Modesty Vs. Shame

I went skinny dipping last night for the first time in my life. I'm sure that when someone reads this, he will be proud of me for accepting his dare and also laugh at me for writing this. I went skinny dipping in a moment that seemed very much like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It wasn't quite dark enough, but I had a lot of fun. I was wondering why I had never done that before because it was so nice to do before I want to bed. The fireworks for the long weekend helped too!


I think the reason I had never done such a thing before is because I was raised in a culture that struggles with the idea of modesty for women. The problem with the idea of pushing for modesty is also that women can become ashamed. The struggle between modesty and shame with our bodies is something I have lived with and continue to struggle with on a regular basis.


Modesty seems to be a concept that fails on most days in society. Clothes seem to have less fabric than they used to be. When I look for new clothes, I find it hard to find some that I can feel comfortable in. Even when I do find something, I seem to constantly be pulling and adjusting so that more of my body is covered. I'm not entirely sure if that is a concept of modesty or shame.


When I walk around in the summer, I see many girls and woman who are comfortable wearing shorter skirts and lower tops than I am. They are more comfortable with their bodies than I am. They are not ashamed of what they look like. They may be seen to have little modesty, but they are comfortable with their bodies and are not afraid to be that way in public. They are not ashamed.


For a very long time I have to admit that I was ashamed. I stopped eating at one point and ran every day. I was tiny, far too tiny for my height and it showed. The strange part about that is that I was still ashamed of how I looked. I thought I wasn't good enough, that if I just worked a little bit harder, then I could be perfect. At that point in my life, what I looked like had nothing to do with modesty. It had everything to do with shame.


The world could do with a little bit more modesty most days, but we could also do with a lot less shame. With magazines only showing pictures of women who wear a size 2 or smaller, it doesn't leave a lot of room for those of us who are average. Average in a healthy way. Average in the way that means we are able to eat what we want and do what we want. We don't starve ourselves and we don't have personal trainers. We are the majority of women in the world and the one that most men will find attractive. If you ask anyone of us if there is something that we would want to change about ourselves, there will always be more than one answer. There will be many things that we want to change. There will be things that we want to change and things that we are ashamed of.


We need to find a balance between the idea of modesty and shame. We need to find a way to obliterate the shame that many women feel. I'm sure some men do, but I have no idea about that. We need to find a place where we are not scared of sharing our bodies. Whether that is regarded as modest by the rest of the world is irrelevant. Our sense of modesty is our own and it has to be. It has to be a personal choice and it has to be one made without the idea of shame. We cannot be ashamed of who we are and how we were made. We were made to be incredible in the way that we are. We are not airbrushed models and we were not meant to be. We were meant to be ourselves and that is something that requires neither modesty or shame.