"Professional ski jumpers are artificially enlarging the genital area before official measurements by using substances such as hyaluronic acid — sometimes placed in a silicone, condom-like sleeve..."

"... to boost crotch dimensions.... The enlarged genital area allows athletes to wear a slightly bigger ski jumping suit that generates more lift and improve aerodynamic.... The crotch measurement is taken from the lowest point of an athlete’s genitals.... 'If you manage to move that point downward, you automatically get more surface area on the suit.... Norwegian ski jumper Halvor Egner Granerud ... said that while being warm during measurements can matter, the notion of injecting substances into the penis to gain an advantage 'sounds extreme' and is not something he believes is happening in the sport."

From "Ski jumping rocked by ‘penis-gate’ claims athletes manipulated genitals for aerodynamic edge" (NY Post).

Such a bloggable headline. Once seen, this post was inevitable. It is not the result of my trying to get 2 Norway posts in a row, but that's what I've got.

Speaking of penis manipulation and the Olympics, I see, via Grok:

"It is especially amusing to hear progressives, the principal creators of the watery Caesarism of today’s presidency, sorrowfully describing Trump’s ballroom..."

"... as discordant with the White House’s proper modesty. They should worry less about the president’s residential immodesty and more about his anti-constitutional immodesty.

Writes George Will, in "The choreographed fakery of American politics: East Wing edition/Trump’s residential immodesty is nothing compared with his anti-constitutional immodesty" (WaPo).

I wondered if anyone had written "watery Caesarism" before. It sounds like a bad salad. A real salad, not a word salad. Don't put the dressing on until you're about to eat it. Anyway, "watery Caesarism" did turn up on a few old web pages, but — are you surprised? — they're all written by George Will!

1992: "Trouble is, most presidents are mediocre.

"The daughter of Ali Shamkhani, one of the Islamic Republic’s top enforcers, had a lavish wedding in a strapless dress."

"Meanwhile, women in Iran are beaten for showing their hair and young people can’t afford to marry."

Wrote Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian dissident, quoted in "Why a strapless wedding dress threatens Iran hardliner Ali Shamkhani/The daughter of Ayatollah Khamenei’s henchman wore a low-cut gown, prompting accusations of double standards among the elite in the Islamic regime" (London Times).

And yet: "The leaked video appears... to have been taken from a female-only event at the wedding, at which it is not uncommon for the father and groom to make a brief appearance. The regime has lashed out against the critics, and one newspaper affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard insisted that Shamkhani had behaved in a 'dignified and proper manner.'..."

As for the display of wealth, we're told the wedding cost $20,000.

"I still to this day call it the worst meeting I have ever had. He was 99 or 100 at the time."

"We said, 'We think what you did was absolutely incredible and we would love to make a film about that particular moment in your life.' He said, 'Oh, no one else needs to know what I did. No one else. Anyone who needs to know about this, already knows about it.'"

 
From "'The worst meeting I have ever had': why a Kindertransport hero rejected a film about his life/As One Life is released, producer says that Nicholas Winton – the 'British Schindler' who saved 669 children – was reluctant for his story to be told" (The Guardian).

"Every time another conservative homeschool mom appeared in a dress I loved, it was [Son de Flor]...."

Writes Bethany Mandel in "Is my favorite dress company the new Bud Light? Son de Flor makes ‘traditional’ clothing — yet decided to use a 'gender-fluid' bearded model" (Spectator).

I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall of the meeting the marketing team had when they made this decision.... For Son de Flor, the target is women interested in timeless fashion and modesty. Overwhelmingly, that is going to translate to religious (read: conservative) women. While a partnership with an individual with over 150,000 Instagram followers might seem appealing on its face, Son de Flor doesn’t seem to understand that an individual is only an influencer for a brand if they actually influence potential customers in a positive way. 

2 quotes — heard by me in the last 24 hours — that use the concept of the audition.

