Don’t assume oppression because of extremely modest dressing or old-fashioned styles
The recent scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) has led to a media focus with many photographs and much film of FLDS woman in their Little House on the Prairie dresses and swept-up bun hairdos.
It seems to me that it should be pointed out that the larger society ought not to allow the extremely modest and old-fashioned dress of the females in this group to prejudice us against the group and assume that they are “oppressed†women. There may well have been abuses, including criminal abuses, within the FLDS. My point is that we should not prejudge them on the basis of style.
While the FLDS is best known for its practice of polygyny, there are many groups in which marriages are monogamous that also dress in a manner that is extremely modest as well as unusual by contemporary American standards. Among them are the Amish, the Mennonites, the Hutterites and similar peoples as well as some groups of Orthodox Jews.
Indeed, the advocacy of modest dress, even an extreme of modest dress, may be a reason some convert to such groups. Their extreme modesty might be respected even by those who are not candidates for conversion.
In mainstream America, we frequently see females flaunting cleavage, midriffs, and thighs. Males may appear shirtless and in shorts. At the same time, there are many people who dislike seeing so much bared flesh.
Folks dislike fleshly exposure common for very different reasons. Some simply find a lot of it to be unattractive. A letter writer identifying himself as a gay men wrote to an online forum that he was very tired of seeing so many female bared bellies. The Maury program frequently has shows in which friends or family members of large people, usually women, complain that the scantily clad style is inappropriate for the heavyset.
I myself have a kind of schizophrenic reaction to the sight of men going shirtless. When I see men in my neighborhood exposing round bellies and chests with loose fat areas around their nipples, I feel like imploring, “Keep America Beautiful and keep your shirt on.†I must admit my reaction is quite different when a man with a hairless chest, solid pecs, washboard abs, and cleanly defined arms chooses to walk around sans shirt.
There are also many people who do not make aesthetic distinctions but find bared skin in general offensive. They may feel that modesty expresses a proper sense of privacy by keeping possibly alluring parts covered. This is a feeling that not everyone shares but should be viewed with respect.
People may also find the hairstyles of women in some of the aforementioned groups to have a quality lacking in the short styles and flowing locks typically seen on today’s American women. Putting one’s hair up in a bun of one sort or another may signify a sense of formality and reticence that contrasts with the let-it-all-hang-out philosophy common in contemporary mainstream. The old expression, “letting one’s hair down,†meaning to speak frankly associates the traditional “up†hairdo with public decorum.
The United States of America is a free country so we cannot legally enforce a dress code beyond a minimal standard of decency that demands the actual sexual parts be covered in public. However, we should not automatically ascribe negative characteristics to those who choose to hide most of their bodies from public view. Nor should we prejudge those who prefer hairstyles that hearken back to earlier eras.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Dear Readers, what are yours?
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April 27th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Despite the occasional whinge about women flaunting, I am quite tolerant. I have no problem with people, men or women, covering up from neck to ankle nor in them wandering around in next to nothing.
I grant you that fat folk who have lost that ‘definition’ – if indeed they ever had it – are not very pleasant to look at but then when they are clothed they aren’t either.
Being a chap I like to see young women looking splendid, whether that is au naturelle or decorated in pretty undies. Most well cut clothes look nice on a nice looking girl and there are a host of fashionable styles that work a treat. A really pretty girl with a fine healthy body can make a sack look pretty good. Given the choice for daily wear in the warm weather, the second above would do fine.
I would not judge a nicely undressed young woman as being immodest or worse just for her lack of clothing. I would, perhaps make a quiet and hopefully not to overt judgement of her beauty.
It is the behaviour that many publicly, scanitly-clad women show, rather than their bodies, that offends. The lewdness and the flaunting. And the ‘blaming and shaming, the demaning of any who ‘look’. The double-standards, the demands, the whining. Frankly she can be beautiful and wearing the most attractive decorative items and to me she is ugly.
Then we come to blokes. I don’t care a jot what they wear, frankly.
April 27th, 2008 at 4:49 am
amfortas said,
Despite the occasional whinge about women flaunting, I am quite tolerant. I have no problem with people, men or women, covering up from neck to ankle nor in them wandering around in next to nothing.
(Denise) Hi friendly amfortas. Thank you for your thoughts.
While you may have “no problem” with modestly dressed women and you live in a free country in which dressing is largely an individual choice, my blog points out that many people tend to stereotype modestly dressed women and that the stereotyping may be unwarranted.
I saw a TV talk show on polygyny. A woman came on to speak against it. She had been a member of such a group and married off at a young age. Later she left the group.
This woman appeared on the program looking very much like the plural wives who spoke in favor of the practice. The anti-polygyny woman wore an ankle-length dress with a high neck and long sleeves. She came across as articulate, assertive, and frank. She had enough independence to leave the insular religious group in which she had been raised and live in the outside world. However, she apparently still felt most comfortable in attire that modestly concealed most of her body from public view.
I believe there is a tendency to make assumptions about women who are modestly dressed such as that they are subservient to men, that they have a special fear and/or hate of men — the misandrist and androphobic character of Marnie in Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name is said to have been “always covering her knees like they were some kind of national treasure” — and that they are sexually repressed. I’m pointing out that these assumptions may be unwarranted and that we should not prejudge women who choose a particularly modest style.
