Now to consider a delicate, and more explicitly feminist, subject. There are traditionally in feminism two schools, as the professor of the sole Women's Studies class I ever bothered to take kindly and wisely put it: Those who are against the sexual act, and those who are comfortable with it. But from thesis and antithesis comes, ideally, synthesis. Is it possible to find redeeming aspects to a view which straddles both these points?
Well, perhaps. I am personally an intensely modest person, rarely finding it appropriate to venture outside in clothing which does not cover me to the neck, and prefering to actually dress; skirts, long dusters, brocaded blouses with silver buttons and these sorts of things. I do not have the wardrobe I'd prefer to be truly proper, but I do frequently surprise people at school by changing between classes when I drop home for lunch, as something different usually seems appropriate for the afternoon over the morning. I shall leave it to Aristasians to critique the nature of modern public dress which leads me to such preferences and sentiments, though I warn that I do not agree with their opinions on language. We cannot ask soldiers, workers, sailors, and other sorts of professions to behave according to the strictures of high society, which is why we have social classes (or should have them), and class spheres, in which different things are appropriate according to setting, and these rules are enforced to create standards of etiquette appropriate to each circumstance. To use the most extreme circumstance: If one is trying to get an artillery caisson out of the mud whilst under a barrage of shrapnel, four letter words are appropriate.
This is however a slight tangent from the principle point, though modesty certainly involves comportment as well as dress. I have never cringed harder in my life than to hear someone, first berate another for an innocent mistake in a fine Japanese restaurant south of Seattle, and then hear the berated person reply with obscenities out of his embarassment at the error. The criticism was uncalled for in public, and should have been handled after dinner; the language in public was utterly horrifying, especially in a place regularly frequented by the local Japanese community where decorum was at a considerable premium. I rather wished to flee, but that would have also been indecorous, by calling further attention to the altercation, so I had only to wait with my cheeks red until enough time had passed that I could excuse myself to the lady's room and compose myself.
Modesty in dress, however, is something important. It is also something which does not speak on sexuality. That is to say, that the anti-sex aspect of feminism is flawed because it assaults sexuality with a very broad brush. The sacrosanct of the female sexuality should be celebrated; erotica is not inappropriate, as the Greeks and Romans well understood, and the Hindi a thousand times moreso. Your body, as a Maid, is a powerful temple to the Goddess and should not be neglected as such; it is a place of power and in the sacred prostitution of old Mesopotamia and of more modern customs was recognized and, even in the Patriarchy, respected as such to at least some small measure. This power should be celebrated, and exercised according to the directions of the restrictions of your class and circumstance, to bring pleasure and joy and health to your partners, and in consort with men, the creation of new life. In the sexuality of a woman's body is a supreme level of power that she ought be trained in both using and controlling, for liberation implies the power to engage in self-discipline.
The liberated woman certainly ought know control, and one of the foremost reasons for it is the way that the driving forces of the patriarchy will tend to pervert sexuality. Observe, for example, modern business clothes for women--they are whorish, without reservation--and they serve only to objectify working women. One wonders what the point of working is when so objectified, and the Honourable Secretary of State's wearing of a pantsuit was a blessed relief, but only because it is better to wear even a dumpy Mao suit as in cultural revolution China than to be restricted into a skirt which offers neither free movement for practicality nor any kind of modesty, which at once constrains the physical body... And shows it off to the consuming eyes of they who control you.
This does call, therefore, for a certain resumption of modesty, a fight against the idea of the "third wave" feminist that liberation will be had in dressing like men. Casual dress on similar standards to men, does nothing at all in terms of advancing women's liberation when business dressing standards forbid it (and ignoring for the moment the debasement of modern casual dress for both males and females). Therefore, beyond seeking to dress modestly in casual dress, to refudiate the idea that the woman must be obscured into the modern casual clothes of the man, we may also seek to assault the sexual objectification of the woman in the business dress culture.
Here, we may indulge in imagining the dress of a truly proper and liberated businesswoman to be a skirt of length below the knees, either A-frame or with a suitable kick-pleat for free movement, with stockings covering the knees and heels of a half inch or inch at the very most, flat and stable for walking, to reject the idea that women must be limited to areas of business where customary formal business dress makes their presence impracticable. Ideally the business dress of a woman will serve an engineer in the field just as well as a secretary, with a few modifications (boots, for instance). The purse should be long-strapped and worn across the shoulder as this is a practical concession against theft, and it may well be carrying important identification cards in the modern secured workplace. An under-bodice or similar unribbed garment, demi-corset at most, might be well suitable for toning, with a button-up blouse modestly concealing the décollage, obviously, for work should be a professional place, and hair generally pulled back, but some free draping allowed to the sides, or else in a more typical style, and the blouse perhaps covered by a vest as well worked in below the long coat.
These general rules are but an indulgent description of an ideal which is intended to contrast the tight, short pencil-skirt, gauzy nylons, and high heels of the modern woman's business suit, a request for you to imagine the differences. The woman so dressed can run, whereas the modern business suit does not permit it. The woman so dressed conceals her body in the workplace, where she is procuring money for her household.She is thus left with the freedom to choose her own dress on time which is her own, and to bring to work only that which she needs to accomplish her job in a competent fashion. One cannot say that women are liberated in the workplace until it is the norm for them to be able to wear exactly the same amount of concealing clothing as men wear, because they have even more reason for it, while still adhering to standards of beauty and elegance.
Who then could really say that dress codes changing in the past forty years have done anything positive at all for women, when the average Maid is still required to wear objectifying clothing to work? There is certainly power to be had in modesty in the right circumstance, in the same way that the raw power of female sexuality may be channeled into incredibly healthy and productive expressions in its own time as well. Truly of the Christian Bible the truest verse remains: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven". The leftist feminist literati at times seems to have done very little to address the continued sexual exploitation of the professional woman in modern corporate culture, and it is here that a stand against social convention could actually do some good.
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