1. "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition." — John Lennon, spoken at the end of The Beatles last public performance, quoted in "The story of the Beatles rooftop concert at the heart of ‘Get Back’" (WaPo)." (I heard this last night as I took in the final hour of the 8-hour Peter Jackson documentary, which I have now watched, in its entirety, twice.)

2. "I cannot believe you would make me audition for you. You look like clowns. I am not bluffing." — Dave Chappelle, quoted in "SEE IT: Dave Chappelle criticizes affordable housing plan before Ohio village votes against it" (Daily News). (I heard this today because the incident occurred on Monday and the story was prominent in the news today.)

Lennon was being comically humble, exiting the stage as if the band were tiny when it was the biggest band the world has ever known (and it still is, more than half a century later). As you may know, because I've said it before, the jokes that delight me the most play with the idea of big and small, and this little line of John's falls roughly in that category (understood broadly (not narrowly!)). 

Chappelle, who is specifically a comedian, was dead serious, and he meant to appear as large as possible as he spoke at a Yellow Springs village council meeting, where he intended to intimidate the council into voting the way that suited his real estate interests. For him, the concept of the audition meant something that was beneath him. Everyone is supposed to know who he is, how great he is, and how much is owed to him.

"The museum appeared at first to be a collection of capitalist artifacts. A large figure of the Jolly Green Giant flanked Poppin’ Fresh, of Pillsbury fame... shared space with... the Michelin Man."

"But Ms. Weis’s intent was to link our conceptions of these pop-culture figures to the human need to mythologize; she asserted that our Fates, Furies and giants were not left behind in Greece or Egypt, but rather transposed to our own culture.... One of her favorite pieces in the museum was a plastic model of Elsie the Cow, the character used to sell dairy products in advertisements for the Borden Dairy Company, which later branched out into chemical products, including glue. Elsie then acquired a husband, Elmer, who sold the well-known white glue named after him. Their domestic squabbles formed the background of 20th-century ad campaigns selling Borden products. Mr. Whiting compared their dynamic to that of Hera and Zeus in Greek mythology, the archetypical contentious marriage. 'We’re not saying they’re deities,' Ms. Weis said... 'But the same relationship holds. They will live beyond their generation because people revere their character by buying the product.'"

From "Ellen Havre Weis, Whose Museum Put Pop Into Mythology, Dies at 64/The Museum of Modern Mythology, in San Francisco, which she helped found, posited that advertising figures have emerged as the pre-eminent mythical figures of our time" (NYT).

As I mentioned on this blog in its first year, there's a member of my family who, when he was rather young, believed for quite a while that the image on the cans of Green Giant peas and corn in the cupboard was God. I had to ask him why did you think that was God? It's not as if anyone ever encouraged him to think the Jolly Green Giant was God, and he'd never questioned the adults about who this laughing green entity is supposed to be. The image itself conveyed the sense that this is God. 

Which image? It was the 1980s, so pick out 1980s Giant:

Yes, he's depicted with a scarf there. I'm going to presume that's the image for frozen vegetables. The "God" impression came from cans. I believe the giant stood spread-legged above a sunny farm field, wearing only his leafy tunic, crown of leaves, and elf shoes. Does that say "God" to you?

By the way, I fear for the human woman he took up with in 1945. The God Giant needs to stay in his heaven, presiding over the crops, and not consort with mortals. Those ears of corn and pea pods are far too large for the lady, whose head is the size of one of those peas.

And the 1970 giant is so 1970s, clearly influenced by the hippie movement. Imagine a God who follows transitory, regional human trends... and who's squirmily bashful about his achievements. A modest God!

"I think taking off all your clothes — and I’ve never taken off all my clothes — is not only immoral but boring."

"There has to be something left to the imagination. If you take everything off, you please a few morons and chase all the nice people away.” 

Said Tempest Storm, in 1969, quoted in "Tempest Storm, Who Disrobed to Enduring Acclaim, Dies at 93/One of the most celebrated strippers of her time, she began her career in burlesque’s golden twilight and continued performing into her 80s" (NYT).

