A Rebellion of Modest Proportions

By Tom Ryan

Espousing conservative dressing and even virginity, many girls are embracing modesty as part of a “good girl” movement.

The leader of movement is author Wendy Shalit. Her new book, Girls Gone Mild, argues that teens and young women are rejecting promiscuous “bad girl” roles embodied by Britney Spears, Bratz dolls and “Girls Gone Wild” videos. Instead, they’re covering up, insisting on curfews on college campuses, bringing moms on dates and pledging to stay virgins until married.

The movement challenges the feminist tenet that being openly sexual empowers women.

“Looking ‘wild’ and acting ‘wild’ are supposed to be empowering, but more often they lead to misery, especially for young women who quickly learn to put their emotions in deep freeze to do what is expected,” Ms. Shalit writes in Girls Gone Mild. The book is based on interviews and thousands of email exchanges with 100 girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 28.

“We’re at a really critical time right now,” Ms. Shalit told The Toronto Star. “People realize that this pornification of everything isn’t working.”

The movement appears to be spreading:

• In Pittsburgh, teenagers staged a “girlcott” against Abercrombie & Fitch, persuading them to stop selling T-shirts reading, “Who needs brains when you have these?,” “I had a nightmare I was a brunette,” and “Do I make you look fat?”;
• Pure Fashion, a modeling and etiquette program for teen girls whose goal
  is to show “it is possible to be cute, stylish and modest” has put on 13
  shows in 2007 featuring 600 models;
• Websites advocating conservative dressing – ModestApparelUSA.com, ModestByDesign.com
  and DressModestly.com – have been all launched;
• A newly launched Eliza magazine bills itself as a “modest fashion” magazine
  for 17- to 34-year-olds;
• Macy’s is carrying items from Shade clothing, founded by two Mormon women
  wanting trendy, but not revealing, clothes.

Some see any modesty movement as an inevitable reaction to increased female sexual empowerment, similar to the backlash against flappers in the 1920s and feminists in the 1970s, rather than any seismic shift toward chastity.

“Gays and lesbians are becoming mainstreamed, women make up more than half of college populations, they’re becoming full partners in the workplace and there’s a general cultural deconstruction of what gender means,” Joshua Zeitz, author of “Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern” told Newsweek. “We go through waves of progress and reaction, but you can never bottle these things back up for real.”

But Newsweek also posed that the movement may have its roots in the mainstreaming of conservative religious values. Christian rock brands and “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets have recently become vogue. Pure Fashion and many modesty websites are also tied to religious organizations, although they attract nonreligious customers as well.

Another twist is that by acting “good”, daughters are rebelling against their parents.

“It used to be that moms would control the way their daughters dressed. But now we have this ‘Desperate Housewives’ culture, and the moms are as influenced by the media as the kids,” said Ms. Shalit. “They’ve lost the sense of encouraging their daughters to be ladylike.”

Discussion Questions: Do you see signs of a modesty movement among girls and
young women? What does it mean for retailers that seek to serve these consumers?

• Girls
  Going Mild(er) – Newsweek
• How the `bad’ girl became good – The Toronto Star