Is Modesty Empowerment?

Friday was World Hijab Day. Millions of women across the world chose to wear a scarf on their head in support of Muslim women who choose to dress modestly every day. They say that their choice to wear a Hijab is empowering to them.

Certainly, how you dress reflects your inner self or internal spirit, if you will. In that context could dressing modestly be perceived as a how comfortable you as an individual are with being detached from how society expects you to dress in a sexualised way? If that is the case then dressing modestly shows an inner confidence not evident in those who dress in a more sexualised way, right?

Wrong.

What is modest? Is figure forming jeans modest enough? Can you show any flesh and be modest? I could wear a business suit and feel I am dressed modestly, for some it could be I am dressing immodestly because I am showing a bit of leg? Where is there a modesty line? Whose modesty line counts? And how do you know when you have crossed it?

Could it be as simple as this? Women for centuries have been given the responsibility for men’s behaviour. Modesty is not about empowering women rather it is about reducing the excuses men can trot out for THEIR sexualised behaviour. Women need to be able to choose how they dress, be it modestly or not we cannot any longer moderate our behaviours because men seem incapable of moderating their own. Women are measured against man, rather than as individuals in our own right, however we are NOT responsible for how men react to us.

Is modesty empowerment? Maybe. For some women it is. However, it is also a control mechanism used by a patriarchal world to force us to conform.