By the time she was in her late teens she had made her way to Los Angeles, where she found work as a cocktail waitress. A customer told her she ought to be in show business and asked whether she could perform a striptease. “I said, ‘What is that?’... I was from a small town, I didn’t know. He said it was just dancing, but you take your clothes off. I said: ‘Oh, no, not me. My mother would disown me.’” 

Here's an interview she did with Roger Ebert in 1968. Excerpt: 

"They tried full-scale burlesque in New York a year ago: comedians, three chorus lines, the works... But it flopped and now they're back to strippers. What I object to is the dishonesty and cheapening that goes on. The thing that killed the family audience for burlesque, in my opinion, was when some strippers began 'flashing' - that's burlesque lingo for showing everything. Not only is that unpleasant, but it's unnecessary.

"The secret to a good striptease is to leave as much as possible to the imagination. No matter what men may think, they don't actually want to see a performer just come out and take off her clothes. There's got to be communication, there's got to be contact. In my act, although I eventually do get down to the legal minimum, I actually put on more clothes than I take off. There's some psychology in this. A performer who can communicate a feeling of modesty is sexier than one who just strips."

You've got to communicate, and what do you need to communicate? Modesty!

(To comment, email me here.)

"I don’t know if it’s the fact that my husband has voiced that sometimes too sexy is just overkill and he’s not comfortable with that."

"I listen to him and understand him. Still, at the end of the day, he always gives me the freedom to be and do what I want. But I have kind of had this awakening myself. I realized I could not even scroll through Instagram in front of my kids without full nudity coming up on my feed pretty much all the time. And I definitely contributed to that. I mean, one of my most iconic covers was the Paper magazine one, when I was all oiled up and ripping my dress off. I also did think, like, Okay, I’m here in the White House and then the next day I was posting, like, a crazy bikini selfie. And I was thinking, I hope they don’t see this. I have to go back there next week. I think I’m evolving to where I don’t feel the need to want to keep up. Not that I did it to feel like I had to keep up, but I guess I just don’t care as much anymore to want to take tons of photos in a thong bikini. I actually just want to lay out. I don’t care to take the time out of my day on vacation like I used to, where I’d pull up to the house and I’d see, This is a setup, this is an Instagram pic. Now this is a different setup. Oh, this place has so many different setups. This is going to be amazing. And now I’m just like, 'Let’s actually live in real time and enjoy it. If we happen to get a photo, great.'"

Said Kim Kardashian, asked about "dressing a little less sexy" and quoted in "In the 2010s, Fame Went Multi-Platform/Kim Kardashian West on life as a brand and her political awakening" (New York Magazine).

ADDED: It's funny that she speaking of "keeping up": "I don’t feel the need to want to keep up. Not that I did it to feel like I had to keep up..." This whole thing got started with the message to everybody else that we needed to be "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." It's a fascinating tell: She felt that she needed to keep up. Keep up with what? We were supposed to be keeping up with her. That says something about the emptiness and futility of the imagined race.

"There are many Lakota who praise the memorial.... But others argue that a mountain-size sculpture is a singularly ill-chosen tribute. When Crazy Horse was alive..."

"... he was known for his humility, which is considered a key virtue in Lakota culture. He never dressed elaborately or allowed his picture to be taken. (He is said to have responded, 'Would you steal my shadow, too?') Before he died, he asked his family to bury him in an unmarked grave. There’s also the problem of the location. The Black Hills are known, in the Lakota language, as He Sapa or Paha Sapa—names that are sometimes translated as 'the heart of everything that is.'... Nick Tilsen, an Oglala who runs an activism collective in Rapid City, told me that Crazy Horse was 'a man who fought his entire life' to protect the Black Hills. 'To literally blow up a mountain on these sacred lands feels like a massive insult to what he actually stood for,' he said. In 2001, the Lakota activist Russell Means likened the project to 'carving up the mountain of Zion.' Charmaine White Face, a spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council, called the memorial a disgrace. 'Many, many of us, especially those of us who are more traditional, totally abhor it,' she told me. 'It’s a sacrilege. It’s wrong.'"

