Immodesty, then, is not simply about being vigilant about your clothing (don’t wear a purse that falls diagonally across your body, don’t show your arms or your thighs), it’s a constant vigilance about how you display your body (don’t stretch, bend, or bounce). “Clothing plays a part in modesty, but it is only a part,” an 18 year old male explains, “Any item of clothing can be immodest” (his emphasis).posted by TheophileEscargot at 10:11 AM on August 1, 2010 [26 favorites]
In addition, these rules are potentially changing all the time. A “technically modest” outfit, such as a school uniform, can suddenly have immodest connotations (so watch MTV, girls, to stay on top of these shifting meanings)
This is a great deal of self-monitoring for girls. Not just when they shop, but when they get dressed, and all day as they move, and with constant re-evaluation of their clothes and how they fit. But, the rationale is, they must be vigilant and obey these rules in order to protect guys from the power of all bodies (both their own sexiness, and men’s biological response to it). Guys are burdened with lust, they insist.
There is no line to chest immodesty. However, it shouldn't be "How close can I get without being immodest?" It should be "How can I glorify Christ and build up my brothers in Him?"posted by taz at 11:31 AM on August 1, 2010 [3 favorites]
A tough one. What is the rest of the wardrobe? Is it a spagehtti strap shirt? A little collarbone is OK, but there's certainly a point where, even though cleavage isn't being shown the shirt could be immodest.
Immodesty has to start somewhere, we should not be trying to walk the line, but flee from it.
It's once the cleavage shows up that it really begins to be a problem - but do leave at least a small margin for error.
As a man, I don't really see how anyone could really defend this position. Never once in my long career of being in a locker room and hearing lewd talk have I ever heard a man say "DUDE! DID YOU SEE HER COLLAR BONE!?!? AND THE TWO INCHES OF SKIN BENEATH IT?!"
It depends on the person, really: How high on the chest the breasts are, etc.
I agree mildly--let me explain. The more skin that is exposed the more risk of being a stumbling block to a brother. And another caution is that if you have a dress that has a neck that comes down past the collar bone (I have seen it especially on those that have squarish necks) you have much more of a chance when you bend over of exposing yourself. (and don't kid yourself by saying "I won't bend over") Most often from the dresses that I have seen that expose the chest bellow the collar bone are immodest if you bend over (cleavage or worse will be visible.) Thus I believe that it is generally immodest to wear a dress that exposes below the collarbone. Does this make sense? I do not think that it is necessarily immodest for me to see your collarbone, but almost all dresses that exposes your collar bone will be immodest.
I think that it draws attention to the chest, even if it doesn't reveal anything bad.
Personally, I've never had a problem with this. My concern is that the breasts be completely covered, in all reasonable postures. Just don't make it an ambition to push the neckline as low as possible.
I think girls can expose their upper chest without being immodest. As long as it is without cleavage.
This alone need not necessarily be immodest, but if a lot more is exposed elsewhere, it could perhaps contribute to an overall immodest appearance.
If you don't have a dad or brother to ask about the propriety of specific outfits or articles, try to find a brother in Christ who you can ask. As helpful as surveys and things like this can be, they can't ever answer a question like "Does THIS pattern draw too much attention to my chest?" I'm not really sure what kind of criteria you should put on this kind of surrogate male family member (except that they should definitely be "aware" of girls, and understand and appreciate what you're trying to do), so you'll have to think through what would be appropriate, and what you would be most comfortable with, yourself. I don't think it should be too hard to find someone willing to help you in this way. I know for sure that I would be perfectly happy (not to mention thrilled that a girl was taking this stuff into consideration) to help someone in this manner.posted by taz at 12:30 PM on August 1, 2010 [5 favorites]
cgk - I was also wondering about the not insignificant subset of respondents who are not teenagers, and whether they correlate to the insanely puritanical end of the spectrum or whether it's the younger kids (raised completely within Religious Right backlash culture) who are more fanatical than their more liberal older counterparts (who'd have been of the "burn your Nirvana albums" generation).Inside the culture that we're talking about, it can actually feel really, really good to do something like this. It feels bold, and honest, and counter-culture edgy. My theory is that everyone -- everyone -- wants to believe in something, to be passionate about something, to rail against the powers that be and set themselves apart from the culture at large. Some kids go hipster, others go punk, others strive to succeed in academics (believing that 'mediocrity' is the defining characteristic of the culture at large). One of the smartest things that the RTC culture has done is branding regressive mores as "X-Treme."
"She is not some body or shape to serve my foul pleasure of the moment; rather she is in truth a daughter of God."Even in short snippets, the self-loathing that I wrote of earlier comes through. It's not enough to say, "Hey, I shouldn't be objectifying them," or "Hey, they're people who deserve to be treated with respect." Sexual attraction is about forcing someone to serve your foul pleasure. It's taking a beautiful, angelic princess created by God and tainting them.
