A Return to Modesty: Is there a way back to how it used to be between men and women?
Shalit, Wendy & Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe
BOOKS Victoria's secret A Return to Modesty Discovering the Lost Virtue Wendy Shalit I'lie I'm I'rr-,. it!. M>4 is/;. Barbara Daf oe Whitehead A growing body of research evidence tells us...
...If girls can't be modest about sex, then they will be modest about what they eat...
...Wendy Shalit, a twenty-three-year-old member of the first generation of young women to come of age after the sexual revolution, says that all these girl troubles can be traced to a single cause: the loss of sexual modesty...
...Yet her rhetoric often outruns her evidence...
...And they have trouble with men...
...Instead, they have to lower their expectations for commitment from lifelong marriage to a "long-term relationship" to a phone call the morning after...
...Young women are victims of sexual harassment, date rape, and stalking, as well as lesser kinds of male discourtesy and disrespect...
...But this advantage is now lost for many women...
...First, she offers her report from the frontlines of a culture that few older adults understand or recognize...
...How likely is a return to modesty in a coed youth culture where men and young women share dorms, bathrooms, and sleeping bags...
...She can make much out of a fashion magazine article or an encounter with one of her politically correct professors...
...For example, she claims that modesty is going to stage "a huge comeback" but she offers no eviCommonweal 2 1 February 26,1999 dence for this stunning prediction...
...Shalit believes that sexual modesty is irrepressible...
...They must be discerning about their mate in order to ensure the quality and likely survival of their offspring, and that discernment requires withholding sexual favors until a prospective mate proves himself worthy...
...Finally, traditions of modesty tend to be stronger when women marry at a young age...
...Traditionally, female sexual modesty also seems to require strong parental involvement in courtship...
...Consequently, when women surrender their modesty, they give up much of their power and prerogative in love relationships...
...What's gone wrong...
...Many "twenty-something" women despair of finding a decent man to marry...
...Women are the more modest sex for a simple reason: they bear and nurture children...
...Their chief hang-up is modesty about sex...
...How do we encourage modesty when women are postponing marriage until their mid or late twenties...
...In their love relationships, women want emotional as well as sexual intimacy, a meeting of the minds as well as the bodies...
...Baby Boom parents who cheered the sexual revolution can now contemplate its impact on their daughters...
...Barbara Daf oe Whitehead A growing body of research evidence tells us that today's young women are unhap py...
...This is not an argument in favor of immodesty, but it does suggest that modesty is a frail defense against male sexual aggression and misconduct which is why it has always been surrounded by legal sanctions, social controls, and cultural codes, most of which have now been repealed...
...Girls with downcast eyes are sometimes overlooked or underestimated...
...More serious is her failure to own up to some of the problems traditionally posed by the obligation of female modesty...
...Modesty gives women the time to slow things down, to bank the fires of sexual desire while cultivating friendship...
...These traditional sanctions and codes will be difficult to restore, I suspect...
...Young women complain incessantly about men's failure to commit and about the shortage of marriageable men...
...Doing away with modesty violates women's nature, says Shalit...
...This means that it's okay to lose your virginity as long as you do so with a condom...
...They suffer from depression, eating disorders, binge drinking, and body-image disturbances...
...I was too shy and embarrassed to yell at him or to tell my mother...
...If they can't be sexually pure, they will purify themselves by restricting calories or reducing fat intake or relentlessly "working out...
...But when women begin to treat their virginity as trash rather than treasure, men sense their advantage: why try to please a woman when she will pleasure you...
...And modesty can lead to misplaced shame and silence...
...Even then, they are often cruelly disappointed...
...Saddest of all, women who have casual sexual relationships cannot demand much from the men they "hook up with...
...The rhetoric of today's sexual culture is one of choice, but the reality is that women are less able to choose wisely and well...
...And what does the loss of modesty have to do with eating disorders and other body discontents...
...Indeed, modern marriage has evolved in the direction of a "best friends" relationship in deference to women's desires...
...Cultures with strong traditions of female sexual modesty tend to segregate the sexes in education, the workplace, and places of worship...
...We should all pay heed...
...Something has gone awry in girls' lives and it seems to be tied to the basics: biology and culture...
...Twenty-something women have been raised in a culture that tells them that they should lose their "hang-ups" about sex, according to Shalit...
...When I was about twelve, I went to a dentist who frequently and vigorously wiped his hands across the bib on my chest...
...Like the young political dissidents of the sixties, these cultural dissidents of the nineties are bent on telling the grownups where they went wrong...
...This generation is better educated and more sexually liberated than any earlier generation of women in history...
...How do we bring back courtship when young adults are living away from home as singles...
...After all, modesty can be misread as passivity or stupidity...
...Parents, teachers, and sex educators tell teen-age girls that shyness about their body is prudish, that waiting to have sex until marriage is impossible, and that "sex is no big deal" as long as you are "responsible...
...Push it down in one place and it pops up in another...
...Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is the author, most recently, of The Divorce Culture (Knopf...
...What's more, Shalit is a fiercely intelligent and resourceful critic...
...Much of what Shalit says is persuasive...
...Second, she is one of a small but growing band of twenty-something women writers who are disenchanted with the sexual revolution...
...That said, Shalit's book is important for two reasons...
Vol. 126 • February 1999 • No. 4
