[Avodah] When does mixed swimming mean?

[Daniel Israel]

Michael Makovi wrote:
> She responded to me, however, that there is no issur of wearing tight
> clothing. This seems wrong to me, but to be honest, I cannot recall an
> explicit source that tight clothes are assur. We have arguments about
> showing arms and revealing a tefach and uncovered hair, but I cannot
> recall (from Rabbi Henkin's handy summarization of every single Gemara
> on tzeniut) anything about skintight. Is my memory faulty, or is my
> friend correct?

I am not up on the halachic literature, but I would say that much of 
tznius is from the fifth chelek of SA (common sense).  We all understand 
the basic idea of tznius- it seems wrong to you because it is, and one 
shouldn't need the SA to figure that out.

Somone (RnTK, maybe, or RnSB?) recently made an excellent point about 
this which boiled down to: yes, one can write a sefer that paskens 
outfit by outfit, but that misses the point and gets bogged down in 
minutia to the extent that the real concept is lost (and communal 
standards get replaced by someone's chumros).  If one teaches the 
underlying ideas and the basic halachos, women will figure it out.

"Tight clothes" is a perfect example.  A psak would require strictly 
defining "tight clothes," which is probably impossible.  Some common 
sense is required: does this outfit attract the wrong kind of attention 
or not?

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu