What Does It Mean to Dress Modestly?
What does it mean to dress modestly? What makes one outfit modest, while another outfit with the same hemline is revealing? Why is it that a Himba woman in her native village in Namibia, Africa being completely topless is not immodest, yet the same would not be true concerning an American woman living in New York City, United States? When we think about modesty in dress as Catholic laywomen, there is much more to consider than the hemline of the garment, though this consideration is important. Many Catholic laywomen understand the importance of the virtue of modesty, yet expressing this virtue through clothes seems to get messy. It causes anxiety, and it makes what should be an act of devotion and worship much more about vanity and self glorification, rather than about glorifying the Lord with our wardrobe, preserving our dignity, and honoring the sacrament of marriage. This article is here to help you understand modesty in dress as a virtue that transcends culture and how you can dress modestly without the rigid, self-debasing rules that functionally work to objectify you in a different way from that which modesty in dress is supposed to protect you.
Modesty in Dress as a Virtue to Discern
It seems that we have two options in our contemporary time when it comes to learning how to dress modestly as Catholic laywomen. On the one hand, we can turn to social media influencers, and on the other hand, we can turn to the popular traditional Catholic modesty rules that many Catholic women grew up hearing and being taught. Both are problematic but in different ways. The social media influencers are often rooted in concealed vanity, consumption, and profit. While the so-called modest outfits shared seem modest from a secular worldview, to the Catholic laywoman who yearns to glorify the Lord with her wardrobe, they seem cheap and superficial. These so-called modest outfits often reveal more than they conceal, but more insidiously, they present the idea of modesty without embodying the essence of it. On the other hand, while the popular traditional Catholic modesty rules do a much better job at promoting objective modesty in dress, they are often rooted in the fear of being objectified by men, and often by the very men who are supposed to protect us. These rules turn our body into a mannequin to be measured so that we do not inadvertently upset the men around us as we learn that we must hide from them. Both the social media influencers and the popular traditional Catholic modesty rules miss the mark of modesty as a virtue. Neither the social media influencers nor the popular traditional Catholic modesty rules help Catholic laywomen to learn how to discern modesty in dress as a virtue rather than as a display of virtue and social signaling or as a survival mechanism of being the weaker, fairer sex surrounded by weak and lustful men, but we are not limited to either the social media influencers or to the popular traditional Catholic modesty rules. We can learn how to dress modestly from virtue, as the Catholic Church teaches it. When we learn how to dress modestly from virtue, we need neither to cloak our vanity behind a hemline or trend nor do we need to be moved by the fear of being objectified. Rather, we can evaluate the act of dressing ourselves as a moral act in which we consider the act itself, our intentions behind it, and the circumstances that surround the act.
What is Virtue?
Modesty in dress is more than a hemline. Modesty in dress is also more than a way to signal the virtue of modesty. Rather, modesty in dress is an expression of virtue of modesty. For this reason, in order to dress modestly as Catholic laywomen, we must first come to understand what virtue is. Then, we must come to understand what modesty in dress is as an expression of the virtue of modesty. Only after understanding these two things can we then move on to the practical matters of choosing articles of clothing that constitute modesty in dress as an expression of the virtue of modesty and as a way to glorify the Lord with our wardrobe as Catholic laywomen.
“Clothing expresses joy and sorrow, authority and power, pride and simplicity, wealth and poverty, the sacred and the profane. The specific form of this expression depends on the traditions and the culture of a particular people; it changes all the more slowly as the institutions, characters, and sentiments that the styles interpret are the more stable.”
““On the contrary, Honesty [*Cf. Question [145]] pertains to virtue. Now a certain honesty is observed in the outward apparel; for Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 19): “The body should be bedecked naturally and without affectation, with simplicity, with negligence rather than nicety, not with costly and dazzling apparel, but with ordinary clothes, so that nothing be lacking to honesty and necessity, yet nothing be added to increase its beauty.” Therefore there can be virtue and vice in the outward attire.””