"Modest fashion might come across as a humblebrag: You have to be a pretty stylish, pretty good-looking woman to claim ownership of such radical dowdiness...."

"It can also sometimes seem like an elitist project of sociocultural self-positioning: By embracing the covered-up look, you declare yourself part of a particular psychographic tribe, one whose members don’t just dress for other women, but for a particular subset of other women — those who get it, who are sophisticated enough to understand that opting out of conventional beauty standards makes for its own kind of conceptual, better-than-thou fashion. It also, however, has the feel of a real dare. Observing this version of feminist signaling, which conflates the rebel, haphazard spirit of a Bloomsbury Group-like smockishness with traces of early ’90s grunge and a dash of post-bellum Sunday best, we might begin to ask ourselves: What happens when women start dressing in ways that are less than conventionally flattering? Why are they doing it? And what does it look like when fashion choices that might have been linked to female oppression perform in the service of liberation?"

From "Modest Dressing, as a Virtue/What’s really behind fashion’s — and women’s — love of concealing clothes?" by Naomi Fry. The NYT published that article on November 2nd, but I only noticed it yesterday, when it was featured on the front page. I'm thinking that it has — in the last week and a half — become more timely, because of the sexual harassment/assault stories in the news. The author tries to answer her question by talking to some women to find out why they are clothing themselves in a manner that doesn't flaunt their body parts. Specifically "nonreligious women" are asked — because they are "trendier" and more likely to be deciding for themselves what they want to wear.

“I really disagree with women who think walking around naked is liberation. I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, too many people get to enjoy this for it to be liberation,’ ” [said Aminatou Sow, a 32-year-old digital strategist and podcaster], only half in jest. Instead, she cites figures like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who, first as actresses and street-style sensations and later as designers of the Row, made dressing in long, hobo-ish layers chic. “It was really jarring, and men didn’t like it,” Sow recalled to me. “But there was something disgusting and liberating about it. These were girls who didn’t care how anyone else was supposed to be dressing. It was the rejection of body politics.”

The last paragraph of the article begins with one hell of a sentence: "Navigating the world in a woman’s body remains a fraught proposition in the most quotidian and granular of ways."

Are you in there — in your body — navigating it? Are you not at one with your body? If not, why not? And, more importantly, what kinds of clothes and hats and shoes could reunify you with yourself?

Navigating the world in a woman’s body remains a fraught proposition.... The oldest meaning of the English word "fraught" is "Of a vessel: Laden" as in "The drowmound was so hevy fraught That unethe myght it saylen aught" (a1400 Coer de L. 2459)(OED).