On the Veiling of Virgins

RECOGNIZE THE WOMAN: yes, recognize the married woman, by the signs of both body and spirit, which she experiences both in conscience and in flesh. These are the first tokens of natural espousals and marriages. Put an outward veil on her who already has an inward covering. Let her whose lower parts are not bare have her upper parts covered as well. Do you want to know what authority age carries? Set these two before yourself: one pressed too early into a woman's garb, and one who, though advanced in maturity, continues in virginity with its proper garb. The former will more easily be denied to be a woman than the latter will be believed to be a virgin. Such, then, is the dignity of age, that not even garb can overpower it. What of the fact that these virgins of ours confess their change of age even by their garb? As soon as they understand themselves to be women, they withdraw themselves from virgins, laying aside their former selves, beginning with the head itself. They dye their hair, and fasten it with a more wanton pin, declaring plain womanhood by hair parted from the front. Next, they consult the looking-glass to aid their beauty, and by washing they thin down their over-exacting face, and perhaps even vamp it up with cosmetics. They toss their mantle about them with an air, fit the multiform shoe tightly, and carry fuller appliances down to the baths. Why should I go on through details? Their plain appliances alone show their complete womanhood. Yet they wish to play the virgin by the single fact of leaving the head bare, denying by one single feature what they profess by their entire deportment.