Spring has Sprung

It's spring and I don't know about you, but I'm ready to buy a few new duds.  So I thought we could put the theoretical discussion of modesty on hold for a spot and get down to the practical -- where to buy!  Here are a few links to some nice sites that have some modest clothes for women and girls. 

Shabby Apple
Revamp
Layers
Christa Taylor  

I know these things are rather subjective, so feel free to post whatever you consider modest -- we won't judge. 

Happy Spring!

Three Cheers for Square Dancing

I went to a square dance the other night and it was extremely fun.  It reminded me of an ECD (English Country Dance) I went to with my 90 year-old grandmother a few years ago at her Senior Center (yes, I was the youngest by half a century).   I felt like I was in a Jane Austen novel as I danced and watched others dance in this innocent yet exciting way.  But the best part was seeing all the young people dancing together couple to couple - then switching partners, then back together. It made me realize how crucial this kind of event was to courtship and how sorely missed it is now. There is very little chance for young people to get together and meet nowadays that also includes adults.  Kids behave so differently around adults and it seems to be a very healthy way of nudging them into adulthood.  You now how when you were young and you liked a boy at school but then when you saw him in a setting with your parents or other adults you got a whole different take on him?  Kids need more of that.  And it was way more fun than TV!

Glamorous Misery Loves Teenage Company

Wendy Shalit recently told me about Miley Cyrus wanting to make a "younger, cleaner version of Sex and the City," and it really made me wonder.  When the movie version of the wildly popular HBO series “Sex in the City” first hit theaters, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about how the movie is appealing to a much younger range of girls than expected. When the show originally aired it was on the pay-for channel HBO but now the cable channel TBS plays “sanitized” episodes on nearly every night of the week, where a much younger audience has far greater access to it. 

But the real issue is whether or not marketers are targeting this age group for the "Sex" movie. They claim not to be, but according to the Journal they are advertising during shows that are specifically geared to this demographic, such as "Gossip Girls" and MTV’s "My Super Sweet 16" (a show about spoiled girls’ Sweet 16 birthdays -– a whole blog in itself). 

In some ways it is rather curious that this show appeals to these girls since the characters are more than twice their age and have carved out some pretty bleak lives for themselves (loveless, childless, neurotic, etc). What, besides their (overly-revealing) wardrobes could possibly be attractive about them? But I guess you can dress up just about anyone in a $400 pair of shoes and have them swill delicious-looking cocktails and girls and women alike will be drawn to them.

And that of course is the problem. While older and wiser audiences might be able to appreciate various shades of irony or poignant contraction, younger audiences will fixate on the glitz and glamour and fail to recognize the underlying emptiness and angst. As a boy, my husband used to watch reruns of M*A*S*H and was mesmerized by its uniforms, rugged old-fashioned jeeps, and occasional explosion; only later on did he realize that it was anti-war. My fear is that what M*A*S*H is to boys, “Sex in the City” is to girls. Even if the underlying message of the TV series and/or movie is a cautionary tale about female misery in modernity (or at least it should be), the young audiences now being so unscrupulously targeted will miss the moral and get hooked on a very, very false allure. And since part of that allure consists of nonchalant banter about the advantages of threesomes or the best personal pleasure toy, you know our young girls are in for trouble.

It's a Mad, Mad World

At the end of its first season, the new AMC series “Mad Men,” the story of Madison Avenue advertising executives set in the year 1960, is in good shape. The show’s creators chose that year because it had almost all the cool, “Rat pack” style of the ‘50s and almost all the libertinism of the late ‘60s. (1961 was, after all, the year of the Pill.) At least stylistically, the show is making an impact on male fashion. GQ ran an article on how to imitate the sleek formality of the Mad Men, and they say that thanks to shows like “Mad Men,” the term “metrosexual” is giving way to “menergy” to "describe the ultra-masculinity in designer menswear.”

“Mad Men” is not always a first-rate show (sometimes it’s thinly written), but it is interesting. Indeed, its most intriguing character may not be the protagonist Don Draper but the year 1960 itself. But what I also find interesting (and sometimes annoying) about the series is its portrayal of women. At times the characters are like cardboard cutouts. Don Draper’s wife is pretty, bored, sweet, and rather ditsy; his paramour at the beginning of the series is a carefree and insatiable bohemian artist; and the female business client that he is romantically drawn to is a (secular) Jewish woman who has taken over her father’s department store.

So is this another feminist caricaturing of the bad old days, a reductionistic portrayal of the era as the age of the Stepford wife?  Possibly, but that doesn’t mean it is necessarily off the mark. One of the things that “Mad Men” unintentionally does is show that while post-WWII America was certainly chauvinist, it was not, strictly speaking, patriarchal. That is to say, there is no sense among the men in the show that they are solemnly obliged to respect womanhood and even to foster it. Instead, they crack one vulgar joke after another about their secretaries and grow defensive about their wife’s honor only because it threatens theirs. What we have here is not Abraham or St. Paul, but the swinish and selfish mentality authentic biblical patriarchy is meant to combat and supplant. 

