I feel like sometimes we are painting ourselves into a corner with all this modesty stuff.

We’re at a point where women’s underwear and bathing suit ads are considered pornography by some (because that is apparently where many men’s problems with pornography start? Nevermind that it could actually start because a woman’s body, self abuse masturbation,  and all things sexual are forbidden and secret sacred).
Are we really at a point where we have to worry about our husbands and sons seeing women in underwear or a bikini? Where we shame and un-friend teenage girls for not upholding to your standards of dress; for wearing bikinis and towels without a bra?
And now we paint clothing on Barbies so that our children don’t ever have to see a naked plastic toy body, let alone actually play with a Barbie while it is naked.

Going to the extreme?  Crazier still, you can see that the manufacturer included underwear in the molding. See the waist line of the panty?source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/109775309637371943/

Going to the extreme?
source

 

Yes, even babies need to never be naked. The horror! Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/226657793718545051/

Yes, even baby barbies need to never be naked. The horror!
Source

Our primary aged daughters are gossiping about how immodestly dressed their peers are, creating an idea of “we’re good because we make good choices and they aren’t as good because they aren’t making good choices” in their minds which they then reinforce in their peer groups in a classic mean girl scenario.

Can you believe she’s wearing THAT?! How immodest! That neckline shows so much cleavage!
source

I am so tired of it all. It kills me whenever I see modesty lauded and taught to young girls in the name of “starting early” or ensuring that such “standards” have always been the standard so there is never any question of modest dress standards when they are teenagers.

It’s creating hypersexuality and awareness of a child’s body that they should not and do not need to have.

It is of my own opinion (of which many others would agree), that we are doing this to ourselves.

A few weeks ago a friend told me about her four year old playing Barbies. She decided they all needed to go swimming, but there were not enough swimming suits, or she just didn’t think to look for them, or they were hard to put on.
All this four year old knew is that you don’t go swimming in clothing, especially not dresses like most of the Barbies are dressed in, so she proceeded to remove their clothing and have them head to the beach.
Now, this mom carefully weighed the situation as the modesty rhetoric she had been taught all her life started to ring in her head. Should she insist that all Barbies be clothed at all times like so many other moms enforce in their house? Should she use this moment as a time to teach modesty and hold Barbies to the same standards that some people (and most definitely Mormon people) hold? To her blissfully unaware four year old?
While she certainly could have done any of those things, she stepped back and just let her child remain blissfully unaware and let her remain in her happy pretend world that is totally normal for a four year old. No mention of nakedness or the need to wear clothes. Not a big deal.

Years ago we lived in Texas and our community had a pool. As I spent days at the pool I noticed women of all shapes and sizes comfortable in their bikinis and no men ogling them. It was so refreshing to realize that these women owned their bodies and wore what they wanted to wear with no concern over what men would think about them along with the men not even batting an eye.

 

Everyone wears a bikini! It's normal! Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/record-heat-producing-record-attendance-at-barto-1/nRdH5/

Everyone wears a bikini! It’s normal!
Source

 

And so I wore a bikini (I’m sure some members of my family are gasping in horror!). My husband initially expressed his concern over other men looking at me and quickly realized that their behavior didn’t matter. Of course they might look, but it wasn’t his job to make sure I was dressed to maintain their virtue, nor my job to dress to accommodate them. Frankly, they would have been looking if I was in a one piece bathing suit too.
It’s up to them to see me as a person or a sexual object, the same way I have to decide to look at a shirtless “Hey girl” meme of Ryan Gosling and not objectify him.

Sure some guys looked, but they do not matter when I decide what I wear each day. I do not plan my attire thinking about what others will think of me. I wear what makes me feel good about myself. And what do you know, I walked around that pool deck in my bikini and no one ogled nor did I notice any stares, and I realized that the world outside of Utah and LDS culture is normal. Wearing a bikini is not shocking nor does it cause men to lust after you or lose control of their thoughts. Women do not need to refrain from “immodest” dress out of consideration of men around them

Recently a friend posted a picture of “sexy” bras and underwear for pregnant and nursing mothers on her Facebook wall. She was met with a response to think of the boys and men that would be seeing that and that she was worried about her own sons and husband seeing such an image.

This is the image that my friend shared http://www.cakelingerie.com/nursing-bras/underwire/dark-chocolate-bra

This is the image that my friend shared
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What are we doing to our children? To our sons, and even our husbands?

We teach our children starting from age 3 (and younger!) that this and that way of dress is modest (yay! good!) and that this and that way of dress is immodest (boo! shame!).

In the Young Women program modesty is brought up on a regular basis. We have fashion shows where “modest” (according to the “rules” spelled out in a standards pamphlet for youth) fashions are showcased and lauded, thus making anything unlike them “immodest”. We start feeding our youth defined lines of modesty in order to have a “standard” which then becomes hyper-focused on. Those standards become a measuring stick. People not conforming are not as righteous or have some kind of issue because they aren’t “following the prophet” or living the “standards” that the church has spelled out and reiterated time and time again.What a girl is wearing  is a visual way to measure their level of righteousness.

Suddenly our young women are required to wear pants and swim in t-shirts and shorts at girls camp where there are ONLY GIRLS because we are so into enforcing modesty. Dress ups and tank tops are worn with shirts under them, skirts with leggings, exercise wear is limited to shirts with sleeves, pants, and long shorts. Modest is Hottest is the phrase of choice and suddenly we have whole clothing companies catering to the modesty and layering so that everything remains covered.

hmm...

hmm…

 

We’ve started applying the standards of garments to our children and young women in the name of “well, they are going to wear them eventually, so we choose to adhere to those standards to make the transition easier”.

