To be surprised that M&S has a section on their website for Modest Clothing?

[Scabbersley]

here

What's that all about then? Why does it warrant its own category?

It is at the very least problematic to use the term modest clothing for women’s garments. It makes too much of a ‘thing’ out of sex and puts the onus on women to fend off unwanted male interest.

And it is certainly inappropriate to use the term modesty shorts to describe items of clothing for young girls. (M&S were selling them under this name for the age range 6-16.) This actually encourages people to think of girls in sexual terms when it should be a complete non-issue for this age group. I’m glad that M&S is not using the term any longer.

I know there are thoughtful people out there who think this is a trivial matter that should not be given headspace. I would like to say to them that I hope they will at least come away from this thread with the understanding that quite a number of people take this very seriously indeed and I hope this is sufficient to encourage them to think over their airy dismissal of the importance of this issue.

Furthermore, I would like to think that as women we are able to show each other some solidarity. I would certainly defend the right of any woman to walk around freely in covered attire without being subjected to abuse. I hope that those who choose to cover would similarly defend the rights of those like me who do not. I should be able to go about my business without harassment and not feel that I ought to be doing more to secure this right.

Yes she has Lass multiple times. She's posted that only people too thick to understand her would disagree with her repeatedly.

Examples of her attempts to shut different views down by calling anyone expression them stupid include her posts yesterday at 11:32 and the day before at 23:00, from a very quick scroll through just looking at highlighted posts by the OP.

*expressing

That is a brilliant and thoughtful post OutwiththeOutCrowd

hear hear Out

It is actually extraordinarily difficult to write website copy that simultaneously:-

a) describes your stock in a way that's economical and accurate. (A lot of website design is about images so you don't want to use too many words.)

and

b) uses the words that are most likely to be entered into a search engine. (So if there is a known profitable fashion trend, generally called Trend X,a business is relatively unlikely to say well, maybe we should substitute our own new and different term such as Trend Y and hope that one or two customers might accidentally type Trend Y into a search engine.

I run a small online business, so have had to grapple with all this in a different context.

Outwith if only the thread was more like your last post instead of insulting and goading anyone daring to debate it would be far more valuable.

There is far more to the emergence of the "modest fashion" trend than this thread wants to acknowledge, and posters trying to ban the use of the word sound massively blinkered and unwilling to consider complexity. The increased purchasing power of young working Muslim women surely has to be a good thing.

Claiming offering categories is insulting is an obvious nonsense. Retailers categorise to draw potential purchasers to pick up multiple items instead of just the one they went in for or instead of deciding to look elsewhere because they don't wish to spend large amounts of time browsing through lots of items not of interest to weed out the ones fit for whatever purpose they are shopping for.

It may or may not be a positive ideal to pressure major retailers to keep the specific term off the highstreet, M&S are merely using a term already in use in the hope it will cause some shoppers to put a few more items into their baskets.

I see you got nothing then from OutwiththeOutCrowd's post. There are so many straw men arguments in your response one could over winter a herd of cattle on them.

Lois A sleeveless top apparently!

There you go again.

Patronising and belittling.

Crying 1984 whilst acting out animal farm.

Is there a definition of modest for men?

The word also has other meanings

Goodness, this has turned into a real live debate what with the straw man references and so on.

For the record, all M&S clothes are “modest”, frankly, so why invent a new category with such a label?

No one wants M&S unless that are shopping for food.

...they are shopping...

There you go again

Patronising and belittling

Crying 1984 whilst acting out animal farm

OutwiththeOutCrowd posted a thoughtful post which you praised but then disregarded every point she made whilst inventing an argument that those of us who find the term modest problematic are only doing so to prevent some Muslim women buying clothes they like.

There was nothing in your post indicating you took on board anything OutwiththeOutCrowd said.

Claiming offering categories is insulting is an obvious nonsense indeed it would be nonsense- and apart from you no one has said it. It is a masterpiece in creating a straw man argument.

I suppose that I find myself very uneasy when posters are utterly disrespectful of a) religious faith and b) women who find religion important.

I absolutely respect that many women do not have any kind of faith and/or may have had wholly negative experiences of religion. They may wish to utterly dismiss the views of women who have faith and/or derive something positive from those beliefs. But it doesn't make for a very inclusive kind of conversation.

