WASHINGTON, 20 July 2007 — Young women in the US are rejecting the promiscuous “bad girl” roles represented by such torrid “I’ll do anything to keep my name in the tabloids” pop idols such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Madonna.

A growing group of young American women have had enough and are now choosing modesty over vulgarity.

These “girls gone mild” are pushing forward their own movement, and creating their own market. Websites such as Pure Fashion, offers a modeling and etiquette program for teen girls whose goal is to “show the public it is possible to be cute, stylish and modest.” Pure Fashion says it has put on 13 fashion shows in 2007 with 600 models, and the company says it is currently planning 25 shows for 2008.

ModestApparelUSA.com, ModestByDesign.com and DressModestly.com all promote a return to styles that — as my dear mother used to remind me while shopping for clothes — “leave something for a man’s imagination.”

There are many explanations for the massive modesty movement. Some speculate that the sexual revolution has caused many women to rethink their own values. “Gays and lesbians are becoming mainstreamed, women make up more than half of college populations, they’re becoming full partners in the workplace and there’s a general cultural deconstruction of what gender means,” Joshua Zeitz, author of “Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity and the Women Who Made America Modern,” recently said in an interview.

Another explanation is what many see as the mainstream return to conservative religious values. Modest-clothing websites have religious roots, from Christian to Muslim to Jewish, but also are attracting nonreligious customers.

Faith-based programs like Pure Fashion — which in a takeoff of the question “What Would Jesus Do?” provocatively asks its viewers: “What Would Mary Wear?”

Others speculate that it is parents, who some children view as having gone too far in their “sexual liberation” behavior that has caused children to reverse course — and rebel against their parents’ examples of immodesty.