for every virtue including that of modesty, where the accompanying action is essentially the way we choose to dress. At the end of the day, if you dress modestly, you become modest and chaste. If you dress immodestly, you become immodest and unchaste. Have you ever noticed how it is that priests and nuns, who wear cassocks or habits, command a certain dignity and impose respect in those who see them? They have given their lives to God, and their habit reveals that to anyone who sees them. They “speak” of God just by the way they dress. In turn, this apparel inclines them to act in a certain way and to avoid certain activities and places, simply because their dress imposes upon them the dignity of their position. If they “kick the habit” and begin to dress like the laity, behaviours often change, because they no longer have that constant reminder of their being consecrated to God. In the same way, it is no secret that women are inclined to act differently depending on the way they dress. If they wear jeans, t-shirt and sneakers, they tend to conduct themselves in a commonplace, undignified manner. When they have a beautiful dress on, they are more likely to bear themselves in a graceful, demure manner. The reason for this is that the nature of the clothing forces the person to move differently according to how the item is made. The effect of feminine apparel, however, will not just extend to how you move around; it will slowly extend to much of your external interactions as well as internal attitudes. Many women have been surprised when experiencing this change within themselves that follows upon dressing with dignity. One of the strikingly sad things that one notices when studying the evolution of fashions over the past century is that in the early years after World War I, and then especially after World War II, the fashions remained feminine but became increasingly immodest: the hems got higher and higher and the necklines tended to lower, shoulders were uncovered, the form of the body was more and more pronounced, etc. But gradually, from the 1960’s, women tended to dress more and more like men do, thus losing the prerogative of beauty, until today when we see the fashions actually making them more and more ugly with, for example, wornout jeans with holes in the knees (or even the thighs…), tattoos that disfigure their arms and legs, nose-rings, lip-rings, tongue-rings…. Knowing what you do now, Amanda, about the interaction between body 21
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