dress Movement as you can see from the following link:
http://www.fashion-era.com/rational_dress.htm
Rational Dress Movement
As you can see they advocated something modest, comfortable and practical while still being beautiful.
Since trousers in any form were not customary dress in most of the Christian world at the time, it was rejected. The only places where Christian women wore bloomers were places like Lebanon, Syria, Bosnia and Hercegovina, where some regional dress for Christians included them at least for work in the fields, and sometimes as daily attire or even of elegant dress might include the full Turkish bloomers.
In England anything that was like trousers was assumed not to be proper Christian dress.
Women were riding bicycles and of course skirts are highly impractical for that! Bloomers of about calf lenght worked quite well for women who rode bicycles.
Since pants violeted the interpretation most Western, Northern European, North American had of the Biblical verse prohiting cross-dressing, 'Bloomers' were condemned.
I think if they hadn't gone the direction of being 'man tailored' the fashion might have spread into the working classes and been generally more accepted.
During WWI fabrics were in short supply and rationed. Skirt lengths went up, leaving only peasant women in long skirts for the most part.
By then men had taken over the fashion industry, and it was their fantasies which decided what women would wear. So modern dress is less beautiful, less modest and less in touch with realities of the female body.
There are people who say that women in certain other cultures are oppressed by what they must wear and by what they may not wear.
The truth is a similar lack of choice is the case in the West at this point, mainly because of business dress codes.
Business dress codes are intended to prevent people showing up at work looking like sluts. I'm all for preventing that, don't get me wrong! Where I have a problem is that a lot of modern business attire 1. does not allow a woman to be properly covered, 2, makes no accomadation for women's physical needs, 3, has no pockets, forceing women to carry purses 4, looks too mannish or is too tight and is too short. 5. It doesn't allow women to cover their hair which in fact IS a Biblical requirement.
I find it most ironic that it is Christians who most no longer LOOK like Christians!
A lot of the people who fund Christian Extreme Fundamentalist movements are IN the business community!
It's interesting that liberal Christians are MUCH more likely to understand the importance of modesty in attire as a part of observing Christianity!
There is some movement back toward modest attire, but churches for the most part are not backing it like they should.
Mormons value modesty and Catholics do as well. There have been groups of Catholic and Mormon girls who have put on fashion shows for modest dress and who have pressured stores to stock modest dress.
This is a reaction to the fact that even clothes for little children have a certain 'street' quality to them. When places like Abercrombie and Fitch were selling thong underwear to pre-teen girls there was a reaction to that, but there was no reaction to the fact that besides underwear that is too skimpy, over garments were too skimpy for a LONG time!
A Christian woman should have her skirts at about ankle length, lower calf lenght at the very shortest, and should not have cleavage on her blouses. Sleeves ought to be at the elbow and women really should be wearing scarves!
For most of history that was what women wore!
I can see exceptions for going to the beach to swim, I can see exceptions for athletic events and for work reasons. Obviously a woman who is a soldier isn't going to wear skirts on the battlefield or in a field hospital! Obviously a woman who is working in a hospital is far better off wearing some form of trousers, because caring for sick people you could have to move in a way where a skirt would be WAY too revealing!
Most of us don't work in hospitals, most of us are not soldiers, and we don't most of us go to the beach every day either!
I think men are almost de-sensitised to the female body in the Western culture. You notice that a LOT men have problems functioning by a certain age, there is a reason Viagra is such a popular drug! That should not be the case! That is sad for these men and their wives!
Modesty would be better for both men and women.
A woman who is a slave to the fashion industry is not a liberated woman, a woman who is a sex object is not a liberated woman.
The West has not been really recognized as a place of extremes in dress, but in fact it was in the period of the late 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century.
Women's dress included huge hats with big feathers and birds and such, they had corsets that cinched their waists in so much that it was a danger to health. Some women even had their two lowest ribs removed in order to be corsetted yet tighter.
They wore hoop skirts and high heels, and fainted easily. They wore excessive jewelry.
There is a big difference between being both beautifully and modestly attired and excess. Excess always comes from the fashion industry, serious excess is not a thing normal people will do.
The original Rational Dress Movement as you can see from the following link:
http://www.fashion-era.com/rational_dress.htm
Rational Dress Movement
As you can see they advocated something modest, comfortable and practical while still being beautiful.
