NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE M uch has been said about transgender influencer Rose Montoya’s toplessness on the White House lawn at President Biden’s recent Pride celebration. Montoya was banned from the White House for the display.

Then, and only then, something odd happened. Multiple right-wing provocateur types came out in quasi-admiration. Radio host Clay Travis tweeted, “As a first amendment and boobs guy this has me totally shook.” There are more examples, none of which are worth sharing.

With this recent history in mind (and I urge you not to investigate it too deeply), it’s about time that we address the virtue of modesty. What is modesty? Why should we embrace it and how?

Modesty is the choice to give oneself the gift of privacy. We live in a world that likes to publicize things. On social media, we flood our friends with personal information. Our problems, our once deeply held secrets, our successes, and so on. We boast about our material possessions and lament about what has gone wrong in our world — or the world at large. We are seldom careful about what we choose to share, both on and off the screen. At times, publicizing what ought to be private, whether prosthetic breasts or classified documents, comes with formal repercussions.

Modesty teaches that publicizing what ought to be private always has consequences, and doing the reverse always pays off. That is not to say that anyone “deserves” to face the consequences. But all will face them nonetheless. I think of teenage girls who, having fallen into the rabbit hole of “clean eating” influencers, weigh 85 pounds and overthink how they look on social media. All it takes today is a trace of tummy fat, which is natural, to decide to quit food altogether. Growing up, I found that most, if not all, of my female friends loathed their bodies. They were competing with alien Barbie-doll “perfection,” and they did not realize that they could simply forfeit the match.

I wish my friends knew that they were not obligated to obsess over their weight at age 13, that they were not a spectacle for the camera — or for the boys. I wish that TikTok had not caused them gender dysphoria, that I never had to hear the words “I hate my breasts” from girls who had seen enough trauma and were now being told to dive into more. But they were taught not to have privacy, and this lesson persists today. Of course, the lesson reaches beyond the body, and I have no doubt that the publicizing of the private makes people loathe various aspects of their lives, whether it has to do with their wealth, accomplishments, or even mental health. The publicization of these things garners different types of attention: jealousy, applause, pity.

Modesty encourages a life that is about more than others’ attention. It teaches its disciples that the shallow interest of a broad audience means nothing, whereas the close involvement of a select few means the world. The modest person is not a product on display at the public market, and neither are the details of his or her life. Moreover, modesty allows us to look outward rather than inward. Instead of fixating on one’s position in the rat race, one admires the beauty of the world around us. The modest person treats others with dignity and is slow to pass judgment: How can we judge those whom we know so little about? What others present in public, the modest person knows, is not the whole truth of who they are. When the modest person does contemplate the self, character comes first.

Modesty applies, to be clear, to men and women alike, and their common choice to be modest bears fruit for their counterpart. They constantly remind each other that neither are means to an end but instead precious human beings worthy of careful attention and time. Their lives are not shallow, so neither are their interactions. They do not degrade one another, and they feel no desire to degrade themselves.

How do the modest interact, then? They converse, thinking carefully about every word, because their words are windows to the soul. They take caution not to pry or have a knee-jerk reaction to what the other reveals. They know how limited their knowledge is of the other, and they are humbled. They know that what they learn about the other is precious, because it is knowledge seldom shared.

This is not to say that we should be ascetics. We can enjoy material pleasures, so long as we treasure them and treat them with the dignity of privacy. What we enjoy does not need to be boasted to the world for us to enjoy it. And we should still care for these things. We should exercise and clean our rooms and put in an honest day’s work. But we should recall that there is depth in life beyond these cares, which we should explore with equal attention. Find this depth in kindness, generosity, and gratitude. Direct your material endeavors toward these things, knowing that they will provide you with a foundation with which to cultivate virtue.

We need not lament an immodest world, though we ought to have compassion for its victims. Help to remind them, as we remind ourselves, that we do not need to always compete in the shallow races that seem to define so much.