Put simply, mainstream American Christian culture has a profoundly fucked up approach to human sexuality, sensuality, and sexual identity.*Please note the difference between 'has' and 'is founded on' -- I'm less interested in dissecting the historic sins of Yahwehism than looking at the here and now. That doesn't mean the history isn't interesting, but I'm trying to draw a clear line between people who have moved past that, and people who have "doubled down" on the unhealthy sexuality.
I have to disagree with you. The entire Judeo-Christian religion is founded on on a fucked-up approach to human sexuality.
This thread is terrible in all the predictable MeFi LOLXIANS ways. verb's comment is pretty much the only one I've seen that even comes close do doing this subject justice.Thanks for the kind words - I wasn't sure whether my post would be seen as kind or condescending from someone on the other side of the religious fence, but it wasn't intended to be cutting. That said, I don't feel this thread can be considered LOLXIANS in any way, unless that simply means that Christians are involved and some people went 'LOL.' As you noted, this letter that sparked this post is terrible by your theological standards!
...Criticizing something like this from the perspective that one should be able to have consensual sex with whomever one wants, whenever one wants, isn't terribly interesting. If that's your sexual ethos, anything which suggests that it might not actually be okay to have sex with anyone you please is bound to look draconian and impossibly backward.That's where I think you've misread this. No one in the thread (OK, no one I've spotted so far) has said that these kids need to go get laid, or be less uptight and get some porn, or that they SHOULD in fact leer at women lecherously.
Not in those words, no. But there are injunctions against masturbation in the Talmud. I do not know if they are repeated in Christian scripture.Nope, they aren't. In the culture I'm talking about in my posts, though, the line goes that it is impossible to masturbate without lusting, and lust is a sin, sooooo...
Girls are in a tough spot when it comes to modesty. They are called by God to dress modestly, but because they aren't born with the same "visual nature" in their sexuality as guys are, it is difficult for women to spot where modesty begins and ends. Where are the boundaries? What trips a guy's trigger, and what doesn't?Think through what is being said here: the clear implication is that "modesty" is not a standard that can be known and understood, but the lowest common denominator of male arousal.
I wish we didn't need this survey. I wish that fathers and brothers in local churches could serve their daughters and sisters and that each home could provide loving direction on its own.In other words, "Fathers and brothers should be telling their daughters that guys will get turned on if they show calf, that guys will mentally undress them if they go jogging, that their bodies are an incitement to sin, and so on. But since some girls clearly aren't getting that message, we need this survey."
As women, clothing and appearance are some of the most powerful and important means we have of sending a message about our hearts and our values.That sentence makes me want to weep.
The thing is, theologically rigorous Christianity does view lust as sinful, yes?Yes, that's true -- and the traditional rejoinder is that no woman can make you lust, any more than a bank can make you steal by having lots of money. The apocryphal Martin Luther quotation, if I remember correctly, is "You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair." The survey is an attempt to catalog all of the ways birds can fly over a young man's head, not to deal with the real issue that historic Christianity considers problematic.
But most of the crowd seems to be operating on the assumption that any argument for female modesty is the same thing as Sharia law, and it's just not true.I think that it's more accurate to say that the things the survey describes as immodest or problematic are so innocuous that it is impossible for an observer to not draw the line between such thinking and the justifications for Sharia law.
Besides, isn't this logically equivalent to asking "You know who else likes modesty?" It permits the questioner to reject the thesis out of hand without actually trying to figure out what's going on.You know, lots of atheists like modesty, too. The issue here is that 'modesty' often devolves into "innocuous things women do that men blame for their own sexual feelings."
If anyone ever tells these kids that there is porn on the internet, they're fucked.Or, more likely, they'll develop an addictive cycle of secret pornography consumption, massive guilt and self-loathing, overcompensation by publicly maintaining a hate-on for "lust" and "immodesty," and the eventual projection of responsibility for their own feelings onto women.
9Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? 11So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.
Not in those words, no. But there are injunctions against masturbation in the Talmud. I do not know if they are repeated in Christian scripture.Nope, they aren't.
"If you don't have a dad or brother to ask about the propriety of specific outfits or articles, try to find a brother in Christ who you can ask. As helpful as surveys and things like this can be, they can't ever answer a question like "Does THIS pattern draw too much attention to my chest?" I'm not really sure what kind of criteria you should put on this kind of surrogate male family member (except that they should definitely be "aware" of girls, and understand and appreciate what you're trying to do), so you'll have to think through what would be appropriate, and what you would be most comfortable with, yourself. I don't think it should be too hard to find someone willing to help you in this way. I know for sure that I would be perfectly happy (not to mention thrilled that a girl was taking this stuff into consideration) to help someone in this manner."Warren Jeffs, is that you?
The idea that what you feel when you see an attractive girl is "sin" as opposed to "something you have to learn to deal with as a human being."And the shameful, despicable truth is that voices in mainstream protestant culture are unwilling to discuss the question, "Where's the line between sexual attraction, sexual pleasure, and sin?" The answer, by default, is "If you enjoy it, you're sinning."
