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I really loved this article, modesty is one of those things in the church that drives me nuts. I love the principle behind it, but hate how it’s taught and enforced. Even after being warned I did read some of the comments, and wow…. I laughed pretty good most of them seem to have missed the point of the article. They seemed to focus on the girl in the two piece swimsuit and how she wasn’t following the Lord and the Prophet’s commandments. I want to know where in the quad it says anything about swimsuits. Yes I know For the Strength of the Youth but that isn’t doctrine that’s supposed to be a guideline but people take it too seriously. At any rate, as my generation gets older and starts to teach the younger I hope modesty gets taught in a better way. This quote from Seneca (Context? I have no idea) speaks to my complete fatigue with the subject of modesty: Quote:Modesty forbids what the law does not.
But…we keep trying to write a legal code for modesty.Give up; it can’t be done. I say, LDS women, get out there and keep it classy. I hope our girls will think us beautiful and worthy of emulation. I’d prefer it if men stopped talking in public LDS venues (not meaning this site, btw đ ) about what women and girls wear. It’s awkward.amateurparent wrote:When I was a teenager, Brazilian men all wore very tight Speedo swim suits. It was very obvious when someone was especially happy to see me. It was just considered part of being human and no one made a big deal about it.
Worked with a guy who was a part-time comedian. His claim to fame was opening for Tom Jones (4000 people). He was normally pretty hilarious.
If he came to church, he would likely say something like this if he saw me:
“Is that a Book of Mormon in your hand, or are you just glad to see me??”.
He also walked up to me once and said “I was in Salt Lake City. I saw this keychain. It has a keyfinder on it. When you clap your hands, Moroni appears and points”.
Once he came back from Las Vegas and told me he tried to get into the “Mormon casino”. Said he got to the front desk but couldn’t afford the cover charge.
I guess I think of those Brazilian beaches .. Lots of skin. When one lives in a culture where showing a lot of skin on the beach is the norm, it isn’t a big deal. It is just skin. In the U.S., men’s swim suits MUST be loose and baggy. Tight men’s swim suits don’t sell well here .. It is a different modesty standard for men. But tight shorts for bike riding are okay .. How come those are considered acceptable?
Weird double standards.
I was thinking more about this today – the real fly in the ointment of the modesty plan is the rest of the world. Like AP mentioned Quote:Weird double standards.
As a religion we chose not to live in communes or communities like the Amish, we encourage being with the world and not of it, but try being a normal LDS teenage boy. All the Mormon kids have this modesty drilled in you, then the kid gets to the local lake with friends and da#% those girls in bikini’s look hot. To be honest even the Mormon Mom – Me is looking at those cute girls in their cute bikini’s.
Now does this young man run home, hide in shame and call his Bishop? or Does he look at this as a missionary opportunity and introduce himself. You know saving them from the sin they are committing?
đŽ But seriously, we can put our girls in Burka’s but no one else cares, those nasty devilish shoulders, clavicles, and universally given belly buttons are going to be on display no matter what that fine upstanding young man does.
We have definitely done a number on ourselves.
Silent Dawning: The problem is that modesty has never been described to LDS women as being just a dress standard.
Quote:“If we are modest, we do not draw undue attention to ourselves”
That above statement gets interpreted many different ways. One of the ways it is interpreted to YW, is that women are supposed to take a supportive role in relationships. “Supportive” gets twisted into subservient. “Undue attention” gets turned into “you are not allowed to have an opinion that differs from authority figures in your life. There are lots of lessons about how the priesthood holder is the final authority in the household.
All these twists of the LDS definition of modesty lead to women who don’t feel they are allowed to have their own opinions.
Add an attitude that any sexual thought a man has is the woman’s fault due to her lack of modesty .. That combination sets up a situation that too easily leads to emotional and physical abuse.
amateurparent wrote:That above statement gets interpreted many different ways. One of the ways it is interpreted to YW, is that women are supposed to take a supportive role in relationships. “Supportive” gets twisted into subservient. “Undue attention” gets turned into “you are not allowed to have an opinion that differs from authority figures in your life. There are lots of lessons about how the priesthood holder is the final authority in the household.All these twists of the LDS definition of modesty lead to women who don’t feel they are allowed to have their own opinions.Add an attitude that any sexual thought a man has is the woman’s fault due to her lack of modesty .. That combination sets up a situation that too easily leads to emotional and physical abuse.
As much as I appreciate reinvestigating the broader meanings of the word modesty, I agree that defining it more broadly will probably just add to the burden that is placed on young women.
Nor do I particularly want kids of either gender to feel that they must sacrifice themselves and their potential accomplishments in order to not draw undue attention.
At the heart of Modesty as I would want it to be taught is that none of the trappings of success define you or make you fundamentally of greater worth than any other human being. Yes, you may be the football star, you may be a swimsuit model, you may be a captain of industry – those things are fine until they become the measuring stick for who you are inside.
