Violent movies and novels are on the rise; women and girls are loud and crass, aping cavemen histrionics as an indication of equality and liberation; kids are being taught sex education way too early; condoms are being passed out before a childhood is been experienced; teen girls are sporting tight “porn star” t-shirts as a fashion statement; leering surly men everywhere, what’s a girl to do?!
A Return To Modesty inspects premature sex education, cavalier attitudes towards dating (ie. “hook-ups”), the riot-grrrl concept of equality through women behaving as badly as men, men, college and campus life in the form of militant and radical feminists, the problems and peer pressure of coed dorms and shared bathrooms, (an almost out of place chapter on) prozac to treat sensitivity in women, parental guidance, and of course, understatement in one’s public presentation. There’s also a charming appendix featuring snippets of etiquette advice to the modest woman from all decades.
I’m sure the same complaints filed against Friedan’s Feminine Mystique will resurface here: there’ll be a rift between class and race, as plaintiffs declare that whole segments of the melting pot are not being addressed. But in Ms Shalit’s defense, I think it’s important to write about your world and what you know. If she were to venture into different socioeconomic and racial sectors (which she may have little experience), there will be yet another group that rails against the absence of another subdivision. Modesty for Bosnian women living in Russian-populated Brighton Beach anyone? Where does it end? I say, stick to what you know. If the naysayers want representation, they should submit their own drafts.
The opening pages of A Return To Modesty has the author stating: “As anyone who has ever had an ideology knows, you do not ask; you just look for confirmation for a set of beliefs.” Although this gets negated later on, I felt that oftentimes throughout the book, Ms Shalit DOES go looking within a narrow genre in the media to support her arguments: audacious headlines from Cosmopolitan magazine resurfaced throughout the book; The End of Alice (a novel about a sexual predator who violates and decapitates his underaged victims); Playboy magazine; Howard Stern; Dear Abby Q&A; Nazi’s; Complete Woman Magazine; and Vogue magazine. It’s almost too easy. Even friends of mine who watch UFC cagefighting to relax would blush more than Ms. Shalit’s modest women at the mention of some of these topics. All of my friends and family members (male and female) groan at the first mention of Cosmo magazine. It is true that all these factors collectively form the zeitgeist of current trendy behavior, but they are not the only culprits of the modern push towards brazen manners.
Don’t get me wrong, there are cursory references and quotations from a broad cross-section of the Western canon: Kant, Kinsey, Samuel Johnson, Satre, de Beauvoir, Aristotle, Plato, etc. At one point, I almost felt it was more interesting to read the book as a collection of quotes. But that’s all they were: quotations. It didn’t get tied together into one cohesive argument that flowed from one paragraph to another, one chapter into the next. It sometimes felt as if established philosophers were rallied by Ms. Shalit to bulwark her debate. Names get enlisted for a short quote in one paragraph and dropped in the next. That’s ok for a few paragraphs, but when it continues throughout an entire book, I must confess the focus was difficult to sustain.
I also felt the author’s occasional snippy and sarcastic retorts to quoted comments from glaringly insensitive people are immodest and unnecessary.
Modesty is a wonderful idea, and I must commend the author for proudly declaring a strong father-daughter bond (in times when it is no longer chic to do so). I also agree that women who dress better and more conservatively do get treated better, regardless of what sort of neighborhood they are in. I adore the notion of etiquette (no matter how outdated it is) and I believe it forces men to behave better. I’m sad that kids no longer have the luxury and time to be kids; peer pressure and unquestioning consumption of multiracial popular culture have forced children to become a grotesque sort of adult long before they need to be. Parents may want to pay close attention here, as subtle indicators point to the observation that teen girls are acting trashy when deep down, they really don’t want to. According to Ms. Shalit, many of them feel pressured to do so. (Readers who want to investigate this particular topic should check out Rosalind Wiseman’s “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” the book that the movie Mean Girls was based on.)
There are many great ideas in this book and there there is certainly no shortage of intellectual support, I just wish it was weaved better to present a stronger case. In these loud, in-your-face times, modesty deserves a quiet but firm push into the limelight.