From "Who Speaks for Crazy Horse?/The world’s largest monument is decades in the making and more than a little controversial" by Brooke Jarvis (in The New Yorker).

This is an excellent article about the twisted commercialism of the gigantic unfinished Crazy Horse monument, which is run by the Ziolkowski family and seems to work for tourists as some kind of antidote to Mount Rushmore.

I wanted to give this post the tag "humility," but I only have "humiliation" and "modesty." "Humiliation" is plainly wrong, but is "modesty" okay? Wikipedia's article "Modesty" says "This article is about body modesty. For the concept of modesty in a broader sense, see humility," so I'm going to go with the tag "modesty," and please understand that I mean it in the broader sense that Wikipedia treats at "Humility":

Humility is an outward expression of an appropriate inner, or self regard, and is contrasted with humiliation which is an imposition, often external, of shame upon a person. Humility may be misappropriated as ability to suffer humiliation through self-denouncements which in itself remains focused on self rather than low self-focus.

Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue which centers on low self-preoccupation, or unwillingness to put oneself forward, so it is in many religious and philosophical traditions, it contrasts with narcissism, hubris and other forms of pride and is an idealistic and rare intrinsic construct that has an extrinsic side.

"In my youth and still somewhat to this date, I learned to view my body as a threat, both to myself and to others."

"Taking care to cover those bits that act as a sexual signal felt like a necessary step to de-weaponize my body....  Just as heavier women are assumed to be 'unhealthy,' and skinny women are evaluated as 'needing a sandwich,' you are cast as a harlot; a man-eater. A simple T-shirt over an ample bosom is rendered obscene, and you mustn’t be too tempting.... [S]chools and sports teams should be mindful that they aren’t ostracizing girls based on arbitrary modesty codes that have the effect of penalizing certain body types. When they do this, they are not only participating in the oversexualization of these girls, but they give power to the negative attitudes toward curvier body types by turning them into policy."

Writes Amanda MacLean in "The Obscenity of Curves/Oversexualizing female athletes is dangerous" (NYT)(writing in reaction to that story about the high school competitive swimmer who was disqualified for her too-revealing bathing suit).

"One day in early June, Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California, tapped the glass of the bakery case at a Blue Bottle coffee shop on a non-iconic block in Beverly Hills."

"No one seemed to know who she was—another polished professional woman, grabbing an afternoon coffee—which was fine by her. She had chosen the spot, presumably for the anonymity. A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie: caramel chocolate chip, covered in a light snowfall of flaky salt. As Harris broke off small pieces and popped them in her mouth, we talked about her early life, rummaging through the layers for identifying details. The child of immigrant academics who divorced when she was young—her mother, a cancer researcher, came from India, and her father, an economist, from Jamaica—Harris grew up between Oakland and the Berkeley flats, but also spent time in college towns in the Midwest and a few years in Montreal, where her mother was teaching. 'A very vivid memory of my childhood was the Mayflower truck,' she told me. 'We moved a lot.' She speaks some French. She loves to cook and enjoys dancing, puns. She tells her own story uneasily. 'It’s like extracting stuff from me,' she apologized. 'I’m not good at talking about myself.'"

The inauspicious beginning of "Kamala Harris Makes Her Case/The Presidential candidate has been criticized as a defender of the status quo/Can she prove that she’s a force for change?" by Dana Goodyear (The New Yorker).

Here's my screen shot of one of the 2 Blue Bottle coffee shops in Beverly Hills (from Google Maps):



Where do you go when you want to look like just another polished professional and you want to pop a light snowfall of flaky salt and talk about yourself without talking about yourself?

Did I read the rest of the article? Okay, I'll force myself to skim, but I take that opening to mean that Goodyear got nothing out of her. Let's see...

Harris, who is fifty-four, has a billboard smile, and brown eyes that soften easily but just as readily turn skeptical.

Kamala cautiously takes on the criticism "She’s very cautious."

So David Axelrod had disparaged Kamala Harris on at least 2 occasions:

1. “She is an incredibly compelling personality; a very bright and accomplished person... But she’s very cautious — and that caution was pretty apparent in a lot of her answers.”

