Modesty for women and men

[OurBeloved]

Uh, no. They don’t. And by don’t, I mean there is no absolute consensus. Again, what is sexy in one context will not be so in another. School swimsuits are one-piece bathing suits and would be considered modest by some people’s standards. However, I know more than a handful of guys who consider the sexual fetish items.

I haven’t even begun to discuss the folly that is disregarding intent itself. Are you aware of that school of thought? Apparently not.

The point I am making is that our society has reduced modesty to at best, a personal standard. This is because if you did wake up tomorrow and wanted to be modest, you don’t have any traditional values to draw from in our own current culure. The reason being that our current culture has evolved for sometime without modesty as a core value and is relatively new (I am talking about the West here when I say “our culture”, since that is where I live). So in our culture, you have nothing but your own experience to turn to and hence you have these standards that vary from some thinking a Bikini is modest and others thinking the Islamic dress is probably the only modest dress.

What needs to happen is to tap in to the traditional values of a culture that upheld modesty including our own before a certain time. That contains the collective wisdom of centuries built from experiences of a culture that tried its best to uphold modesty i.e. not tempt another in ones dress.

Now as I was explaining to our brother Baelor, at this point you might say, I’d rather hold on to my personal experience. The problem here is that you have probably lived for a very short time and in a culture that does promote immodesty. So your judgement is more likely to be wrong when it contradicts the collective wisdom of centuries that originate from a culture that DID uphold modesty.

Really? This is to appeal to my sex faculties?

What about this one for the ladies?

I think either you misunderstood me or you are being deliberately dishonest here in trying to pass the above characters as representative of entire manga.

I said that most manga art does tend to go for sex appeal, especially in female characters. It does not follow from that that all manga characters are made for sex appeal. However, in the case of Lightning for an example, the skirt or shorts are indeed a bit short for battle purposes. And yes, I am making this judgement by adopting a traditional value set and you are most likely finding it bizzare as I say this.

I can also give you some good examples of some other characters from the Final Fantasy series which I am sure many would agree (in some cases the fans themselves) were designed for sex appeal in the way they are dressed. We could discuss the various costume packs that were released for some of these characters to further give some fan service that were more immodest as well. I don’t want to post pictures here because that too can lead some others to temptation. But I am sure you are well aware of what I am referring to.

How charitable of you to assume I’m disabled of something when in truth is it’s the ones giving into their hormones who are disabled (willingly at that). I have a capacity to eliminate hormonal influence when I evaluate something aesthetically, so does everyone else and so do you. Heck, I’ll say it again. I’ve found even outfits that would make you squirm still worthy of admiration without any hormonal influence.

That is very commendable that you have mastered self-control. But as you rightly point out, hormonal influence is something that exists biologically in every human being. You might in fact be someone with a relatively below average hormonal activity when it comes to sexual attraction. So anyway, the bottom line here is that while everyone should do their best to master their self control, the others must also do their best to not lead others to temptation. That is one of the points of modesty. How we do this is best achieved by resolving to traditional values regarding dress from a culture that upholds modesty as valuable.

If you do take the time to think about your own position, it should be somewhat clear to you that you too are advocating a society without modesty. This is part of the problem as well and a by-product of our current culture…

And frankly, I’ve gleaned more insight from fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast than the modesty quotes from the saints on these threads. If there’s one virtue I find surprisingly constant in both fantasy and real life, it’s that appearances can never be trusted.

The issue is not a matter of trust. It is a matter of temptation and how to best prevent it. On a deeper level, the issue is whether it is best to prevent it by

1. resolving to the traditional values of present culture that does not hold modesty as a core value
   or
2. resolving to my personal experience as to what might be/not be sexually appealing
   or
3. resolving to traditional values of a culture that has upheld modesty as a core value for sometime.

Both (1) and (2) seem inadequate as I explained before. (1) because traditional values to safeguard modesty does not (or less likely to) form in a culture that does not promote it. (2) because you yourself have grown in a culture that promotes immodesty (or doesn’t have modesty as a core value) and you have lived a much more finite time and experience much less compared to (3).

So (3) seems to be the way to go if you want to be modest.

