- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Given the interest in Elder Callister’s talk and the response of professionals dealing with depression as it relates to body issues and the shame that comes from what can be a hyperawareness of sexuality as well and the increase emphasis on modesty, I thought this might be an interesting point of view. I am a nudist/naturist and this web site has a post that I’ve found relative to this discussion. I’ve taken the liberty of editing some parts that may be too graphic and hope the point of view of a naturist who sees the importance of self control and personal responsibility will be of interest given the context of someone that sees no shame in the human body. When reading the post be aware that the writer doesn’t equate immodesty with nudity. I’m not putting this up to advocate for clothes free living but to show that given the recent discussions there are some common opinions. Be aware that if you go to the link to review the entire piece there will be non sexual nudity.
Quote:Self control and clothes free living
February 11, 2014 homeclothesfree
One of the biggest deterrents to the acceptance of clothes free living is the connection between being nude or clothes free and wanton sexual behavior. In western society particularly North American people have a hard time separating sex from nudity and being clothes free. For most the only reason to be clothes free is to engage in sex. For many that represents a decent into depravity. Some of that has been blamed on the religious institutions and some of it has been blamed on the commercialization of the human body. In the writer’s opinion both are correct. But the question remains what to do about this situation. My response is two words: self control.
Self control speaks to an important characteristic and quality of life that addresses the social conditioning that comes from the religious community as well as the secular or commercial. It speaks truth to the first and scientific reality to the second. Self control means knowing yourself and knowing yourself enough to moderate or control behavior for appropriate situations.
To the moralistic religious folks I want to say that all of the four world religions require its followers to practice self control. The Christian Bible goes as far as to state that self control is a gift of the spirit of God. )Galatians 5:23) This means that if followers of Jesus do not exhibit self control in their behavior, then they need to look to themselves and their relationship with God for the source of the problem. They should not look to the actions, behaviors or dress of others to explain away behaviors they do not control. Take for instance this moralistic blogger’s opinion about the legality of women wearing legging or yoga pants.
Quote:I’m going to be blunt. I find spandex pants (“yoga pants”) to be extremely sexually distracting:
edited as was a bit too graphic
Quote:What doesn’t make sense to me is why it is legal to dress this way in public. It’s basically nudity, and nudity is illegal. Public nudity is referred to as “indecent exposure” or “public indecency”.
While I can agree with the writer about form fitting clothes being next to wearing nothing, I cannot agree with his conclusion. The fact that it is sexually distracting to him is about his self control. The next step in this line of thinking for the religious moralists is always that the clothes free human body is bad and somehow offensive to their sensibilities. So the people who prefer to go clothes free must be put away, hidden away lest they make offense. To this I once again say self control. This is how the Christian bible puts it
Quote:A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls (Proverbs 25:28 NLT)
So before taking offense at someone’s clothes free body we should all practice self control.
The same might be said about bare shoulders.
Quote:Which leads me to the second response.
To the secular folks who have bought into the myth that all we are is sexual animals I would point to the science that shows all kinds of behavior in animals can be controlled. Science shows us that we are conditioned to control our behavior all the time. The difference is this control comes from outside of us instead of from within. The leaders of the fashion industry and other commercial entities have used social conditioning (sex sells) to condition us into connecting the clothes free body with sex. The result is our view of the human body has become distorted and monolithic.
This short sighted conflagration forgets that a core libertarian principle is personal responsibility (self control). You are free to say what you want, to do what you want, but if that might bring any REAL harm to someone then you must act with self control and be personally responsible. In fact this libertarian principle would suggest that self control and personal responsibility is a sign of a truly civilized society…
(Note I personally do not espouse libertarian views but I am using them here to make a case for self control.)
Now to be honest science can also be used to justify this distorted view of the body as in this small survey of men done by some Princeton researchers. But even this affirms my point that it is about self control. It is not what the woman is wearing or not wearing that it at issue but the uncontrolled mental response of the male subjects.
Bottom line is our choice is not between social ostracism or social abandon, but self control.
Cool Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
Truth be told most people look sexier with clothes because being naked shows all your flaws. I went to a beach in Italy once and there were a lot of topless swimmers and I saw all those breast in a very nonsexual way and I was pleasantly surprised that my reaction was to not get aroused. The human body can be so beautiful in a nonsexual way. church0333 wrote:Truth be told most people look sexier with clothes because being naked shows all your flaws. I went to a beach in Italy once and there were a lot of topless swimmers and I saw all those breast in a very nonsexual way and I was pleasantly surprised that my reaction was to not get aroused. The human body can be so beautiful in a nonsexual way.
It’s not that being naked shows flaws it just shows us being normal. I remember a friend commenting while at a naturist club for the first time that she’d never realized we were all so different. We think of “flaws” based on what society, business, advertising, etc. tells us instead of seeing ourselves as we are and not deficient in some way. As has been pointed out clothing can sexualize a person but an over emphasis on modesty can have exactly the same result by telling people, especially children, that our bodies are bad and have to be hidden.
