Gotcha Covered

Seems that the first lady of France is hot enough to have posed nude, and that the resulting artwork is hot enough to sell for big bucks, over there in the land of "we are so much more sophisticated than you poor, Puritanical Americans". Hey, fair enough -- when's the last time _we_ had a first lady whose buffness would make anyone's day? (Have we _ever_ had one like that? Let me think... ) But Reuters was quick to point out that her pose in the picture included "covering her modesty with her hands". Covering her what?? (So that's what it's called nowadays!) I imagine this is a case of something getting lost in translation. In a more reserved era, the, um... "area" of a woman was occasionally referred to as her "shame", as in "covering her shame with her hands". Well, we can't have any of that, surely. How can something you were born with be equated with "shame"? But to refer to it as covering one's modesty... well, surely it was a way of, in a sense, _exposing_ one's modesty, i.e. putting it on display -- but in a coy way, i.e. not to the extent of ruining the photo shoot. In any case, it's a blessing that the French, at least, have better things to do than worry about the prime rate.