Appropriate Dress For Women

[Mark_Roberto]

Unless a woman is anywhere near cute to beautiful what’s the point of veiling onesself? Grandma veiling herself is nothing but the religious ostentation of “holier than thou” because if she applied any common sense when she looked in the mirror she’d realize she doesn’t pose a temptation to sin to any man within a hundred miles. Veiling should be for the sake of modesty, shielding from the eyes of men the beauty of woman which can be a spiritual stumbling block to salvation. Apart from this it’s a useless accessory that is more smirk-worthy than it is commendable.

 

[Shin]

Modesty is not only about issues of purity. It is about wearing clothing that is proper to one’s interior self and state in life.

For a woman, a veil is proper, old or young, because it is modest, in and of itself, whether the woman is old or young, beautiful or ‘ugly’. And because a woman is – a woman and all that means, issues of purity entirely aside. A veil is proper to her because of God. Because of the saints. Because of the angels. Because of the Blessed Virgin Mary… because of the long history of veils the saints wore, and all the holy women throughout the ages. A long and holy tradition that all women are a part of.

Both old and young women, beautiful and ugly, both are called to dress modestly and with the same restraint.

Going back to matters of purity, even if a woman is so ugly and old that not a single man would feel tempted, she still should dress as modestly as the most beautiful young woman.

Thereby she provides good example for all men and women, and does not tempt those who can cause problems with impurity to imitate a poor example put forth by those who cannot.

Speaking in general – When there are exceptions in cases of necessity – Exceptions can never be taken as doing away with what they allow a temporary relief from.

One thing about modesty… modesty is not about doing what you can do… it is doing what you should do, at a cost… a precious cost because what you should do repays you spiritually at least tenfold, while doing what you should not may seem to reward, but only in this life in ways you regret in the next.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Unless a woman is anywhere near cute to beautiful what’s the point of veiling onesself? Grandma veiling herself is nothing but the religious ostentation of “holier than thou” because if she applied any common sense when she looked in the mirror she’d realize she doesn’t pose a temptation to sin to any man within a hundred miles. Veiling should be for the sake of modesty, shielding from the eyes of men the beauty of woman which can be a spiritual stumbling block to salvation. Apart from this it’s a useless accessory that is more smirk-worthy than it is commendable.

Now don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel!

Using your logic, grandma shouldn’t wear any clothes at all.

Methinks you’re glossing over the fact that for most individuals one’s sense of modesty directly mirrors one’s sense of comfort. I don’t care how fat and ugly you might find me, I wouldn’t feel comfortable exposing my genitalia or posterior, age notwithstanding.

 

[HAnne]

Back to the OP and the discussion at hand:

I have to say that a headcovering is a very PERSONAL thing between a woman and God. Some of us are called to wear it, some aren’t. Some are called to wear a traditional mantilla, others a scarf, others a shawl pulled up, still others a headband style that can be scrunched up when not in prayer.

I welcome questions about my covering. I truly do. I very my style of covering based on the situation I am in. There are times when it is practical for me to wear a mantilla (such as in Mass) and there are times when it is far more practical for me to wear my headband headcovering or a tightly tied scarf (such as when I’m teaching children!!). I do not feel drawn to wearing a hijab but I often do wear a sheer scarf in a similar manner but tied behind my hair instead of pinned into place and then over my shoulders.

Honestly I would ask her. We women are amazing creatures with amazing stories. Perhaps she likes the amount of cover with the hijab. Maybe she feels drawn to it for the many potential reasons stated here. Maybe she researched headcoverings extensively and chose that one or maybe since she found it was readily available (unlike many Christian appearing covers) she went with that choice.

I find that behind every humble and blessed woman wearing a covering of any kind there is a beautiful story about how it came to be there.

 

[Ashurie]

I attend a very multi-religious University…there are many Muslim girls who attend as well. They always look so nice, and up-to-date with fashion as most girls want to be…they are a great example for Catholic girls who wish to dress modestly and want to wear a veil. Heck! It isn’t me…I love wearing jeans and tee, but seeing them makes me want to be a good modest young Catholic woman!

 

[spinoza1111]

which quite a rare thing these days, which is why so many women are surprised to see one, lol…Modesty has become a dead trait in the young generation of women.

