Having posted a few words on feminine modesty yesterday, I thought I might add another little thought that I had concerning feminine modesty and Islam. This occurred to me the other day when the Doctor and I were walking in a local park. We passed two Muslim women, fully covered except for their hands and faces, and a little girl of around eight years old. Presumably she was the daughter of one of the women. She was wearing jeans, a sweater, and sneakers — perfectly standard attire for an American child. Having lived in Islamic societies a couple of times in my life, I know that this is a fairly common practice. Women are expected to cover themselves almost entirely, but there is very little concern about the attire of prepubescent girls, who may wear whatever is comfortable or convenient. The day a girl reaches puberty marks a dramatic break in her life. Thenceforth she must always clothe herself as a woman.

I should specify now that I do not want to turn this into a discussion of particular articles of clothing and their suitability for women. That subject has been banned on this blog, and for good reason. What bothered me about this scene was not the apparel of the child per se, but rather the obvious disparity in attitudes towards women and girls. It’s true, of course, that children and adults will tend to wear slightly different clothing in most cultures, and also that young women should quite properly pay more attention to modesty in dress as they approach adulthood, especially once their bodies begin to take on a more womanly form. Nobody is offended to see a lightly-clad baby, of either sex, playing in a sandbox on a warm summer day. As children get older, they become more aware of the sexual aspect of their nature, and together with that awareness they should be taught about the importance of physical modesty. There is a social and spiritual significance, both in the concealing and in the revealing of different parts of their physical body, and by adolescence they should have some understanding of this. They should dress in a way that seems conducive to fostering virtue.

Apparel is significant, of course, for the messages it sends to others. All cultures will have certain specialized types of dress that, by convention, signify certain things. A physician who walks into the examining room in jeans and a flannel shirt will probably find his patient much more nervous than he would if he wore a white lab coat. White coats, in our culture, signify professional competence, specifically in medicine and in certain sciences. Of course there are other professions, too, that are distinguished by special sorts of dress, and priests and religious likewise show that they are “set apart” from the rest of society by wearing unusual (but recognizable) sorts of clothing. Beyond these very obvious, formalized conventions, there are also a wide variety of subtler signals associated with clothing. Different colors, different styles, different levels of formality, different amounts of money spent… a panoply of choices allow us to communicate a whole range of things about ourselves to every person we might encounter throughout the day. Some messages are subtle, and some quite overt, but one thing is clear: the way we dress affects both how others perceive us, and how we feel about ourselves.

What should we make, then, of a cultural convention whereby women undergo a dramatic change in dress specifically at the onset of puberty? I can see two possibilities here. The first is that the change in dress signifies a substantial change in social status. And indeed, there are many transitions in life that might be marked by a sudden change in dress. In some cultures (though not really in ours) people (particularly women) dress differently after they are married. As I’ve already said, people change their dress upon entering different professions (though that normally only applies when they’re on the job) and upon entrance into the religious life. Kings dress distinctively (or used to) and so do inmates. In all these cases, the change in attire signifies a dramatic alteration in one’s situation in life.

To a certain degree, I think this is the case with Muslims at the onset of puberty. Puberty is the age at which they are said to be accountable for their actions. In particular, this is the time when they are taught about practices relating to sexual purity. But that change isn’t really equivalent to a change in social status. And so far as I have been able to discover, there isn’t a dramatic change in a girl’s social standing at the onset of puberty — her activities and duties remain largely the same, the only exception being that she may now be eligible for marriage (but normally that will wait at least a few years.) All things taken together, the social change doesn’t seem great enough to merit the change in dress. And although both boys and girls become accountable for their actions at puberty, it is only the girls who are expected to change their wardrobes so dramatically.

Which brings me to the second of my two possibilities — that women are expected to cover themselves only once they’ve reached the age where they will be desirable to men. So, in other words, their clothing is not an expression of anything about them, nor intended to help cultivate an interior disposition in accordance with feminine virtue. It is intended only to shield them. If it were not for this sudden transition, we might suppose that, as with us, modesty in dress is intended to help foster in the woman a particular sort of self-image. We might disagree at points about the effects of particular items of clothing, but the central goal would be the same. And indeed, I have heard Muslim women make something like this claim. But for me, it’s the startling transition from girlhood to womanhood that makes this implausible. Puberty brings with it certain experiential changes, to be sure. But a 10-year-old girl is not a radically different sort of creature from a 13-year-old girl, and her self-understanding does not transform overnight. If the clothes were indeed supposed to foster a particular sort of disposition, they would be phased in over a period of years, as the girl increased in both physical and mental maturity. You cannot claim to have a high concern for feminine modesty, while remaining indifferent to its development in children.

Particularly in places where the burkha is worn, it often seems that the goal is precisely to make the women faceless, each one identical to all the others. No doubt some Muslims would argue that it sends a message about the woman’s willingness to obey God… but on an earthly level, the main message seems to be: “back off.” What kind of interior disposition does this foster? What does it say about her place within society? And insofar as the primary purpose of the burkha does relate to protection from men, this shows a lack of concern about their interior dispositions as well as the women’s. Men, apparently, cannot be trusted to rein in their lustful passions appropriately; the only way to prevent them from misbehaving is to remove all possible stimuli. Once again, the pattern of dress seems calculated, not to foster virtue, but to militate against it.

It’s always good to be careful about accusing other religions or cultures of misogyny. After all, the Catholic church gets accused of this all the time, and obviously I think the charge quite ill-founded. We should recognize, too, that there are some Muslim cultures or families that show concern for the dress of younger girls as well as older ones; very likely these would protest against being grouped with their less strict counterparts, just as we would protest being called to answer for the behavior of heretical liberal Catholics. Still… the more I examine that question, the weightier the evidence seems to be.