Thank you for sharing this. The title sums up insecurities many of us struggle with. Your story would be unbelievable except I know how that time and place was, and I can totally imagine "modest" being a reprimand. What a terrible experience. I don't have a specific memory like that, but I was always moving as a child and always the new girl which made me feel vulnerable and exposed. I have recurring dreams where I'm naked or the bathroom door is open and it's the same feeling. It helps to understand where the fear is coming from in order to soothe that little girl within and recover.
Yeah, the zeitgeist then dictated that any value long held needed to be dumped upside down, that restraint was always the problem. Many in my generation had to figure things out for ourselves, and eventually discover that Western Civilization had long ago figured this out for us!
Thank you for sharing this. The title sums up insecurities many of us struggle with. Your story would be unbelievable except I know how that time and place was, and I can totally imagine "modest" being a reprimand. What a terrible experience. I don't have a specific memory like that, but I was always moving as a child and always the new girl which made me feel vulnerable and exposed. I have recurring dreams where I'm naked or the bathroom door is open and it's the same feeling. It helps to understand where the fear is coming from in order to soothe that little girl within and recover.
Yeah, the zeitgeist then dictated that any value long held needed to be dumped upside down, that restraint was always the problem. Many in my generation had to figure things out for ourselves, and eventually discover that Western Civilization had long ago figured this out for us!