Since trousers in any form were not customary dress in most of the Christian world at the time, it was rejected. The only places where Christian women wore bloomers were places like Lebanon, Syria, Bosnia and Hercegovina, where some regional dress for Christians included them at least for work in the fields, and sometimes as daily attire or even of elegant dress might include the full Turkish bloomers.
In England anything that was like trousers was assumed not to be proper Christian dress.
Women were riding bicycles and of course skirts are highly impractical for that! Bloomers of about calf lenght worked quite well for women who rode bicycles.
Since pants violeted the interpretation most Western, Northern European, North American had of the Biblical verse prohiting cross-dressing, 'Bloomers' were condemned.
I think if they hadn't gone the direction of being 'man tailored' the fashion might have spread into the working classes and been generally more accepted.
During WWI fabrics were in short supply and rationed. Skirt lengths went up, leaving only peasant women in long skirts for the most part.
By then men had taken over the fashion industry, and it was their fantasies which decided what women would wear. So modern dress is less beautiful, less modest and less in touch with realities of the female body.
There are people who say that women in certain other cultures are oppressed by what they must wear and by what they may not wear.
The truth is a similar lack of choice is the case in the West at this point, mainly because of business dress codes.
Business dress codes are intended to prevent people showing up at work looking like sluts. I'm all for preventing that, don't get me wrong! Where I have a problem is that a lot of modern business attire 1. does not allow a woman to be properly covered, 2, makes no accomadation for women's physical needs, 3, has no pockets, forceing women to carry purses 4, looks too mannish or is too tight and is too short. 5. It doesn't allow women to cover their hair which in fact IS a Biblical requirement.
I find it most ironic that it is Christians who most no longer LOOK like Christians!
A lot of the people who fund Christian Extreme Fundamentalist movements are IN the business community!
It's interesting that liberal Christians are MUCH more likely to understand the importance of modesty in attire as a part of observing Christianity!
There is some movement back toward modest attire, but churches for the most part are not backing it like they should.
Mormons value modesty and Catholics do as well. There have been groups of Catholic and Mormon girls who have put on fashion shows for modest dress and who have pressured stores to stock modest dress.
This is a reaction to the fact that even clothes for little children have a certain 'street' quality to them. When places like Abercrombie and Fitch were selling thong underwear to pre-teen girls there was a reaction to that, but there was no reaction to the fact that besides underwear that is too skimpy, over garments were too skimpy for a LONG time!
A Christian woman should have her skirts at about ankle length, lower calf lenght at the very shortest, and should not have cleavage on her blouses. Sleeves ought to be at the elbow and women really should be wearing scarves!
For most of history that was what women wore!
I can see exceptions for going to the beach to swim, I can see exceptions for athletic events and for work reasons. Obviously a woman who is a soldier isn't going to wear skirts on the battlefield or in a field hospital! Obviously a woman who is working in a hospital is far better off wearing some form of trousers, because caring for sick people you could have to move in a way where a skirt would be WAY too revealing!
Most of us don't work in hospitals, most of us are not soldiers, and we don't most of us go to the beach every day either!
I think men are almost de-sensitised to the female body in the Western culture. You notice that a LOT men have problems functioning by a certain age, there is a reason Viagra is such a popular drug! That should not be the case! That is sad for these men and their wives!
Modesty would be better for both men and women.
A woman who is a slave to the fashion industry is not a liberated woman, a woman who is a sex object is not a liberated woman.
# posted by Katja R. @ 3:11 PM 
Comments:
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I liked it, though I'm still undecided on my position on this matter.
Biblical female figures are portrayed with headscarves in the works of Renaissance masters. Some fabrics used on models even have verses from Koran from the trade with Muslims.
Like you, Muslim scholars make the case that headscarve is designed to protect women from becoming sex objects. I argue that we should put blinders on men's eyes instead.
Biblical female figures are portrayed with headscarves in the works of Renaissance masters. Some fabrics used on models even have verses from Koran from the trade with Muslims.
Like you, Muslim scholars make the case that headscarve is designed to protect women from becoming sex objects. I argue that we should put blinders on men's eyes instead.
@Owen, I know you disagree with me on this and are trying to be funny.
Mr. Ahmedinajad's religion does not require him to be covered anymore than between the naval and the knees.
The former leaders were clerics and were because of their line of work, more formally dressed, just as a minister or priest or rabbi would be more formally dressed in Europe or North America!
Mr. Ahmaddinajad is only a politician. He isn't expected to go beyond what is ok for an ordinary person in his country.
