Kasha, first of all, I don’t learn Gemarah, but I did learn the Kimchis STORY many, many times throughout my life, and it was NEVER meant to be an halachic inyan, only a lesson about her level of tznius (and we were not being told to emulate that level, just to understand it). It does not mean that the Gemarah is AGREEING with her that all women should do the same, only that the Gemarah is telling her story to make a point about how far she was prepared to go in her commitment to personal tznius. Does the Gemarah actually say, “YES, rabbosai – Kimchis was correct – her children were exceedingly beautiful and became kohanim Gedolim b’davka because the inanimate objects in her house never saw a hair of her head” – SERIOUSLY? There are plenty of things the Gemarah is “wont” to include that may be personal conjecture. There is a rabbi in Pirkei Avos who said not to be marbeh sicha with nashim, and it is told how (I think it was) Beruriah gave him mussar on that, when he used too many words to ask her for directions to Lyddah. Not all rabbonim agree with each other, and many things in the Gemarah are meant to teach a certain hashkafa to us but not necessarily halacha which is accepted by all or most.
We should be tzniusdig, both men and women, in all aspects of our lives. What one person chooses to be machmir on, does not invalidate the observance of one who is not machmir in the same way. the danger of stories like this one is that people such as yourself start to be hyper-critical (not hypocritical) of other people who are FOLLOWING the actual halacha, because you begin to think of the chumrah as the halacha and the halacha as “minimal observance, at best.” Tell me I am wrong about that, because everything I have ever read from you, tells me otherwise. And I absolutely respect and applaud your right to believe, follow, observe, every chumrah ever adopted and those yet to be thought of. But please, please, please stop preaching to the oilem as if we are all sinners and you are the one with the universal clue. Because if that is not your intention, then you are coming off that way to me, and possibly to other posters (though I can only speak for myself).