I am grateful that adult women are no longer forced to concern themselves with other peoples’ preferences when making decisions about what clothes to wear or not wear, or what makeup to apply or not apply.
I am even more grateful to live in a time when we understand that girls and women are not objects to be consumed or defended, despite what the author of The Death of Pretty suggests. He wants to make women commodities the same way he asserts feminism did, albeit commodities beyond the direct control of men.
Moreover, “innocence” is an affect projected by people with little to no power or autonomy. By lamenting the fact the women no longer look “innocent,” I think the author wishes for a time when women had diminished roles in society and were seen as childlike and harmless rather than powerful. I mean, who would describe Wangari Maathai, Indira Gandhi, Yingluck Shinawatra, Meg Whitman, or any other female leader, as “innocent?”
Luna
Not at all. I believe the author understands “innocence” much in the same way as “chastity”. This has nothing to do with preferring women to be subdued, weak etc. This does have much to do with preferring women to be chaste and project a chastity-friendly image for lack of a better word. He makes an explicit reference to beauty as opposed to base sexual urges, projection of sexual appetite or availability.
Therefore, the author is very much in favour of dignity. He isn’t telling women to hide their ankles. He’s asking that women don’t market themselves as sexual objects (which Christian women, and men too for that matter) have no business doing because premarital sex is a mortal sin, also when it is merely fantasised about in one’s mind. As Catholics we have no business defending a right to do whatever we see fit with our sexuality (including premarital or extramarital sex or one-night stands) simply because we don’t have that right. That is, we can do it, but it will be a mortal sin and will separate us from God. Our sexuality is meant to be ordered, we should not be presenting it as disordered (and it is disordered when it is rampant, voracious, doesn’t restrain itself to one partner chosen till death do us part, which is what a lot of modern clothing lines project the wearer’s sexuality to be). We also have no business pretending that we don’t value chastity as much as we really do as Catholics. (Yes, some people just have a problem with an inch of material missing here or there. Nope. The problem is with using one’s appearance to provoke others to engage in sinful thoughts.)
Plus, at the risk of repeating myself: we have no business being sexually desired by people in general, as in the general public or the people we meet when we go about our business. We have business being sexually desired by our spouses and we also have some business inducing a chosen person to marry us (though still not at the cost of violating the moral law by fornication, physical or mental). Some of the modern clothing lines are incompatible with this idea because they are designed specifically for the purpose of causing arousal in others.
Besides, women feel disrespected when oggled. Sometimes the same women who wear provocative clothing (humans are entirely capable of being inconsistent). As a man, I feel direspected when a woman attempts to get a couple of seconds of sexual arousal out of me in order to confirm her own attractiveness to herself, without being interested in my personality and without being concerned with my feelings. Let alone anything remotely associated with marrying me. In which case she’d have every right to want me to desire her sexually.
Hope this helps.
or any other female leader, as “innocent?”
How about St. Joan of Arc, who was the finest knight to walk this earth? And what about Our Lady, who’s more “powerful” than any other created being (apart from becoming the Queen of Heaven as a created human being) and yet the most innocent of all? On the male side, Our Lord Himself is innocent. God is the most innocent of all beings.