2. “She’s a brilliant person, there’s no doubt about that... But what we’ve learned so far is that she’s great at asking questions but timid at answering them. She’s going to have to correct that to navigate this process.”

And it's not as though KH noticed and decided to push him right back (which is the sort of thing Trump does (he always hits back)). Politico put her on the spot and asked. You can't be very cautious and sound timid when asked whether you're too cautious and timid, can you?

Asked by POLITICO about Axelrod’s concerns — part of a line of criticism that Harris aides and allies broadly believe is tinged with sexism and not applied in the same way to the men running for president — Harris paused for a few seconds before saying, “I don’t know what to tell you."

Wow. Politico had to try to cushion the effect of the embarrassing confirmation of Axelrod's take. Look at that ridiculous extra material inserted in between the dashes. That's not what KH said when asked, and it's such mushy stuff — "broadly believe," "tinged."

“Axelrod was on the road with Barack a decade ago,” she added. “I’ve invited him to come on the road with me ... (and he’d see) “contrary to what he thinks is happening.”

She won't defend herself in words. Can that work in politics? I can imagine the most wonderful person in the world responding to attacks by murmuring "If you really knew me, you wouldn't say that." But would you choose that person as your champion, to do battle for you against bold adversaries?

As for whether the critiques of her are grounded in sexism, Harris said some of those making the charges about her “should do a better job of performing themselves.”

Again, she confirms Axelrod's take. She won't be direct. She exhibits nice modesty. I think it is better for female candidates to refrain from characterizing criticism as sexist, but you still need an answer, and her failure to answer is more evidence that Axelrod is right.

Incredibly, Politico's article ends with a quote from Willie Brown: "I would have said, ‘What did he say? I didn’t read it... Axel-who?'"

That forces me to go looking for what, exactly, is the connection between Kamala Harris and Willie Brown? I only remember the crude joking that continually turns up in the comments. Here's a piece published yesterday in The Washington Examiner: "Kamala Harris’ first significant political role was an appointment by her powerful then-boyfriend Willie Brown, three decades her senior, to a California medical board that has been criticized as a landing spot for patronage jobs and kickbacks. Then 30, Harris was dating 60-year-old Willie Brown, at the time the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly, when he placed her on the California Medical Assistance Commission [which met twice a month]. The position paid over $70,000 per year...."

"What do I know about branding, maybe nothing (but I did become President!)... But again, what the hell do I know?"

What do I know about branding, maybe nothing (but I did become President!), but if I were Boeing, I would FIX the Boeing 737 MAX, add some additional great features, & REBRAND the plane with a new name.
No product has suffered like this one. But again, what the hell do I know?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2019

I'm giving this my "modesty" tag even though it's jocular modesty. I think the rhetorical use of modesty is interesting coming from Trump, whose antagonists love to present as relentlessly, narcissistically bragging. It's still bragging, of course, but the bragging is lighthearted (perhaps too lighthearted, considering that hundreds of people died in the Boeing 737 crashes).

"I’m reluctant to comment on another person’s faith, but I would say it is hard to look at this president’s actions and believe that they’re the actions of somebody who believes in God."

"I just don’t understand how you can be as worshipful of your own self as he is and be prepared to humble yourself before God. I’ve never seen him humble himself before anyone. And the exaltation of yourself, especially a self that’s about wealth and power, could not be more at odds with at least my understanding of the teachings of the Christian faith."

Said Buttigieg, giving us an interesting look at his idea of reluctance.

I'm not reluctant to ask: Is Buttigieg's commentary humble or arrogant? Does it seem like something that would be said by somebody who believes in God? And would you like to rate everything any politician does or says according to how closely it accords with a belief in God or your understanding of whatever religion the politician professes?

I'll suggest a scale from 1 to 5:

1 — That's the sort of thing that you'd probably only do/say if you believed in God/the religion you profess.

2 — That's something that might arise from a belief in God/religion or from ethics or good motivations of a non-religious sort.

