Rather, if you consider, how we define appropriate dress today, it becomes readily apparent that dress is highly responsive to context (i.e. one religion vs another; one country vs another; one gender vs another; etc.).
Moreover, not only does appropriate dress differ by context, but the regulation of dress, overtly (i.e. dress code policy of a school, workplace, community, etc.) and otherwise (i.e. cultural norms perpetuated through social and peer influence), reflects differences in what is considered appropriate and/or inappropriate censorship of expression (personal, cultural, religious, political, and otherwise).
For example, is it appropriate for France to prohibit the wearing of face veils, in protest of gender role conscription of Muslim women among modern French women? Meanwhile, the dress of Amish women, which is regulated within Amish communities, also represents gender role conscription... yet no part of Amish dress is prohibited among non-Amish communities.
In the end, does it matter how we dress? At work? With friends? On a date? And is it ever appropriate to regulate our attire? At work? With friends? On a date?
Which begs the question... is it appropriate for schools in Utah to haphazardly photoshop yearbook photos in order to digitally modify the attire of young women, based on inconsistently applied dress code policies? Or... is it appropriate for companies to advise employees to adorn themselves less attractively or risk their jobs and their careers for failing to comply with misogynistically applied dress code policies (viz. dress codes that disproportionally apply to women, for example)?
When dress is deemed appropriate or inappropriate and subsequently censored... what messages do we communicate? For when dress codes are disproportionally devised by one group in order to subsequently disproportionally censor the dress of another group... (vis a vis any number of labels, i.e. gender, religion, ethnicity, national origin, socioeconomic status, marital status, sexual orientation, etc.)... are dress codes, overt and otherwise, truly innocuous?
More disturbing still... even when we don't explicitly regulate dress... we implicitly do.
Isn't this how we rationalize condemnation, blame, and the stiff price of noncompliance? Especially vis a vis women who are blamed for assault... not as perpetrators, but, as victims? How many people who deny victim blaming, openly discuss the relationship between a woman's attire and harm, as if the two are meaningfully correlated? As if assault is ever appropriate, in any way whatsoever, by virtue of a perpetrator's designation of a victim's dress as inappropriate.
Seriously?
Yet, men and women alike, succumb to this intractable stupidity. Why? Ostensibly, for (at least) two reasons: to mitigate our fears of personal harm and enforce social norms and expectations. For when we hold victims responsible for their victimization (per the failure to display appropriate rape-discouraging attire), we affirm our false sense of personal security via our superior and sanctimonious demonstration of normative conformity.
However, despite how entrenched this illogical belief persists within our dialog about appropriate and inappropriate dress... if people who do good and people who do harm are indiscriminately subjected to good experiences and harmful experiences, irregardless of divine justice and/or karma... by what sound reason is dress, ever a legitimate basis for determining whether or not a person deserves or doesn't deserve, to be harmed?
Along this vein, ridiculous personal safety measures, from anti rape clothing to anti rape nail polish, seek to redistribute the responsibility of preventing rape, upon the shoulders of its potential victims... within a cultural milieu that also perpetuates pervasive shame-inducing dress conformity, in order to ostensibly de-sexualize potential victims. Is this censorship any more appropriate than France's prohibition of face veils? Or the digital modifications to the attire of students in Utah?
Appropriate, inappropriate... does it matter?
In the end, our clothes neither make us victims nor perpetrators nor advocates nor condemners. It's our unremitting objectification, sexualization, and repulsive degradation of human beings (and frankly all kind), that generates the fertile social and moral foundation upon which perpetrators justify the suspension of empathy required to victimize another being and condemners justify the suspension of empathy required to shame another being.
Until anyone can wear anything at all or nothing at all, anywhere and everywhere... without verbal, physical, and sexual harassment and/or assault... we will continue to inexplicably fail to sustain the basic moral premise that every being, regardless of gender or attire, deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.
Addendum (2014)
This post is inspired by the press garnered by the invention of a date rape detecting nail polish. While intriguing and noteworthy... it invariably puts the emphasis and capital on the wrong end of the equation.
For date rape detecting nail polish will not decrease the incidence of rape, anywhere. Instead, decreasing the incidence of rape requires demonstrative concordance with affirmative consent and mutually respectful physical contact... because the terrible fact of the matter is that men and women rape women and men.
