![\"Old](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/635\/2017\/08\/862px-Paula_Modersohn-Becker_001.jpg\")
<\/a>This is post is not about modesty as such. To go on about our cultural sexual and other missteps would take an entire other post (or several). My interest is, instead, in how modesty has itself become a commodity to be fetishized within (largely Traditionalist) Catholic circles. This is not surprising; sadly, it\u2019s merely proof of how inescapable the logic of contemporary capitalism is, how charged with power the ways of the world are.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, we\u2019ll have to start with a definition of modesty. The Catholic Encyclopedia<\/a> <\/em>defines it thus:<\/p>\n With chastity is often confounded modesty, though this latter is properly but a special circumstance of chastity or rather, we might say, its complement. For modesty is the quality of delicate reserve and constraint with reference to all acts that give rise to shame, and is therefore the outpost and safeguard of chastity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Modesty is a safeguard against wrong action; that\u2019s all the Encyclopedia <\/em>has to say on the topic. Aquinas<\/a>, in his charming way, has this to say:<\/p>\n But those women who have no husband nor wish to have one, or who are in a state of life inconsistent with marriage, cannot without sin desire to give lustful pleasure to those men who see them, because this is to incite them to sin. And if indeed they adorn themselves with this intention of provoking others to lust, they sin mortally; whereas if they do so from frivolity, or from vanity for the sake of ostentation, it is not always mortal, but sometimes venial. And the same applies to men in this respect. Hence Augustine says (Ep. ccxlv ad Possid.): \u201cI do not wish you to be hasty in forbidding the wearing of gold or costly attire except in the case of those who being neither married nor wishful to marry, should think how they may please God: whereas the others think on the things of the world, either husbands how they may please their wives, or wives how they may please their husbands, except that it is unbecoming for women though married to uncover their hair, since the Apostle commands them to cover the head.\u201d Yet in this case some might be excused from sin, when they do this not through vanity but on account of some contrary custom: although such a custom is not to be commended.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Again, here modesty (not named as such, though I think we can infer from the above definition that that is what he means) is primarily associated with guarding against provoking lust in others. Aquinas says that to adorn oneself out of vanity may<\/em> not be a mortal sin, but doing so to get somebody\u2019s jollies going (so to speak) is a no go. This applies equally to men and to women (though, as a medieval, Aquinas\u2019 stronger concern is, unsurprisingly, with women).<\/p>\n But how is modesty talked about by many who promote it in the Church today? To take a fairly benign example, an author over at ChurchPop<\/a><\/em> has said the following about veiling:<\/p>\n It makes the woman feel beautiful, and some husbands think that veils are \u201chot.\u201d The beauty of the veil is something that honors God in the same way beautiful architecture or beautiful vestments do. They contribute to giving God the worship that is due to Him.<\/p>\n UPDATE 4\/21\/15:<\/strong>\u00a0Author\u2019s note: Some people object to my use of the word \u201chot\u201d. I am using it in the context of Christian marriage: think Song of Songs: \u2018You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.\u2019 (Song of Songs 4:9) Physical attraction is a very good and important part of Christian marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In a slightly less odd tone:<\/p>\n Women naturally have beautiful hair, and a veil ornaments and accentuates that beauty. In general, we want to bring the best of ourselves to liturgy, and veiling is a way of doing so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The addition to the first passage does help clarify the point (and arguably makes the use \u201cokay,\u201d since within marriage it seems fine to encourage \u201csexiness\u201d in some sense). The word \u201chot,\u201d however gets to the point: modesty is often presented as an \u201cattractive\u201d quality that ought to excite men (and, often does, if the \u201cthirst\u201d on Twitter and Facebook is to be taken to mean anything). There\u2019s a real fetishizing of the feminine form as it exists when covered up. Anyone with experience among young Trads will have seen this. It\u2019s in memes (here is an example<\/a>, though it\u2019s more of a quasi-meme. Most of the real stuff can seem a bit, well, at times racist); it\u2019s on websites (another example<\/a>); it\u2019s, well, basically everywhere in the Trad community (which, in online presence anyway, remains predominantly male). Hence the \u201cthirst\u201d already mentioned above.<\/p>\n On the one hand, this seems (ironically) a way for certain forms of Traditionalist to accommodate themselves to digital culture, to turn our primary means of information dissemination into an evangelical tool. On the other, in doing so, it has come to make modesty obey the laws of Capital under which virtually everything must be commodified and fetishized (what is all of this lustful discourse around \u201chot\u201d modesty but a form of fetishization?).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To clarify, here is how Marx<\/a> defines commodity fetishism:<\/p>\n There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things qua<\/em> commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men\u2019s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Marx has a rather complicated definition of a commodity, but the simple point is that under capitalism most everything ends up becoming one (arguably memes are not really commodities, but that doesn\u2019t much detract from the point; we\u2019ve certainly reached the point where intellectual property has been commodified). These commodities develop auras all their own. A famous example <\/a>of such an effect is Coca-Cola. Coke doesn\u2019t really quench thirst; its utility is more-or-less unrelated to why we drink it. It\u2019s simply developed a significance that cannot be reduced to utility. The same can be said for modesty memes and modesty discourse. \u201cHot\u201d pictures of veiled women, memes comparing \u201cugly\u201d feminists to \u201cattractive\u201d traditional women\u2014these are modes of fetishization that excite a response within the reader or viewer. The idea is to make modesty \u201chot,\u201d when per Aquinas and the Catholic Encyclopedia<\/em> modesty (especially outside marriage) is the opposite of a fetish; it exists to rein in any possibility of excitement.<\/p>\n