🎓 Complaints about immodesty go way back

A discussion of sumptuary laws and clothing critiques, mostly focused on Greco-Roman and Crusader cultures.

May 09, 2025

The school my kids attend has a uniform. For the most part, it’s convenient and I like it. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time agonizing over clothes that didn’t fit quite right, that made me feel frumpy, etc. The uniform seems to bypass all that; my kids are young enough that they wear sweatpants and a t-shirt, and the sweatpants fit better than anything else my son wears.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that although one of the ostensible arguments in favor of school uniforms is that they enforce a certain standard of modesty, the girls are wearing skirts that are way more revealing than anything I ever saw similar-aged girls wearing back when I was teaching public school. I’m not bothered, but there’s something startling about helping out with recess and watching a young girl do a handstand in a skirt because none of the uniform options involve pants… after being told that this school environment involves a more modest demographic than public school.

I’ve been reading The Silk Roads by

Peter Frankopan

lately, and was therefore reminded of the following complaint from Seneca:

Seneca for one was horrified by the popularity of the thin flowing material, declaring that silk garments could barely be called clothing given they hid neither the curves nor the decency of the ladies of Rome. The very foundation of marital relations was being undermined, he said, as men found they could see through the light fabric that clung to the female form and left little to the imagination. For Seneca, silk was simply a cipher for exoticism and eroticism. A woman could not honestly say she was not naked when she was wearing silk.

How the world has changed! These days, silk is practically chaste compared to the clingy spandex yoga pants we take for granted.

But also… oh how the world has stayed the same!

Clothes are never just clothes.

They’ve always carried messages about class, virtue, and power.

From Rome and China to early modern England and Japan — and probably other societies I’m less familiar with — moral panic over immodest, extravagant, or socially inappropriate dress always seems to crop up in times when there are deeper concerns about social order, sexual mores, and the maintenance of established hierarchies. The whole point of laws like Elizabethan England’s sumptuary laws, in which only the upper classes could wear satin, silk, and velvet, was to legislate clothing’s role as a way to distinguish between social classes.

Yet I don’t recall ever reading that Elizabethan silks were considered immodest.

And Roman sumptuary laws like the Lex Oppia — a law from the early 3rd century BCE — were more about restricting spending than controlling modesty. For example, the law restricted how much gold women were allowed to wear and what they wore; they were no longer permitted to dress in multicolored garments, particularly purple. This was a wartime austerity measure, but notably, guys like Cato the Elder tried to keep the laws even once the crisis was over. The women objected, taking to the streets to protest.

For a time, Athenian women were forbidden from owning more than three traveling dresses.

Some people think that clothes are mere frivolity, but they matter.

For the most part, even in schools and workplace with uniform policies and selection processes that privilege uniformity and “culture fit,” the average person can tell somebody’s social class and political allegiance based on what they wear and how they style themselves. Only some kids have Minecraft lunchboxes, neatly braided hair, confident postures, or any of a thousand other little “tells.” Hell, Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through The American Status System talks about how the flowers chosen for landscaping — rhododendrons vs. chrysanthemums, for example — are a class signifier.

Derek Guy — one of Twitter’s most popular users — gained enormous cultural influence helping people learn to speak the language of menswear fashions, breaking down the minutiae of tie lengths, shoulder pads, shoe types, and shades of blue.

There are dangers in judging people by how they look, of course. There is a horrible history of pseudoscience used to judge the intelligence and ethos of entire groups of people based on the color of their skin or the shape of their head. Yet on the flip side of that, people have been using their appearance to deliberately signal social allegiance for thousands of years. We ignore those signals at our peril.

For all the little differences between the kids at school, none there have dyed hair, or visible tattoos, or multiple piercings — not something I could say about their age-mates at other schools I’ve spent time in.

Society loves an “ugly duckling” story, but “a beautiful woman’s beauty is hidden behind a complete lack of awareness of how to fit into mainstream culture” is effective precisely because society places value on fitting in. It took me a long time to figure out the clothes that effectively signal (to myself, and to others) the identity I want to have. It’s like branding, in a way, but in many ways more powerful. Software developers look different from fintech quants. Teachers look different from secretaries. Restaurant managers look different from electricians.

A Patagonia fleece signals something very different from a Harley-Davidson jacket

I spent a month working with a personal trainer to make sure I had good (safe!) form while re-building a weightlifting habit1, and she was always surprised when I showed up in my usual outfit of bootcut yoga pants (which look like slacks), pearls, v-neck tank top (which looks like an office-ready blouse), and ballet flats. Those are affiliate links, but let’s be real — none of y’all are gonna buy these even if they do have amazing pockets and incredible range of motion. Amazon informs me I own 12 variations of that shirt and 8 pairs of those pants, which sounds right. They don’t look like workout gear, but there’s nothing I can’t do in that outfit — while looking pretty spiffy if I do say so myself. Toss on a bolero sweater (I own 3 of this one) and it works for all seasons.

Appearances vary across cultures.

Clothes, jewelry, weapons, and other accoutrements (like those Minecraft lunchboxes) are a powerful way to symbolize belonging to a group. During the Crusades, Eastern Christians and Muslims were known for long beards, while Latin crusaders from the west were known for being clean-shaven or, at most, having short, groomed beards. When Richard the Lionheart (mostly by accident) conquered Cyprus, the citizens of the capital city of Nicosia signaled the change in leadership by shaving their beards.

I’m quite bad at signaling that I belong to the gym rat group, because I value other aspects of my identity more.

Once upon a time, I had hair down past my waist. Some of the girls at my son’s school have hair that long — but none seem to wear their hair shorter than their shoulders. I used to think I’d encourage my daughter to keep her hair short, the way I now do. Now I’m not so sure.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Long hair has been associated with the aristocracy in many places — it takes a lot of work to maintain; according to Tyrants of Syracuse by Jeff Champion, “many of the anti-democratic rich in Athens emulated the Spartans by growing their hair and/or beards long, and wearing their short, red military cloaks.” So when the Spartan general Gylippus showed up to the city of Syracuse with long hair and a red cloak, the Athenians and Sicilians mocked him roundly for it. At this time in Greek history, long hair was associated with conservatism and aristocracy.

It’s a far cry from 1960s America, when it was linked to liberalism and communism and the various anti-war movements associated with hippies.

I’m working my way through a monograph2 about Greek identity3, and there are a lot of axes on which the Athenians treated Spartan norms as barbaric. Spartan women wore distinctive clothes that were famously short, with slits up the sides that bared their thighs. At religious festivals, Spartan maidens sometimes danced naked. While the Spartans themselves saw this practical and virtuous, signaling fitness and frankness, the Athenians considered it a breach of feminine modesty.

14th-century English chronicler Henry Knighton condemned the outfits ladies wore to jousting tournaments, noting with disapproval that women donned scandalously form-fitting clothes and even pieces of men’s apparel. Medieval church writings (from sermons to sumptuary laws) routinely targeted low-cut gowns or overly sumptuous attire.

When 14th-century traveler Ibn Battuta reached the Mali Empire in West Africa, he was shocked by how even Muslim women went about wearing ‘almost nothing.’ He complained that servant girls and even the ruler’s daughters appeared topless in public, ‘exposing their private parts.’ It’s hard to imagine how he’d feel about someone like Mylie Cyrus or Lady Gaga — but I’m sure Medieval priests would be appalled by modern Catholic school girl uniforms.

Manuscriptions

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