Why I find the new trend for ‘modest’ fashion disturbing
SEEING photos of the newly married Pippa Middleton at a wedding recently, a few thoughts crossed my mind.
Firstly: ‘ooo, she looks pleased with herself — and quite rightly so, seeing as she’s bagged a millionaire without breaking either a sweat or a nail.’
The other — seeing the voluminous, eye-crossingly ugly, ankle-length Erdem frock she was wearing — was an inversion of the old Scarlett o’hara line: ‘Take off that dress and make me some curtains!’
one word which didn’t come to mind, however, was ‘modest’. Pippa engaged the camera with a full-on ‘hands-off-he’s mine’ grin. A good thing too, as I’m no fan of modesty, especially for women, for whom this mild-sounding trait has been historically used as a tool of oppression.
But then I noticed others were joining Pippa in the great cover-up, too. Women who’ve plunged it down to there, slashed it up to here and left no part of their bodies unscrutinised for years are suddenly dressing in a way which would suggest they’re going straight from the premiere to do a spot of prison visiting.
Let me stress, these dresses are not your usual lost-in-France-and-loving-it summer maxis. These garments cover every inch of a woman’s body, from her earlobes to her toes.
Even the editors of women’s magazines are at it. This week, former Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman attended a swanky West End party in another floorlength, £1,095 Erdem dress, reminiscent of a shower curtain, while the editor of Cosmopolitan, Farrah Storr, appeared on a magazine front cover recently under the headline: ‘She’s the Editor of Cosmopolitan — So Why is She Covering Up?’
Farrah was wearing a shapeless, ankle-grazing sack, before leading us into a pious plug for the dubious pleasures of ‘modesty dressing’. Now I’m not against modesty entirely: some people are born modest (and have much to be modest about), some achieve modesty (ageing divas who would previously disrobe at the drop of a prop get all censorious about young starlets stripping off) and some have modesty thrust upon them (that multitude of the world’s women born into certain religions).
THOUGH I’m not a fan myself, I do have modest mates, and I admire their dainty ways. But what I don’t like at all is when modesty is used as a shaming stick which women use to beat other women.
When applied to clothing, the word implies, by default, that any other form of dressing is immodest, that is, tarty, exhibitionist and ‘wrong’.
And that’s something I do have a problem with. I found it ironic that Miss Storr spoke in her article about her decision to eschew the figure-hugging clothes she’d hoiked herself into in her youth as a rediscovery of her Pakistani father’s roots.
Considering what an oppressive, bigoted, sexist country Pakistan remains today for women, it seems extraordinary for a woman who has benefited from the manifold freedoms the West has to offer to come over all dewyeyed about the place.
Sitting incongruously alongside this muddle-headed tribute to one of the world’s worst places to be female was a slurry of breathless gushing over celebrities who have allegedly adopted modesty dressing; Adele, Angelina Jolie, Emma Watson and Victoria Beckham have all been seen sporting floorskimming numbers covering every inch of their bodies.
And now Pippa, too, is passing for a Puritan. Maybe it’s the cynic in me which thinks that the humble dressing movement may be a way for stars whose every lump, bump or jutting bone has been savagely dissected on social media to hide from scrutiny.
Another, completely opposite view, is that it is a way of getting noticed. After all, what else is there left for an attention-seeking starlet, except putting a metaphorical tin-lid on things?
Either way, looking at these beautiful women in ugly dresses — even Nicole Kidman and gwyneth Paltrow managed to look like they were wearing their Nan’s brush-nylon nighties — I couldn’t imagine that anyone in the real world would want to copy them.
Any sensible person would surely imitate their mother and tut: ‘If Beyonce jumped off a cliff, would you do it do?’ Best just ignore it and it will go away. But there’s a sinister side to this modesty manifesto that goes beyond the whimsy of fashion, that shouldn’t be ignored.
In her article, Farrah Storr started to sing the praises of women on Instagram who wear modesty clothes such as hers, often with hijabs.
She also spoke about what a relief it is to talk to men and have them look into her eyes rather than at her body, as if it was her responsibility to keep their lust in check rather than theirs.
other magazines have devoted pages to the voices of ‘brave hijabi’ women, talking about how they see this ultimate modesty dressing as a symbol of feminism.
Some call them ‘brave’ for speaking out against the discrimination they face daily by
abiding by their ‘freedom’ to cover themselves.
But it’s not in any way ‘brave’ to cover up. These Western modesty dressers are unwittingly placing themselves on the side of the female oppressors; the imams telling women that not to cover themselves makes them a dirty sweet on the floor rather than an unwrapped delicacy for men to devour, obviously.
‘Modesty dressing’ is having its moment because of a combination of cowardly cultural cringing on the part of the weak-willed West and the ceaseless desire of the fashion industry to find new ways of making women look ludicrous while paying handsomely or it.
Make no mistake; when a woman dresses in a way which she boasts of as ‘modest’, she is telling the world that women who choose not to dress as she does are immodest.
This places the responsibility for sexual harassment, abuse and ultimately rape squarely on women. If covering up is a sign of modesty, not covering up is a signal that a woman is ‘asking for it’.
And, of course, this skewed way of thinking is not confined to the religious. Do we want to go back to the days when an uncovered ankle or a bare shoulder marked you out as a prostitute, as it did in British societies a few centuries ago? You don’t need to be quoting the Bible or the Koran to be a sexist, judgmental bigot.
I dressed revealingly when young and now at the age of 57 have settled for a sweater and pencil skirt uniform which takes me happily from church to bar crawl.
It’s natural to cover up as we age — but to bring a moral dimension into this is strange, and probably says more about the insecurities of the coverer than the sexual incontinence of the uncovered.
Does the fact that I no longer dress in the skintight leather, lace and fishnets of my size 10 salad days mean that I have lately seen the light of propriety?
Of course, it doesn’t. I am grateful I grew up in a society where those choices were open to me — and continue to be. For they are indicators of greater freedoms.
Ironically, only last year Cosmo’s Farrah Storr gave an interview to her own magazine in which she was asked ‘What is your definition of feminism?’ to which she answered ‘Equality — pure and simple. We want to do everything on a level playing field, be a person first and a gender second’.
The reverse of this starts with modesty-dressing and it ends up with a woman walking down the street covered up from head to toe in the name of ‘propriety’.