Few can deny that the feminine form invites the eye. Nowadays, this is likely taken exclusively as a comment on personal sexual preference, but that’s nonsense. This misunderstanding is likely the root cause of a laughable array of young women believing themselves to be that which is called now “bi.” No, you sweet little, likely to be married to a man, ordinary young lady: to appreciate the unique beauty of the female form is not the same as lusting after it.
All of us can be intrigued by the lines and curvature, the symmetry and variation of a mother’s body. True, many women are not mothers, but it is that capacity that seems to inform so much of the feminine form. Much ink has already been spilled in parsing the virtue of modesty. This brief reflection is no such in-depth dissertation. Merely a brief thought experiment, cud for us cows to chew on as we go about our daily lives.
From the emotionally-charged discussion about the propriety of wearing skin-tight leggings as pants of yesteryear, we have emerged in a new era of bold and brave “freedom” that sees women clad in nothing but was until quite recently considered undergarments attending everything from the opera to the grocery store. We have made so many foregone conclusions in disrobing that the past seems almost unreachable.
Consider:
It used to be that mothers did not disclose to their children when they were pregnant. This is a level of reserve that we likely do not wish to return to. But it is fascinating to consider. The Von Trapp children were surprised when they were reunited with their mother after a trip and they met a new sibling. If memory serves from reading Down a Sunny Dirt Road, the charming autobiography of the creators of the Berenstain Bears, both Jan and Stan Berenstain met baby siblings they did not see coming.
Memorably, in the Betsy-Tacy series, Betsy and Julia are shipped off to the uncle’s farm and summoned back to meet “Ray Junior,” who turns out to be baby Margaret. Betsy, it seems, had no notion of what motivated her parents’ home renovations.
Again, this extreme privacy may very well be undesirable. But how could all these mothers hide the dramatic physical transformations of pregnancy? Sartorial ingenuity. We tend to think that dresses of past centuries were drab, shapeless affairs. But a survey of historical evidence suggests that there was a charming accentuation of the feminine figure along with the billowing folds of discrete dressing styles.
It’s quite remarkable that so many women successfully dressed in a manner to conceal pregnancy when now, even when wearing comparatively modest attire, a bout of indigestion will elicit questions from nosy children and strangers about the state of one’s childbearing season.
Of course, people still successfully hide pregnancies in loose-fitting clothes, but it’s a lot less becoming. And it usually serves not the beautiful surprise of siblings but instead lands an episode of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.
The reactionary long dresses and skirts of our day accentuate nothing. The point is solely concealment, not the treasuring of mystery. So much of “modest” clothing consists of shapeless sacks of garish-colored clothe or, heaven forbid, the oft-mocked denim of the stereotypical American Christian matron. A truly beautiful garment adorns a woman’s body to show respect for the mysterious power contained therein while eliciting appreciation for just how beautiful a woman is.
No sane person wants to return to the corset and hoop skirt but some of the principles of past eras seem worth revisiting. Attempted modesty inspired by fear will not be worthy of women. For that, only modesty with respect for the mystery will do.
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