Modesty?

There's a common misconception I've encountered with people being ashamed of themselves, their bodies, and their behavior.  The problem with shame is we tend to sit and stew in it rather than use it to move us along.  In my life, as a rule, anything that doesn't move me, isn't serving me.

I received a question from a friend recently who was on a retreat with his buddies and encountered a locker room situation.  Some of the men walked around in robes or towels being careful not to show anymore skin than they were used to, carefully undressing beneath, only removing it behind the shower curtain, and blindly reaching for the towel  hook while holding the curtain against the wall.   Then...  Well, then there were the other guys.  The men who walked around proudly strutting their naked bodies with a towel flung haphazardly over their shoulder or left behind entirely.  My friend being part of the former group, asked me, "How do they balance modesty?  On one hand I wish I could walk around like they do but on the other hand I'm supposed to be modest in the way I present myself."
 
I thought it was an excellent question and it got me thinking.  There's surely what to be said for having inner and external freedom to walk around like that, but what about modesty?  I think maybe the answer is in the understating of the word modesty and how it's completely different than shame.  So I started by answering him, shame and modesty are so far from being same thing.  My friend was floored just by that simple idea even before I offered any explanation.  Modesty is about being humble and free from vanity and egotism or from showing off.  Modesty is about preserving the beauty of my internal self. Shame is about believing something is wrong with my internal self.  Shame shrinks me and tells me there is something wrong with me.  This man had spent his entire life believing that his personal modesty meant he was supposed to be ashamed, and even more so, actually embarrassed of his body.  This couldn't be further from the truth. (Not to mention, in our society today there's  a huge problem of over-sexualization of our bodies which makes it more difficult for men to be comfortable. A great article from another blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/06/naked-men.html).  Modesty is about preserving the beauty within, not about feeling like there's something wrong and we therefor need to hide it or cover it up.

So I don't have an answer about what's right or wrong for this guy.  But towel or no towel, what I do know is shame shouldn't be what holds him back.