Modesty of Self-Presentation

One

The Virtue of Modesty is not about how you dress

The virtue of modesty is the virtue that helps us resist what is unimportant and superficial. It’s the virtue that keeps us from being distracted by what doesn’t matter. Humility helps us focus on the good we should do. Studiousness helps us focus on the truth we should know. Modesty keeps us from being distracted from the good we should do and the truth we should know. Modesty prevents distractions. But modesty doesn’t just prevent us from getting distracted ourselves, modesty also prevents us from acting in such a way as to distract others.

More specifically, modesty prevents us from seeking attention in inappropriate, superficial ways. Because that kind of attention isn’t good for anybody. Not good for us, and not good for the people whose attention we’re capturing.

What we need, then, is a modesty that pertains to self-presentation.

Two

Calling attention to yourself 

Calling attention to yourself for superficial reasons is a really bad policy. It means you get people to notice you, and think about you but always for reasons that don’t matter.

In practice, that means when people look at you or think about you, all they see is something shallow. They think of you in terms of a talent or a look. And when you’re constantly calling attention to yourself, that’s exactly how you’re encouraging people to see you.

Whereas, what everyone really longs for is intimacy, not attention. Attention is getting people to notice you for what’s on the surface. Intimacy is when you are known by another person for who you are – and when you know that person in turn.

Intimacy takes time. Intimacy takes mutual trust, privacy, and depth. If either person is just hungry for attention, intimacy simply can’t happen. And then no matter how much attention you get, you’ll always be lonely.

So again, modesty prevents you from seeking superficial attention. Which means modesty is your only real chance at intimacy, friendship, and love.

Three

Modesty of Deportment

St. Thomas Aquinas identifies one of the most important parts of modesty as “Modesty of Outward Movement.”

What does that mean?

It means you shouldn’t be too loud, or too melodramatic. It means you shouldn’t dominate every conversation or every social gathering. It means you shouldn’t be flamboyant, you shouldn’t have an obnoxiously loud laugh, and you shouldn’t have a bunch of theatrical gestures or catchphrases. You shouldn’t even be too eccentric, since that’s often just a calculated way of getting people to stop and wonder about you.

Why not? 

Because all those traits are just ways of getting superficial attention. They’re all ways of being noticed but not noticed for any significant or profound quality. Basically, if you get a ton of attention for being loud or eccentric, how are you ever really going to reach intimacy with people? After all, intimacy requires that you be quiet and listen to the other person just as much as they need to be quiet and listen to you.

What is really special about you is deep inside. That’s where the intellect and will lie. That’s where the Trinity dwells.

So don’t be constantly distracting people by always putting on a big personality fireworks display.

Don’t work so hard at being superficially fascinating. You deserve better, and so do other people.

Four

Modesty of Dress

Only after Aquinas talks about the modesty of humility, studiousness, and modesty in outward movement, only after all that does he talk about modesty in dress. And, can you believe it, even when it comes to modesty in dress, he doesn’t start out by focusing on avoiding sexually provocative clothing. His main concern is that we shouldn’t dress too nicely, or too badly. Both are a sin against modesty.

Here too, his point is that you shouldn’t dress in such a way as to call too much attention to yourself. You can do that by trying too hard to stand out in what you wear, to be noticed because of how good you look. But you can also do it by dressing too sloppy, too counter-culturally, drawing attention to yourself by dressing down, or goth or punk or what all alternative look. Certainly weird hair-cuts, weird hair colors, weird piercings, the stuff teenagers do.

Why do they do this? So they can look “different.” But why do they want to look different? Obviously, it’s because they want to stand out. They want people to notice. They want to call superficial attention to themselves. The sad thing is, whether it’s people who exhaust themselves trying to look like supermodels every day, or whether it’s people who desperately want everyone to know how not mainstream they are – in both cases, they’re selling themselves short.

They’re working too hard to get attention based on their appearances. And that kind of attention just isn’t worth hardly anything. So we shouldn’t spend hardly any time or energy trying to get it.

Five

Body Attention

Finally, one of the most absurd but common forms of immodesty in dress is simply not wearing enough, or wearing things that are way too tight.

Why do people do this? In order to call attention to their bodies. And it doesn’t get a lot more superficial than that. There’s literally no attention so superficial as the attention that comes from showing a lot of skin. 

Sometimes that skin inspires lust, which just makes it worse – because then people don’t just look at you superficially, they also look at you exploitatively. Which is really bad for them and really bad for you. But even if lust isn’t a factor, this is not the impression you want to make on people. This is not the lens you want people to see you through. 

You just can’t see the soul as clearly when someone’s body is hogging the spotlight. And if the way you dress is making it harder for someone to see your soul, then you can say goodbye to intimacy, to friendship, and love.

Don’t settle for less than intimacy. If you’re trying to generate superficial attention, if you’re trying to catch eyes, or impress people at a glance – then tone it down. Because you don’t want superficial relationships. You don’t want a superficial life. You want a life and relationships that matter. And the more modest you are, the more likely that is to happen.