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I have an idea for an invention that will revolutionize the fashion industry in the Northeast. It's a garment that women can wear underneath their shirts that will support their fleshy bosoms. This invention would have the benefit of further concealing the breasts, but making them appear firmer and fuller, and preventing sagging when women approach old age.
Seriously, I feel like the modern urban world has forgotten about the bra. When I'm in big Northeast cities riding public transit, I rarely see a single woman wearing one. What's with this development? Is it some feminism thing? Is it fashion? Is it just that it's hot these days? Was the bra always worthless but women wore it out of modesty, but now there's no more modesty? I would guess that is some feminist notion that bras are a relic of patriarchy, and that has influenced fashion over the last decade to make it less fashionable. And that this has enabled the more lazy women out there to just not bother wearing it, and in turn, the link between bras and female modesty is disappearing (along with maybe the modesty itself, or the idea that women should be modest).
Out of all the issues in our world, "women around me are showing me more of their breasts" is not one that I personally consider a problem. I have some disagreements with women on average - for example, while I am pro-choice and so to some extent understand why women are reluctant to vote right, I also do not understand women's tendency to vote left despite it leading to some policies that are to both their own detriment and mine, such as when it comes to law and order. But overall, I do think that in some ways women are wonderful. They really do tend to be nice and gentle, at least to men. I have heard some horror stories from women about how other women treat them, but as a man I can say that the vast majority of women I have encountered have been very nice to me. And no woman has ever punched me in the face, whereas some men have. Some my closest actual friends are women. So my attitude towards women is more or less that for the most part they are like men in terms of the kinds of qualities that I value, but with the added benefit that I am also sexually attracted to some of them. Experiences of being intimate in bed with women, both sexually and emotionally, have been some of the highlights of my life. Obviously the vast majority of "extreme right end of the bell curve" intelligent people in history have been men but oh well, while I wish that I was, I really doubt that I am in that extreme right end myself as a man. It's not something to hold against women. And I have known a handful of women who are as intelligent or even more than I am.
This is all a long-winded way to say that overall, I tend to love women, and part of that is that I love enjoying women's erotic company. Female modesty seems rather pointless to me. One could make an argument that immodesty from both genders contributes to a chaotizing of society, a focus on hedonism instead of on the often-boring tasks of upholding a decent society, such as raising families. And that could be an interesting argument to make, but I am not sure how much truth there is to it. Overall, I would say that immodesty is extremely low on the list of our society's problems, if it even is a problem to begin with, which I doubt. It is not half-naked women in the streets that are causing Walgreens to get robbed left and right or politics to be ruled by corrupt incentives. And an extreme focus on female modesty has not stopped Islamic societies from being shitholes. Victorian England, from what I understand, despite all of its prudity was not some pinnacle of social order, it had a higher violent crime rate than modern England.
This is a bit of a tangent, but why do women tend to lean left? I say this as a moderate who dislikes both the left and the right. So I am not coming at this from a right-wing perspective, I just am sometimes baffled why so many women are actually left-leaning rather than being a centrist like me. What is the appeal? Is it mainly the fact that the right is associated with socially conservative prudes who favor patriarchy-coded social structures and are not pro-choice? Is it some higher degree of empathy from women that makes them feel more bad for the so-called oppressed of the world than men do? That is a common argument, but in my personal interactions with women, while I have found that the vast majority of women are nice to me, I have not found women to be more sympathetic to others abstractly than men are, on average, so I am not sure. Women do tend to be much more pro-social than men are on average, mainly because there is a small fraction of men who do the vast majority of both genders' anti-social activities. But do they really tend on average to be more "naive bleeding-heart liberal" than men are, and if so, why?
The case for modesty, to me, is much the same as any other standard— it’s about self respect and dignity. And keeping a high standard both personally and culturally is important because it treats yourself and others as people worthy of respect. When a person doesn’t dress appropriately, either because they’re immodestly dressed or dressed sloppily, it tells me that not only are they not someone who I should take seriously (because they don’t take themselves seriously) but that they don’t respect the fact that other people might not want to see someone dressed in that way.
The same can be said of other standards. If you don’t put forth your best efforts, or can’t behave in public, or a thousand other things you do among others every day, eventually you have a society in which everyone does the bare minimum, you’re surrounded by trash, and so on.
While I don't think you're categorically wrong, I think there's the danger here of misusing a heuristic as a law.
Sloppily dressed people are often, yes, sloppy people who don't do good work, don't take care of their relationships, can't be relied upon etc.
And then, sometimes, they're astrophysicists who are so engrossed in their work that they never learned how to dress themselves. Before it become an coopted fashion signaling mechanism, the Silicon Valley "hoodie and shorts" was the mark of a developer who was a bit of a slob because he was dedicating 18 hours a day to working on his app.
On the modesty side of things, there are definitely women who use their wardrobes to appeal to the male lizard brain and attract attention that way. There are a lot of women who simply follow fashion trends and don't really put a lot of thought into what signals they're sending men but do care about what other women think. There is a certain small proportion of women who literally do not understand that wearing yoga pants and a sports bra 24/7 is going to result in increased male attention. Are any of these subgroups more prone to promiscuous and/or anti-social behavior. Hard to say. You can make some generalizations, but the danger there is the slippery slop of generalization --> heuristic --> iron law.
In the past 5+ years, I've never had a conversation about fashion expectations with a woman where she expressed frustration towards modesty standards (either too much or too little). Mostly, it was the simple and unending difficulty of keeping up with whatever is in fashion to signal (to other women) that you're "with it."
I may be misunderstanding you; let me know if I am. I don't know a women who isn't frustrated with the clothing available, and it's not all about pockets. I cannot easily find a shirt that isn't too low cut / designed to expose more of my chest than I typically prefer. Tshirts or fairly masculine tailored button downs are pretty much the only shirts I can depend on to meet my preferences. And hemlines are incredibly short. I can either go with long-and-flowy don't show an inch of skin, which tends to be too frilly and feminine for my preferences, or "this is so short it may not be long enough to cover my backside when sitting down" which is ridiculous. Apparently, wanting fabric to extend to my knees or there-abouts is too demanding.
But, I'm not sure I'd talk about these issues in regards to "modesty" because that term isn't really something I talk about much. I'd call it preference, or style. Modesty's part of it, but outside of a religious context I just don't see that term in use.
I wasn't referring to the garments themselves, but more general attitudes / vibes around clothing expectations.
Too low cut and your other examples - absolutely, have heard that.
"I don't think I can wear what I want too because it's too revealing / I don't think I can wear what I want because it's too buttoned up" <-- Have not heard that.
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