People don’t realize is that the hijab came from christian/Judaic tradition of the veil…They are rooted in the same thing. Id much prefer this than what some women wear in the Church today with short skirts, tight jeans, cut shirts, clothes that hug the body, etc. The way many women dress in the Church causes a stumbling block for others since their clothing incites lust. Parents and husbands need to get a better hold and directive on their daughters or wives… The fact that many seem to allow them to wear whatever they want is contrary to christian modesty and humility. A husband must guard his wifes modesty just as a father must guard her daughters. And with the advent of feminism which caused wives and daughters to rebel against the virtues of modesty it became an issue that took over

I would give it a new “name”: instead of being “modest”, perhaps need to take responsibility for their bodies, and the effect of their sexuality on men, instead of spouting a lot of ill-digested feminist claims about their “rights”.

Men used to wear short shorts (the white Rhodesian militia of the 1970s was an egregious example) and in CS Lewis’ time thought nothing of swimming naked, while in CS Lewis’ times women dressed more carefully,

Today, women run around half naked sniggering at the men on whom it has an effect, and uniformly one finds that they are shocked and disgusted when even fit men wear shorter shorts than “board shorts” or speedos.

Traditionally, while there have been modesty rules for men in the Abrahamite faiths, most religions recognized that as workers and fighters, men might be half-naked, and biologically this doesn’t have the same effect as female nudity on most people.

There are different types of hypocrisy, from my female student who walked in with disturbingly short shorts but then in class condemned New Zealand working class males for wearing shorties at work sites, innocently unconscious of her irony, to the Muslim guys in my neighborhood who force their wives to wear full hijab but go shirtless, in contravention of Islamic law for men.

 

[Shin]

You know I’ve heard more than a little testimony from people who have made that step towards modesty and how beneficial it has been on their spiritual lives.

So it’s a great way to get over any spiritual ruts you’re in, where you’re not making progress.

I think more than one person who could take the next step would be very happily surprised after making the sacrifice for greater holiness through modesty.

Everyone is called towards modesty, and I don’t think anyone couldn’t practice more of it. We all need to improve this virtue, so there’s only one way – forwards! For Our Lord’s sake!

 

[Miserys_Fence]

I wear a hijab because it offers superior coverage, and I generally don’t like people seeing my hair (there are rare occasions where I do not cover).

I refuse to take any responsibility for being a “stumbling block” to men, whether I’m covered or not. If you get all hot and bothered seeing my hair, or seeing me in a tank top, you’re a pervert, plain and simple, and in serious need of professional help. The only help I can offer you is a crack to the chops.

Miz

 

[spinoza1111]

I still must disagree, given my own position which I’ve already divulged to you. I frequently attend the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. I’m very much used to women veiling themselves, and I agree that it’s a great sign of modesty. My question concerned not veiling in general, …

Capiche?

No, I don’t capiche. Because I’m not passing judgement on you based on your city of residence. I am saying that certain ways of thinking and being are so global as to infect the well-intentioned and to emerge most perniciously in the clean and well lighted places (as in the story of the swept and the garnished).

I was surprised when Bro Paul accused ME of jumping on YOU and made this into personalities, but I see a lot of that in “discussion groups” in the USA, owing to a general lack of training in formal logic and philosophy and a cultural disinterest in ideas, which appears most strikingly in the “well educated” (well-certified) who learn from what little training is given that nothing is true and nothing can be proven…and flee into the absurdities of Tertullianist religious belief as a result (Tertullian, a Christian but not a saint nor father of the Church, said, “I believe it because it is absurd”).

In this postmodern Tertullianism, when someone takes an idea (such as the construction of the “Muslim” as in Edward Said) he’s disruptive.

I have had my time wasted ever since in this discussion defending myself against this false witness.

I say again: the construction of the Moslem appears in your post and should be de-constructed. It is appropriate that your story be a basis for discussion of the relationship between the dress and dietary laws of the Abrahamite faiths and in fact that is what has transpired. You should thank me. You’re welcome.

And as to the charge that “this has naught to-do with that”: lady, everything has everything to do with everything else by way of language, and Catholics ought to know this…perhaps the eradication of the Latin mass, about which Catholics were not consulted by the hierarchy, has obscured this.
Spanish Catholic women wore exceptionally modest clothes precisely because Spain was an Islamic country between the ninth and 16th centuries. German Catholicism was influenced heavily by Spanish Catholicism during the Thirty Years War with the result that the piety of my ancestors had Spanish intensity along with the modesty of my women ancestors. Everything is linked together in what a believer would call “God’s plan” and what I call “the great mirror” of a world constructed by language, or the Word if you please.

I’m not attacking you. I’m interested in ideas, in part because Father Mirabelli (may his soul rest in peace: I will say it out of respect although I am not a believer) was so passionately interested in World History in my high school and taught us his Catholic interpretation with such vigor. And I think the Church has lost its way, like Dante nel mezzo del camin, when religious belief is about behavior and not ideas.*

 

[spinoza1111]

I wear a hijab because it offers superior coverage, and I generally don’t like people seeing my hair (there are rare occasions where I do not cover).