I think what is interesting is that secular women do find religion (especially religions that aren't a sort of vague Establishment Christianity - very threatening. This might partly be as a result of personal experience, but also because of a climate that is hostile to other faiths and is keen to publicise them as extremist. (For example, Trumps recent Tweets.)

But the majority of religious people just want the freedom to be able to practise their faith without wanting to be abused because their faith is in some way visible.

I think where we are with non-mainstream faiths (ie. not vague C of E) is where we used to be with gay relationships. A sort of, 'I suppose it's just about okay provided you pretend to be invisible/in the closet/act as much as possible like everybody else.'

Have read the whole thread now so I feel in a position to respond.

Those, like the OP, who object to 'modest' as a mainstream marketing term have explained their views so clearly and comprehensively that I'm not surprised they've got a bit snarky with those who wilfully and repeatedly misunderstand.

I agree with the OP.

There definitely are some posters who still don't get the objection. This is my take on it:

Wearing any clothes is fine - skimpy, long, fully-covered - whatever.

Calling your own clothes modest is fine - it's your choice.

Big, supposedly non-religious companies calling certain clothes 'modest' is not fine.

Some people won't accept that 'modest' has moral judgement to it! I could understand, say, if you'd never really thought about it, or weren't used to analysing words/culture/anything... but when people have patiently pointed out that there are unpleasant connotations- isn't it a bit dim to keep insisting there aren't ? If you personally aren't offended- great - but don't tell others not to be!

Words all come from somewhere. This word, insofar as it relates to clothes, comes directly from patriarchal religion. Those religious people should be totally free to believe what they like and dress how they like. But the whole point is we don't have to agree. Pushing the term into commercial, secular life is not on. It's an infringement of women's freedom.

Words definitely DO matter.

Anna - do you think religion is respectful to women, in general, or has been over the years?

I suppose that I find myself very uneasy when posters are utterly disrespectful of a) religious faith and b) women who find religion important

I have done none of this. Have others?

Has anyone said anything about denying people the freedom to be able to practise their faith without wanting to be abused because their faith is in some way visible.

I don't think so- another straw man.

I ask because I sometimes find it hard to reconcile my firm belief that people must be free to believe as they like with my firm belief that people should be treated equally. And many of the main religions do not treat, and never have treated, women as being equal to men.

Rebecca, I would say that religion is not just one thing. It differs across place and time. Secular societies also differ. So the question isn't really an answerable one, to my mind.

You can point to secular societies that treat women badly. (I'm thinking of a Las Vegas style porn culture.) And or non-Conformist religious communities where women had much more freedom than they would do elsewhere.

Or you can take a conservative repressive culture (Saudi Arabia) and decide this is basically the fault of the state religion. You could then compare that with a secular society in which women had equal pay, easy access to contraception, men did 50% of childcare, there was no sexual abuse committed by men, and the management of all workplaces/governing bodies was balanced according to gender. (Though I'll confess I am struggling to think of a society where the above applies.)

I think many of us find the origins of total female coverage distasteful... Did some of you not see those images upthread where women are essentially sweets, either wrapped or unwrapped. Yes, the whole issue may be more complex than that, but, on some level, there is an idea of women as consumables.

So, as Rebecca suggests, it can be really hard to get your head round the whole business. It's hard to see some religions neutrally when they foster these ideas about women.

However, we don't have to agree. Religion is a choice. That's the beauty of a free society.

But when M&S starts shoe-horning a term directly taken from this sort of religion into mainstream secular society, we have a problem.

for golden bowl for explaining what I was grappling with in my mind so eloquently!

It's by no means just Islam but this is the sort of thing that bothers me - from day 1, we are told that women are weaker than men and make mistakes and therefore their brains are only worth half a man's:

islamqa.info/en/20051

I really struggle to see how that can be ok - but then I'd also really struggle to think that women shouldn't be able to believe that if they want to.

Of course enforcing it in the way some countries do is a whole different issue as anna alludes to above.

There's a really interesting piece here about the Biblical origins of the word modesty - and different interpretations of modesty in different cultures

qideas.org/articles/modesty-i-dont-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/

So, I'd argue that you can't saying the rot set in with Jesus or even Paul. Shaming women is something that certain powerful people will choose to do, but it isn't endorsed by the religious texts themselves...