A not-yet-locked Thread on Modesty

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blackforest said:
Great post! On the topic of keeping our eyes on our own plate, I’ve brought this up in more than one modesty thread: Modesty is humility. It’s in our hearts, not in our clothes.

If you’re showing off your body, wealth, house, possessions, credentials, intellect, or - yes! - virtue, you’re being immodest. I’m not so sure that the scantily clad Mass attendee is worse off than the modest one veiled in moral arrogance. While it’s much easier to eye other people (read: women) with self-righteous scoffing, we’d do best to search our own hearts and see where we’ve failed at modesty.
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I think this is where someone says “kindly” - - “I just try to focus on the beam in my own eye! What about you?”
 
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Sarcelle said:
I’ve participated in enough modesty thread and know it evolves.

Quite predictable really. After discussion modesty, the standards of modest dress gets discussed. What is modest dress.

First no shoulders or upper arms showing, no knees, no ankles, no toes, no clothes showing the outline of the body. Preferably a high neckline.

No heels, no open toed shoes since men with a food fetish get distracted.

Hems must be at least 8 inches below the knee.

By the time the definition of modest is done, you end up with some sort of uniform like this. This how all modest women should dress.

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Do you think most Catholic saints would approve of this look?
Would Cosmo mag?
Are you denigrating these women for their perceived “frumpiness”?
Are we judging them with the eyes of the world?
Are you posting this picture to show how “uncool” modest women are? Or what?
Or perhaps you are just exaggerating for some “comedy gold”.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I struggled with lust. So did every other normal, healthy young woman I knew in college, all of whom went on to have husbands.
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Both men and women can use the same word. My life experience tells me there is a radical difference. A woman can never understand a man, nor vise-versa. We are too different - the mars/venus thing. Note Jesus gave this teaching to MEN, not to women:

Mt 5:27 "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
Mt 5:28 But I say to you that every (masculine) one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

No matter how much this culture wants to say that the only difference between men and women (as I was told, in this very crude terminology, by a “modern woman”) is different plumbing - God made us differently - and different.
 
No

I am condemning the very narrow definition of modesty.

Creativity in fashion and modesty are not mutually exclusive.

Who cares what Cosmo mag says.

I remember Pope Benedict XVI addressing the fashion designers of Milan. He admonishes them to respect the dignity of the human body but acknowledges that clothing can be a thing of beauty which respects the human body.

That is the meaning of modesty. Clothes which respect the dignity of the human body and not try to hide it or diminish it in shapeless baggy forms.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
It was time about 100 posts ago in my humble opinion, but I don’t get a say 🙂
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I don’t understand something here. I’m not asking this as a rhetorical question, but simply as a question: why do you participate so much in threads, in which you repeatedly post your opinion that they are redundant, you’re tired of the same arguments etc. and these kinds of “duplicate” threads ought not ever have been posted? If I felt that way, I might post that thought one time in the thread but then move on to something more fruitful for me. Doesn’t it seem to you that you are wasting your time, staying on a thread that displeases you?
 
Gee, I guess if Jesus didn’t give his teaching to women, including me, I spent an awful lot of time angsting over my behavior and confessing my sins of lust when I really didn’t have to bother.
 
Sarcelle said:
Yet you dismiss what a woman tells you as if you knew better than her on what she personally experiences as a woman.
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No, I dismiss her judgment that she experiences something - “lust,” in this case - in the same way and in the same intensity a man does.
 
Again, how sure are you that women don’t struggle with lust?

You are not a woman so why do you feel so confident in telling us what we do or do not struggle with?
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Gee, I guess if Jesus didn’t give his teaching to women, including me, I spent an awful lot of time angsting over my behavior and confessing my sins of lust when I really didn’t have to bother.
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I think that is an overreach in the opposite direction.

I was in an extended retreat many years ago, in a group of three men and maybe 30 women (nuns), on Matthew’s Gospel. The priest retreat director stressed the fact that that teaching in the Sermon on the Mount was directed to men, not to women - and he clearly wanted those women to realize that, and not stretch their experiences to try to make the teaching fit onto themselves, in the confessional. His philosophy of exegesis was clear and precise: listen to what God is saying, not what the reader wants to immediately apply to himself or herself. God is the teacher, we are learners - if, indeed, we allow God to teach us.

True self-knowledge is precious, and rare.
 
fide said:
No, I dismiss her judgment that she experiences something -
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This is both disrespectful and uncharitable.
You are not me.

Please have the courtesy to respect the statement of another poster when they describe their own struggles with sin.

I don’t think there’s any point in continuing this discussion further.
 
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Sarcelle said:
Again, how sure are you that women don’t struggle with lust?

You are not a woman so why do you feel so confident in telling what we do or do not struggle with?
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I know very well that women, seeking holiness, struggle greatly with inappropriate feelings and responses and self-judgments. But women are not men, and men are not women, thanks be to God. We all need to seek the reality of who we are before God, and who we are called to be, before God. Not every sin is my sin, not every sin is your sin - but may God help us to see the actual sin within us in all starkness and clarity, and repent of it all. I think St. Teresa said, we must never leave the room of self-knowledge.
 
Because then a woman that looks with lust is not sinning so that’s not the way to interpret it.
 
Sarcelle said:
By the time the definition of modest is done, you end up with some sort of uniform like this. This how all modest women should dress.

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This is in no way to be taken as a criticism of what constitutes modesty for you, but my grandmother wore less than that. And I honestly did a quick experiment and walked out the front door to see what any girls were wearing who passed by. Bear in mind I’m a few minutes from the beach and it’s summer here (apologies to anyone freezing in northern climes). The first three were wearing skirts that would be about tennis player length. That is, quite short. And one of them was pushing a pram. And they all looked quite pretty and relaxed and were dressed perfectly normally for the circumstances.

Would that be acceptable for church wear? No. For office wear? Possibly not. For walking around Islamabaad? Quite dangerous.

There is no single standard for all circumstances.
 
I grew up dressing like the three girls in that picture. Honestly it was nice. I never had to think about what was showing when I bend over and such. When I went to college I realized people consider that type of dress weird so I went shopping and bought trendier clothes. I honestly don’t really like them even now, just for comfort reasons. Today’s trends show so much skin. You can’t be pretty just because you have a lovely floral print on your dress and a smile on your face… you also have to have nice legs and shapely arms and a flat stomach. The prettier you want to look these days the more it really depends on the type of body God gave you. I truly wish women covered more of their body than we typically do because it gives more of us the chance to feel pretty. People always reference the Dutchess of Cambridge as the standard for today’s modest look & I agree - she is lovely. But what about those of us less blared with her natural beauty? Today’s styles reveal our bodily flaws. Modesty isn’t just about keeping men from lusting. It’s about women looking lovely and having that prettiness be about more than their body parts. Think about women in queenly robes like you might imagine St Elizabeth of Hungary or St Margaret of Scotland. Do you know what their calves looked like? Whether their arms were sculpted? No, you don’t. But they were still pretty. That’s what modesty does for girls. It takes the pressure off THEM. They aren’t competing with EACH OTHER anymore.
 
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It sounds as if there are some people who would like to see all women wearing the equivalent of burkas which frankly is ridiculous.
 
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