@warchild, that last bit you wrote, makes me think of a comment by Golda Meir, the Israeli parliment wanted to pass a curfew to protect Israeli women from a crime wave, and she said 'it's the men who should have a curfew, it's not women who are committing crimes!'
There is one problem with blinders for men, men have to go out and earn a living, and being blindered might interfer a lot with that.
My argument is for what really is what was the custom and practice of Catholic people before all this 'modernization' crept in.
The Catholic Church's source of law is Canon Law, which is Biblically based.
It's interesting to note that early Protestant groups actually were in some cases far stricter than what was the custom in the Catholic or Orthodox Churches!
My example would be the dress of the Anabaptists, Moravians, Hussites, Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites and Quakers and the Puritans who settled in New England after their time in Holland.
The Catholic view was always and remains that women can be beautiful, modest AND comfortable!
The fact that in the West this is now made difficult in various ways is a shame!
Pope Benedict back before he was Pope, got into a discussion with some women who were angry with him for his strong advocacy of modesty, and he said 'Women in India manage to be modest, beautiful and comfortable, there is no excuse for what is going on now in Europe!
Canon law because it is Biblical has it's roots in Jewish law.
Orthodox Jewish women wear scarves and long skirts. They always have.
Middle Eastern Christians have always dressed modestly, and European Christians who did not live in cities did too until they were corrupted by the fashion industry.
The only Biblical figures customarily portrayed unclothed are Adam and Eve, and their unclothed state reflects their innocence before the Fall.
Sometimes Jesus is portrayed totally unclothed on the Cross, and it reflects the Biblical account of the Crucifixion.
Mr. Ahmedinajad's religion does not require him to be covered anymore than between the naval and the knees.
The former leaders were clerics and were because of their line of work, more formally dressed, just as a minister or priest or rabbi would be more formally dressed in Europe or North America!
Mr. Ahmaddinajad is only a politician. He isn't expected to go beyond what is ok for an ordinary person in his country.
@warchild, that last bit you wrote, makes me think of a comment by Golda Meir, the Israeli parliment wanted to pass a curfew to protect Israeli women from a crime wave, and she said 'it's the men who should have a curfew, it's not women who are committing crimes!'
There is one problem with blinders for men, men have to go out and earn a living, and being blindered might interfer a lot with that.
My argument is for what really is what was the custom and practice of Catholic people before all this 'modernization' crept in.
The Catholic Church's source of law is Canon Law, which is Biblically based.
It's interesting to note that early Protestant groups actually were in some cases far stricter than what was the custom in the Catholic or Orthodox Churches!
My example would be the dress of the Anabaptists, Moravians, Hussites, Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites and Quakers and the Puritans who settled in New England after their time in Holland.
The Catholic view was always and remains that women can be beautiful, modest AND comfortable!
The fact that in the West this is now made difficult in various ways is a shame!
Pope Benedict back before he was Pope, got into a discussion with some women who were angry with him for his strong advocacy of modesty, and he said 'Women in India manage to be modest, beautiful and comfortable, there is no excuse for what is going on now in Europe!
Canon law because it is Biblical has it's roots in Jewish law.
Orthodox Jewish women wear scarves and long skirts. They always have.
Middle Eastern Christians have always dressed modestly, and European Christians who did not live in cities did too until they were corrupted by the fashion industry.
The only Biblical figures customarily portrayed unclothed are Adam and Eve, and their unclothed state reflects their innocence before the Fall.
Sometimes Jesus is portrayed totally unclothed on the Cross, and it reflects the Biblical account of the Crucifixion.
@Owen, you defend your position eloquently, and even in being facetious you took the admirable path that is such a hallmark of British people of being FUNNY!
I know about school uniforms, they are a common feature of Catholic school life, and often the first act of independance on the part of Catholic school girls is to rebel against the uniforms! Let it be noted, Madonna had a Catholic education.
Here is something interesting, I don't think I made this point clearly enough, I simply HATE modern business attire for women! I hate it because it is not actually modest, it is HIGHLY uncomfortable, it has NO DAMN pockets and as far as I'm concerned is ugly!
Madonna is immodest but she at least makes the effort to make it look good! I find a lot of the immodesty in Western culture isn't even an effort to show a beautiful female body, it's almost like it's there to make it look as BAD as possible!
