Modesty 2.0
Modesty is becoming one of the words
that make me twitchy almost as soon as it's mentioned. The conversation usually turns to the necessity of covering
breasts and bums, how covered is covered enough, how women just don't
understand the male sex drive, how adolescent males are little better
than dogs in heat. The whole discussion becomes so negative and
degrading, to both men and women. Modesty cannot be the passing of
the burden of male chastity or male honor onto the bodies of women.1
If it is, we should just forget it entirely, because in that case,
the very fact that a woman possesses a fully matured body is
immodest, and she is therefore, by definition, not through any action
on her part, a source of temptation to weak-willed men. This is no
way to live.
We are creatures with bodies and sexuality, and modesty, at its
best, can help us balance those aspects with the rest of our selves.
The balance is hard to achieve, but a good first step would be to
accept our embodiment, rather than attempting to cover up in such
huge swathes of fabric that we appear as mattresses with heads.
1This
is a concept that I first ran into a few years ago, reading an
article on honor killings, linked from a blog whose name I've
forgotten. I can't link to the originator of that concept, which is
a pity, as it's really helped clarify my general uneasiness with the
typical modesty discussion in Christian circles.
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