And not for being good wives and mothers or even overall decent human beings, either...
When you browse on your smartphone, YouTube keeps pushing videos into your timeline, if you hit on one, you'll get the whole series, that's how I grew addicted to reading UTube discussions on the Magnificent Century, a Turkish historical drama/soap I'd written about before.
Yesterday, I was reading comments on Prince Mustafa's relationship with one of his girlfriends. After his father prohibits their marriage since she is of low birth, he lets her go.
But he still took her virginity, remarked someone indignantly.
Well, she was a Christian, and it's not important for Christians anyway, was the answer.
That's what they think about us, and honestly, who could blame them? Of course, many Eastern people somehow still mistakenly consider modern Western countries Christian, and I realise that Christian generally means white/Western to them, but even among those who call themselves Christians virginity and chastity aren't exactly hot topic, either.
In fact, I remember how a Christian site (I think it was Boundless but could be mistaken, so don't take my word for it), had a discussion where virgins were told that virginity was their idol. Also, have you seen what "chaste" Christian girls wear to church nowadays?
I seldom write about modesty on this blog for several reasons. First, is it any use flogging a dead horse? Modesty in clothes is a totally foreign concept to 99% of the citizens, often including non-Western immigrants and fundie women, too. The first group will cover their hair (and that not always) but dress in pretty Western styles for the rest, the latter will wear a short skirt provided it's black/dark.
Second, you easily get accused of being "jealous" of younger women and their beauty. The accusation is ridiculous, of course, since it's not only the problem of the young women any more, and those young women in 15 years will be older, too, so what is there to be jealous about? But, of course, those who hurl it won't care.
Third, Western men, despite what they will tell you, love it. Muslims will often avert their eyes even talking to you, because that's the way they are taught, but I have yet to encounter a Western man of whatever age and religion who would do it. Oh yes, they sometimes decry it online but keep watching.
In general, the reaction to this show is eye-opening. It depicts, among other things, infidelity, fornication and abortion. Muslim viewers decry it. How could you kill an innocent child? Why is Sultan not monogamous, asked someone from Pakistan (!), that's just so horrible and immoral. How could you commit adultery and fornication with your best friend's wife? Why are ladies' decolletes so low? That's the issues which bother them
Western people are bothered primarily by the lack of feminism and the lack of equality as in the Royal family being arrogant and having more rights than their slaves/servants and commoners.
The East is the East and the West is the West and never the twain shall meet, I guess...
Sometimes when one talks about modesty (or the lack thereof) in women, commenters would accuse you of being a 'creep' and assume you're a man, or you are mocked and laughed at for even pointing it out. I have had this happen to me before.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's true! And even older generations...I remember how my own dear Granny would tell me not to wear long skirts, because it "made you look like a nun" and "how on Earth would you find a man dressed like this?"
ReplyDeleteI know, right?
DeleteI get disappointed on the inside when people say that long=prude/fundie/dressy/impractical/frumpy, because we've been desensitized seeing short 'everything' for decades. Despite of this, short does catch eyes, but wrong hearts: short skirts, skimpy bikinis, tiny shirts and shorts--the results are either thirsts or she's 'for the streets'. None of those are good, and they complain about objectification under one breath and wanting 'hot' people (or looking hot) under another breath. I think society doesn't distinguish beauty from hotness and tend to think they are the same thing (I believe there's a big difference), and Roosh made a recent article about this.
I may sound petty when I say this, but the frustrating thing is, when modesty is applied, no appreciation or refreshment from others, just overlooked or seen as plain/unattractive/'meh' (not that getting attention is the goal here). Few to no one goes to the modestly-dressed women and say, "Thank you for dressing like a lady and having the courage to protect our eyes and hearts and being honest with your face, which is truly beautiful. You are upholding one of the key characteristics of being a good woman. It's a shame that this is a rarity, and I hope it becomes more commonplace. Keep it up, and good people will come your way."
When it comes to dress, there is a time and place for things. I do appreciate when a woman dresses in an attractive and sexy manner, but this also be dependent on her body type and such. There some things overweight women should simply be wearing in public and the same goes for men.
