A few weeks ago a story surfaced about Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel wearing a garment a kin to a “burka” as a way of up-ing the anti on modesty. The original Haartz article on this issue is in Hebrew, but you can read all about it right here. The Haartz article suggested that this trend is in some sense analogues to anorexia.
Some bloggers have cited parallels to eating disorders. Both anorexics and the burka women are denying their bodies in order to make them “disappear”. Both are reacting to unattainable cultural ideals, be they size-zero thinness or increasingly stringent standards of modesty in the Charedi world, by taking them to an obsessive extreme. And anorexia is often understood to be a desperate way for women to assert control over at least one aspect of their lives. Surely, wearing a burka or vowing silence can be construed similarly. Jewish Chronicle.
The assumption behind the blog I cited above is that there is a kind of modesty that is good, and thus by comparison wanting to be skinny per se, is not the problem, it is just the twisty version that becomes a problem. This analysis does not implicate the “healthy” majority in the illness of the fanatics. I, however, implicate the very notion that a woman should strive to be thin or/and modest as the fuel behind this bazaar fire.
Women who strive to be thin or/and modest are doing so (most of the time) because they believe, that they are striving for an ideal of womanhood, an idea that is directly connected to pleasing men sexually (anorexia) and following men’s rules (modesty).
Tangent: Lesbians are at much lower risk of Anorexia. Doesn’t surprise me! (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1994; 62(2):252- 260)
There is no “good” desire to be thin, and there is no “good” desire to be modest. Modesty, is a bad idea, not just at its extreme, it is a bad idea at its inception, because modesty is about women not tempting men by remaining silent and covered! Women silencing themselves for the sake of men is the very definition of patriarchy, if you ask me.
The perversion of modesty is only it progression. And anaraxia, is just the progression of the desire to be thin (aka, desirable, aka beautiful, aka for men).
Thus, the frame of reference must change. Twisty modesty is not going to disappear, until the ideal of modesty disappears, and of course the same thing can be said, and is often said about eating disorders. The change in these fields begins with a change in discourse.
Modestly aught to be a dirty word.
I think you misunderstand modesty and, to some extent, a desire to be thin. Not everyone desires to be thin in order to be desirable or beautiful for men. People who are obese should desire to lose weight in order to be healthy. Of course, not all people are motivated by health to the extent that they would undergo the major changes necessary to lose weight. For those people, I think that some societal pressure to be thinner can be good. For example, accept the premise that helping poor people is good. While some will help poor people just because, others only help because they receive tax benefits, or because someone else is watching, or because of a belief in some moral obligation. While tax cuts, societal pressure, or actions done only as a fear of Big Brother may not be good, giving to the poor is.
As for modesty, it’s not about “women not tempting men by remaining silent and covered.” In fact, if it is, that’s the perversion of modesty that I and other bloggers have discussed. Modesty is about focusing on the inner person and applies both to males and females. If someone is eating dinner next to you and chews with their mouth open and food continually falls out of their mouth and all over their shirt, the table, and in their hair, are you paying attention to what they may be saying? Doubtfully. That’s an example of immodesty. It has nothing to do with being silent or covered, but has to do with distraction from who a person is. Sure, clothing and behavior reflect a person, and should. However, just as modesty can be twisted, so can self expression. While the girls at my university may have been expressing themselves by wearing furry jackets, ugg boots, and skirts so short I could see their butt cheeks, but at some point, that style of dress put enough pressure on others that I know people who stifled their own style to dress in such a manner because they wanted to be attractive and stylish. To say that attempts to please men aren’t a major motivator behind the dress of many girls would be incredibly nieve. The goal of being “modest” is not to remove all self expression, nor is it to conform to the dictates of men. It is to allow true self expression by removing distractions. When someone sits next to you at dinner eating neatly, talking only after swallowing, and without other distractions, you can focus on their words, their intonations, and their personality.
I’ve been thinking this over for a while, and am finally getting my thoughts organized enough to comment.
To start– how are you defining modesty? At it’s most fundamental level, there is modesty in wearing a bikini top– the woman in question is choosing to cover part of her breasts.
So I’m guessing your definition is more along the lines of “men dictating the rules for women’s clothing”. Which I agree is icky.
My conflict between feminism and tzniyut is that I like dressing tzanua, I feel much more comfortable that way. What my particular boundaries are have been somewhat influenced by how halacha I’ve been raised with, that is part of who I am. I’ve half-heartedly tried to stretch those limits out of curiosity, but it’s never stuck.
where I am with this at present:
-not judging other women for how they dress, or assuming I know their motivations
-not assuming that my opinions or practices will never change
-making decisions on halacha for myself