 

[OurBeloved]

OurBeloved,

I think you re too quickly lumping everyone today together. There are, even just in the States (which is I assume where we are talking about) various subsets of cultures beyond the main culture presented by the media. I have been lucky to be able to live recently in a catholic community which holds modesty as important but whose dress would still not be acceptable by many people at various times in the past as they allow women to wear pants, shorts, swimsuits, skirts even that come just above the knee, though most go at least just below it. What am I to think of such a community? Am I to presume that since many things they find socially acceptable would not have been socially acceptable in certain cultures in he past that they do not actually hold modesty as an important value? I can assure you that they do. The problem on relying on past ideas o how to dress is that they were influenced by many different values in a society, not just on modesty.

Actually, if you read closely, you would see that I do present two alternatives

1. go back to traditional values of a time where out culture upheld modesty as a core value

or

1. go to a culture that still upholds modesty as a core value, perhaps outside

Now if there exists subcultures today that do uphold modesty as a core value, that would be a good place to turn to and would fall under (2). But one should keep in mind the relative age of this subculture.

For an example, if this subculture was a remnant of the old one, that has gradually refined it-self, then its a good reference to turn to. But if it is merely a subculture that started 10 years ago that wants to dress modestly and merely taps in to the experience of the ones in its group, it might be inferior to option (1) and more likely wrong where it contradicts (1).

As for the specific subculture you speak of, I cannot comment since I do not know whether it was something that the group got together and started fresh by simply drawing on the experience of the participants or a product of refinements added to the old. If it is something fresh, I would think it more reasonable to go with the old when it does contradict the old. The reason being that the new one would have relatively less experience to tap in to in making its conclusions compared to that older one which has the collective wisdom and experience of centuries.

 

[thewanderer]

I would like to add one more thing that has not yet been brought up. What a society as a whole finds arousing differs from culture to culture and for different periods of time.

With this in mind I would like to suggest two flaws to the argument that looking to the particular mode of dress of a different/earlier culture is always a better way to determine what one should wear.

1. As I previously mentioned a societies standards of dress are influenced by much more than simply their value of modesty
2. What is considered as sexually attractive actually changes from culture to culture and so it is important to look at a particular society to determine what is ok for that society.

[EDIT: I realize that you are not saying that we should necessarily return to the exact standards of someprevious society. I am just trying to make these points more clear]

 

[OurBeloved]

I would like to add one more thing that has not yet been brought up. What a society as a whole finds arousing differs from culture to culture and for different periods of time.

I am actually unaware of such a difference. What you might comparing, like many Anthropologist wrongly do, are cultures that have had modesty as a core value and cultures that didn’t. Also good to keep in mind is the age of the culture.

Usually when you account for these factors, all the cultures that do have modesty as a core value and is relatively of similar age, do share a consensus on what is sexually attractive and it does stay relatively constant throughout time.

With this in mind I would like to suggest two flaws to the argument that looking to the particular mode of dress of a different/earlier culture is always a better way to determine what one should wear.

1. As I previously mentioned a societies standards of dress are influenced by much more than simply their value of modesty

That is actually a bit irrelevant here I think. But even if we do consider it, it won’t be a negative. One could even argue that this is why natural evolution of traditional values in a culture as it upholds modesty is more desirable since it accounts for so many other factors as well.

I
2. What is considered as sexually attractive actually changes from culture to culture and so it is important to look at a particular society to determine what is ok for that society.

As I mentioned above, I think that this might be based on a false premise. The notion of what is and what is not sexually appealing do show consistency among cultures when you account for age and core values of that culture. What is usually different are the fashions.

[EDIT: I realize that you are not saying that we should necessarily return to the exact standards of someprevious society. I am just trying to make these points more clear]

Well, it is a return to some previously held set of standards, but it does not necessarily imply a return to previous set of fashions. Fashions can evolve and even change but the standards can only be refined with knowledge and experience as you build on top of them. The standards should guide the fashions.

The change from gowns to pants for an example can be considered a change in fashion. As long as the fashion was guided by previous standards, it is perfectly fine. So we have the skin tight pants, or pants with slits right up to the waist for an example which would still be immodest by previous standards. But we could also have pants that do not over emphasize form that do meet the traditional standards of modesty.

I think there might be a confusion among many as old standards of modesty mean old standards of fashions as well. But I think there is a difference. The standards of modesty guides fashions but fashions can certainly evolve and change within these standards.

In the event that there is difficulty in applying standards of modesty to a certain new fashion, I think it would also be reasonable to abandon the fashion from a Catholic perspective. Or, we might have to turn to a culture that has had this new fashion for sometime to get some tips on how to best apply the standards of modesty to new fashions.

