I posted this in the other thread about tznius, but in my humble opinion it is important for people to see this so I am posting here again:
I think the problem is that the direct approach doesn’t work. I think the frum community needs to look at the psychological motivations behind these behaviors and go after it that way. These people know the halachos from their bais yaakov days. Simply repeating them just makes people want to do them less (people have a tendency to rebel against restrictions that they feel are “forced” on them). It is important to stress self-esteem and self-confidence in women – this is primarily the job of parents, but also the husbands. The women need to understand that they are respected no matter what they wear and if those close to them are able to express that, then we can start heading in the right direction. The next step beyond this is shidduchim and the pressure parents place on their daughters to look a certain way, otherwise they can’t get a shidduch, so how do you think that makes them feel about their essential self, beyond the outward appearance. We have psychologists in the frum community who have studied these points and the rabbonim need to speak with them and work with their kehillos on an individual and general basis to bring home the importance of these points. These messages may be more important than the direct mussar about learning torah, keeping tznius and drinking. These psychological concepts are fundamental to creating people who are shomrei torah on the inside, and don’t just do mitzvos from from community pressure.
We need to dig deep down to the underlying issues and not just see things at the surface as I think many of the comments here suggest.