I really liked this post. I am returning to school and studying behavioral science. I really would like to do research on the effects of brainwashing, in particularly the media/cultural influences regarding body image and the root cause of shame regarding bodies. Church: yep,
Quote:The human body can be so beautiful in a nonsexual way.
Body beauty in all shapes and sizes because beauty is diverse. We are so brainwashed into believing that beauty is only x, y and z, and as far as feminism goes, I feel that as a culture we have gotten further behind as seeing woman as objects and useful if they fit the mold. I was watching a movie this weekend that was made in 1994, the women in the movie were “normal” looking women. The FBI agent was in her 40’s and around a size 10. It occurred to me that if the movie were made today that the woman would be in her 20’s, a size 2 and unattainably sexy. I understand the medias motives for portraying unattainable so that we as a society will continue to spend more and more money to hopefully attain x, y and z. Only to raise the bar in the future. The sad situation is that instead of correcting this, we are bringing men into this unrealistic/ shameful body image. I realize the need for doing this is also the fact that it is so much more fun to focus on appearance and being distracted by outside influences than to actually deal with inner pain and things that are really bothering us… but I hope we (and by we I mean I) can come to a place to value human beings just for being. I often sign off with Namaste which is: “I bow to the divine in you.” We are divine no matter what the body looks like. There is no shame in a sex body, a fat body, a “disabled” body. It is a body. Period. It is not where our value is and neither should there be shame in regarding it… or feeling shame that we find others sexy or attractive. It is what we do with the thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.
When we went to Europe (Yes Liberal Mormon Here), this past summer I reveled in the art of earlier ages. So much of it, is nude. Men, women, chubby people. It’s inspiring. None of it tasteless. As my husband and I walked through the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, we discussed the nudes everywhere. On our guided tour, they explained that for portrait painters the hardest painting was human flesh. That coloring, texturing, realness was very hard to obtain and could really set a painter apart with his skill. In honor that, we bought two prints of naked women washing by a stream. They hang in our bedroom. We knew it would freak our son out, he’s been conspicuously modest all his life – I don’t know if it’s religious or just him, but we hoped it would gently crack open the beauty of God’s greatest creation – the human form. My copy of the Ensign came yesterday. DW and I had a somewhat spirited discussion. She made some points and I can see where Elder Callister is coming from. 1) Men are visually stimulated and certain dress will tend to attract a male sexual response. 2) There is some truth in the adage to “dress for success” and that how one dresses influences how one is perceived and treated by others. We agreed that a better take on the modesty theme would be – “Please respect your body. Please model your self-respect and the respect you would like others to give you in word, actions, and dress.”
We then got into a discussion of how open ended and open to interpretation it might be to ask people to respect their bodies. Is a woman in a spaghetti strap sundress, or bikini, or a shirtless guy playing basketball or mowing the lawn being disrespectful to their bodies? No – even if we might label them as immodest based on current Mormon interpretations.
We had a good discussion on swimsuits. Most modern swimsuits would tend to attract a male sexual response especially if they are worn by an attractive woman with a nice figure. If avoiding this response were a criteria for modesty then Mormon women would not be able to swim (at least not competatively in their full body flowing swimsuits).
We decided that the disrespect is imbedded in the intent of the individual. If they dress in a way that is debasing or devaluing to their body that might be disrespectful. If they see and treat their body as a commodity to be used and leveraged for worldly gain then that might be disrespectful.
So, in a way, it is the turning of the body into a sex object that is disrespectful. Ironically, the overemphasis on covering the body can also debase the body by reducing it to a sex object and be just as disrespectful.
opentofreedom wrote:Body beauty in all shapes and sizes because beauty is diverse.
I think that being familiar to a variety of body shapes and sizes is a pretty good antidote to the idea of a specific, generally unattainable and airbrushed ideal of beauty and body value. That is a major reason why I support the Mormon Women Bare project.
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4894&hilit=+bare Now I haven’t spoken directly to self control. Suffice it to say that I believe it is self evident that self control is about controling one’s self and generally not the purvue or responsibility of other people (unless your lack of self control causes you to perform criminal acts or other things that are harmful to the community).
Interesting piece in the SLTrib given the recent discussion. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/57592727-80/women-mormon-modesty-lds.html.csp I liked this part of the “Sex” chapter in “Letters to a Young Mormon” by Adam Miller: Quote:Chastity is not a kind of perfection. You may have arrived in this world innocent, but chastity is something more. Chastity is not something you are born with and then break or lose, it is something that is made. It is something that must, with years of patient and compassionate effort, be cultivated and grown and gathered and sealed.
Caring for your own hunger will teach you how to care for the body of the person you’ll one day love. Watch your hunger closely. See how, like the ocean, it has a rhythm, tides that come in and out, and waves that break. See how it gets tangled with the stories you tell yourself and the fantasies you entertain. See how it gets knotted together with all kinds of hopes and shames and fears. Notice how, when the tide of your hunger goes out, this doesn’t suddenly mean you’re chaste. And notice how, when the tide comes in, this doesn’t suddenly mean that you aren’t.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.