In the 1960s there was a serious effort to get rid of the conventions you speak of, then they were re:imposed not by ordinary people but by a deliberate programme of the business community! It started with that evil horrid man John Malloy and his book 'Dress for Sucess'
That book was hyped and hyped and now that no one remembers his evil book, no one has any real freedom of dress in the business world.
Including no one has any freedom to dress modestly in the business world.
I personally observe modest dress as part of being Christian, it is a voluntary matter on my part. I am not married, I have a fiance, and in fact the only time we had a serious arguement was that he wanted me to wear conventional Western dress and I refused on the grounds that 1, it isn't proper really for Catholic Christians,2. I hated it even on aesthetic grounds, 3, it's wildly uncomfortable, (you as a male cannot imagine how uncomfortable and inconvenient it is!)4, When he met me this is how I dressed and if he didn't like it the room was full of women who dressed the way he said he wanted me to dress and why didn't he go talk to one of THEM then!?
and I pointed out that I didnt' appreciate his efforts to change me.
For a long time this subject didn't come up again. Then he made the mistake of raising that subject in front of an older Croatian lady that he's known for years.We were over at her home watching TV, and there was a Charismatic Catholic priest from Sri Lanka speaking. He asled why the priest had a beard and I pointed out that Catholic priests in India very often wear beards, and he made some remark about the priest looking mor like a Muslim cleric, what with the white robe and the beard. At some point he made other remarks I've forgotten. It was all done very calmly.
I remember the lady saying 'You leave her alone about that, she knows more about the Church than you ever knew!'
She then explained that she talked with me about these things which was true, and that she saw that I never did anything without a good reason.
I realize that a lot of times yes calls for greater modesty ARE in fact part of other things ANYONE would find objectionable!
I don't know what can be done about that! Immodesty isn't the way to reisit those things though, it's an immature response actually.
All I ask anyone is to realize that a woman of basically liberal attitudes to social policy and politics CAN and MIGHT choose to opt out of being an unpaid stripper, to opt out of having her body commodified
I realize that there are a lot of women in London wearing the burka or hijab or other Islamic dress and that a lot of British people feel culturally threatened because of it, culturally shocked and threatened.
Some of this could have been avoided had the ancestors of people now living not colonized places in the Eastern world, the descendants of these people from former colonies would not now BE in the British Isles!
The U.S. is going to face the same thing if there are going to be continued wars in the Middle East.
Iraqis who helped the U.S. can be expected to need refugee status here sooner or later as did Vietnamese after the U.S. lost that war.
I think that a lot of Christians of Western Europe and North America have not examined well enough the problems they have with Muslims and Jews who retain the custom of modest dress. Some of the discomfort is that Christians SHOULD be observing modest dress and are in many cases not doing so.
It is a similar situation to the turn of the last century anti-Semites who hated Jews for their visual distinctness and for the fact that the Jews ended up being money lenders. Both Jewish and Christian legal tradition forbid interst, and the Christians forced Jews into dealing in interest, they left very few other ways of making a living, and then had the unmitigated gall to hate and condemn Jews for putting food on the table.
What I'm saying is a lot of Christians and non religious Westerners condemn both Muslims and Jews for keeping their religious law and customs, while forgetting that Christian customs and law are in fact very similar!
Where I attend college the contradiction is there in my face daily, there are young ladies and not so young ladies professing a very ardent form of Chrisitanity, often Evangelical forms of Christianity, and here they are running around with large areas of exposed flesh even in the winter months, so there is a serious contradiction here at best!
Like you I appreciate the freedom that allows for women to be immodest! The problem I have is that the freedom to be immodest makes it harder for those of us who choose modesty as a conscious choice.
I am not proposing any extreme like the niqab as an option for Christians!
I would like to mention a peculiar fact in the history of veiling, it's not even originally an Arab thing! It started with the Pharisees in Israel and was spread to Syria from the land of Israel. Arabs didn't originally do it, Christians however took up the custom in the chaotic era of the fall of Roman rule in the Middle East.
The Muslims in other words picked up the niqab from Christians, and in fact NEITHER religion requires that level of coverage! As you recall probably Jesus condemed the Pharisees for requiring more than Jewish law required!
I wanted to say something about the Rational Dress Society, they were a very progressive and basically good organization, they wanted to get rid of the extremes in the English way of dres in their era, the Victorian era, and their efforts were probably a Very Good Thing!
