Regulation of women’s bodies also stems from anxiety about physicality and death

Evidence

Though that is likely part of the story, it is also about animality and death. Such restrictions exist because men have always made the rules, and women arouse sexual lust in them. They also stem from the corporeal nature of menstruation, pregnancy, and the birthing process. … “Taboos surrounding sex, birth, menstruation—all express the desire to ward off something that is too physical, that partakes too much of the secretions of the body.” — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 598

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ essay — cross-cultural dress panics as class/identity signaling; this adds a death-anxiety layer to that theme. — connects to: The fear of bodily decay can make women hostile to life itself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1571; Menopausal anxiety manifests as jealousy and persecution fantasies as defense against a finished life. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1718
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the immodesty essay: the female-body-regulating mechanisms here (menstruation, birth taboos) extend that piece’s argument about dress panics into bodily-animality anxiety.

Related

• The fear of bodily decay can make women hostile to life itself (similarity 0.82)