I refuse to take any responsibility for being a “stumbling block” to men, whether I’m covered or not. If you get all hot and bothered seeing my hair, or seeing me in a tank top, you’re a pervert, plain and simple, and in serious need of professional help. The only help I can offer you is a crack to the chops.

Miz

This is why I’m not a believer. We were taught in Catholic Boy’s School that our male sexuality and desire were a gift of God and the Glory of God. How dare you call any man a “pervert” for having sexual desire? How dare you?

Again, I’m an educated male of Catholic provenance but no believer. Puritanism is heresy pure and simple.

 

[Miserys_Fence]

This is why I’m not a believer. We were taught in Catholic Boy’s School that our male sexuality and desire were a gift of God and the Glory of God. How dare you call any man a “pervert” for having sexual desire? How dare you?

Again, I’m an educated male of Catholic provenance but no believer. Puritanism is heresy pure and simple.

Sexual desire from HAIR is called a fetish, toots. It’s a perverted sexual desire.

Miz

 

[Layman]

Women covering up more would:

1. Stop men being aroused by them or just automaticaly checking them out, men who they will never marry i.e. most adult men.
2. Stop other women competing with or envying them e.g. “look at the state of her”. It’s a power play, I think: “I’m prettier than you, I win”.

… At least at Mass!

Also:

I remember reading a story about a Jewish mother who was asked why three of her sons became rabbis. Her answer was: “Because the rafters of my house never saw my hair”.

Also, wonen’s fashions in London where I live have just gone silly. The fashion now is for wearing skin tight trousers which are basically, tights. While the man in me is fascinated, the would-be saint finds it annoying. And sometimes, laughable. They look like they’ve forgotten their skirts!

Ah, to be twenty years younger and immoral. Just for a month!

 

[Shin]

Women covering up more would:

I remember reading a story about a Jewish mother who was asked why three of her sons became rabbis. Her answer was: “Because the rafters of my house never saw my hair”.

I like that quote!

 

[spinoza1111]

Sexual desire from HAIR is called a fetish, toots. It’s a perverted sexual desire.

Miz

My name isn’t Toots, doll. You mentioned your hair and your tank top, you know, the one from the auto parts dealership.

You’re clearly not an artist, who is able to gaze upon the whole based on the way a detail, such as your hairstyle, sets it off, even as Romeo compares Juliet to “a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear”, which causes her to “hang upon the cheek of night”.

A wildass Magdalene hair style, such as red hair cascading down your tank topped back, is what practising Catholics used to call an “occasion of sin” for men and older boys, and women used to take some responsibility for this.

A “sick” fetish is something different that results in sick societies from the sick repression that you seem to support. It is where a person, usually an older male, develops an obsession for (let us say) hair such that he seeks “The Rape of the Lock” and snips a hank of your hair surreptitiously during divine services.

The fetishized desire would not be checked, it would be exacerbated by covering up and it was more a feature of societies with a great deal of covering up. Other examples would be a man who swiped your shoes from the garage.

This actions are sick (but venial in compare with the abuse of women and children we find in our more uncovered society).

A female hairdo deliberately sculpted by Andre or Edward at the beauty salon to accentuate the complete female shape is, I believe, licit to practising Catholics, but at parties and weddings, not everyday services when men are trying to save their souls.

Display of shoulders at Mass is probably also not taking-responsibility, for some guy (probably some French guy) has observed that “all women have beautiful shoulders”.

It is outrageous that Catholics are willing to obey dress codes at work but not at Mass!

You deliberately confused sexual fetishization with normal, God-given sexual desire, a typical female strategy women use to avoid taking responsibility for the effect of their bodies on men.

 

[bluerose]

FWIW, up until about 15 years ago, my MIL (a life-long devout Catholic from New York) always wore a head scarf, tied kerchief-style behind her neck. AND she wore a lace veil OVER it for Mass. She always dresses modestly, skirts well below the knee, no collar more than “two fingers-width” below the throat, no sleeves above the elbow, no pants or slacks (except for pajamas.) And she always looks very attractive.

She always followed a pamphlet she had on “The Mary-like Standards of Modesty in Dress” (something like that) when it came to choosing clothing and what to wear.