Women wore yards and yards of fabric, they wore corsets that nearly cut them in half, they wore hats with all sorts of feathers, and were dragging those needlessly long skirts through streets ankle deep in horse manure!
The Rational Dress Society did not advocate immodest dress, at least not until the brink of WWI.
At no point did they advocate for above lower mid calf length for example, they advocated for a lot of the things I personally advocate in fact.
Modern business attire fails to be attractive, practical for women or modest, and it IS make no mistake about it enforced by employers, often in fairly ruthless and bullying ways.
I've spent a small amount of time in London, in transit between the U.S. and the Balkans, I LOVE London for the record! I love the diversity of the place and the beauty of the architecture, and so forth, but it wasn't enough for me to get an idea of the every day lives of English women going about their daily business. I did not get a feel for the prevalence street hassle, which is s serious problem in many parts of the U.S.
In the U.S. there is a tendancy towards people one doesn't even know yelling things about what one is or isn't wearing in public, and this is often aimed at people who dress modestly. This was something I observed from about the mid 60s on. I would say it has had until maybe the era of the Iran hostage crisis no special 'religious' componant. Men do this to women in public, and what is even worse, WOMEN do this to WOMEN in public in this country!It mostly happens in poor neighborhoods.
I have begun frankly to give it back, because I'm tired of it.
I would not know about England, but in the U.S. there is almost enforced immodesty and the people most enforcing it do so for the most ignorant and uninformed reasons.
The day I wrote this post which we both are responding to I was not in a good mood because of an incident at school with a FEMALE fellow student who was much younger than me and she started it. I told her to read the parts of the Bible that deal with this issue, St. Paul, and Jeremiah.
I do sometimes wait to respond to a comment until I'm in a more calm frame of mind.
I think you really defended your point of view very well and I am with you on the question of the liberty to be like Janet Jackson or Madonna. Liberty or the lack there of isn't always a matter of law, it is more often a matter of custom and social enforcement.
I know about school uniforms, they are a common feature of Catholic school life, and often the first act of independance on the part of Catholic school girls is to rebel against the uniforms! Let it be noted, Madonna had a Catholic education.
Here is something interesting, I don't think I made this point clearly enough, I simply HATE modern business attire for women! I hate it because it is not actually modest, it is HIGHLY uncomfortable, it has NO DAMN pockets and as far as I'm concerned is ugly!
Madonna is immodest but she at least makes the effort to make it look good! I find a lot of the immodesty in Western culture isn't even an effort to show a beautiful female body, it's almost like it's there to make it look as BAD as possible!
In the 1960s there was a serious effort to get rid of the conventions you speak of, then they were re:imposed not by ordinary people but by a deliberate programme of the business community! It started with that evil horrid man John Malloy and his book 'Dress for Sucess'
That book was hyped and hyped and now that no one remembers his evil book, no one has any real freedom of dress in the business world.
Including no one has any freedom to dress modestly in the business world.
I personally observe modest dress as part of being Christian, it is a voluntary matter on my part. I am not married, I have a fiance, and in fact the only time we had a serious arguement was that he wanted me to wear conventional Western dress and I refused on the grounds that 1, it isn't proper really for Catholic Christians,2. I hated it even on aesthetic grounds, 3, it's wildly uncomfortable, (you as a male cannot imagine how uncomfortable and inconvenient it is!)4, When he met me this is how I dressed and if he didn't like it the room was full of women who dressed the way he said he wanted me to dress and why didn't he go talk to one of THEM then!?
and I pointed out that I didnt' appreciate his efforts to change me.
For a long time this subject didn't come up again. Then he made the mistake of raising that subject in front of an older Croatian lady that he's known for years.We were over at her home watching TV, and there was a Charismatic Catholic priest from Sri Lanka speaking. He asled why the priest had a beard and I pointed out that Catholic priests in India very often wear beards, and he made some remark about the priest looking mor like a Muslim cleric, what with the white robe and the beard. At some point he made other remarks I've forgotten. It was all done very calmly.
I remember the lady saying 'You leave her alone about that, she knows more about the Church than you ever knew!'
She then explained that she talked with me about these things which was true, and that she saw that I never did anything without a good reason.
I realize that a lot of times yes calls for greater modesty ARE in fact part of other things ANYONE would find objectionable!
I don't know what can be done about that! Immodesty isn't the way to reisit those things though, it's an immature response actually.
