Head Covering and Modesty

Cynthia Gee writes:
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Here in Central PA the Mennonites wear black tights because flesh colored tights or pantyhose look like skin and so are “less modest”. The Amish (there IS a difference) wear flesh-colored tights or pantyhose, because colored stockings are not as “plain” and thus are less modest.

The Mennonites wear flowered dresses because a pattern is thought to distract the eye from the contours of the body and so is more modest than a solid color. The Amish wear solid colored dresses because prints attract attention and thus are less modest than solid colors. (The younger Amish women also wear black bib-aprons that wrap almost all the way around their bodies. Some of them wrap the apron so tightly that they look like they are wearing a spandex dress with contrasting sleeves! 8o )

In the US, some women put their hair up in a bun and cover the bun, because they think that hair is immodest, whereas in Japan, it was once believed that only immodest women showed the ears and the nape of the neck.

And when I was a teenager, women who were on the make and who wanted to attract men would get gussied up in a dress. Pants were considered to be more modest than long skirts, and women who wore skirts when pants would do were show-offs at best, and at worst, they were, well…..

I could go on and on.
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The White Man's comments:

Perhaps a basic black-and white woodland camouflage pattern would work. Oops, no, that would be worldly.

The point is that immodest women can always manage to advertise their wares, no matter what the rules of the culture may be. Certainly the harlots who hung around Jesus were dressed distinctively enough to be readily identified even by those who had never been their customers.

Unfortunately, once rules enter the picture, modesty often goes out the window. No woman really wants to look like a prairie muffin, so the tendency is always to accentuate one's assets in whatever way works. Then other women, who aren't particularly wanting to advertise, fall for peer pressure and wear the same styles just to look nice.

Women in Western (i.e. 'immodest') dress in Saudi Arabia can expect to get their bodies pinched, poked, or groped when they go out in public. We're a bit more refined than that here in the USA, but many women wearing the conservative garb of their order would be shocked to realise the eye candy they are providing some men.