Modest Dress - The Ultimate Act of Self Determination

When industrial manufacturing processes were modernised in the late 1800s and early 1900s, for the first time, luxury items became accessible to more people as they could be produced in numbers that reduced scarcity. However, it soon became apparent that there were more luxury goods than there were people to buy them. In response to this conundrum, we saw a range of responses, but one of the most significant was the development of the great Victorian department store. In these British department stores, luxury goods were made to seem aspirational, yet accessible to more people than just royalty and the super-wealthy. Normal people now had a place to go to not only buy aspirational goods, but also to dream of one day buying aspirational goods. Department stores gave working people a real place where they could go and dream of a better life and work towards that better life.

However, World War 1 saw a huge step up in technological development which saw a continued increase in the development of luxury items. By the 1920s, manufacturers were fighting to find a specific share in a limited market. So, they had to find new ways to encourage people to buy their specific product. Hence, from the 1910s, and become more prevalent in the 1920s, we begin to see "problematisation" being used to sell luxury products.

"Problematisation" is a marketing strategy. In this strategy, consumers are told they have a problem and the product being sold is the only one capable of fixing the problem. The problematisation strategy addresses two issues manufacturers were facing in the early 1900s. Firstly, if you have a problem, and that problem can be solved with your product, your product is no longer a mere luxury. In fact, if you can convince consumers the problem is significant enough, your product becomes a necessity. Secondly, if your product fixes a problem, then you do not need to target your product at a tiny market of people wealthy enough to buy luxuries. By making your product a necessity, you open up a market that will never shrink, unless the problem disappears.

However, when it comes to personal products, such as clothes, beauty products, health tonics, appearance related medications etc, the only thing that could be problematised was the body of the consumer. Almost exclusively, this meant the problematisation of women's bodies. And considering in the West in the early 1900s, women were still the legal property of their husbands and were unable to access basic rights such as the right to vote, work or be educated in many fields, women had very little within their control except their bodies. And it was these bodies they were able to utilise (along with manners and outward socially defined behaviours) to attract a husband who would then control their lives. So women responded enthusiastically to problematisation marketing, as they would do whatever it took to manage their physical selves and solve any physical problems with their bodies.

While great gains were made in women's rights over the 20th century, the problematisation strategy never went away, as women continued to respond to the problematisation of their physical form. Looking at advertising campaigns over the 20th century, you can find many examples of women being told they were too short, too tall, too thin, too fat, too flat chested, too large brested, too pale, too dark skinned, too weak, too strong etc etc etc. There is no element of the female physical form that has been spared problematisation. Women's bodies were and continue to be torn apart, over-analysed and cruelly criticised and demonised. For over 120 years, women in the West have been told their bodies are a serious problem that require money spent to enable these flawed bodies to be fixed. Generations of women have grown up in a society telling them their bodies were fundamentally imperfect and in need of masses of products to enable them to be fixed.

The watershed moment for women was with second wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. For the first time, women began to fight back against a society that would problematise them. Women sought equality in the work-place, pay equality and social equality before the law and in their private lives. This could have been the moment when women finally rid themselves of the capitalist strategy of problematisation. But marketers were not going to lose this easy female market they had created for themselves. As such, from the 1960s, we see marketing campaigns embrace some aspects of second wave feminism. One of the capitalist's most embraced aspects of the movement was "free love." They translated this socially based idea of freeing women from suffering should they have children out of wedlock or engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage, into "sexualisation." Marketers suggested that "free love" actually meant "sexual attractiveness" afterall - how could you express free love if no one considered you beautiful enough to want to sleep with you? Likewise, women were told by marketers that their sexualisation was not a form of objectification being used to sell them more products, but rather it was evidence of their "sexual freedom." Women were told they had won the sexual revolution only if they were willing to sexualise themselves by showing as much of their bodies as possible. And let us not forget - a body on show is a body that should be perfect!

Hence, by the 1970s, women were no longer being only problematised, they were also being sexualised as well as problematised! And they were being told they were anti-woman and old-fashioned if they were uncomfortable with this sexualisation. Marketers made women believe that objectification was feminism, all while still telling women their bodies were a problem to be solved. Hence, fashion trends became about what body parts were being shown, rather than the clothes worn on the body. Celebrities wore less and less clothing in the name of being "seen" to be fashionable and popular. Little girls are sold underwear in the name of it being "sexy" when they are not sexually developed. I have seen young girls unwilling to swim at swimming carnivals because all they own is a bikini when they do not have breasts and so the top would peel off when they jumped in the water. Teenage girls in Australia consistently quit playing sport in their teenage years because it is seen as being too masculine, when they could instead sit on the side in skimpy clothes and watch their boyfriends! And girls who may be larger or have some aspect of their body that worries them, often end up developing significant self-hate or even worse, legitimate psychological illnesses (such as anorexia nervosa) because they strive to meet these sexualised standards in a world that problematises what is in fact perfectly normal and beautiful about their bodies!

I am not going to tell anyone that the solution to all this abuse is modest dress. If modest dress is forced upon women the same way sexualisation has been forced upon women, the outcome would be the same. The solution to this issue is not a type of dress - it is to end the sexualisation and problematisation of women's bodies in the media and in advertising. Sadly, there is no sign of any such end occurring any time soon in the West. And so women are left with few options in order to take back their bodies from objectification and to determine for themselves how they feel confident, beautiful and psychologically strong in their clothing.

Except modest dress.

In our current society - modest dress is the ultimate act of self determination. By choosing to cover your body, you are choosing who may see it. You are taking back the entire industry that is devoted to sexualising women's bodies for the purpose of problematising those bodies. Modest dress allows you to decide what parts of your body you will show and who you will show it to. Modest dress also allows you to decide when you will show your body, and whether you want you body being judged by the public. Modest dress not only covers your skin, it can also control your form and shape, ensuring you are not being judged for your size, shape, colour or any other aspect of your body that capitalists have problematised. You can cover parts of your body you find imperfect while you come to terms with your body and begin to realise, when you are free of all the messages telling you there is something wrong with the body you have out in public for everyone to see - that in fact your body is beautiful and perfect and exactly as it is supposed to be. That difference is normal and beautiful and we are not all supposed to look the same or fit into a single definition of beauty. And you will learn that things you were told were disgusting (like your size, skin texture, body hair etc) are in fact not only normal but quite lovely and exist just as they are supposed to exist!

And while modest dress offers the wearer freedom from objectification, it is also a highly powerful weapon in actually achieving the equality women sought in second wave feminism. When you take your body back and refuse to allow yourself to be objectified, all members of society are forced to see your personality and capacities rather than an objectified stereotype of who you should be. I will not lie and pretend this will make your life easier. It may not - many people in power live in great fear of people who they realise are more capable than they are, as well as braver than they are as they are willing to throw out social expectations and free themselves of needless criticism. But, you may also find people in positions of power who are actually interested in getting the best people around them, and in these cases, freeing yourself of objectification guarantees you will be seen for your abilities, not your socially defined attractiveness.

It is for this reason, modest dress is the ultimate act of self-determination. It ensures you are in control of your body and the way that body is portrayed and utilised in public. So ask yourself - are you a strong enough woman to wear modest dress?