All I ask anyone is to realize that a woman of basically liberal attitudes to social policy and politics CAN and MIGHT choose to opt out of being an unpaid stripper, to opt out of having her body commodified
I realize that there are a lot of women in London wearing the burka or hijab or other Islamic dress and that a lot of British people feel culturally threatened because of it, culturally shocked and threatened.
Some of this could have been avoided had the ancestors of people now living not colonized places in the Eastern world, the descendants of these people from former colonies would not now BE in the British Isles!
The U.S. is going to face the same thing if there are going to be continued wars in the Middle East.
Iraqis who helped the U.S. can be expected to need refugee status here sooner or later as did Vietnamese after the U.S. lost that war.
I think that a lot of Christians of Western Europe and North America have not examined well enough the problems they have with Muslims and Jews who retain the custom of modest dress. Some of the discomfort is that Christians SHOULD be observing modest dress and are in many cases not doing so.
It is a similar situation to the turn of the last century anti-Semites who hated Jews for their visual distinctness and for the fact that the Jews ended up being money lenders. Both Jewish and Christian legal tradition forbid interst, and the Christians forced Jews into dealing in interest, they left very few other ways of making a living, and then had the unmitigated gall to hate and condemn Jews for putting food on the table.
What I'm saying is a lot of Christians and non religious Westerners condemn both Muslims and Jews for keeping their religious law and customs, while forgetting that Christian customs and law are in fact very similar!
Where I attend college the contradiction is there in my face daily, there are young ladies and not so young ladies professing a very ardent form of Chrisitanity, often Evangelical forms of Christianity, and here they are running around with large areas of exposed flesh even in the winter months, so there is a serious contradiction here at best!
Like you I appreciate the freedom that allows for women to be immodest! The problem I have is that the freedom to be immodest makes it harder for those of us who choose modesty as a conscious choice.
I am not proposing any extreme like the niqab as an option for Christians!
I would like to mention a peculiar fact in the history of veiling, it's not even originally an Arab thing! It started with the Pharisees in Israel and was spread to Syria from the land of Israel. Arabs didn't originally do it, Christians however took up the custom in the chaotic era of the fall of Roman rule in the Middle East.
The Muslims in other words picked up the niqab from Christians, and in fact NEITHER religion requires that level of coverage! As you recall probably Jesus condemed the Pharisees for requiring more than Jewish law required!
I wanted to say something about the Rational Dress Society, they were a very progressive and basically good organization, they wanted to get rid of the extremes in the English way of dres in their era, the Victorian era, and their efforts were probably a Very Good Thing!
Women wore yards and yards of fabric, they wore corsets that nearly cut them in half, they wore hats with all sorts of feathers, and were dragging those needlessly long skirts through streets ankle deep in horse manure!
The Rational Dress Society did not advocate immodest dress, at least not until the brink of WWI.
At no point did they advocate for above lower mid calf length for example, they advocated for a lot of the things I personally advocate in fact.
Modern business attire fails to be attractive, practical for women or modest, and it IS make no mistake about it enforced by employers, often in fairly ruthless and bullying ways.
I've spent a small amount of time in London, in transit between the U.S. and the Balkans, I LOVE London for the record! I love the diversity of the place and the beauty of the architecture, and so forth, but it wasn't enough for me to get an idea of the every day lives of English women going about their daily business. I did not get a feel for the prevalence street hassle, which is s serious problem in many parts of the U.S.
In the U.S. there is a tendancy towards people one doesn't even know yelling things about what one is or isn't wearing in public, and this is often aimed at people who dress modestly. This was something I observed from about the mid 60s on. I would say it has had until maybe the era of the Iran hostage crisis no special 'religious' componant. Men do this to women in public, and what is even worse, WOMEN do this to WOMEN in public in this country!It mostly happens in poor neighborhoods.
I have begun frankly to give it back, because I'm tired of it.
I would not know about England, but in the U.S. there is almost enforced immodesty and the people most enforcing it do so for the most ignorant and uninformed reasons.
The day I wrote this post which we both are responding to I was not in a good mood because of an incident at school with a FEMALE fellow student who was much younger than me and she started it. I told her to read the parts of the Bible that deal with this issue, St. Paul, and Jeremiah.
I do sometimes wait to respond to a comment until I'm in a more calm frame of mind.
I think you really defended your point of view very well and I am with you on the question of the liberty to be like Janet Jackson or Madonna. Liberty or the lack there of isn't always a matter of law, it is more often a matter of custom and social enforcement.