So in general, every-time fashion changes too rapidly to something entirely different, there is a risk that one might loose modesty because of the inability apply standards of modesty to the new fashion.

 

[thewanderer]

The reason I said that What different societies considers as sexual differs between them is from looking not so much at the fashions and standards generally accepted, but rather at the styles chosen by the promiscuous. As I understand it in parts of the orient it was the nape of the neck rather than cleavage which was considered sexual. I admit that I do not have proof that this is the case, this is simply something that I heard.

However, let me give you an example from my own experience. The college I attended (Which is surrounded by the previous mentioned community) has an enforced dress code, similar though slightly more strict to that of the previous mentioned community. While I was at school one of the boys in my class who came from a home which enforced a much stricter dress code on their children and kept them very sheltered decided that the dress code at our school was not strict enough and sent a memo to all the girls in my class telling them in no uncertain terms that if they didn’t follow his stricter dress code they were being immodest (note that even this boy did not complain about the fact that we are allowed to wear knee-length skirts and at times pants and shorts). While the women were obviously upset about this, what really struck me was that the men were at least as upset if not more so as none of them saw this dress code as immodest. In other words these young 18-21 year old men who value modesty and chastity were openly saying that the dress code of this campus is* not something which tempts them to sin against purity.*

However this dress code is clearly not accepted by many of the previous society’s standards if appropriate dress. So I ask, was the previous standard based on something besides what is necessary for modesty and purity? Or did the perceptions of society change? Either way I see no reason to return to the particular standard of other societyies but rather to help show what is actually appropriate for this society.

 

[thewanderer]

Having read your above post I must admit that I am quite at a loss as to what you mean by traditional values of modesty. Can you please clarify what you mean by this?

[EDIT: Also, I am curious whether or not you agree with my previous statement that one guide for acceptable apparal ought to be that a society’s standard of acceptable apparal ought not to prevent or discourage anyone from participating in a legitimate activity]

 

[OurBeloved]

The reason I said that What different societies considers as sexual differs between them is from looking not so much at the fashions and standards generally accepted, but rather at the styles chosen by the promiscuous. As I understand it in parts of the orient it was the nape of the neck rather than cleavage which was considered sexual. I admit that I do not have proof that this is the case, this is simply something that I heard.

I am not sure how to draw any conclusions from this though. There are some physical differences in human beings from from country to country as well so it is possible to have some form of slight difference unique to a country. But I don’t think that ‘people x were attracted to nape of the neck more than cleavage’ really have any substantial basis. Unless the culture was 1) based on the core value of modesty, 2) did cover the neck while exposing cleavage.

I personally don’t know of any and the ones I do know that satisfy (2) usually didn’t hold (1).

However, let me give you an example from my own experience. The college I attended (Which is surrounded by the previous mentioned community) has an enforced dress code, similar though slightly more strict to that of the previous mentioned community. While I was at school one of the boys in my class who came from a home which enforced a much stricter dress code on their children and kept them very sheltered decided that the dress code at our school was not strict enough and sent a memo to all the girls in my class telling them in no uncertain terms that if they didn’t follow his stricter dress code they were being immodest (note that even this boy did not complain about the fact that we are allowed to wear knee-length skirts and at times pants and shorts). While the women were obviously upset about this, what really struck me was that the men were at least as upset if not more so as none of them saw this dress code as immodest. In other words these young 18-21 year old men who value modesty and chastity were openly saying that the dress code of this campus is* not something which tempts them to sin against purity.*

However this dress code is clearly not accepted by many of the previous society’s standards if appropriate dress. So I ask, was the previous standard based on something besides what is necessary for modesty and purity? Or did the perceptions of society change? Either way I see no reason to return to the particular standard of other societyies but rather to help show what is actually appropriate for this society.

Well, if indeed the standards that the young man promoted were consistent with the old traditional values, then yes, he would be correct.

The problem here is that when you say “I want to do what is consistent with our current culture”, you really have no values to go with except traditional values that were built around neglecting the concept of modesty. Our current culture is relatively new and was built on abandoning the concept of modesty (and many other ideas). So obviously, these values are unacceptable The other alternative is for you to say “I am going to go by my experience and feedback I received in trying to be modest”. This too would be inferior to the collective wisdom and experience of many who had shaped the traditional values over centuries. So I honestly don’t see a valid alternative, but you are welcome to present one.

