Contents
How is modesty different from shame and why do we feel it?
Psychology
To distinguish them, the psychologist Beatriz Ostalé uses a simple metaphor: “Modesty is the vaccine for not committing what would cause shame”
El modesty It is a very personal thing: while there are those who feel a rush just to go to the beach and have to stay in their swimsuits, there are others who undress in the middle of a changing room without much concern.
Although at first they seem the same, it is not the same to feel shame than to feel shame. The psychologist Patricia Gutiérrez, from Centro TAP, comments that modesty is an emotion traditionally associated with the sphere of sexuality, nudity and intrapersonal intimacy. “On the other hand, shame is an emotion that encompasses many other fields of development of the human being, and can be present in different structures and relational contexts,” he says. To explain the difference, the psychologist of the Virtus group, Beatriz Ostalé, uses a metaphor
simple: “Modesty is the vaccine for not committing what would cause shame.”
When it comes to seeing if we are more or less modest, what influences both our social and cultural context; they are our modulator. “The family, the immediate social environment and the school context are the most primary reference to see if we are modest or not”, explains Patricia Gutierrez. In addition, it states that it also influences our construction of modesty sources of learning such as cultural, economic or health factors. As an example, the professional comments that if a person, from a young age, goes to medical check-ups, they will have less shame than those who have not experienced the act of undressing before health professionals.
How insecurity influences
The security that one has (or not) in oneself is a determining factor on individual modesty. “This does not mean that this insecurity is an intrinsic and isolated variable, since it is in turn regulated by the culture and by the previous experiences that the person may have suffered previously,” says Beatriz Ostalé. He adds that, in this case, many factors come into play, which can range from the individual, such as the level of demand that a person may have regarding himself, to the more collective ones, such as established standards of beauty “That determine the value of the person (both at the individual and social level) depending on whether or not a normative or canonical body is possessed”.
And can you learn not to be modest? Both professionals explain that, since we are talking about an emotion, it can be managed in different ways. The Virtus psychologist comments that, in this case, the key is to learn to accept oneself as each one is. “To do so, we have to see our bodies as something neutral, that is, as a medium through which we live, and not as something to hide or something that dictates your value as a person,” says the professional. Likewise, the TAP Center psychologist highlights that, in order to become masters of our modesty, it is very important to know the reason for our desire, as well as to measure the consequences it will have for us and for our social-affective environment. “Asking ourselves about the motivations for our change will allow us to generate more stable and deeper changes,” he says.
Are women more modest than men?
You can have the perception that women, historically, tend to be more modest than men. “Society does not expect the same from a man as it does from a woman,” Beatriz Ostalé emphatically affirms. He argues that, traditionally, women have had to be modest since his purity, his discretion or his modesty were praised socially. “The opposite of this in our culture was penalized and related to promiscuity,” he says. On the other side of the scale, he comments that men’s modesty is not traditionally related to their sexualization, but to a number of other issues. “For example, charisma is valued more than the physical, so a man can be modest when speaking in public, for example, but not be modest about his body,” he says.
Even so, both professionals agree that these attributions to each gender are increasingly diluted. «Men and women are not pre-designed to feel different; We must put the focus on the educational and cultural base in which we grow so that this changes, ”says Patricia Gutierrez. “It is not difficult to find both women and men who do not go to the gym or the swimming pool out of modesty”, says Beatriz Ostalé. With this phrase, one last idea stands out: beyond being a man or a woman, the impact of social networks in today’s society makes the established beauty standards increasingly demanding for everyone.