In her younger years (she’s now 75), she wore pedal-pushers and shorts, sleeveless tops and dresses, shorter skirts. She and my FIL had a “conversion” of sorts about 30+ years ago when she began dressing more modestly (they got rid of the TV, too.) HOWEVER–she has NEVER imposed her views on any of her daughters or daughters-in-law or granddaughters, although she does not hesitate to warn any of us if she thinks our neckline is too revealing or our clothes too tight (neither does MY mother, for that matter, although she wears slacks and short sleeved shirts.)

In recent years, my MIL has stopped wearing the headscarf everyday (still wears a veil for Mass) and will wear short sleeves (though never for Mass). I feel it is something to which she felt called and when its purpose was served, she made modifications. She had two daughters called to the Carmelite order and a son who became a priest and she had felt a call to a third-order… perhaps that all had something to do with it. Still, I believe it was a decision she made that was right for her and, lest anyone think it made her stodgey, to this day we love to go shopping for clothes together!

That’s my two cents’ worth to add to this discussion…

 

[zab]

bluerose, thanks for sharing with us this beautiful example of your mother-in-law.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

For anyone who was curious:

I’ve since grown rather close to my colleague; close enough to feel comfortable asking her about this. It turns out that she indeed wears the hijab due to convenience and accessibility. She finds that the Muslim standard of dress for women more than satisfies her sense of modesty, and the only way she can (these are her words) “dress modestly without looking like [her] grandmother is by shopping for female clothing directed to Muslim consumers. This includes the hijab as a veil.”

I asked her how she feels about giving the impression that she’s a Muslim when in fact she’s a Catholic. She told me that it is something that concerns her at times, but in reality her White-Latino ethnicity actually prompts lots of questions concerning “when she converted to Islam”, which in turn provides an ample opportunity for her to say “actually, I’m Catholic…” and continue on with evangelization, as well as a proverbial soap box upon which she gets to pontificate on the virtues of modesty.

 

[sungirl]

For anyone who was curious:

I’ve since grown rather close to my colleague; close enough to feel comfortable asking her about this. It turns out that she indeed wears the hijab due to convenience and accessibility. She finds that the Muslim standard of dress for women more than satisfies her sense of modesty, and the only way she can (these are her words) “dress modestly without looking like [her] grandmother is by shopping for female clothing directed to Muslim consumers. This includes the hijab as a veil.”

I asked her how she feels about giving the impression that she’s a Muslim when in fact she’s a Catholic. She told me that it is something that concerns her at times, but in reality her White-Latino ethnicity actually prompts lots of questions concerning “when she converted to Islam”, which in turn provides an ample opportunity for her to say “actually, I’m Catholic…” and continue on with evangelization, as well as a proverbial soap box upon which she gets to pontificate on the virtues of modesty.

That’s really interesting; thanks for the update!

 

[sungirl]

For anyone who was curious:

I’ve since grown rather close to my colleague; close enough to feel comfortable asking her about this. It turns out that she indeed wears the hijab due to convenience and accessibility. She finds that the Muslim standard of dress for women more than satisfies her sense of modesty, and the only way she can (these are her words) “dress modestly without looking like [her] grandmother is by shopping for female clothing directed to Muslim consumers. This includes the hijab as a veil.”

I asked her how she feels about giving the impression that she’s a Muslim when in fact she’s a Catholic. She told me that it is something that concerns her at times, but in reality her White-Latino ethnicity actually prompts lots of questions concerning “when she converted to Islam”, which in turn provides an ample opportunity for her to say “actually, I’m Catholic…” and continue on with evangelization, as well as a proverbial soap box upon which she gets to pontificate on the virtues of modesty.

That’s really interesting; thanks for the update!

 

[Ashurie]

For anyone who was curious:

I’ve since grown rather close to my colleague; close enough to feel comfortable asking her about this. It turns out that she indeed wears the hijab due to convenience and accessibility. She finds that the Muslim standard of dress for women more than satisfies her sense of modesty, and the only way she can (these are her words) “dress modestly without looking like [her] grandmother is by shopping for female clothing directed to Muslim consumers. This includes the hijab as a veil.”

I asked her how she feels about giving the impression that she’s a Muslim when in fact she’s a Catholic. She told me that it is something that concerns her at times, but in reality her White-Latino ethnicity actually prompts lots of questions concerning “when she converted to Islam”, which in turn provides an ample opportunity for her to say “actually, I’m Catholic…” and continue on with evangelization, as well as a proverbial soap box upon which she gets to pontificate on the virtues of modesty.

This actually makes me curious about a mid-aged lady I frequently see at University. She is Anglo, but she wears a hijab and is very modest - very Islamic looking…but your story makes me rethink “could she be Catholic?”.