ReplyDeleteI'm getting older as a man, so I try not to dress like a dork with butt crack showing. I'm finding for job interviews in my part of South Texas, I keep it to a nice pair of slacks or black kakis and a long sleeve dress shirt. I'm often better dressed than those interviewing me. I used to wear a tie, but that's gone away. If it's a cooler time of year, I may wear a jacket, but no point in going overboard.
As for Muslims and their morality, the ones in the US for some reason vote heavily Democrat just as much as many Mexican American Catholics, so as an agnostic with some exposure to Catholicism, no one has explained how they can vote for party is literally endorsing infanticide.
Muslims living in the West are a totally different story apparently. Those in comments were from their own countries. Here they also tend to vote for parties promising more gibsmedat yet socially they are often quite conservative and prevent at least some degeneracy.
ReplyDeleteIt also depends on where they come from. I read somewhere that in Ireland there is (was) a shortage of doctors so they invited some Sudanese Muslims and they refused to perform abortions saying it was a sin. But in Turkey, for instance, abortion is legal.
We used to have a certain dress standard for women in the West, until about mid-1950s, which was pretty universal, though less restrictive than in Islam. I'll try to write about it tomorrow.
Also, men's clothes certainly became less formal, but most men still cover themselves usually. As in they won't wear shorts to church but short skirts are OK somehow and so on.
I think it is just double standards coming crumbling down. The modesty in Muslim countries in general is nothing more but a forced law. You learn quickly to cover yourself and your children if you'll be dead if you didn't. I guess most have seen pre-Islamic revolution photos from Iran/Iraq etc. And, I don't know the current situation but it used to be that the Arabic countries were those which used pornographic material the most. So I guess what we are witnessing is kind of Revelation 22:11 kind of thing. Those who find dignity in modesty will do so despite of what's going on around them.
ReplyDeleteI should say that in the 1940s-60s all the countries of the world were undergoing rapid secularisation and s8xualisation of their female population, yet some Muslim countries reversed this trend by repressive measures.
ReplyDeleteAnd even in liberal Muslim countries such as Turkey, revealing clothes and certain behaviours are something which the Westernised elites do, or at least those who live somewhere in big cities like Istanbul. The countryside is remarkably conservative.
There were stories of Turks who would have a civil partnership outside of Turkey (with a Western woman, of course), but would marry before going back to their family, because such sort of unions are not really approved over there.
All these pics you mention in Iran were exactly of these elites, peasants always overwhelmingly supported Islam and the do still.
Christians used to have their own modesty standard which was not really that different, including headcoverings for women in public, but it disappeared around the time of the s*xual revolution.
Observe the typical male writer's outfit by default, a negotiation with that "too casual" versus "not casual enough" split where you wind up in somewhat bog standard trousers yet have custom tailored Oxfords you wear everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThink about it: Salman Rushdie, Bruce Chatwin, even that travel writer out in the American Pacific Northwest, Rick Steves, they've done it by default.
In my case, it's really a class reaction, a way of saying, "I absolutely refuse to dress up like a total pleb, even if I'm dressed so I can be relaxed".
I had to force myself to switch to trainers instead of wearing what were called "120s" in London because in America, that sharp shoes thing was just enough to put everything over the top of "not casual".
Doing this doesn't save me much money, BTW, because the orthotics for my "120s" were usually £50 which is about what I pay for a set of trainers with built-in orthotics that I wear out in less than ten months.
But apparently dressing toward an international conservative norm gets you some flak in America.
Never wear a tie though.
I had to cut someone loose back in the 1980s from a dot matrix printer that went rogue on his tie.
He's just lucky I had a knife on me that I didn't tell anyone about. :-)
I don't know about the USA but here you can pretty much determine someone's social standing by the clothes and oh yes, shoes. Before corona made things difficult we used to visit a church for the "wealthy" and my husband had to buy the dress shoes just to fit in:)
ReplyDeleteAs ties were mentioned it reminded me of this article. Of course, the message of it is for everyone.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.artofmanliness.com/style/ties/heres-what-happened-when-i-wore-a-tie-to-work-every-day-for-a-year/
Theirs is a cool website! But I'm afraid few men would wear a tie to work nowadays if it's not a part of the company's dress code.
ReplyDeleteLuna, and then she complained how slutty modern girls were. I just think many people don't see how one leads to the other...
ReplyDelete