Yeah... see... the thing is they don't believe that. What they believe is that indulging in sexual pleasure outside of marriage is sinful. This doesn't mean that simply being attracted to another person is sinful, but that what you do with that attraction may be sinful.
There's a general Christian idea that those who have burdens (which in this case is the men) shouldn't have to shoulder them aloneThe funny thing is, it always seems to be men who need help on this front. Strange how that works out, that women always seem to be tempting the poor men, what with their stretching and their tank tops. That's a serious cultural problem.
I'm not trying to defend what these people are doing. If anything, I'm more offended by it than most people here seem to be. The only difference is that I'm attempting to critique it from within rather than from without.Agreed, and appreciated. I think what angers me more than anything is the knowledge of what an incredible, brutal uphill struggle you face doing that. I stayed inside of the church long after I had ceased to believe because I believed that these things were important, critical issues -- eventually I had to concede that I was being dishonest, and that I would have to leave those issues in the hands of those who still believed. I was no longer a legitimate 'voice from within.'
"However, a system of religious belief that has, at its center, an assumption about women as pollutants--women as temptations--women as subordinates--is, in fact misogynistic."They are pretty spot-on in my experience of evangelical culture, and according to quite a few others who have said that they grew up in (or are even currently part of) evangelical culture, the observations are accurate. The letters from the adults who sponsored and supported the survey are damning enough as it is; there's no need to project motives onto the guys who answered it.
The problem we're having here is that observers such as yourself are arguing that the only way one could do something along the lines of the Rebelution survey is to make those assumptions. The Rebelution people would disagree, and from my experience in evangelical culture, I'd disagree as well. Those attitudes are actually pretty foreign to my experience in evangelical culture.
No, actually, it doesn't. The Catholic position regarding homosexuality is that homosexual desires are just desires. They're essentially things that happen to you and have no different moral valence than the desire for food.Imagine telling a vegan that their desire for food is perfectly acceptable -- it's just that eating vegan food is a sin! -- and the analogy snaps into focus a bit more.
I didn't. I just switched denominations within the Protestant tradition. I'll no longer accept the moniker "evangelical," as that's come to mean the overly political, theologically vapid stuff you see on the news, but I'm probably more Protestant than I was when I made the switch. I'm also still pretty involved in the culture--personally and professionally--so I can still speak as an insider, even if I'm something of a mole.Doh!
But the problem there is that they're failing to recognize that being a heterosexual married couple does not give one permission to indulge in sexual license.Yes, a thousand times yes.
The history of evangelicalism as a distinct and identifiable movement isn't a terribly long one--think Billy Graham in the 1950s and 1960s--and there was a rather uncomfortable amount of segregationist sentiment knocking around at the time, most of which has been forgotten as embarrassing.I'm not sure this is really true. Wouldn't the British Evangelicals of the 1800s count? My wife's been doing quite a bit of research into that are, and is an avid Anthony Trollope reader -- he apparently had no kind feelings for Evangelicals. But I think that might be what you're talking about in terms of the emergence of Evangelicals as a potent national force. I think the cross-pollination inside of fundamentalism (not capital-F fundamentalism, just... oh, screw it, we need to get some better descriptive terms) is just as important to keep in mind as the nuanced theological differences between Evangelicals and other denominations.
Like, for example, the fact that the Protestant church was uniformly opposed to contraception until the 1930s, when the Church of England moderated its stance. Within two decades, American Protestant traditions had forgotten that it had once been a moral issue at all. Huh?It's been noted that much of the Church considers "conservatism" to be "The way I remember it." There's a generational sliding window effect that ensures they're just "conserving" what was normative in the past. Contraception, racial discrimination, divorce, etc.
Put simply, mainstream American Christian culture has a profoundly fucked up approach to human sexuality, sensuality, and sexual identity.*Please note the difference between 'has' and 'is founded on' -- I'm less interested in dissecting the historic sins of Yahwehism than looking at the here and now. That doesn't mean the history isn't interesting, but I'm trying to draw a clear line between people who have moved past that, and people who have "doubled down" on the unhealthy sexuality."
I have to disagree with you. The entire Judeo-Christian religion is founded on on a fucked-up approach to human sexuality.
Sorry, but you don't get to frame the argument to suit yourself. American Fundaentalism didn't just arise out of thin air-- it is what it is because of the foundations.I don't think that's a fair characterization of the point I was trying to make, or the thread as it's played out. My point is that in the context of this conversation, I was talking about specific schools of belief and thought. There are certainly reasons why those cultures have grown out of certain belief systems, but other far less objectionable cultures have grown from the same soil. I was trying not to lump everyone (say, the Quakers and their aggressive egalitarianism) with the tainted wackiness of the group that ran the survey.
Thus leading to strange life involving a perversely carnal relationship with automobiles.This actually reminds me of a moment many years ago; a friend and I were both 13 and talking about the serious topic of lust and respecting women and how to avoid objectifying them. No shit, we were a couple of evangelical kids thinking earnlestly about this and it wasn't an attempt to get into somebody's pants.
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posted by josher71 at 9:51 AM on August 1, 2010