More on affirmative consent from The Huffington Post by Tyler Kingkade (September 8, 2014): Colleges Are Rewriting What Consent Means To Address Sexual Assault
What's ridiculous about protests of affirmative consent, is the assumption that affirmative consent is inherently impossible or difficult to gain, during normal consensual sexual interactions. Regardless of the fact that it is not... in reality, the reason for affirmative consent policies is not to require overt affirmative consent for every sexual act between consenting adults, but to protect men and women who cannot give consent because they are (1) unconscious, (2) asleep (or passed out), (3) in an altered state (i.e. the victim is under the influence of medication or illicit drugs, for example), (4) cognitively incapable of providing legal affirmative consent (i.e. a victim who possesses the functional intelligence of a child, for example), etc. In addition, affirmative consent policies also protect victims within relationships, for whom consensual sexual contact may occur without overt affirmative consent... alongside contested violence (sexual and otherwise).
However, aside from the issue of dress and overt sexual violence (i.e. rape and assault)... our cultural expectation that women who adorn themselves in a non-de-sexualized manner (i.e. anything other than a potato sack), should neither be surprised by the reactions of others nor hold others accountable for their reactions (i.e. prurient comments and lascivious gestures)... is irresponsibly inane. Why are women shamed and condemned for not wearing potato sacks, while reactors, actors, commenters, gesturers, etc. are not censured for objectifying, sexualizing, and/or repulsively degrading mothers, daughters, sisters...?!
Which begs the question... is our cultural expectation that women wear de-sexualized attire a slippery slope towards burkas for all women? Yet, even where burkas are common, sexual violence is still endemic.
More from The World Health Organization (2013): Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women. (Although this report is lengthy, skip to page 18 for Figure 2: Global map showing regional prevalence rates of intimate partner violence by WHO regions (2010) and page 20 for Table 5: Lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence (physical and/or sexual) or non-partner sexual violence or both among all women (15 years and older) by WHO region.)
WTFudge
Bafflingly genial acceptance of "boys will be boys" and "men will be men" theories of gender specific behaviors create nightmarish conditions for women around the world, i.e. India. More from Time by Per Liljas (June 13, 2014): With 4 Hangings in 2 Weeks, India’s Women Are Living in Fear.
Moreover, lest we minimize the unnervingly hostile and deeply inappropriate experiences to which women in so called civilized societies are routinely subjected... here's this, from The Journal by Mia Doering (October 6; year not noted): Making lewd remarks to women on the street is not ‘banter’. Not surprisingly, readers and listeners of Mia's experience from every gender camp, hardly extend her any sympathy... which only further illustrates how unquestioningly, blatantly pervasive bias is condoned, with respect to normative gender specific behaviors.
In addition, the issue of appropriate and inappropriate dress also includes the appropriate and/or inappropriate censorship of expression (personal, cultural, religious, political, and otherwise). For when we require dress conformity, regardless of context, we invariably perpetuate discomfiting social messages. To wit, unexamined cultural norms, influenced by misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, and narrow minded myopia, habitually inform and guide explicit and implicit expectations of appropriate and inappropriate dress within our schools, workplaces, and communities (religious and otherwise).
Further Reading
While there are many articles featuring the recent development of an anti rape nail polish by four university students, this one comprehensively discusses why nail polish won't solve our rape problem: from The Telegraph by Claire Cohen (August 26, 2014): Anti-rape nail varnish? Pah. This just shows we still see sexual assault as a women's problem
More about the banning of face veils in France (starting with the results of its appeal): from The Telegraph by Rory Mulholland (July 1, 2014) European Court of Human Rights upholds French burka ban & from The Worldpost on The Huffington Post by Elizabeth Nicholas (December 18, 2013) France's Burqa Ban Gets New Scrutiny in European Court
Nevertheless, the wearing of burkas is, in and of itself, a contested topic within Muslim and Arabic communities. Here's an argument for banning it: from The Daily Mail by Dr. Taj Hargey (July 16, 2014): Why I, as a Muslim, am launching a campaign to ban the burka in Britain. (Note that Dr. Hargey espouses views that are characterized, by some, as polarizing and controversial.) Here's a brief tutorial on the various head coverings worn by women within Muslim and Arabic communities: from BBC (September 17, 2013): What's the difference between a hijab, niqab and burka?
