“When a town has certain standards of public dress in place, for someone to move into that town they are de facto saying that they will uphold the standards of the town.”
So if someone lives in Manhattan, they should live like streetwalkers??? The standards of a town are subject to many influences, changes, and circumstances. What is accepted one day, may not be the next, and vice versa. Lakewood was NOT always like it is today, (my husband’s non-frum family grew up there), so should the Yeshivish people who moved in oh so many years ago when Lakewood was rather, shall we say, “relaxed” in its standards, have acclimated themselves to lving more in line with how the original Lakewood natives did????? That simply makes no sense, though I DO get the sincere point you are trying to make.
People should try to be sensitive to their seviva and not seek to cause machlokess with their neighbors. But that is just plain menschlechkeit, and has nothing to do with the fact that at THIS point in time a particular mode of dress is followed. It goes both ways, as I have pointed out, and not only the way of the more medakdeik residents of a neighborhood.
I may have once mentioned analogously, that a woman moved into my neighborhood from Boro Park. She came into shul one Shabbos and the Rabbi was shortly about to give his morning drasha, and as we always do, I parted the curtains that cover our mechitzah (even without the added curtain the mechitzah is 100% kosher in and of itself, as it is extremely difficult to clearly see people through it), in order to see the rov as he spoke, which helps me to hear him better, as well. She came into the small ezras nashim and immediately went up to the curtain and covered the mechitzah up again. When I asked her what she was doing she said, “In my neighborhood, we don’t open curtains up on the mechitzah.” I quietly reminded the lady that she was not in her old neighborhood, and we are noheig to do things differently in our shul, and she was most welcome to hear the drosha with the curtains open. She sat down and never did it again.
The point is, the new kid on any block should not be throwing his or her weight around, but watch and learn from the residents, to see what the lay of the land is. That goes for the person who is more Yeshivish coming into a not as Yeshivish environment, and for the frum but more modern person entering the Yeshivish world. Mutual respect goes a LONG way to promoting Ahavas Yisroel, something we really need to keep in mind especially in the next few weeks. Changes, if any need to be made, are best made in smaller increments. It avoids ill will, and can end up being a real Kiddush Hashem.