So in the case you mention, it is quiet understandable why so many, including boys would be upset. They have grown up in an environment where culture has no core value as modesty. The subculture in which they immediately delve in is also relatively new and based on values of a group of people belonging to that group rather than the older set of values. Now unless the group of people belonging to that group used the older values to refine them and come up with what they had, their values are most likely inferior.

Now to answer the final questions as to what happened to our society. What happened was that we decided modesty and some other concepts (like sex reserved for marriage) were just old ideas themselves and decided to abandon them. We began a new culture. The origins of this new culture probably fall around 1920-1950’s. So what we have today is a culture that grew up without a core value of modesty. The few subcultures we have today, rather than being remnants of old that continued on, are usually newer groups that got together with the intent of upholding modesty. Many didn’t draw on the old but decided to draw on their own personal experience in trying to live modest lives. As a result, some of the standards of old might not yet be discovered (or rediscovered) in the new.

So in a sense, most subcultures we see today are based on re-discovering what we had before. The only problem is that we had centuries before compared to the short time many of these people belonging to these groups have lived. The natural development is further hindered and more likely to go astray because it is present around a more hostile culture to modesty to begin with. As a result, the subcultures might not be as mature as the older traditional values and can in-fact contain errors.

The only way to judge what is appropriate or not in dress today would therefore have to be done using standards of old. Something interesting to keep in mind is that if we never abandoned modesty to start this new culture to begin with, these old values would still be the current and new standards.

 

[OurBeloved]

Having read your above post I must admit that I am quite at a loss as to what you mean by traditional values of modesty. Can you please clarify what you mean by this?

[EDIT: Also, I am curious whether or not you agree with my previous statement that one guide for acceptable apparal ought to be that a society’s standard of acceptable apparal ought not to prevent or discourage anyone from participating in a legitimate activity]

For your first question, I am not sure what is unclear? If we say for an example that shoulders should be covered was a standard of old traditional values, then this should be upheld in modern fashions, is what I mean. So if someone designs a shirt, it should make sure that shoulders are covered. If a gown, same thing. Or some other cross new type of clothing, the shoulders should be covered etc.

So the standard remains the same, the fashion (i.e. gown, shirt etc) can change.

As for the 2nd question you ask, are you asking whether anyone should be allowed to participate in any activity regardless of dress? Because I am not sure how to answer that. A surgeon for an example would better cover his hair with a cap before his surgery or an astronaut better wear his suit.

But if you mean in the general sense, should society shun and advice those who go contrary to traditional values of dress, I think the answer is yes. This is the same way society should shun and advice individuals who behave immorally.

So this is not to say that first time Susy wears a bikini to church, she should be asked to leave. Perhaps the first time, someone can give her advice about how her dress is immodest. The second time, perhaps the congregation or priest and can walk up to her and ask her to please leave (or give her something to wear and if she refuses ask her to leave). I think that is perfectly fine and should be how a society operates. Now when Susy realizes her error and comes back, they should welcome her with open arms as well.

 

[severus68]

Well, if indeed the standards that the young man promoted were consistent with the old traditional values, then yes, he would be correct.

The problem here is that when you say “I want to do what is consistent with our current culture”, you really have no values to go with except traditional values that were built around neglecting the concept of modesty. Our current culture is relatively new and was built on abandoning the concept of modesty (and many other ideas). The other alternative is for you to say “I am going to go by my experience and feedback I received in trying to be modest”. This too would be inferior to the collective wisdom and experience of many who had shaped the traditional values over centuries. So I honestly don’t see a valid alternative, but you are welcome to present one.

So in the case you mention, it is quiet understandable why so many, including boys would be upset. They have grown up in an environment where culture has no core value as modesty. The subculture in which they immediately delve in is also relatively new and based on values of a group of people belonging to that group rather than the older set of values. Now unless the group of people belonging to that group used the older values to refine them and come up with what they had, their values are most likely inferior.

Now to answer the final questions as to what happened to our society. What happened was that we decided modesty and some other concepts (like sex reserved for marriage) were just old ideas themselves and decided to abandon them. We began a new culture. The origins of this new culture probably fall around 1920-1950’s. So what we have today is a culture that grew up without a core value of modesty. The few subcultures we have today, rather than being remnants of old that continued on, are usually newer groups that got together with the intent of upholding modesty. Many didn’t draw on the old but decided to draw on their own personal experience in trying to live modest lives. As a result, some of the standards of old might not yet be discovered (or rediscovered) in the new.