While the WHO publication above (Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women), is the most neutral, with regard to addressing the incidence of sexual violence towards women around the world... here are two, biased but interesting articles nonetheless, that reflect the stark reality that Islamic ideologies (viz. Sharia) on de-sexualized attire for women, do not prevent rapes and other forms of sexual violence towards women within Muslim and Arabic communities: from Europe News by Nicolai Sennels (February 5, 2010): Sexual abuse widespread among Muslims & from The Muslim Issue (July 11, 2013): Rigid Muslim socieites have the highest rape scales in the world – Study.
More than anything else, the fact that sexual violence occurs within societies that legally injunct and morally enforce de-sexualized clothing for women, illustrates that de-sexualizing women, especially via attire, does not minimize nor eliminate a woman's risk for sexual violence.
Of course, dictating the attire of men and women, within communities that circumscribe the roles of women, is not an isolated phenomenon of Muslim and Arabic communities. Hasidic Judaism is one other such community: from New York Post by Sara Stewart (February 7, 2012): I was a Hasidic Jew - but I broke free. More about Hasidic Judaism dress @ Wiki. Furthermore, even among communities that are less controversial for most Americans, explicit dress codes illustrate gender role conscription. Case in point: Amish dress codes from National Geographic (undated) Amish: Out of Order Facts and fundamentalist dress codes (nondenominational, although, ostensibly Christian) from unFundy.com (undated) Chapter 6: True Christians Are Not Part Of This World.
As for the high school students in Utah whose photos were digitally altered, I couldn't find an article that illustrated the purportedly inconsistent nature of these alterations. Nevertheless, here's an article that describes the bruhaha: from Fox News by Samantha Varvel (May 30, 2014) Utah high school 'learned lessons' after altering yearbook photos of girls.
In addition to the explicit and implicit designations of appropriate and inappropriate attire within communities (religious and otherwise) and schools... attire is also routinely regulated via workplace dress codes. Here's a brief list of what is legally permitted within workplace dress codes, from Lawyers.com (undated): Behavior Restrictions at Work. Whether you personally believe that workplaces should or should not retain the right to censor expression (personal, cultural, religious, political, and otherwise) via attire, here's a discussion of various legal protests of workplace dress codes, along with their legal outcomes: from Colorado Bar Association by Laura Hazen and Jenna Syrdahl (2010): Dress Codes and Appearance Policies: What Not to Wear to Work.
In addition, women who've attributed their workplace terminations to their attractiveness and/or purportedly provocative attire, have also publicized their protests of misogynistically applied dress code policies: from International Business Times by Industry Leaders Magazine (June 18, 2013) Hot & Fired. Being Too Sexy Can Be Too Much. In one such case, an Iowa court unbelievably upheld the right of a small business to fire a woman whose attractiveness apparently threatened the owner's marriage, from Outside the Beltway by James Joyner (December 22, 2012): Firing Workers For Being Too Sexy Approved By Iowa Supreme Court.
In sum:
When unexamined cultural norms, influenced by misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, and narrow minded myopia, habitually inform and guide, explicit and implicit expectations of appropriate and inappropriate dress within our schools, our workplaces, and our communities (religious and otherwise)...
What exactly are we complicitly perpetuating?
- M.
Addendum (2016)
There are two myths that continue to run rampant, despite sound reason and good sense, that time and time again, intersect with our notions of appropriate and inappropriate dress.
Myth One: The only legitimate rape is when a large and/or burly man, burdened by sexual urges (due to the normal flux of hormones that propel the healthy sex drive of men, overwhelmingly toxic sexuality perpetuated by the propagandizement of lustful sin (aka Western or American media), and/or monstrous carnal appetite), physically overwhelms a woman unknown to him. Out of an abundance of modesty, this woman, wearing a potato sack that reveals nothing of her physical form, protests while vigorously protecting her chastity. The man proceeds to physically assault her until her resistance is abjectly nullified, whereupon, he satiates his bestial desires. All under the cover of night in a squalid alley in the bosom of a hotbed of profligate criminality.
