Of Shells and Modesty

The late R'n Esther Jungreis - always fashionable yet modest

(It’s) impossible to look good in a shell. It’s not stylish, it’s not flattering and it cheapens every look. It’s rarely, if ever, used with intention, beyond the intention of making something modest. It’s a lazy approach to dressing, where creativity in dressing falls by the wayside. Wearing a shell makes dressing modestly a mechanical, mindless process, and sucks the joy out of getting dressed.

Why would restrictions imposed by men be necessary in order for women to dress creatively? What legitimacy, in fact, do such restrictions hold?

By critiquing minor aspects of tznius, like shells, women may claim to have a degree of control over their bodies and how they choose to cover them. Yet adhering to normative modesty codes, by definition, cedes this control.

Any alleged “creativity” involved in selecting an outfit which will not offend or disturb Jewish men is a sad and minimal compensation. Mild complaints about minute details only grant tacit legitimacy to this system…

However a woman chooses to adhere to modesty, shells or not, the rules she complies with are predicated on male anxiety about women’s bodies and the potentially dangerous responses which the sight of women’s bodies may provoke. 

The opinion that Schneider expressed in her piece, that dressing modestly is a set of restrictions imposed on women by men, is closely related to a commonly held but completely false premise – the idea that exposing one’s body is an expression of empowerment and covering one’s body is a result of male oppression of women.

Of course, in order to come to this conclusion, one must overlook the fact that Western women’s fashion has pretty much always been dictated by men, and has always attempted to expose, or highlight, women’s bodies to a greater degree than men…

From very early on, women have been convinced (read: sold a bill of goods) that flaunting all is an exercise of freedom. That covering one’s body is an indication of shame, and that “if you’ve got it, flaunt it”, and anything else is a sign of oppression or domination.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have long explained that there is a fundamental difference between the way men’s brains are wired and women’s brains are wired when it comes to sexual arousal. Keeping religion entirely out of the picture, it has been proven that men are primarily aroused by visual input whereas women are primarily aroused by touch. That’s not religion. That’s science.