Can't touch me!

To my mother, I have now become a slut.
Returning home at 9.15pm after a nice dinner with Jane and Leanne, my mum eyed the top I was wearing and launched into a lecture on "modesty, chastity and purity of heart, mind and spirit."

And I thought those were internal values you embody, not something you can discern just from looking at someone's dressing.

Anyway what, was wrong with what I was wearing? It's your standard, run-of-the-mill streetwear. Put me in a large group of people and you could even single me out for dressing conservatively. Geez. It wasn't a bikini top, it wasn't a teensy-weensy tube, it wasn't two small postage stamps strategically stuck to my chest. It was a spaghetti top and jeans. Plus I wore a jacket over it towards evening. What makes it even worse is that I had recently overcome a mental obstacle with regards to dressing and was feeling quite celebratory (Eve, I think you're the only one who will quite understand what I mean - what I told you while we were O2Jamming the other night).

Me: What's wrong with it?
Mum: PULL it up.
Me (tugs at neckline)
Mum: HIGHER
Me (tugs again)
Mum: Hmmph. Tsk, this is Australian dressing already, you know.

Yeah, and pray do tell me: where am I currently residing in, huh, the North Pole??

Then she made me read out the definition of "modesty" from the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary.

modest /mod-uhst/ adj. 1 having or expressing a humble or moderate estimate of one's own merits. 2 diffident, bashful.

She grunted with great displeasure at the first two definitions I read out. "No, no, what's the other meaning?"

So I read on:

3 decorous in manner and conduct.

Which seemed to satisfy her. I won't continue with the other two meanings of 'modest', but you get the idea.

And I think we got into some debate about rape and molestation, with me taking the (feminist) stance that a woman, even one revealing dressed, never, never, ever deserves to take even the weeniest ounce of responsibility should she be raped; while mum, still clings on to the antiquated notion that rape is a dark alley, creepy man and sexily-dressed woman. (Hello, it's not - majority of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim; even old women and conservatively dressed women are raped, because rape is about establishing power and control over someone weaker, not necessarily about sex and perceived attractiveness) She took what I thought was a decidedly anti-feminist stance by declaring that women have a responsibility to be always dressed modestly in order not to tempt our good brothers in Christ. Or whatever.

Ironically, when we get right down to it, I don't think I'm unreasonable when I say I fit the dictionary definition of modesty. I have humble expectations of myself, I don't expect myself to be some rich, famous career high-flier with three Porsches and a Lambourghini. Hell, I don't even want a merse or a BMW or a Toyota or a Honda. I'll be happy with a beat-up second-hand car. With a manual roll-down windows. I don't expect to live in a mansion, not even a semi-detached. I'll be happy with a small flat or apartment.

I don't show-boat. I don't scream to be centre-of-attention. I don't need to be surronded by fawning admirers. I really am quite a shy, introverted person. I don't really talk about my academic or other achievements, not because I'm not proud of them, but because... why, because there really isn't any need to, at least among the people I hang out with. And I like it that way.

But no, my mum picks and choose the definitions she thinks should apply to me in order to portray me as 'immodest'. Because I'm not dressed in a tent that makes a pleateau out of my chest and hides my dirty pillows, because I'm wearing something that makes her ultra-conservative, nearly-fundamentalist-christian radar go off, I am now officially TEH SLUT.