A little context, first. Slate ran an article last week about dress codes. Also, a few days ago, a friend of mine reblogged this Tumblr post, which is, as things are usually defined, NSFW. (Whether or not such images ought to be considered safe for the workplace is a topic for another day.) These two items don't directly relate to one another, but both have to do with the concept of enforced modesty.

In case it is not clear from the title of this post, I do not support enforced modesty.

Here are some things that I believe that ought to be fairly non-controversial from a feminist standpoint:

• A woman is entitled to wear whatever she wants. There is some wiggle here with respect to the legality of public nudity, but at the very least, women ought to be allowed to be as clothed or unclothed as men are allowed to be.
  
• Regardless of what a woman is wearing, it is my obligation to be respectful and treat her like a human being in any and all interactions I have with her, not like a sex object.
• Regardless of what a woman is wearing, my actions are my own responsibility. As a man, I am, frankly, offended by the notion that men are incapable of controlling themselves around an unclothed woman.
  
• No one facet of a person's appearance or behavior can give a complete picture about that person, and it is very easy to be wrong when ascribing motivations to other people. Thus, no solid conclusions can be drawn about the amount of self-respect a particular woman has based solely on the way she dresses.

However, I also know that we live in a society that consistently broadcasts the message that the sole or most important qualities a woman has are her appearance and sexuality. You can see this in the kinds of stories we tell in our mass media. You can see it in the way advertising markets to both men and women. You can see it in the way we talk about our celebrities. You can see it in the kinds of articles that fill major women's magazines.

(For whatever reason, the publisher of Self magazine sent us a free copy last month. Flipping through it, it might as well be called "Your Only Purposes In Life Are to Be Pretty and Attract a Man" magazine. That it's actually called "Self" magazine was deeply troubling to me. I asked Juliette if we could please not keep magazines like that around the house when Eva is old enough to read or recognize what's going on in the pictures.)

Given how pervasive and powerful this message is, I think that most women who dress in certain particular styles are doing so in order to attract a certain type of male attention and, further, that the reason they are trying to attract that male attention is because they feel that beauty and sexuality are their most important qualities. This isn't based on any study that I've read. I don't have any numbers to back this up. It is, if we're being generous, an educated guess.

I'm very ambivalent about what this all means, though. In general, I don't treat a woman differently if she is dressed provocatively. I neither ogle nor chide. But I also don't really approve.

Of course, my approval is neither here nor there for most of the women of the world, and furthermore, I'd be way out of line for me to say anything on the matter. When it comes to my daughter, though, I'm not sure.

I wrote a piece last year about the mental struggle I have with this idea, and in responses online and off, I had women of many different sociopolitical viewpoints tell me that I should quit worrying about it, and that it's OK for me to set standards for both of my kids. Nevertheless, I worry both about the morality of telling a girl what she can wear and the practical effects of paying too much attention to her appearance.

What I've settled on—albeit uncomfortably—is that I will continue to tell my daughter that she's cute and pretty, but that I'll also tell her that she's smart, strong, funny, helpful, kind, honest, or any other adjective that applies. And that I can set reasonable standards for her dress that neither require her to wear a burqa but might, for example, require that her skirts cover her entire bottom, at least until she's an adult—once she goes off to college, if she wants to, say, go to a Pimps 'n Hoes Ball (that is actually a thing) then it'll be up to her to figure out what that means to her. And it'll be on me to make her know that she can make her own choices without changing my opinion of her.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable and non-sexist stance to take, to me. But I still can't help feeling like there's something wrong with a man telling a woman or girl how she can dress.