Well, there certainly are cultures that consider the face to be so private that you have to mask it (at least for women). And this shit has been going on for way longer than 200 years.
Oh man. Someone very close to me was somehow persuaded to join such a culture. I was recently told good women stay at home and don't show up outside without escort. And they do it by choice. Infuriating, totally unexpected stuff coming from a white person who grew up in Europe. Religious fucks brainwashing people.
It's not about being ashamed of body parts, it's about feeling safe in a shared environment. It's the same reason we don't put peepholes on changing room walls.
For women in particular, it's about not having creepy men crossing your boundaries and ogling you with sexual intent. The guys who would sneak a peek up a woman's skirt are the sort of men who would rape if they thought they could get away with it.
At the beach nobody bats an eye about being nearly naked. But in the library, we're scared someone might look at the same exact part that's on display at the beach. A place where it used to be taboo to expose skin, btw.
I believe that this fear of men ogling women in public is a direct byproduct of us being afraid that men will ogle women in public, and thus women's behavior and fears are a result of aforementioned fear, which in turn encourages men to act that way because it's expected. The whole thing is a self-perpetuating taboo. It's completely made up.
