Prof. Irving Rosse, of Washington, refers to "New England prudishness," and "the colossal modesty of some New York policemen, who in certain cases want to give written, rather than oral testimony." He adds: "I have known this sentiment carried to such an extent in a Massachusetts small town, that a shop-keeper was obliged to drape a small, but innocent, statuette displayed in his window." (Irving Rosse, Virginia Medical Monthly, October, 1892.) I am told that popular feeling in South Africa would not permit the exhibition of the nude in the Art Collections of Cape Town. Even in Italy, nude statues are disfigured by the addition of tin fig-leaves, and sporadic manifestations of horror at the presence of nude statues, even when of most classic type, are liable to occur in all parts of Europe, including France and Germany. (Examples of this are recorded from time to time in Sexual-reform, published as an appendix to Geschlecht und Gesellschaft.)
Some years ago, (1898), it was stated that the Philadelphia Ladies' Home Journal had decided to avoid, in future, all reference to ladies' under-linen, because "the treatment of this subject in print calls for minutiæ of detail which is extremely and pardonably offensive to refined and sensitive women."
"A man, married twenty years, told me that he had never seen his wife entirely nude. Such concealment of the external reproductive organs, by married people, appears to be common. Judging from my own inquiry, very few women care to look upon male nakedness, and many women, though not wanting in esthetic feeling, find no beauty in man's form. Some are positively repelled by the sight of nakedness, even that of a husband or lover. On the contrary, most men delight in gazing upon the uncovered figure of women. It seems that only highly-cultivated and imaginative women enjoy the spectacle of a finely-shaped nude man (especially after attending art classes, and drawing from the nude, as I am told by a lady artist). Or else the majority of women dissemble their curiosity or admiration. A woman of seventy, mother of several children, said to a young wife with whom I am acquainted: 'I have never seen a naked man in my life.' This old lady's sister confessed that she had never looked at her own nakedness in the whole course of her life. She said that it 'frightened' her. She was the mother of three sons. A maiden woman of the same family told her niece that women were 'disgusting, because they have monthly discharges.' The niece suggested that women have no choice in the matter, to which the aunt replied: 'I know that; but it doesn't make them less disgusting,' I have heard of a girl who died from hæmorrhage of the womb, refusing, through shame, to make the ailment known to her family. The misery suffered by some women at the anticipation of a medical examination, appears to be very acute. Husbands have told me of brides who sob and tremble with fright on the wedding-night, the hysteria being sometimes alarming. E, aged 25, refused her husband for six weeks after marriage, exhibiting the greatest fear of his approach. Ignorance of the nature of the sexual connection is often the cause of exaggerated alarm. In Jersey, I used to hear of a bride who ran to the window and screamed 'murder,' on the wedding-night." (Private communication.)
At the present day it is not regarded as incompatible with modesty to exhibit the lower part of the thigh when in swimming costume, but it is immodest to exhibit the upper part of the thigh. In swimming competitions, a minimum of clothing must be combined with the demands of modesty. In England, the regulations of the Swimming Clubs affiliated to the Amateur Swimming Association, require that the male swimmer's costume shall extend not less than eight inches from the bifurcation downward, and that the female swimmer's costume shall extend to within not more than three inches from the knee. (A prolonged discussion, we are told, arose as to whether the costume should come to one, two, or three inches from the knee, and the proposal of the youngest lady swimmer present, that the costume ought to be very scanty, met with little approval.) The modesty of women is thus seen to be greater than that of men by, roughly speaking, about two inches. The same difference may be seen in the sleeves; the male sleeve must extend for two inches, the female sleeve four inches, down the arm. (Daily Papers, September 26, 1898.)
"At——, bathing in a state of Nature was de rigueur for the élite of the bathers, while our Sunday visitors from the slums frequently made a great point of wearing bathing costumes; it was frequently noticed that those who were most anxious to avoid exposing their persons were distinguished by the foulness of their language. My impression was that their foul-mindedness deprived them of the consciousness of safety from coarse jests. If I were bathing alone among blackguards, I should probably feel uncomfortable myself, if without costume." (Private communication.)
A lady in a little city of the south of Italy, told Paola Lombroso that young middle-class girls there are not allowed to go out except to Mass, and cannot even show themselves at the window except under their mother's eye; yet they do not think it necessary to have a cabin when sea-bathing, and even dispense with a bathing costume without consciousness of immodesty. (P. Lombroso, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1901, p. 306.)
"A woman mentioned to me that a man came to her and told her in confidence his distress of mind: he feared he had corrupted his wife because she got into a bath in his presence, with her baby, and enjoyed his looking at her splashing about. He was deeply distressed, thinking he must have done her harm, and destroyed her modesty. The woman to whom this was said felt naturally indignant, but also it gave her the feeling as if every man may secretly despise a woman for the very things he teaches her, and only meets her confiding delight with regret or dislike." (Private communication.)
"Women will occasionally be found to hide diseases and symptoms from a bashfulness and modesty so great and perverse as to be hardly credible," writes Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, an experienced coroner. "I have known several cases of female deaths, reported as sudden, and of cause unknown, when the medical man called in during the latter hours of life has been quite unaware that his lady patient was dying of gangrene of a strangulated femoral hernia, or was bleeding to death from the bowel, or from ruptured varices of the vulva." (British Medical Journal, Feb. 29, 1908.)
The foregoing selection of facts might, of course, be indefinitely enlarged, since I have not generally quoted from any previous collection of facts bearing on the question of modesty. Such collections may be found in Ploss and Max Bartels Das Weib, a work that is constantly appearing in new and enlarged editions; Herbert Spencer, Descriptive Sociology (especially under such headings as "Clothing," "Moral Sentiments," and "Æsthetic Products"); W. G. Sumner, Folkways, Ch. XI; Mantegazza, Amori degli Uomini, Chapter II; Westermarck, Marriage, Chapter IX; Letourneau, L'Evolution de la Morale, pp. 126 et seq.; G. Mortimer, Chapters on Human Love, Chapter IV; and in the general anthropological works of Waitz-Gerland, Peschel, Ratzel and others.
[1] The earliest theory I have met with is that of St. Augustine, who states (De Civitate Dei, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII) that erections of the penis never occurred until after the Fall of Man. It was the occurrence of this "shameless novelty" which made nakedness indecent. This theory fails to account for modesty in women.
[2] Guyau, L'Irreligion de l'Avenir,