Modesty advice

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Glancing around this thread, all too typically, every single post seems to be dead wrong.
Sorry, I know, that wasn’t arrogant at all. However, the argument you are about to read just might make you think.
What you are all talking about, by and large, is precisely what to wear, right? Swimsuits, pants, what parts of the body arouse, just how much is too much.
So, that’s what modesty is? Concealing yourself? Dressing certain ways to avoid arousing men as much as possible?
In other words, modesty is lack of dressing “inapoppriately” and lack of arousing men. So it’s like darkness, silence, stillness, or what have you. A name we have for emptiness.
In other words, something that doesn’t exist.
Clearly, your definition went wrong somewhere.
Here’s why your definitions all fail by trying to define modesty by such means.
You seem to have an actual moral value mixed up with applications of moral values. Actual morals are laws God set in place that any Catholic, or any culture for that matter, would agree are true. No culture rewards homicidal maniacs and punishes life-saving surgeons. Now culture celebrates lying or thievery.
Those are the absolutes. Modesty is one of them. No culture values sexual seducers, hookers and floozies above modest women.
An application of morality is using that moral in particular situation. For example, while honesty is a moral, it is not necessary to tell the molester with a knife at your throat that your wife is on her way to the mall. If there is an emergency, it is not immoral to hijack a car with intention to return it. If someone has a severe burn, then heck to modesty, you have to get their clothes off the area.
Or… an application of modesty is what exact type of clothes to wear. And this differs decade to decade, culture to culture, person to person. It is entirely a matter of one’s own conscience. Some women can walk out in good conscience in a bikini. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea if they want to be respected by men, but it* is *simply their application of morality as long as they truly wish to be morally respectful. You can’t make minute rules about how low a neckline should be or a skirt. The reason with all this bickering over the centuries nobody has found a definitely correct golden standard of modesty is that there isn’t one.
 
thewanderer said:
No, this is false.
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Hello. I suspect you may have misunderstood what I said. I will try to re-phrase.

What I attempted to say was that we are all responsible for our sins and for avoiding the near occasion of sin. We are all responsible for our behavior with mental illness, reduced mental capacity, and/or habit of sin being mitigating factors.

A woman purposely being immodest can be a cause of sin in others by provocation.
9 ways of participating in another’s sin:
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  1. by counsel
  2. by command
  3. by consent
  4. by provocation
  5. by praise or flattery
  6. by concealment
  7. by partaking
  8. by silence
  9. by the defense of the ill done
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I’d find an explanation interesting on why the above is not true, but that would have to be another thread.

I also figured it was understood at the start of this discussion that looking lustfully at women may be sinful and needed no discussion.

Original post:
Ok well I made a thread about modesty involving Bikinis and it turned into a fight. So I am going to try this again. I would like to know from a women’s point of view. Should I talk with my female friends about modesty? I am being controlling or judgmental by doing that? The only reason I am doing it is because I want to protect them from loose men.
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Yes I do know that mean have to control their own action and we are responsible for ourselves. However we are also responsible for each other as brothers and sister in Our Lord Jesus
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My apologies for my lack of clarity.

And this is how I see things regarding this issue and how I understand the Catholic Church’s teaching on this issue. Please take what you like and leave the rest.
 
A woman purposely being immodest can be a cause of sin in others by provocation.
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True that, crenfro.
However… cough Is anyone going to reply to what I said at the very end of the previous page? I know, I’m acting like a puppy begging for attention. But it’s not my argument, it’s St. Augustine’s I believe.
 
While there is certainly some truth in the article the fact that she claimed that
In many cases, the very women offended by the negative attention of men are dressing in such a way as to earn it.
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is absolutely unnaceptable. No man or woman ever deserves to be objectified, that is why it is always sinful to do so, they always deserve to be treated better than that, as human beings, no matter how sinful they are they never deserve to be objectified or treated badly. There are much better articles out there promoting modesty than this one. I urge you to stop putting this one forward as a good article and point out the above error to anyone you have shown this article to as it is a terrible error which is very harmful to all people and contrary to the Catholic faith.
 
Also… I’m sorry, but really?
Manipulating a man’s attention for the purpose of affirmation is how women are tempted to lust.
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If she thinks women aren’t tempted to lust after handsome men, or men with manly voices, etc then she has no clue what she is talking about. Not to mention that the above is not even close to lust, but, when sinful (for it is not always sinful) it is a sin of vanity, not of lust. :nope:

Also, if this were actually true
When we dress in a way that has even the potential to cause a man to lust, we create an unnecessary war against his soul.
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then even Burqas would not be sufficient as men still lust after women wearing burqas.

And no, I am not saying modesty is not important, I believe strongly that all people must both act and dress modestly, but this article is full of many flaws, some of which are extremely dangerous and decidedly anti-catholic. It should not be promoted.
 
I found this after following another posted link on Modesty
Modesty Only Works When It Isn’t Distorted
This is not to say I want the world to be one where women can be scantily clad under any circumstance (I don’t!). This is to say that if our solution for “men objectify scantily clad women” is “women stop dressing scantily,” we send the following message: A man’s objectification of a woman isn’t the problem. Her body is.

The damage done by an idea like that goes deep for both women and men.

And real modesty doesn’t do any damage.
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Pound_Coolish said:
You can’t make minute rules about how low a neckline should be or a skirt. The reason with all this bickering over the centuries nobody has found a definitely correct golden standard of modesty is that there isn’t one.
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If I’m to be honest, your whole post went a little over my head, but I think I get the point.

This is something I’ve often struggled with–people complain about how women dress and have their standards for how they should dress. But I always thought well, sure that is modest, but if you were in Iran it would be very immodest. Or if you were in another time period it would be immodest.

So it must be about something else. It must be about our heart.

When you get dressed, what’s your objective? I can guarantee you that there are women who may appear to be dressing immodestly, but they don’t know it. It’s something they’ve been brought up to do and they have no idea. Just like some people dress very badly (stomachs bare and hanging out over pants)–they don’t know. Because who would actually dress like that if they were aware of how awful it looked?

Additionally, some women don’t know they have any worth outside of the body. Imagine if you thought all you had of value was your body.

When I was in college, that’s what I thought when it came to wanting the attention of men. I thought I had my body and that was it. The problem was that this rationale was often confirmed–I got attention for dressing inappropriately. (I’m not blaming men for the way I dressed, just stating a fact that my decision produced the outcome I was desiring). But I specifically remember one time that i didn’t receive the desired attention–and in that moment I felt embarrassed and ashamed, as if I were actually standing there naked. It was a horrible feeling.

I’d like to say from that moment on I changed, but I did not. That came years later. But if only I had known my value early on so that I didn’t resort to objectifying my body.

And in regards to men lusting. Women are responsible for what they do that leads others to sin. If I dress with the objective to have men lust after me, well then I’m an accomplice in any sins of lust that result. That’s just me and what I have to deal with between me and God. The man who lusted is still responsible for his sin, no matter what the woman was or was not wearing. It’s not like if I’m in a room full of diamonds unsupervised and I steal some God is going to cut me slack for that sin. Same thing with men & lust. We can’t blame each other for our own sins, although we can help each other to avoid sin.

Unfortunately, just telling people how to dress isn’t really solving the problem. If we saw their lack of dress, or if we saw their lustful eyes, as a symptom of a bigger problem maybe we could begin to solve it.

Our first step is with our families–make sure your children know their real value. Then we move out from there. It seems impossible given our society, but we start with the person nearest to us.
 
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