the birth of a chumra

I'm reporting on an interesting trend. likely enough i'm not the first, but i'm reporting it nevertheless. you know those taliban women? the jewish women who wore something v close to a burka and were put into cherem by rabbonim for going waaaay beyond the pale? the leader was arrested for child abuse, eventually.
A-ny-way, while i have only seen one full burka lady, i am seeing a few women wearing their scarf swathed around their neck as well as their hair.

but most common of all, i see women wearing cloaks. short cloaks, that fall to just around the hip. it's becoming really common here, and i can see the goalposts moving. this is not a fashion statement, this is an 'extreme tznius' statement. i told ben, and he said that the rabbis had put the taliban women in cherem. and i said that no one has put wearing just a cloak in cherem, and no one will, because it's just a cloak, you might as well put 100 denier tights in cherem. but this is what happens when you absorb chumra into 'normative' halachic practice; people will come up with their own chumra. another 60 years, i think, and burkas will be normative for a good beis yaakov girl. let's daven that moshiach comes first.