A new Victorian era

Bari Weiss, writing in the New York Times on the decision of the Miss America pageant to eliminate the bathing suit competition:

"Our culture hasn’t stopped objectifying women. We — men and women both — are just getting better at pretending it’s not happening."

That's how the prudishness we condemn as "Victorian" works. Everyone keeps doing what we've always been doing only we pretend we're not. We pretend not because there is a potentially huge penalty for letting on that you are. That penalty is not for objectifying women but for making everyone else feel uneasy.