Martial long since observed (Lib.
iii, LXVIII) that when an innocent girl looks at the penis she gazes
through her fingers. Where, as among many Mohammedan peoples, the face is
the chief focus of modesty, the exposure of the rest of the body,
including sometimes even the sacro-pubic region, and certainly the legs
and thighs, often becomes a matter of indifference.[69]
This concealment of the face is more than a convention; it has a
psychological basis. We may observe among ourselves the well-marked
feminine tendency to hide the face in order to cloak a possible blush, and
to hide the eyes as a method of lulling self-consciousness, a method
fabulously attributed to the ostrich with the same end of concealment.[70]
A woman who is shy with her lover will sometimes experience little or no
difficulty in showing any part of her person provided she may cover her
face. When, in gynecological practice, examination of the sexual organs is
necessary, women frequently find evident satisfaction in concealing the
face with the hands, although not the slightest attention is being
directed toward the face, and when an unsophisticated woman is betrayed
into a confession which affects her modesty she is apt to turn her back to
her interlocutor. "When the face of woman is covered," it has been said,
"her heart is bared," and the Catholic Church has recognized this
psychological truth by arranging that in the confessional the penitent's
face shall not be visible.
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