It is the ranking of people that is truly immodest. In this way the principle of modesty can be about discovering divine self worth independent of all worldly trappings. I would like to see it taught like the Wemmicks of the Max Lucado book “You are Special” ; modesty can require a paradigm change where we no longer see the world as a competition of shiny stars and grey dots. Unfortunately, this is not being done. If anything the current modesty approach just gives us one more criteria with which to evaluate each other and hand out stars… or grey dots.
I want modesty defined for what it really means: moderation. I want that definition to be as broad as it is meant to be – so it includes eating habits, financial choices, lifestyle, conversations, etc. I want it taught as a principle, NOT focused exclusively on a dress standard – and, especially, not focused almost entirely on a female dress standard. We have defined it so narrowly that it has lost its inherent power to be a foundational life principle for everyone.
Also, importantly,
the way we define and talk about modesty right now actually is immodest– since we have limited it in an extreme way and applied it to how we dress in a way that is extreme in some cases. (not overall with relation to how most members dress, but absolutely when it relates to swimming, summer wear, shoulders, etc.) Quote:Roy wrote:
At the heart of Modesty as I would want it to be taught is that none of the trappings of success define you or make you fundamentally of greater worth than any other human being. Yes, you may be the football star, you may be a swimsuit model, you may be a captain of industry – those things are fine until they become the measuring stick for who you are inside. It is the ranking of people that is truly immodest. In this way the principle of modesty can be about discovering divine self worth independent of all worldly trappings. I would like to see it taught like the Wemmicks of the Max Lucado book “You are Special” ; modesty can require a paradigm change where we no longer see the world as a competition of shiny stars and grey dots.
Unfortunately, this is not being done. If anything the current modesty approach just gives us one more criteria with which to evaluate each other and hand out stars… or grey dots.
Very well stated. More lessons could focus on how to interact consistently with kindness.
Old-Timer wrote:I want modesty defined for what it really means: moderation.
I do not disagree with you Ray. However I see that being really difficult to implement or even really define. What is modesty other than something that is between two extremes. How would you give that lesson? Would it be about being “well rounded.” Modesty as moderation seems rather nebulous to me.
The SCOTUS judge famously said about obscenity “I know it when I see it.” To take it a step further, I do not know that I could recognize “moderation” when I see it. I believe I might need to have representations of the extremes in the example to properly identify what the moderate position was. For example, a moderate LDS lifestyle may be moderate for the LDS community but still be quite extreme when compared the an average non-LDS person. A home may be modest in a particular community in the United States and yet be immodest in a community in a developing country.
What are your thoughts on this?
Moderation is different for everyone but we want to be able to draw that line in the sand. It’s a part of the process though, we incorporate how other people define moderation into our own definitions. Other people’s experiences contribute to what we view as boundaries just as much as our own experiences do. The author gave a great reply article this am (sorry I don’t have the link right now) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
In the words of Weird Al, from Amish Paradise. “Well, I know I’m a million times as humble as thou art!”
In my attempt to be charitable to some of the commenters from the first article – I thought to myself that maybe some of them are just reacting reflexively to what they perceive as yet another attack against the church. Some were like, “How dare you question how the brethren have taught this principle? If this is how the church does it then this is surely how God wants it.” In the response article Sister/Dr. Julie Hanks makes clear that our own literature treats modesty in a much more expansive way. She also emphasizes the “judge not, lest you be judged aspect.” Which was a fairly safe play against people that were not about to see their conception of modesty assailed.
IMHO many of these conversations would be much less polemic and much more productive and civil if we could just collectively grasp that âhmmm. Perhaps the church was wrong about how that was taught, emphasized, communicated, and/or implemented.â
I found the following quotes from the response article particularly noteworthy:
Quote:Just because it doesnât meet our recommended guidelines doesnât mean that it is, by default, immodest.
Quote:These wonderful boys appeared to feel completely comfortable and justified judging and talking about a young girlâs swimming attire, while disregarding a core and unchanging doctrine of Christâs teachings: charity and love.
Quote:When we reduce the definition of Modesty to âWhat Women Wearâ we are reinforcing the very thing that modesty is designed to avoid: The sexual objectification of womenâs bodies.
Quote:This leads me to question whether our cultural (not our core principles and doctrine) approach to teaching and applying modesty is weakening or strengthening this objectification response. Is it possible that by hyper focusing on which female body parts are covered or exposed we might be inadvertently strengthening the objectification? By culturally labeling exposed shoulders, knees, and stomachs as âimmodestâ are we unknowingly sexualizing parts of the female body that donât need to be sexualized, and in doing so, making the situation even more difficult for men to control their thoughts? Itâs something to consider.
Quote:The topic of modesty could be replaced with keeping the Sabbath Day holy or following the Word of Wisdom, but the principle is the same. We would be wise to focus on improving our own lives rather than focusing on judging and policing the choices of others.
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