7 letters, each a link in a chain of control and always applied to women when referring to our choice of clothing. (How often do you hear fathers referring with pride at how modest their sons are?)

Recently while relaxing in a park near my house, I overheard a conversation between two women. 

“You chose a nice dress for your daughter” one mentions to the other in reference to prom. 

“Thank you. I told them at the store that that we wanted a modest dress. Even for this dress, the neckline was almost too low for her. She is very modest.” The mother responds in a tone of pride, proud to be a mother of a daughter who covers her body. 

“She was the most covered at prom.” The mother adds, this added with a sense that her daughter had accomplished something noteworthy, something that warranted pride and recognition.  The other woman shakes her head, eyebrows raising with an expression of “of course” at the notion that other girls were less covered. 

Is modesty superior? If some of the cultural constructs are to be believed, then, yes, of course it is. Modesty affords a woman with virtue, and virtue allows a woman to inch higher to that oh-so-illusive glass ceiling, that window to a world where men swim shirtless and don’t have so many words lurking in the dark waiting to jump out and label them. 

For the sake of modesty and the status that comes with it, women around the world deny their bodies, their desires, their pleasure, even their very comfort. 

But why?

The story goes something like this: Once upon a time, men were created as strong, sexually entitled beings, warriors and populators of the world. Whereas women were given a more passive nature, wrapped in a form so tempting (think Eve), that it’s our responsibility to not seduce men with our bewitching charms and lust inducing bodies.

What a terrifying and manipulative bedtime story for girls. (For boys, it doesn’t seem like such a bad deal to be granted all the libido but none of the associated responsibilities.) 

But for us women, it’s Sisyphus’s boulder, an impossible task. How can a person be expected to control a mind that does not belong to them? A mind capable of viewing a lizard and transforming it into a dragon with a mere thought. Perhaps it would be more effective to teach men to see a naked woman and cloth her from head to toe in his mind if he so wishes. 

Yet, terrified by ever-present labels fluttering around ready to stick themselves to us, (or in search of those power-granting labels), women behave. I have partaken in such rights of passage so as to not be deemed a wanton woman. 

I recall a time when on a beach vacation with a set of particularly conservative relatives, I wore a one piece bathing suite, made worse by shorts placed over it, when all I wanted to do was wear a bikini, or better yet nothing at all, not to tempt the minds of men, but simply to feel the soft caress of the water across my skin and the sunbeams dancing down to kiss me. 

My male cousins were utterly topples, nipples exposed to the world without shame. Yet I,  and the other females, for the sake of modesty were left to spend the day with cold, sticky cloth sucking and clinging to our bodies, trapping sand in very uncomfortable places. But virtuous, I suppose, we were.

However, as the world changes, virtue, perhaps, is no longer a virtue. In a world where women have economic choices beyond marrying for income and security, a door opens and a choice appears. We can stay in the dark in an ever frustrating game of avoiding labels to seek recognition, or we can simply walk out and give no more fucks. 

So, reader/viewer, what do you assume about me based on these photos. What label would you slap across my own ass, so shamelessly prostrated across your own screen, this “altar of fornication” as I’m sure some might call my website. My body, unashamed, exposed to the world, while I write of my sexual freedom to remind you that contrary to the beliefs of some, women are equally desirous of sex as men.

Am I a hussy, a slut, a cheap woman, a tramp, a whore, a bimbo, a harlot, a jezebel, a floozy, a hooker, an easy woman? All are words that from a fear of association, keep women subdued, docile even. 

Or perhaps I am none of these. Maybe I simply enjoy the freedom to be as I wish, rejecting the notion that my value and right for respect come from my ability to deny myself the pleasures and intrigues that my feminine spirit demands. 

As the patriarchy cracks –crumbling under the weight of, among many other example, WAP, Megan and Cardi in their shameless heels and terribly revealing clothes with their unapologetic lyrics – do we need to worry about all of these words and their implications that for so many millennia have kept women obedient and bored? As you can see, I think not.