Stop Pretending: Dressing Sexy Comes at a Price

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | April 4, 2004 | Miranda Devine

[Law]

Good on Sarah Freeman, the 20-year-old Melbourne assistant store manager who refused to wear the provocative T-shirt her employer provided for her.

Westco Jeans had issued staff the skin-tight, V-neck T-shirts with "Stop Pretending You Don't Want Me" emblazoned across the chest. The accompanying memo instructed: "NO T-shirt equals NO work. Any team member that does not dress correctly will be sent home."

Freeman was sent home last weekend for refusing to wear the T-shirt after a customer made lewd comments and stared at her breasts. "I said, 'Hello'," she told The Age newspaper, "and he said hello to my face, and then he had a good look at my chest and said, 'Well, hell-o', and I ran away."

After a public outcry, the company withdrew the T-shirts. "If you put slogans like that on a T-shirt," federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward said, "you can't expect your staff not to be harassed."

But not so long ago such a statement would have been denounced as politically incorrect prudery. Perhaps Freeman's courage in standing up to Westco, and the support she attracted from the community, signals a shift back to female modesty.

For decades feminism has told women they have the right to wear whatever they like, no matter how sexually provocative, without taking any responsibility for the effect come-hither clothing has on men. Woe betide the male who has mistakenly equated flashed breasts and vast tracts of exposed flesh with sexual availability.

The fashion industry long ago declared war on female modesty, and is relentlessly sexualising girls as young as eight, dressing them up as a mini Nicky Hilton, giving them a jaded, sexually wise image at odds with their dewy skin and innocent eyes.

Last week, in a community where alcohol abuse is a source of much suffering, an Aboriginal girl of 12 or 13 in Redfern was interviewed by Four Corners wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Buy me a drink and I'm yours".

But, far from empowering women and allowing them to "take charge" of their sexuality, this loss of innocence has led to their degradation. It has put them at the mercy of men's basest appetites.

Female modesty in the past forced men to behave respectfully towards women in order to achieve their ultimate goal of having sex.

But with sex available on a platter, on call, why should men bother with the niceties? And how are they meant to calibrate their own behaviour when the signals sent by women are so confusing?

Modesty also gave women an easy excuse to fend off sleazy men and an opportunity to be judged on deeper qualities than sexual accessibility. In her 1999 bestseller A Return To Modesty, young American author Wendy Shalit argued that modesty was a protection device for women and that the public display of nudity destroyed female erotic power.

"From sex education in [primary] school to co-ed bathrooms in college, today's young woman is being pressured relentlessly to overcome her embarrassment, her 'hang-ups', and especially her romantic hopes," she wrote. "Meanwhile, the problems young women struggle with grow steadily more extreme: from sexual harassment, stalking and date rape to anorexia and self-mutilation."

There is a lot of talk about the problem of fatherless boys. But what about fatherless girls? One of the things fathers do better than mothers is protect their little girls from sexual predators.

But instead of being protected, many fatherless girls spend puberty fending off the advances of their mother's boyfriends. Old feminists derided modesty and chastity as patriarchal shackles, but patriarch is just another word for father.

devinemiranda@hotmail.com

[Law]

Amazing that a female reporter in a mainstream media outlet would write a story so openly supportive of traditional modesty and patriarchy.

[Law]

Would someone more HTML savvy than I post the pic for the article in this thread?

[finnman69]

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[goldstategop]

I applaud Sarah Freeman's stand. Men are drawn to women but we are more drawn to women who dress modestly than those who overtly advertise their sexuality. Its only human nature - a man will prize a woman more who saves herself over one who is easy to get into bed.

[BibChr]

What's with this common-sense from AUSTRALIA today?!

Dan

[finnman69]

[chance33_98]

I like the one on the left.

[Dead Corpse]

Bravo Sierra. Modest? Is that why the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit edition sells so poorly?

[Freedom4US]

In her 1999 bestseller A Return To Modesty, young American author Wendy Shalit argued that modesty was a protection device for women and that the public display of nudity destroyed female erotic power.

It's always nice to get paid to state the obvious, I suppose. Maybe she can get credit for inventing the wheel, too.

[OMalley]

the first one looks like a grim reaper convention;)

[Damocles]

Man, that's just plain freaky...

[goldstategop]

SI is fantasy. In real life, no man wants his girlfriend or wife to dress like a slut in public. If a woman wants to show lots of skin or more than a hint of cleavage, the appropriate place to do it is behind closed doors.

[goldstategop]

That one was a topical book, written at a time when Monica Lewinsky gave her body to Bill Clinton but he never returned the gesture.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

She did the right thing, not wearing that shirt. She should mail it to my wife now.

[freebilly]

I like the one on the left.

She's hot!

[Stop Legal Plunder]

Female modesty in the past forced men to behave respectfully towards women in order to achieve their ultimate goal of having sex. But with sex available on a platter, on call, why should men bother with the niceties?

It's only human nature - a man will prize a woman more who saves herself over one who is easy to get into bed.

Indeed. I have heard this put more bluntly as: "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" The question is quite vulgar, I realize, but all too many women don't have a clue as to "Why won't he commit?" and they need to know the answer.

[dead]

Miranda Devine is one of their lone journalistic voices of common sense.

[freebilly]

They're all hot. Ain't no fans under their hoods....

[Enterprise]

"In real life, no man wants his girlfriend or wife to dress like a slut in public.

Actually, I think you're right!