We live in a society that continues to view women that wear more revealing clothes as less respectable than those who wear less revealing clothes. They are said to be more modest and respectable if they cover up and hide their bodies.

Women deserve to be respected no matter their choice of clothes. We deserve to be viewed as more than just sexual objects where our worth is defined by what we wear. We need to end society’s continuous pattern of constantly body-shaming women and instead working on uplifting women’s self confidence.

Since I live in a conservative town, I hear people saying that fashion industries are now producing more revealing and “sluttier” clothes which are forcing women to look less modest. This is the complete opposite of what is happening today. If you look up the words “modest fashion,” countless links will pop up with articles talking about how modest fashion is more in style than ever.

Tribune magazine states that “more so now than ever, women from all walks of life and various faiths have been donning more modest attire.” New Humanist said that “modesty is enjoying a popularity it hasn’t had since Victorian times.” Modest fashion has become so common now that one of the deputy directors of the Museum at FIT, New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, said that “it’s been insane to see how popular [modest fashion] is.”

People who feel that their idea of modesty is fading from the fashion industry are flat out wrong. In fact, they are only angered by the fact that women now more than ever are feeling confident enough in their bodies to wear whatever they want, modest or not.

How is it logical to see the clothes that a woman wears as inappropriate simply because she shows more of her body? It is sexist and wrong to see a woman and automatically view her as a sexual object that is less respected because she isn’t “covering up.”

Respect a woman’s choice of clothes and do not allow it to affect impact the perception of how women view themselves.

We must stop shaming grown women for wearing pencil skirts to their professional workplace because some co-workers see it as “inappropriate.” We must stop having schools say that they do not want girls wearing a certain type of outfit and clothes length because they will “distract” their male peers.  

We must stop shaming mothers for letting their three-year-old child wear a bikini. Nothing, and I mean nothing, should be remotely sexual about toddlers. Viewing women as sexual objects is so ingrained in our society that even toddlers are sexualized.

This may be hard for some to understand, but whatever women wear, revealing or not, they do it because they are comfortable with themselves in doing it. The length of a woman’s clothes does not have anything to do with her sexual availability, and it certainly does not have anything to do with how much attention she desires from others.

She is simply content with her body or finds the outfit interesting enough to wear. There is no hidden meaning to why we chose to wear what we wear.

In the world today, women are not being taken seriously as much as they should, and one of the main causes of this is the clothes we wear. It seems like the more revealing clothes get, the more men get distracted by our bodies instead of listening to the words that come out of our mouths.

Women need more modest clothing options, and that won’t happen unless the fashion industry makes more modest clothing. I’m not saying that clothing is the only reason why men don’t take women seriously, but it is a huge part of the reason today. Furthermore, clothes that are considered modest do not need to be the type of clothing from eras like the 1700s.

I don’t think that the fashion industry really knows what a woman wants. They just know how to make money, and if that means stepping on all the women in their path, then so be it. The clothes the industry makes basically tell men in this society that women should only be seen for their bodies and not their minds. It’s like some men are trying to tell us through fashion that women can not make decisions for themselves, which is not true because women, and people in general, have a mind of their own.

As of a 2015 survey done by Business of Fashion, only 14% of top fashion brands for women are actually run by women. With more men in power, the fashion industry is portraying women how society sees us, provocative and clueless.

I feel like I have to be in a pantsuit to be taken seriously, and I don’t want to feel like that. Since there are more men in power in the fashion industry, they are making the actual decisions of what a woman wears, but women should be making the decisions because they know what they need.

Already in this American patriarchal society women are not being taken seriously when discussing serious topics, whether it is in the workplace or school. Maybe one way to make our voices be heard is to cover up a little bit.

A woman’s reputation is judged more than a man’s reputation, so until men learn how to respect women for more than their bodies, women should just keep a modest profile so we can be respected like we deserve.