Free The Wild Girls by Ursula K. Le Guin

barrier which clothing designers keep lowering to titillate and raising a little again to tease. The appearance of physical modesty in fact has little to do with clothing, everything to do with convention. A naked woman can be completely modest in her demeanor, if nakedness is a norm in her society, while a fully dressed woman can appear as a flaunting, taunting sexual self-advertisement, if she wants to, or is expected to, or if the fashion in clothing forces it on her.
    In the political arena, modesty has usually been rather a pose than a position. For most politicians, exhibitionism is the norm, sometimes with an effort to ground self-praise on an ethical basis, often showing only a shameless disregard for realistic self-judgment.
    Advertising—boastfulness in the service of greed—is the great enemy of realistic assessment and respect for probability. Where profit is supposed to be unlimited, realistic assessment is unwanted. Advertising now sets the tone and style not only of politics but a great deal of what we say and do, read and hear. Thus strength of character is judged not by reliably competent behavior, but as a show of assertiveness, a display of aggressiveness. In order to prove that he’s strong and confident, the president of the United States is required to talk about “kicking ass.” The self-consciously vulgar, preening hostility of the term is the essence of its significance.
    (I find the bumper-sticker slogan “Girls kick ass” particularly sad. What the slogan protests is the old notion of modest man-serving maidenhood, or the vicious demand that young Black women be humble and subservient. But such a vapid threat of indiscriminate violence fails as a protest: it doesn’t evoke pride, it isn’t a call to action, it’s nothing but an advertising slogan.)
    For an artist, insofar as modesty implies diffidence, an unwillingness to exhibit oneself or one’s work, it’s a virtue so dubious as to be a handicap. Art is a show, an exhibition. Self-doubt can smother a true gift, just as a canny self-confidence can parlay a minor talent into artistic fame. But if modesty is interpreted not as diffidence or self-effacingness, but as non-overweening, a realistic assessment of the job to be done and one’s ability to do it, then you might say a chief virtue of excellent artists is their modesty. We may mistake it for arrogance because the ability they knew they had was so immense that they were unafraid to do what nobody else dared. But knowing your limits and going to them isn’t arrogance. It’s greatness of spirit. It leads to the immense, unboastful sureness of a Shakespeare or Rembrandt or Beethoven. Next to them the swagger artists, the great egos, the Wagners and Picassos, look a little smaller than life.
    Self-advertisement by announcing the subversiveness of one’s work, making a show of boldly overthrowing conventions long since overthrown, adopting a style for mere novelty, or in cynical mockery of an older style, or to shock—these are ploys artists first began using in the nineteenth century. They’re common now, and particularly successful in architecture, painting, and sculpture. Writers and composers who attempt similar immodesties don’t always meet with the complacent acceptance offered the visual artists.
    Their prices are lower and their critics less collusive. The greatest work of art concerning modesty as a major character trait is the Jane Austen novel that people who adore
Emma
usually don’t adore at all. The morality of the tale of an uppity girl getting brought down to size is simple, familiar, and welcome to everybody. The morality of
Mansfield Park
is not simple, is not familiar, and is unwelcome to those who consider extraversion a desirable norm and self-confidence an illimitable virtue. That a girl could really, truly, actually be modest—that is, assess her situation realistically, choose the behavior appropriate to it, and stick to it through immensely powerful