Why don’t we just make a child’s version of garments? We pretty much have the equivalent of the top in the classic tight fitting cap sleeved shirt that is worn under almost everything, all we need is long biking shorts.

new underwear for children?

new underwear for children?

Wait.
Oh, right, garments aren’t there to enforce modesty. Or at least that was not their intent. Sadly, I often feel that this is what they have become.

As adults, people are known to subtly check for garments. I know. I used to do it. “GASP! I don’t think so and so is wearing garments! WTH?” Some cases are obvious and it’s easy to pass judgement on someone who you feel should be wearing garments who obviously are not. Some cases are not as obvious and you wonder in your mind and try to determine if they really are or aren’t and then wonder why they aren’t wearing garments or how they could possibly wear garments with what they are wearing. We saw a lot of this with Ann Romney and her clothing choices. The Mormon world was in a fit over her skirt length and sheer sleeves. Never mind that she was dressed modestly and dressed well.

Onto teenage boys. They hear the same message: that girls need to cover up because boys (them) will have sexual thoughts about a girls body if they don’t. If you’re told that looking at women and having sexual thoughts is just what boys/men do, then why do you have reason to believe otherwise? How does that teach our sons and husbands to have any accountability for their own actions? Even if we are teaching that boys are responsible for their own thoughts, we can’t continue to lay out a standard of dress. By doing so, we teach all of our youth that anyone not conforming to the standard is immodest. Our boys hear this and are lost at what to do when their friend or date shows up in a tank top or shorts or a strapless dress. They are awkward as missionaries when they encounter females in “immodest” clothing. Any showing of shoulders or cleavage or general attractiveness becomes titillating because it was always covered and forbidden and sacred. Shoulders. Thighs. Normal parts of women that are not intended to be sexual, but become so because so much emphasis is placed on covering them and being modest that those places they rarely see become arousing.

One community leader involved in protecting children from “indecency” (according to her standards which she sees as LDS standards and thus believes that her community would all hold the same standards), “recounts a typical encounter with someone who has seen the light after “porn has turned his life upside down.”  … When I hear this, I always congratulate the person, then ask, `How did it start?’ she writes. “Invariably, he replies, `Swimsuit pictures, stuff like that; sometimes the lingerie section of a catalog.’ For some it began with National Geographic.”
Robert Weiss, clinical director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, dismissed this view as “propaganda, not science.” Pornography might contribute to a sex addiction, Dr. Weiss said, but only the way a glass of Champagne might lead to alcoholism or a round of poker might lead to a gambling addiction.”  source

 

Amelia over at the Exponent says what I’m trying to say far better. Also, please go read her post in it’s entirety!

The Mormon emphasis on external, clothing-oriented modesty is just another form of sexualization. We attempt to negate the sexualization of young girls’ and women’s bodies by covering them up and locking them behind the door called Chastity. But when the female body is taboo because of its inherent sexuality (a sexuality so powerful that a woman literally turns herself into pornography for some men by dressing immodestly, according to that canard advanced by Dallin Oaks), and when women are celebrated almost exclusively because of their potential as breeders and nurturers of children, then we successfully sexualize the female body every bit as much as pushing heels, padded bras, plunging necklines, and miniskirts for pre-teens does. The invisibility of the female body, or of the attributes of the female body that stand for Sex, does not mean we have refused to grant the female body a sexualized status.
According to the APA, “sexualization occurs when:

  • a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
  • a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
  • a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making;
  • and/or sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.”

And we are widening this scope of hyper-modesty beyond our church walls to our community.

There are countless other links on how the modesty rhetoric can actually be damaging to a person’s self image.  

We have blinders over magazines that may have the word sex written on them or partially (and mostly!) dressed woman (I do recognize that for some magazines, blinder use makes sense) and people painting clothes on “immodest” displays. There are people who are declaring lingerie stores and ads as soft-core pornography (What soft-core pornography actually is) and rallying the community to get involved. While I understand the intent of groups to be involved in maintaining a community standard and generally agree that public involvement is a good thing, it can be seen as an extreme view to others.  These types of groups are not a new thing. The National Legion of Decency upheld standards in the motion picture industry in accordance to the Roman Catholic Church in the United States’ point of view beginning in 1933. 

Like I mentioned above, in so many ways, we are doing this to ourselves. So many of the issues that our members have with sex, body image,pornography, and feeling unable to control their thoughts after exposure to a model in an underwear ad can probably, in my personal and unprofessional opinion, be tied in some way to our hyper focus on modesty.

By  emphasizing the need to cover up children in the name of maintaining virtue, we are sexualizing them. By constantly emphasizing modesty lines with our youth and by creating a garment that people interpret as The Church’s (aka The Lord’s) standard lines of modesty are creating a culture where the focus is on lines of righteousness instead of intent of the heart and spirit.

To all of you perpetuating this damaging culture, I say,

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/278026976965626356/

 “Stop it”.

For some further good reading, check out the following.

In the link to The Exponent above, Amelia references a couple of blog posts including a four part piece on modesty at FMH, so be sure to check those out.
How Modesty Made Me Hate My Body
Men, Sex, and Modesty“|
Hyper Modesty in a bible church
On Modesty
Mormon Beauty, Modesty, and Shame

Carrie is a memorial artist and mom to 3 young children, and is being watched over by twin boys. When she isn't working, you can usually find her spending time with her family. If there is, by some miracle, extra time when she doesn't want to fall into her bed and sleep, she likes to indulge her creative side, where she dabbles in a bit of everything. She has been married to her husband, Jon, for over 10 years and they enjoy watching shows together, vacationing (who doesn't?!), and going on adventures.

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