If anyone else has seen this show, I am interested in your thoughts.

Wear They Are Now

If the TV show “What Not to Wear” is therapy for the sartorially challenged, then it only makes sense to have follow-up sessions to see how the patient is doing. I guess this and a good dose of curiosity is one of the reasons that Stacey and Clinton periodically have “Wear Are They Now” episodes, where they get to interview former guests on the show and check out their current styles. 

Even years later, most of the women more or less stick to the advice they received on the show, though not always voluntarily: several interviewees said that because shoppers always recognize them now, they can’t resume their former ways even if they wanted to! One lady named Marie, who was told by Stacey and Clinton to stop the grim Johnny Cash look, tried to buy black pants for her daughter at a store and was recognized immediately. “After vainly trying to convince them that the pants were for someone else,” she says, “I gave up and didn't buy them.” 

But one of the recurring themes that comes up during these testimonies is not about the outside at all. “Confident” is an adjective that one frequently hears during these follow-ups, even “life-changing.” And this pertains not only to their careers, but to the affairs of the heart. On last Friday’s show one of the women said something like: “The guys I am dating now are sophisticated, intelligent and have something to say. And now they look at my eyes instead of below my neckline!” Not only did smart dressing raise the bar of her confidence, it elevated the quality of men drawn to her. It accented what was higher in her, her mind and spirit. No wonder her next testimonial was, “Now, I feel totally free.”

The Glory of Humility

It is easy to think of modesty primarily in terms of hemlines and sleeve lengths and to forget its deeper significance. That is why it is nice to be reminded now and then of the other kind of modesty, the kind that is more or less synonymous with humility and the one to which external modesty is ordered. In a recent homily the preacher for the pontifical household, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, emphasized the importance of being modest in evaluating your own merits. By doing so in a sincere and unaffected (as opposed to the false modesty we are all too familiar with), we not only live a better life but we endear others to us. Modesty, Fr. Cantalamessa says, “conquers, makes those who practice it loved, makes their company desirable, their opinion appreciated. True glory flees from those who seek it and seeks those who flee from it."

This, of course, does not mean that one should be modest in order to get glory and recognition, for that would involve a contradiction in terms: the modest person is the one who doesn’t desire these things. But it does point to an interesting paradox often overlooked in our “Look at Me” age: the people who genuinely don’t seek the limelight are usually the ones most worthy of it.

 

Biel: Stop Me From Posing Nude Again!

Jessica Biel has come a long way since playing the daughter of a minister on Seventh Heaven.  Sadly, I'm not sure in which direction.  The actress posed nearly nude (actually entirely nude but in "clever" poses that managed to cover her intimate parts) for a 2000 Gear magazine spread (unfortunately, I saw these photos online and they are pretty raunchy) but later said her then-manager pressured her into it.  One would have thought that this signaled some kind of remorse and that maybe she'd learned from the experience. But, according to the  National Ledger she is going to be doing another nude scene in an upcoming movie with Forest Whitaker. 

Sure, there are plenty of women in Hollywood that do nude scenes --it is practically de rigeur. But what I find disturbing is that she doesn't seem to want to do it.  After her last semi-nude experience Biel said she was "humiliated" and of her upcoming nude scenes:

I definitely worry about how my family would react. You can't help thinking about your dad or brother seeing something. I don't have to be fully naked for the movie. I haven't decided exactly about the nudity. It's a tough one. I'm considering it but it's a very scary thing to do. It definitely feels vulnerable to be naked in front of anybody, let alone a film crew.

So, "Great," you think, "She doesn't have to do nudity and probably she won't."  But consider the contract she signed that, according to the article, "details the bare minimum fans will see – including shots of her breasts (nipples from the front and side) and her butt (side view only)."  Can you imagine signing such a contract? You're sitting in the producer's office and you start your negotiations, but instead of negotiating your health plan and vacation time you haggle over the parts of your body that you'll have to expose and from what angles. I can hardly imagine feeling more objectified.  And do you think for a minute that after negotiating the contract the producer or director is going to say, "Yeah, lets go with shot of her with the top on instead of the topless one." 

Biel also says, "It's scary because of the internet - you don't know where it's going to end up. It's a moment that could be exploited."  Could be exploited? I guess exploitation is a sliding scale where a million people seeing you briefly nude is not as exploitative as, say, a guy using your naked body as his screen saver. Perhaps it is time to find a new line of work that doesn't exact its pound of flesh. 

