Thank you NY Mom. I’ve been wanting to discuss this topic for some time.
I think tznius is such a difficult area. Nobody can seem to agree on what is and what isn’t tznius. I’ve been told that some of my clothing is not so tznius. I happen to disagree. My rabbi has never told me there is a problem with how I dress, and he would tell me if there was a problem.
I have seen the knees of plenty of women, including rebbitzens.
There is a book on tznius that I was told NOT to read because it’s too frum. I read it anyway. While I am not at that level yet, I do aspire to it.
One day I was reading a tznius book (not the frummy one) which spoke about a particular color of stocking. As it happens, I was going to a wedding the next day, and planning on wearing that color stocking. I went out and bought new stockings to wear. When I got to the wedding I looked around, and found many women wearing the stockings the book said were assur. This included the wife of one of the dayanim in the community.
As for short, I was at a Chinese auction and the woman emcee was wearing a skirt that didn’t fully cover her knees. To make matters worse, she was standing on a stage. From that position, above the eye level of the women seated in the audience, one could see quite a distance up her thighs.