+ J. M. J. +
Five years as a priest and I haven't even come close to figuring this out....
Summer is here, even in the Keweenaw, and as the pastor of a campus ministry parish, and working with young people of all ages, I'm still trying to hone my skills around preaching and teaching modesty. As a flesh and blood man, I'm also still trying to hone my skills around custody of the eyes and seeing hearts and souls rather than body parts...
In that context, I've been thinking for years about how modesty hits men and women differently. In terms of dress, I think guys more often struggle with being sloppy, while women are tempted to dress such that attention is focused on their bodies in a way that doesn't contribute to their dignity. I think men and women struggle to understand each other in these areas because we are so different, and it's not an easy conversation to begin, much less carry on to a fruitful conclusion.
I have been blessed with many good and holy women as friends and family members, and very many of them carry themselves with great dignity and beautiful modesty, for which I am deeply grateful!
I just read these two blog posts from Simcha Fisher and Jennifer Fulwiler, two of my favorite Catholic bloggers, and I would love to hear people's thoughts. In all of this, please work against our shared tendency to make assumptions, to hastily judge, and to assign motivations to others without knowing them!
Let the conversation begin, God-willing, prayerfully and lovingly!
Standing Out or Blending In? by Simcha Fisher
Modesty is an Opportunity to Love by Jennifer Fulwiler
+ A. M. D. G. +
It's a hard subject to cover (pun :) with teens especially, because of the prevailing culture creep that gets in the way. How I address this with my daughter is to tell her that it's her responsibility as a female to be in charge of how people see her, and that part of that responsibility is not to advertise what isn't on offer. Whether she thinks it's right or not, people are going to judge her based on her appearance and she needs to be sending the right message about who she is. We try to allow her to wear things that are pretty and reasonably fashionable but are not revealing or scanty. Hopefully, since I don't dress in that fashion either, I'm helping to reinforce the concept of how grown women with a sense of modesty and morals will present themselves to the public. I don't think it's fair to say that men in pants are modest but women are not, and since exactly the same body territory is covered, I feel that's a pretty sexist statement . There is no universal law that I know of that says the female figure is by definition more attractive than the male; therefore it must be the one to be concealed. Another thing that I think is off-base is that the modesty angle is always focused on the female. It seems to me that although men are traditionally allowed a greater degree of physical exposure in public than women are, they still bear the responsibility of managing their modesty; perhaps not so much in what they wear or don't wear, but in their behavior toward women and attention-seeking in a different way. In the end, I feel that both your clothing choices and your demeanor say as much about your respect for the people around you as it does about your respect for yourself.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated the “Modesty is an Opportunity to Love” post – the author made a very clear and convincing argument for the merits of modesty.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article, though, I am finding myself reflecting on a slight variation of her title - IMMODESTY as an opportunity to love. When I’m really honest with myself, I struggle the most with modesty when I’m hurting about something else in my life. I crave attention when life is difficult, and while it’s not a dignified or holy approach, dressing immodestly is a surefire way to get the attention I’m craving. In other words, my immodesty is typically a symptom of a deeper issue.
The problem is, when a person dresses immodestly, rather than receiving any positive support, they typically receive negative attention from both genders. As a woman, I do NOT react well to other women who are dressed immodestly – I respond with jealousy rather than love. Something that I need to work on is how I respond when I see someone dressed immodestly – rather than judging them or ignoring them out of jealousy, I need to reach out the arm of friendship. In other words, help build them up rather than pushing them deeper into a hole that could possibly be the cause of their dress in the first place!