Tzeniut in Greece

Jessica of "Redefining Rebbetzin" writes, inter alia, in Struggling with Skirts,

The Ben Ish Chai has a responsa in which he forbids men from wearing pants and women from wearing dresses. He lived in the middle east and was referring to women’s harem pants and men’s robes. Therefore, the issue is not inherently about skirts as feminine versus pants as masculine, especially in a day in age when men’s and women’s pants are clearly not designed to look similar or to be worn by both sexes.

I have a Greek friend (specifically, from rural Salonika) from yeshiva, Daneliko, who wears the sort of clothing that Ottoman women would have worn (except his clothing is the masculine version), and based on his apparel, I’d say that the pants the women would have worn would be more tzenua than the dresses and skirts women wear today – think MC Hammer-type bagginess. My point is simply that when people forbid pants and permit only skirts, they have to define what they’re talking about, because just as there are decidedly immodest and provocative skirts, there are modest and conservative pants. It frustrates me to no end when people say apodictically that pants are forbidden, period. A simple and vague statement like that is tantamount to declaring that every Turkish Sephardi woman for centuries was violating tzniut. (Which would be ironic, because Rabbi Eliezer Papo of 19th-century Bosnia advocated that every G-d-fearing Ashkenazi send his children to live in an Ottoman land, to save them from European sexual immorality. I kid you not!)

Speaking of Greek friends of mine...

My Gemara rabbi was discussing tzniut as it applies to men, and he said that likely, many of us (being baalei teshuva) had likely become more tzenua in our dress since coming to yeshiva. (Speaking for myself: I used to always wear shorts, even when it was 20 Fahrenheit out, but now, after having been in yeshiva for a few years, I almost never ever ever wear shorts anymore.) My rabbi turned to my beloved havruta, Yosele from Athens, Greece (we have a bromance together), and he said, "Yosef, men in Greece often wear no shirt at all, right?". Yosef innocently replied in the affirmative, and so my rabbi continued, "And so by your former standards, what you’re wearing right now is actually tzenua, relatively speaking." Yosef had been wearing a quite low-cut shirt made of very thin fabric, and he was clearly stunned by our rabbi’s audacity. (But we love our rabbi, and it was all in good fun. I still like to remind my Yosele of this story.)

Me with my beloved "Havrutele" (as I often call him - yes, I call him "Havrutele". I also call him "Havruta!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" before I run up to him and we embrace each other like J.D. and Turk on Scrubs):

I remember when my rabbi was recommending a book on tzniut, he recommended one book in particular, saying that it began its discussion with not women but instead with men, and he said, "Any book on tzniut that starts with men first, you know it’s good."

My Yosele has also remarked that in Greece, the men dress more tzenua than the women, turning thousands of years of human sexuality on their head. When I told him that I had met a Greek young woman, he asked what she was wearing, and when I told him a very modest and pretty dress, he acted as if Mashiah had come; I’ve rarely ever seen a person more dumbfounded and excited than he was that night. Unfortunately for me, I got to walk this young woman all the way home before I discovered that she was not only Greek and not only Orthodox, but also Greek Orthodox. The first and only time I’ve ever had the courage to talk up a young woman I had met at a social occasion. I had even happened to have had my copy of The Jews of Rhodes on my person that night – how often are you that prepared??!! Sigh...