Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins 12

Recognize the woman, recognize the married woman too, from the testimony of both body and spirit, which she endures in conscience and in flesh. These are the original documents of natural betrothals and marriages. Impose a veil from the outside on one who already has a covering within. Let the upper parts be covered as well, whose lower parts are not naked. Do you want to know what authority age carries? Set both side by side: the immature girl compressed into a woman's habit, and the one who has matured yet remains a virgin in her own habit. That woman will be denied more easily than this virgin will be believed. Such is the credibility of age that not even a habit can obscure it. What is more, our own women confess the change of age by their very habit, and at the same time, once they have understood themselves to be women, they are led out from virginity, laying aside from their head what they were; they twist their hair, and with a more wanton needle they fasten it, parting their locks from the forehead to profess their womanhood openly. Already they seek the counsel of their appearance from a mirror, and they soften their face with lavish washing, perhaps even doctoring it with some cosmetic; they throw a cloak over the outside, they lace on a multiform shoe, they carry more equipment to the baths. Why should I pursue individual points? Their preparations alone, manifest as they are, parade their entire womanhood in public. Yet they want to pass for virgins solely by the nakedness of their head, denying with one habit what they proclaim with their whole demeanor.