Good Morning America on Girls Gone Mild

How tickled I was to inadvertently tune into Good Morning America's piece on Girls Gone Mild last Friday.  The story began with clips of young girls complaining about how hard it is to be modest:   "Sometimes it's so short you can see their underwear," and "We can't help it. That's all they sell these days."  But despite the challenges of being a modest girl in an immodest world, the ABC piece showed that there is a movement afoot and Wendy's book is a big part of it. What I really appreciated about the story was that it showed modesty as a viable option for girls and women who are sick to death of the expose-it-all look -- without any lame sneering that usually accompanies such stories. Cheers.

Then, after the initial piece, they did a live fashion show of Girls Gone Wild vs. Girls Gone Mild looks with Allyson Waterman, Special Project Director of Lucky Magazine.

Here is what Allyson had to say about the modesty movement in fashion:

Allyson Waterman: Well, I think it really is a movement towards conservatism. I think it is a backlash against what we've been seeing in Hollywood. Let's face it, whether we like it or not celebrities have become our role models.  There is media covering their every move. And I do think that America is reacting to this over-the-top behavior, in style and behavior. We don't need to see young celebrities' business all the time. I think people realize we've hit a limit and fashion is mimicking this reaction.

Robin Roberts: Enough is enough and the two of us love this movement.

Allyson Waterman: This is not about being frumpy or dumpy. This is not about covering up or not being sexy or hiding under a lot of fabric. This is about embracing a woman's body in an elegant way with decorum.  We never saw Jackie O's underwear, we never saw Grace Kelly... we never saw  Audrey Hepburn behave this way. And these are the women who have maintained themselves as style icons throughout history.

Then the Wild vs. Mild looks. First a girl in super low-ride jeans with an extremely tight tank top that.  Then, a girl in higher-rise, wider leg jeans and a tie-front yellow blouse.

Next the mini-skirt: "It's just not appropriate for work. It's not good. But if you want to wear a skirt and show off your legs and celebrate your look, there is the pencil-slim skirt. You can see what she's got, but she's not giving it away," said Waterman. I really liked this look.

Then dresses: First they showed a spaghetti-strapped slip of a dress. "We don't want to see a bra strap anymore," said Waterman.  Instead they showed a beautiful silky Burberry dress with short sleeves and a poofy bottom.

I thought this approach was brilliant. Instead of just talking about modesty and complaining about what an inappropriate culture we live in, they gave concrete advice and a modest makeover.  Maybe the "after" looks aren't for everyone, but they sure beat what one usually sees on T.V.

Clothing of the American Mind

Oh, how I enjoyed this article in The Wall Street Journal delicously entitled, The Clothing of the American Mind. Not only did it speak to my love of fashion, but it even made me feel justified in my obsession with TLC's fashion show, "What Not to Wear."  The author of the article, Naomi Schaefer Riley, laments the passing of fashion designer Liz Claiborne because she was "responsible for providing legions of working women with attire that was feminine, affordable, easy to care for and, most important, 'appropriate.'" Ms. Riley also laments the absense nowadays of such clothing, citing a recent research firm who claims "lingerie stock now changes with the seasons, since many younger women today are not embarrassed to be 'wearing inner-wear as outerwear.'"

She then quotes a woman dear to my heart, Stacy London, the co-host of "What Not To Wear:"  "You don't want to show too much skin at work--unless you're a lifeguard." True. Ms. London, whose father is Herb London, president of the  Hudson Institute (a conservative policy research organization), attributes to her father the instillation of "a certain sense of propriety and right and wrong in me, which plays into my fashion sensibility."

I find this quote  interesting because nowhere in the brief interview with Ms. London does she discuss her mother, from whom one would naturally gain more fashion insight.  It bespeaks the old adage, "strong fathers, strong daughters."  So here is my question for discussion. How, if at all, has your father's input affected your fashion?  And who was a bigger influence on your style: your mother or your father?

Teens: Pro-Privacy?

It looks like there is hope for future generations! According to this Washington Post article, teenagers nowadays have had enough of immodest fashions and they just aren't going to take it anymore.  Here is an exerpt:

William Strauss, co-author of "Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation," said teenagers are faced with the opposite social problem of their baby boomer parents. They are growing up at a time when sex is talked about freely -- perhaps too freely.

"Modesty is a reaction against the sexualization of the culture, including fashion," he said. "What tends to happen in history is generations correct for what they perceive to be the major excesses of previous generations. . . . They're trying to reestablish a zone of privacy."

Has anyone read this book?  Do we think it is true that after a generation of no boundaries, this generation is having to set a few of their own?  It makes sense to me.  But I don't think (and maybe he isn't exactly saying this) that it is just a generational backlash. I firmly believe that modesty, and all virtues, are written on the human heart and that deep down all people know what is right and wrong -- or modest and indecent, as the case may be.

Thoughts?