3 — That's something that you could do/say without obvious conflict with a belief in God/religion.

4 — If you claim to believe in God or follow the Christian religion (or whatever other religion), then you ought to know that you are doing something hypocritical and wrong.

5— If you claim to believe in God or follow the Christian religion (or whatever other religion), but you do this, you're just lying to us and perhaps also to yourself.

"If a country’s prevailing temperament is one of congenital, chronic emotional constipation, how would its inhabitants even recognize that they’re lonely in the first place?"

"The appointment seems to address an ill that Britain can barely admit it is suffering from, as if the United States government were to install a Secretary of Humility. Of course, the more serious commentary would go on to explain, loneliness is a real and diagnosable scourge...."

From "What Britain’s 'Minister of Loneliness' Says About Brexit and the Legacy of Jo Cox" by Rebecca Mead (New Yorker)("Jo Cox... a Labour M.P., had been a vocal advocate of remaining in the European Union; her killer, a local man in his fifties named Thomas Mair who was later discovered to have neo-Nazi sympathies, was heard to cry 'Britain first' as he stabbed and shot her").

“I have nothing to declare except my genius" — said Oscar Wilde.

Or maybe he didn't say that, but, whatever. It's one of the best-loved Oscar Wilde sayings.

So I wouldn't be so sure I knew "How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves." That's the title of a piece at The Atlantic by James Fallows, who's implicitly talking about himself, implicitly assuring us that he is a smart man who knows the smart people. That is, he is one of the elite who got snookered in the last election.

But the people Fallows talks about in his article are scientists and computer people. Wilde was a brilliant humorous writer, famous, especially, for short, hilarious sentences. Trump is much more like Wilde than like Bill Gates and that guy who won the Nobel Prize in medicine when he was in his 40s.

Here's Fallows:

Virtually none of them (need to) say it. There are a few prominent exceptions, of talented people who annoyingly go out of their way to announce that fact. Muhammed Ali is the charming extreme exception illustrating the rule: he said he was The Greatest, and was. Most greats don’t need to say so....

Once you admit there's an exception, you've got to say Trump is not like the exception. But Trump is like Muhammad Ali. He's making his reputation in large part by speaking entertainingly to the public. And, like Oscar Wilde's declaration of genius, Ali's proclamation of greatness felt like exuberant, extroverted fun to those who loved him. What Trump is doing feels like that too. If you hate Trump, you'll balk at that, but you need to know that there were many people who reacted negatively to Ali's "I am the greatest." I remember it very well, because I loved "I am the greatest" at the time, and I remember why I loved it. It was liberating. You could throw off your inhibition and proclaim your greatness.

If you're going to do grandiosity, go big.

You can't do modest grandiosity.

People may admire modesty and humility, but that does not pair well with grandiosity.

With grandiosity, you've got to go big.

The other side of that is if you're choosing to go with modesty, you can't be grandiose about it. Grandiose modesty? That's even worse than modest grandiosity. Much worse!

"Busy day at the CFPB. Digging into the details."

Busy day at the @CFPB. Digging into the details. pic.twitter.com/yfs0gmh28F

— Mick Mulvaney (@CFPBDirector) November 28, 2017

I'm glad Mick Mulvaney — who won a big lawsuit yesterday — has such an unprepossessing office.

That's the first time I've used the word "unprepossessing" in the entire 50,000+ posts on this blog. I did quote it once, in "A 'balding, blunt, unprepossessing, listed-at-5-foot-7 policy wonk would be a strong contender to take on President Barack Obama...." That was in 2010, and the unprepossessing guy — "the un-Obama" — was Mitch Daniels, whom I'd hope to see get the GOP nomination in 2012. I was interested in moving away from adulation of an icon and toward humility and modesty and workmanlike ordinariness. That didn't happen in 2012 and it sure didn't happen in 2016. I don't know why our politics has gotten so over-inflated and dramatic. I can't answer that. I'm just saying I like Mick Mulvaney's office. And by "office," I mean the physical place, not the abstraction of power.

"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).