April 27th, 2008 at 5:39 am
I see your points, Denise, and raise you one.
I should have prefaced my remarks by saying you are right, that people do make assumptions, and that some of those assumptions are wrong. Some mearly reflect useful working stereotypes. And one would have to agree with anyone who cared to make the arguement that such people as Amish and others you mention that maintain a specific and usually older style of life, do act modesly in more than just their mode of dress. Their behaviour is modest in most respects. Assumptions about them may be more right than wrong in the general. Individuals of course may differ from the norm, even if by a little.
There is a TV show here (from the US) called ‘Big Love’, about a polygamous family in Utah. That explores many of these issues quite well, even the variety of dress (and some quite pleasant undress scenes too), The characters deal with the assumptions of others with mixed success, as we all do.
At the end of your piece you said, “Anyway, those are my thoughts. Dear Readers, what are yours?”
My thoughts were a little more focused, probably drawn into sharpness by my own images of barely dressed ladies wearing just a pretty……. I will leave it there!
( Incidently, on that TV show, any of the wives engaged in sexual intercouse – and that is pretty well every episode – keeps her bra on ! Very strange. What assumptions can we make of that? Mormons need uplift more than Catholics, perhaps?)
April 27th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
When it comes to this situation with the FLDS group in Texas, certain words keep coming to my mind. “Judge not, Lest ye be judged.”
All of the media attention I see focused on this story (in my opinion) is judging the way they dress, their lifestyle, their behaviors, their very differences from “mainstream” America.
I will accept that this group has done many things that are harmful. Lots of groups have done harmful things to other people or people within their group. It is not a stretch of the imagination for me to say they may have done harmful things.
I just can’t give in to judging these men and women for being different. I can’t say they are wrong for a different lifestyle. I can’t say they are wrong for dressing differently.
Considering that a huge part of human history includes girls getting married right after puberty (with references to young marriages in the Bible), I am not sure I can say that particular lifestyle is wrong (but I can say it isn’t for me and I will strongly discourage my own children from a lifestyle like that).
In the end, if they want to dress differently, and four or five women want to share one man and raise the children communally, then I guess that is between them and their maker. I have plenty of issues I have to worry about between me and my maker to go about worrying about how men and women in a differently lifestyle dress and live and raise their children.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Well, anything men do or don’t do could be used against them as a weapon later.
If women dress a certain way that “could” be used against men as a form of oppression forced upon women. Whether that be nice dresses, mini-skirts, to high heel shoes. Eventually, anything could be twisted and used against men as a weapon later. And if oppression doesn’t exist make it up like the “rule of thumb” hoax, disproved by Christina Hoff Summers. That hoax when something like this: If a branch was as thick as the husbands thumb it was legal for him to beat his wife with it.” http://www.laborlawtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-94894.html
As for marriage, well marriage actually doesn’t really exist anymore. Since the early 70’s no-fault divorce became the law of the land. So any guy in a marriage is really just kidding himself. But perception is reality, so hey why try to convince anybody.
April 27th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
amfortas said,
There is a TV show here (from the US) called ‘Big Love’, about a polygamous family in Utah. That explores many of these issues quite well, even the variety of dress (and some quite pleasant undress scenes too), The characters deal with the assumptions of others with mixed success, as we all do.>>
(Denise) A point I previously made and will make again is that the proper name for these families is not “polygamous” but “polygynous.” They are one man married to multiple wives which is what “polygyny” means.
( Incidently, on that TV show, any of the wives engaged in sexual intercouse – and that is pretty well every episode – keeps her bra on ! Very strange. What assumptions can we make of that? Mormons need uplift more than Catholics, perhaps?)
(Denise) Modern day polygynists and their plural wives aren’t properly called Mormons. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints banned plural marriage in 1890. Some groups practicing it today are offshoots from the Mormon Church.
Perhaps “Big Love” should have patterned itself after the family of the late polygynist Alexander Joseph. For at least awhile, the family experimented with group sex and he sometimes had sex with two or three of his wives at a time. I don’t know if anyone kept a bra on or not!
April 28th, 2008 at 11:32 am
The big Who ha is that here you have a society where the family and Gods law is supreme. The man is the head of family and the “feminist infection” from the outside world is not tolerated. This drives the feminazi nuts, they go positively ballistic, seeing a society they have tried soo hard to stomp out. A working model, minus the child abuse assuming the claims are real and I highly doubt it, of what made this country great. Women are chaste and obedient, not sluts rebelling against even good sense.
I know that polygamy is not about sex, it is about perpetuation of the group, again this is something that drives the feminazi’s nuts! Not only do they existe, but they are growing and soon there will be more of them.
I think this whole thing is the liberals, the feminist and the out of control “nanny state” believing it has a right to force its standards on these people. You see these people believe their children are theirs and the state believe it owns all the children,even the ones in these cults.
so they are at odds, the state has “gun totting goons” to go out and illegally enforce its unwanted standards on these people.
We must stop the “out of control nanny state” or very soon they won’t just taking the children from the unpopular groups, they will be taking children from you!