So in a sense, most subcultures we see today are based on re-discovering what we had before. The only problem is that we had centuries before compared to the short time many of these people belonging to these groups have lived. The natural development is further hindered and more likely to go astray because it is present around a more hostile culture to modesty to begin with. As a result, the subcultures might not be as mature as the older traditional values and can in-fact contain errors.

The only way to judge what is appropriate or not in dress today would therefore have to be done using standards of old. Something interesting to keep in mind is that if we never abandoned modesty to start this new culture to begin with, these old values would still be the current and new standards.

Modesty is a lot more than about dress.

Tell us what are the other traditional values you would like to bring back? It might help us understand where you are coming from.

 

[thewanderer]

I must admit that I am a little confused. As I indicated in my post, them men were upset precisely because the women were being accused of being* immodest. *In other words they disagreed with the claim that what the women were allowed to wear was a temptation for them to sin. If the men in a society which values modesty collectively make known that they are not tempted by the apparal of the women, I fail to see how the accepted standard of dress can be considered immodest. And so I am unsure as to why you question whether or not the dress-code actually is modest. How can it be immodest if it does not tempt the men to sins of impurity?

As to whether the particular dresscode corresponds to traditional values of modesty I really cannot say because I honestly am not sure what you mean by that term. You have shown me that what I would have assumed to be its most obvious meaning is not what you mean by it, so I have a better idea of what you don’t mean, but I honestly don’t know what exactly that word is supposed to imply. I would really appreciate it if you could clarify what you mean by this term. I’m not intentionally trying to be dense, I just honestly am not sure what you mean by it.

 

[OurBeloved]

Modesty is a lot more than about dress.

Tell us what are the other traditional values you would like to bring back? It might help us understand where you are coming from.

Well you are not suppossed to understand where I am coming from but rather what I am saying. I think from what you have written, you do understand quiet well what I am saying. Perhaps now you would like to argue about something that you see of the old as unacceptable judging by your current personal experience and our present culture. But as I have explained before to many, such a personal conclusion or that of our present culture would be more likely to be wrong and inferior.

And yes, modesty is more than dress and applies to a lot of other things. But here specifically we are talking about modesty as it applies to dress. So it would be a divergence to engage in discussion as to how it applies to something else.

 

[OurBeloved]

I must admit that I am a little confused. As I indicated in my post, them men were upset precisely because the women were being accused of being* immodest. *In other words they disagreed with the claim that what the women were allowed to wear was a temptation for them to sin. If the men in a society which values modesty collectively make known that they are not tempted by the apparal of the women, I fail to see how the accepted standard of dress can be considered immodest. And so I am unsure as to why you question whether or not the dress-code actually is modest. How can it be immodest if it does not tempt the men to sins of impurity?

Aah, yes. The problem here is that you are once again attempting to do what culture had done for centuries by simply asking, for an example, the people of your school.

For one thing, the people of your school might not have reached a mature enough age or might not even be able to identify when they are sexually attracted to another over just attracted to someone (you must admit this is a very common problem, especially in high schools).

So what you say is indeed correct that you have observed a small sample over your short life span and come up with reasons that seem to say ‘dress X might not be immodest’ and it contradicts the old. The problem now is that the old values are more likely correct than yours because you only observed for a very short time and a very small population which may or may not have been able to even identify sexual attraction.

As to whether the particular dresscode corresponds to traditional values of modesty I really cannot say because I honestly am not sure what you mean by that term. You have shown me that what I would have assumed to be its most obvious meaning is not what you mean by it, so I have a better idea of what you don’t mean, but I honestly don’t know what exactly that word is supposed to imply. I would really appreciate it if you could clarify what you mean by this term. I’m not intentionally trying to be dense, I just honestly am not sure what you mean by it.

I understand.
This is a very rough example to help highlight the difference.

As I said with the example, when you say elbows should be covered, that is a traditional value on modesty. But if you say wear a gown, that is just a fashion. I can wear a gown and definitely be immodest or modest. Now if we just apply that one standard value on covering elbows, we would say a gown that uncovers elbows is immodest and what that doesn’t is modest.

Now if you look at old traditional values, you can find a set of standards just like the ‘do not expose elbows’ (I am not even sure if this was an actual value but I just made that up for this example).

 

[thewanderer]

well, that helps a little… except that now it seems that you are reducing modesty to simply the amount of skin showing… which confuses me.