Myth Two: Rape culture is a doctrine perpetuated by the misleading sex in order to satisfy their contrived modesty when they succumb to their shameless sexuality with a partner who should never be held accountable for enjoying the carnal knowledge of a whore, willingly or otherwise. Moreover, rape culture is also a doctrine perpetuated by the nefarious sex in order to satisfy their obscene vanity when a partner rejects their patently unacceptable offer of mutual courtship, in order to abide by the noblest of aphorisms: harlots are bedded (willingly or otherwise), not wedded.
That these myths, as well as countless others, continue to possess enormous traction today, is a testament to the united front of men and women, to ceaselessly perpetuate misanthropy the world over. (More from Wikipedia: Misanthropy. See also: The Scarlet Letter (1850), by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Note that many familiar with this work miss the point, with regards to morality and dignity within the stultifying milieu of myopia.)
Moreover, what else are women who propel idolatries of chastity and virtue that require, nay demand, so-called appropriate dress and abstinence at all costs, than equal opportunity misogynists? For these idolatries disproportionally objectify, sexualize, and degrade women. From Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (August 9, 2015): Sex Education (HBO).
Notwithstanding that women also objectify, sexualize, and repulsively degrade men, too. And, like men... women rationalize, justify, and legitimize this manifestly demeaning devaluation as vehemently too. From Elite Daily by Alexia LaFata (July 10, 2015): Why It's Completely Okay to Objectify Men... No, Really, It Is.
Consider this:
If objectification, sexualization, and degradation integrally scaffold rape culture -
and women and men rape men and women -
then -
doesn't sound reason and good sense lead to the realization that the least we can do to dismantle the integral scaffolding of rape culture in totum (not solely as it applies to one label or one group) - is to reject all objectification, all sexualization, all degradation - as unbefitting the dignity and respect due all beings - regardless of label (i.e. gender, religion, ethnicity, national origin, socioeconomic status, marital status, sexual orientation, etc.)?
For what are we really defending, when we're defending the unremitting objectification, sexualization, and repulsive degradation of any being?
That we persistently devise repugnant justifications to rationalize reprehensible harm against human beings (and frankly all kind), reflects our enduring willingness to legitimize recklessly immoral depravity, the world over.
Verily, labels possess no intrinsic power to deprive any being of their dignity and their respect. No more than any label possess intrinsic power to legitimize the degradation of any being. Thus, no one of us of us is to blame for our rampant rape culture -
all of us are to blame.
For there is no moral virtue in the deprivation of the dignity and the respect of any being - regardless of label or dress. Period.
Until -
Anyone can wear - anything at all or nothing at all - anywhere and everywhere - without verbal, physical, sexual harassment and/or assault - we will continue to endemically fail to sustain the sacrosanct premise that every being - regardless of gender or attire or profession or beliefs, etc. - possesses inviolable dignity - as beings.
- M.
More
When unexamined cultural norms, influenced by misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, and narrow minded myopia, habitually inform and guide, explicit and implicit expectations of appropriate and inappropriate dress within your schools, your workplaces, and your communities (religious and otherwise)...
What exactly are you... complicitly perpetuating by legally injuncting and morally enforcing... appropriate and inappropriate dress... as defined and regulated by unexamined cultural norms, influenced by misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, and narrow minded myopia?
Does your definition of appropriate and inappropriate dress... sustain the sacrosanct premise that every being... regardless of gender or attire or profession or beliefs, etc... possesses inviolable dignity?
Or -
Does your definition of appropriate and inappropriate dress... objectify, sexualize, and degrade... your self and other beings... based on gender, attire, profession, beliefs, (and/or any label for that matter, including religion, ethnicity, national origin, socioeconomic status, marital status, sexual orientation, etc.), etc...?
- M.
Disclaimer:
The opinions presented herewith are (i) solely my own, (ii) solely for entertainment purposes, and (iii) not a substitute for the advice and recommendations of a professional. Nevertheless, the content presented herewith, derive from - direct and indirect - personal and professional - knowledge and experiences - on the topic at hand.
Hugs, M.
Post last updated April 2016.