I had a good laugh at your last line! It was cute! :)The Chippendales at least get PAID!
This is a digressiion you may find funny and amusing, for the most part women are not that turned on by what they see of a man, but sometimes a depraved behavior becomes fashionable.
In Sarajevo after the war, in about 1999, there was a fad for strip clubs, but not the sort of strip clubs you would expect in a typical post war setting, the fad was that the strippers were male usually Serbs, and the people who paid to watch were young female and Muslim, showing up fully dressed! The police could hardly handle the shock of breaking up the crowds in these clubs, sometimes the young women rioted and resisted the police!
I think that there was a definate psychological thing going on here, because of the particular facts of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
OK a secret about long skirts and summer that will surprise you a lot Owen....
As long as one isn't wearing a heavy fabric or artificial fabric, such as wool or nylon, if one doesnt' wear too many petticoats, more than three, and very very important, as long as one doesn't wear nylons or panty-hose, one is actually cooler than one would be in shorts or a mini skirt.
One doesn't risk sunburn and if it is a fairly full skirt, one can sit with decency in any position.
The trick is if you are in a very hot climate, to go with Indian fabrics or Mexican fabrics.
The people in France did badly to make that law, I agree with you that there was one justification and that was that the militants were forcing girls to wear scarves.
That is just as bad!
I'm with you that niqab is objectionable, not on your grounds, I've never sensed it as a hostile thing, I am with you because it is excessive.
I actually have only seen niqab in public use four times in my life, three of them in the U.S. one was a woman from Oman, she wore one of those mask like things, the others wore Afghan style burkas, one of them had one in BRIGHT RED! Talk about a mixed message!
The other time was in London in Heathrow on that level where the airlines to places like the Balkans, the Middle East and South Asia jave their counters. In that case it was a very tall Saudi woman with her very tall Saudi husband. I mean damn both of them must have been around six feet tall.
I did not feel wierded out by them. They by the way were walking side by side, none of this four steps behind the husband stuff.
It's funny you mention about the metabolisms of younger people, younger males do sseem to run hotter than younger females.
Still flip-flops at the British museum? Could he not have worn another type of sandle that doesn't make noise? huaraches for example?
They are durable and comfortable and do let in a lot of air.
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This is a digressiion you may find funny and amusing, for the most part women are not that turned on by what they see of a man, but sometimes a depraved behavior becomes fashionable.
In Sarajevo after the war, in about 1999, there was a fad for strip clubs, but not the sort of strip clubs you would expect in a typical post war setting, the fad was that the strippers were male usually Serbs, and the people who paid to watch were young female and Muslim, showing up fully dressed! The police could hardly handle the shock of breaking up the crowds in these clubs, sometimes the young women rioted and resisted the police!
I think that there was a definate psychological thing going on here, because of the particular facts of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
OK a secret about long skirts and summer that will surprise you a lot Owen....
As long as one isn't wearing a heavy fabric or artificial fabric, such as wool or nylon, if one doesnt' wear too many petticoats, more than three, and very very important, as long as one doesn't wear nylons or panty-hose, one is actually cooler than one would be in shorts or a mini skirt.
One doesn't risk sunburn and if it is a fairly full skirt, one can sit with decency in any position.
The trick is if you are in a very hot climate, to go with Indian fabrics or Mexican fabrics.
The people in France did badly to make that law, I agree with you that there was one justification and that was that the militants were forcing girls to wear scarves.
That is just as bad!
I'm with you that niqab is objectionable, not on your grounds, I've never sensed it as a hostile thing, I am with you because it is excessive.
I actually have only seen niqab in public use four times in my life, three of them in the U.S. one was a woman from Oman, she wore one of those mask like things, the others wore Afghan style burkas, one of them had one in BRIGHT RED! Talk about a mixed message!
The other time was in London in Heathrow on that level where the airlines to places like the Balkans, the Middle East and South Asia jave their counters. In that case it was a very tall Saudi woman with her very tall Saudi husband. I mean damn both of them must have been around six feet tall.
I did not feel wierded out by them. They by the way were walking side by side, none of this four steps behind the husband stuff.
It's funny you mention about the metabolisms of younger people, younger males do sseem to run hotter than younger females.
Still flip-flops at the British museum? Could he not have worn another type of sandle that doesn't make noise? huaraches for example?
They are durable and comfortable and do let in a lot of air.
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