For one, I think it is possible for outfits to be immodest even without showing any skin

Secondly, what is ‘modest’ depends entirely on the particular situation. If it is immodest, say, to cover your elbows, then why is it ok to uncover them in the presence of a male doctor? Or why is it ok to have nude art?

I am not just trying to be contrary, please understand that. However, I am going to ask again how you know that any particular traditional value of ‘thou shalt not show such and such a body part’ comes down to a matter of modesty as opposed to a different societal value? We are all given intellects and must use them to the best of our abilities, along with prayer to God for enlightenment to learn and follow his commandments and will. It is true that some traditional values are better than some modern ones, but I am very, very hesitant to claim that it is better simply because it is older. Every society has its failings. Which is why I suggested that people use as a rule to determine whether old societal values are legitimate the fact that no one should be prevented or discouraged from participating in a legitimate activity because of the society’s standard of dress.

As to the men at this college being too immature… There is a surprisingly large number of engaged couples coming out of this college, and all the alumni that I know are still quite happily married and in line with church teaching. Trust me when I tell you that this college is not swayed by the culture of the world around it. It is extremely catholic, traditional, faithful to the magisterium, and couter-cultural. Its formal dress codes all require women to wear skirts. co-ed dorms do not exist, nor are men and women allowed in each others dorms. there are 4 masses offered daily (and attended, both by students and staff) all of which are in latin, and one of which is the EF. The main focus of studies is on Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. The college fought tooth and nail against being forced to include authors into their curriculum for the sake of making sure they have the correct ‘quota’ of female authors etc. The structure of the college and its rules was purposefully made so that any change in either curriculum or rules would have to go through a long process of evaluation so that any change that might actually make it through to the end would take so long to happen that it will be impossible to have much change quickly. Please don’t think this college is swayed by the culture around it or that it somehow doesn’t have modesty as one of its center values. The main reason for instituting the dress code was to ensure that everyone is modestly dressed.

 

[thewanderer]

Also, I again ask, If the men in a society that truly holds modesty as an important value explicitly tell you that they are not tempted to impurity by certain kinds of clothing, how is it immodest to wear said clothes in front of them? Are we to assume that they are lying to us simply because a different society had a different standard of dress?

 

[johnnyjones]

To discover additional new insights one could always start a new thread encouraging women to come to mass in thongs or other revealing clothes that women normally wouldn’t wear.

You could argue that God made our bodies and there is really no call to cover it up. You could say fashion is secondary and it should not turn one mans head in the church. As well you could encourage a woman to bury the idea that fashion has any correlation to sex appeal. Tell women the old idea of looking in the mirror and asking her friend(s), “is this too short?” is now obsolete.

You might get a lot of negative responses. Some woman might actually say, I don’t want a man looking at me in church. The response would be, why would a man look at you based on what you have on?

Other people who are unsure about modesty might say church is a different environment . It is then you could say , what does enviorment have to do with it, you know those clothes don’t have any influence on a man, they shouldn’t look, they are in church.

You could close by saying, outside of church, you will have to figure out what to do.

 

[thewanderer]

JohnnyJones,

I hope you don’t think that I am arguing that anything goes with respect to dress. That is *not at all *what I mean. But what is appropriate and acceptable does depend on the situation.

[EDIT: I do think that would be aninteresting experiment though Even if it is bound to break the record for fastest closed thread]

 

[Baelor]

Societies that do uphold modesty as a core value do not actually disagree. If you show someone in an Eastern culture a dress from 1900 (a time where modesty was still a core value in our culture), they would agree that there is nothing seemingly wrong with the dress except that it is not in their fashion taste.

Do they agree on the liminal cases? And how does their potential agreement justify the state of the cases as immodest?

It is what you have to turn to. To give you and example, lets say someone is a grade five science student. Given a situation that they have to think scientifically, they have to turn to that knowledge they have as a grade five student. Their knowledge might be imperfect, but it is justified to turn to his knowledge.

I do not think that is a fair comparison. A fifth grader can rest assured (assuming a competent school system) that what he knows now is correct. The same does not apply to historical societies and modesty, or at least the connection has not been demonstrated.

So the importance of proper dress in not leading others to temptation I think is not a premise under debate.

Correct. I fully accept that.

How-come? The answer is for you to go and look at traditional values from a time where society upheld modesty as a core value and then advise her based on that values.

