It was June 2000 and my sister and I were listening to an impromptu jazz trio in Central Park. At the end of one enjoyable session the small crowd applauded, the trumpet player optimistically removed his hat to collect coins, and the man next to me turned and said, "You look like Wendy Shalit." "Thanks," I said. "Who's that?" He went on to explain that she was an author. He praised her insightful and witty writing style then recited one or two of his favorite lines from her first book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. His spontaneous, midday review was enough to pique my curiosity--plus I wanted to know what she looked like.
The author photo of Miss Shalit was one of the smaller ones I'd seen, but from the limited perspective I had I officially took looking like her to be a compliment. As far as the book itself was concerned, I was decidedly impressed and a little jealous. She was 23 years old when her first book was published. I was twenty upon reading it with my own big dreams of writing a book, but I knew it wouldn't happen for me within the next three years. I hadn't found a cause as Miss Shalit had. Her cause was an admirable one, and she posed it in a gripping way. She asserted that society should reinstate modesty as the rule rather than the exception, that we need to stop romanticizing promiscuity, and wait until we're married to have sex.
It wasn't the topic that held me as much as the way it was presented. Miss Shalit effectively threw her own experiences, pop culture snippets, news stories, and statistics into a blender and made a compelling argument for the anti-sexual revolution. The reason the subject matter didn't move me too much was because it was one I was very familiar with. I grew up in an Anglican household--church every Sunday, youth group once a week (at least), and Christian camps during the summer. Waiting until I was married to have sex was an ideal I held and supported (sometimes obnoxiously) until I was 18 years old. At that age, I changed my mind. I had no grand reason for doing so other than life and curiosity. Ironically, Miss Shalit voices this perfectly in the introduction of A Return to Modesty: "Sometimes you have to change your mind when things turn out to be more complicated than you initially thought." In retrospect, I realized that not having sex before I was married was never my idea--it was what I was told I should do.
A Return to Modesty caught me at a time in my life when I was leaving one set of beliefs behind and coming into a new set all my own. If I were to reread the book today, I might sit up and argue more readily. I wouldn't argue to the point where I'd tell someone who wanted to wait until they were married to have sex that they were doing anything wrong. That's a wonderful decision, provided it's the one that works for you. But I'd be tempted to make the case that it doesn't work for everyone.
What reading Shalit's book taught me was how to balance disagreeing with someone with fully admiring them. This book also taught by example how to write in an anecdotal, approachable way, and when I eventually found my cause that's exactly what I did. My cause, letter writing, doesn't turn quite as many heads as doing away with all things immodest does, but it is something people tend to react to--including, as I was very excited to discover, Miss Wendy Shalit. A friend of mine sent me a link to Wendy's latest blog, and it's an ode to letter writing. The short but sweet blog post Take Back the Letter is written in Wendy's personal, breezy, and beautiful style that endeared me to her in the first place. On a side note, I have not read her latest book, Girls Gone Mild, but I gladly give bonus points for a very clever title and plan to read it before the year's end.
I can imagine that, at first glance, while Wendy might be pleased to know of my book's existence, she may not approve of the section on erotic letters or some of the causal encounters. I do hope, however, that she'll feel free to consider and contest the material all at once.