Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/265

 PSYCHOLOGY OF MODESTY AND CLOTHING 25 I

organic hesitancy, though in the case of woman social hesitancy may play even the greater role. Pairing is in its nature a seiz- ure, and the coquetry of the female goes back, perhaps, to an instinctive aversion to being seized.

Our understanding of the nature of modesty is here further assisted by the consideration that the same stimulus does not produce the same reaction under all circumstances, but, on the contrary, may result in totally contrary effects. A show of fight may produce either anger or fear ; social attention may gratify us from one person and irritate us from another ; or the attentions of the same person may annoy us today and please us tomorrow. Mere movement is, to take another instance, one of the most powerful stimuli in animal life, and, if we examine its meaning among animals, we find that the same movement may have different meanings in terms of sex. If the female runs, the movement attracts the notice of the male, and the move- ment is a sexual stimulus. Or the movement may be a move- ment of avoidance — a running away ; and in this way the female may secure contrary desires by the same general type of activity. Or, on the other hand, not running is a condition of pairing, and is also a means of avoiding the attention of the male. Similarly modesty has a twofold meaning in sexual life. In appearance it is an avoidance of sexual attention, and at many moments it is an avoidance in fact. But we have seen in the case of the birds that the avoidance is, at the pairing season, only a part of the process of working up the organism to the nervous pitch necessary for pairing.

But without going farther into the question of the psychol- ogy of wooing, it is evident that very delicate attention to behavior is necessary to be always attractive and never disgust- ing to the opposite sex, and even the most serious attention to this problem is not always successful.' Sexual association is a treacherous ground, because our likes and dislikes turn upon temperamental traits rather than on the judgment, or, at any

'Old women among the natural races often lose their modesty because it is no longer of any use. Bonwick says that the Tasmanian women, though naked, care- fully avoided indecent postures, but that the old women were not so particular on this point. (Bonwick, The Daily Life of the Tasmanians, p. 58.)