But that is not an explanation. The fact that they values modesty does not mean that their judgments on modesty are correct, only extant.

But I am interested if you can present an alternative.

First, why is modesty important? I believe that it is important in se, but clearly jj and some others disagree. Let us assume that the judgment of what is modest is not based on what should be covered v. uncovered and instead purely on what is sexually tempting toward others (whether the two can be connected is not relevant here).

If modesty is meant to address the issue of concupiscence, I would recommend knowing what is sexually attractive. Conduct a study on men on a wide variety of body parts and see what the responses are. Hair is sexy? All women and men cover their hair. Toes are sexy? Shoes in, flip-flops out. Cleavage only attracts 10% of men? It is fine.

My alternative is an empirical and thorough analysis of what constitutes sexually attractive clothing (vis-a-vis what it reveals). This to me seems the only reasonable approach to this issue.

The only reason you might object, if you think about it, is probably because “from my current experience, covering shoulders is not a problem”. The problem here is that considering the short period of time you have lived, and that you have lived in a culture that promotes immodesty, it is more likely that you are incorrect when you contradict the collective wisdom of a culture that has upheld modesty for centuries.

This is actually skirting the issue. Whether the current society promotes modesty or not is irrelevant. What matters is whether bare shoulders are immodest. If they are not sexually attractive now, showing them is fine. I fail to see the connection between this and whether the current society is modest.

The problem here however is that you do suggest that there is no empirical strictly scientific research on what dress causes temptation and what doesn’t. So in the absence of such evidence, the best it seems that one can do is turn to traditional values of a culture that upheld modesty.

Yet it should not be claimed that such societies were universally correct. If the society is risk-averse, their conception of what is modest may be skewed.

 

[johnnyjones]

JohnnyJones,

I hope you don’t think that I am arguing that anything goes with respect to dress. That is *not at all *what I mean. But what is appropriate and acceptable does depend on the situation.

[EDIT: I do think that would be aninteresting experiment though Even if it is bound to break the record for fastest closed thread]

The fact that it would be the fastest closed thread may give an indication of how the church and standards are currently linked. In pursuance of God one would want to adhere to practices inside and outside the church.

I have said all along that obviously all women are not Christian or stick to a “moral” code. Much about revealing clothes is closely related to the reduction of inhibitions. Even if a woman wanted to wear a thong in the 1950s much of the US society would have found it perverse and possibly subject to arrest.

Knowing the ongoing escalation of revealed skin, I find it silly to argue the exposure of shoulders versus a modern bikini which, it would be hard to argue, is as close to underwear as could be.
If a woman walked out the door in her actual undergarments (white bra and panties), someone might call the police. However because a bikini is simply dyed a different color and made of material more condusive to regular “pool bathing” it is acceptable.

Seeing a woman in her undergarments has typically been the onset of stimulation for a man. But, my argument is, change the material, and suddenly it is classified by some as a non stimulas. Early on I pointed out in Jesus’ day the stumbling block was braided hair and necklesses. Is it difficult to see that if what we have now was worn then it would be absolutely corrupting? Embracing the concept that a woman does not know what she is wearing and that she is uaware of how this appeals to men I feel is unrealistic.

 

[thewanderer]

I’m not really sure why you are bringin up a thong or bikini. I don’t really see how they pertain to the present conversation, and, jut so you know I would never wear either in public. So it isn’t even something I would argue for. But are you really saying that just because I wouldn’t wear old ripped jeans to mass that I shouldn’t wear them while gardening? Or that he fact that I won’t wear a one piece or modest tankini to mass means that they are never appropriate or ok? If so, I really don’t understand why you would say this.

 

[johnnyjones]

I’m not really sure why you are bringin up a thong or bikini. I don’t really see how they pertain to the present conversation, and, jut so you know I would never wear either in public. So it isn’t even something I would argue for. But are you really saying that just because I wouldn’t wear old ripped jeans to mass that I shouldn’t wear them while gardening? Or that he fact that I won’t wear a one piece or modest tankini to mass means that they are never appropriate or ok? If so, I really don’t understand why you would say this.

Wear whatever you want, but if your desire is to tempt another (although men are not usually perceived that way) that is something you might want to think through. We have been talking about clothing on women and if there is a premeditated desire to tempt a man. I really do think it is time to start a new thread primarily directed at women about the issue. Theres seems to be an overwhelming amount of male perspective at this point which is not bad, just incomplete.