"If you feel you’re Extra Special, why keep it to yourself?" suggests an online catalog. "Announce it to the world. You’ve got it, so go ahead and flaunt it." The site’s wares include T-shirts and coffee mugs opining, "I’m Extra Special." Alternatively, if you’d rather proclaim your wealth than your worthiness, you can choose the sweatshirt that shouts, "Hello girls! I’m very rich!"

The message seems to be "Don’t be modest about your assets; flaunt them, whatever they are!"

If you cling to the old-school idea that "if you have to state it, it must not be true," then you may not rush out to have sentiments like these emblazoned on bumper stickers. But the Web site gets plenty of traffic, indicating that many of us may have succumbed to the humility-doesn’t-get-you-noticed philosophy outlined in books such as Peggy Klaus’s Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It. But is the perception of propriety touted by our togs as deep as the trend will take us? Will we all be buttoning up our self-effacing tweeds to sit in seminars and learn how to "Brag!" our way to promotions that will enable us to buy (and then flaunt) yachts worth almost as much as some nations’ gross domestic product?

Presumably, to be meaningful, the new propriety must become more than skin deep.

But what truly is "propriety"? A thesaurus opens up a rich tapestry of synonyms hinting at characteristics that are conspicuously absent in modern culture: appropriateness, decorum, dignity, unobtrusiveness, modesty. All very archaic concepts. But the antonyms are somehow more striking, because they speak directly of flaws we don’t like to think we have. If we don’t have propriety—if we are not modest—we could be said to be ostentatious, pretentious, flaunty, showy, splashy, tasteless, boastful.

A cursory Web search turns up a host of sites dedicated to eliminating these negatives from how we dress by offering clothes that cover from head to toe. But by focusing on dress, we may be defeating the purpose from the start. One online catalog offers "swimsuits" that look like old-fashioned school uniforms: a tunic over a more formfitting but neck-to-knee garment, which shouts rather ostentatiously, "Look! I’m modest!" Rather than making the wearer less conspicuous, such a garment could attract nearly as much attention at the beach as the thong bikini on the next sun lounger.

It can be challenging to present oneself in ways that don’t shout.

In August 2002, National Public Radio personal finance commentator Brooke Stephens had some interesting things to say regarding "shouting" about financial assets, but she may as well have been defining modesty and propriety in general. She said, "If we can’t wear it, drive it, eat it—we’re not interested. Our biggest thing is we want to make a splash and an impression to show off how much we’ve got, how well we’re doing, how successful we are, and how much better we have it than everybody else. However, many of us are gradually beginning to learn how old money behaves . . . . Instead of having five or six cars, or a new car every year, they buy one or two classic cars that are good [and] last forever, and [they] drive them until they fall apart. . . . They purchase classic clothing with a tailored look that will last for ten seasons instead of two. The most important thing, though: we are beginning to learn how to keep a low profile to not let people know what [we] have, so that [we] can maintain [our] privacy." Or are we?

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