Dressing decently -- what does it mean to you?

What I can't figure out is why they'd be so bent on thinking that a lady who wears pants (feminine pants, mind you) is "cross-dressing", but don't think anything about tennis shoes/sneakers, boots, sweaters, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and many other "generic" clothing items. I mean, weren't these all worn by men first? Yet, as with pants/jeans, these things were made in ladies' styles, too.

I can about imagine what they'd think of me and my overalls!

In the Marine Corps the drill instructors said that men wear trousers and women wear pants

I believe modesty can be taken out of control very easily. IMO, I have noticed that modesty gets to applied out of context that women begin to feel ashamed of being women, and having women's bodies. If I could get a nickel for every girl I've met who had "assets", but wore oversized and baggy clothes in order to be modest, I'd have a nice savings account.

Personally, I believe modesty gets taken to the point where women are expected to be responsible for another person's actions and thoughts, when we are supposed to be responsible for ourselves. There are a lot of beautiful people out there who can't help garner attention and do their best to be modest. I've met guys who had nice muscles and would wear clothes which were appropriate sizes, yet continued to gain the looks of lust from women. What were they supposed to do, stop exercising?

I think it's worse with women. I am a firm believer of clothing one's self appropriately. If I am wearing a top which is lower cut, as WannaWitness said, I will pair it with something underneath in order to retain my modesty. But has someone who has, er...assets in a certain area, no matter how much covering I do, it's still noticeable. In fact, it seems that the harder I try to cover and divert attention, the more noticeable. It wasn't until a friend told me that wearing two layers of shirts underneath a zip-up sweatshirt was making me look HUGE that I realized that covering up to that extent was making me look very top-heavy.

That doesn't mean we have license to walk around in skin-tight clothing where the clothes look like they were spray painted on. However as women, many of us tend to have curves and how clothes fit isn't something we always have control over. Many of us who try to buy clothes bigger than our actual size end up exacerbating the problem because with curves, baggier clothing tends to "fall" on those areas and pile up, adding more attention than needed.

We are supposed to dress decently in order to not intentionally incite lust from others. When we do that, we're keeping our end of the bargain. The other end of the bargain is not up to our control, and we can only do things in our control. If a guy can't keep his eyes from looking down while talking to me, and I have everything covered, should I get a reduction?

I just came home from Hilton Head, and we rode bikes there for a week, I didn't have any trouble riding in my skirts. It wasn't easy for me to come to this decision, 15 years ago...but as I read well, it really spoke to me.