This is in response to this article, by Rachel Held in Contempt:
I am kind of tired of this woman, there was some other article going around about something else a while ago and I blocked it out because it was so obnoxious. She herd a bad sermon, so, of course, the only remedy is a worse blog post. This woman is just a populist, she just says stuff that makes everyone feel good about what they already think and don’t know. Oh she used a Greek word, she must know what she is talking about. It actually makes me think of something that would require me to pardon my French.
“While popular culture tends to disempower women by telling them they must dress to get men to look at them, the modesty culture tends to disempower women by telling them they must dress to keep men from looking at them.”
What in the world? She basically is saying that all women have is their looks, while the remainder of the article attempts to bash the evils of objectification. If you dress frumpy you have no power, and that’s like– heaven forbid–living in the past! Oh my!
She makes it all about the woman and their feelings and sense of empowerment. “So my advice for women looking for bathing suits this season is this: Don’t dress for men; dress for yourself. “ In Christendom, women and men used to dress out of respect for other people, this is really loving your neighbor. She makes it all about you and your objectification in a different way, it’s still selfishness. Why not try respecting the culture you live in, instead of trying to distinguish yourself with clothes and hair and piercings? Today wealth may not be of utmost value but individualism is. Way to bash yesterday’s evil while being totally blind to your own. But hey at least everyone gets to feel warm and fuzzy in their sin, until it consumes them. Sex is out of control in our culture. The demand is pushed up by nudity flaunted everywhere and the only truly responsible way of meeting that demand, healthy marriage, is also under assault. It’s a recipe for disaster.
When you read the Bible looking for the commands for other people you miss the point. Worry about that log in your own eye. Women, don’t worry about the commands to the men, worry about doing what you can to stop your own sin, and ways you can look out for your brother, or sister. We all have enough sin to go around. Sin is serious, Jesus tells us it would be better to cut off our hand than sin. Wouldn’t you want to do all that you can to prevent it? Is some silly notion of self esteem more important than preventing sin? Today it is. Which brings us to culture. All cultures are not the same. Just throwing up the ‘all cultures are different’ line as if it were an argument could be a justification for anything. Immoral cultures on the verge of being wiped out or backward people who have found a comfy place below civilization, i.e. indigenous peoples, shouldn’t be our role model. Our role model should be vibrant Christian culture, like that of the middle ages or the Puritans in America. They dressed modestly and colorfully. They loved sex between a husband and wife and they didn’t tattoo or pierce or walk around naked. This responsible culture grew and flourished. Oh Europe has nude beaches, so we are supposed to learn something from that? Why don’t we try to take whatever culture we have and make it better? Instead of throwing up our hands, throwing out modesty and just opting for pleasing ourselves. “each man is different, so it would be a fool’s errand anyway” Well, fatalism is the real fool’s errand.
Showing off your body and showing off your money are the same thing and you should be ashamed of them both. Since when did shame become something bad? “Just seer your conscience woman because overcoming it is the most empowering thing in the world, nothing bad will happen” said the snake to Eve. But I think we can conclude that she missed this story and it’s modesty message. Women with hot bodies showing them off because they can is the same as women showing off their money because they can. Isn’t this obvious? Not when you are trying to justify doing whatever you want. Popular culture even calls women’s bodies ‘assets’. Hello?
Oh no you have a habit of trying to be too modest? My goodness you better get to therapy right away. I bet a good hypnotherapist can cure you. Some day everyone everywhere will break all those pesky traditions and then, and only then will we live free. . . as the cave man. You should thank God for all the habits of our civilization it’s the only thing holding it all together right now. As we squander all the capitol given to us by 2000 years of Christianity with our pursuit of lusts, it is those habits that guide us to sanity when we would choose something destructive. I just can’t believe she gets this so wrong in every way.
As a man I have traveled in Muslim countries, and it’s very refreshing, on this front. I could do without the calls to prayer and the general abuse of women, but the modesty is refreshing. I had a Turkish man ask me via our translating friend, what I thought of all the covered women. I told him it was better than all the naked women running around in America, and it is. I notice it every spring as the women are forced to go naked ‘because it’s so hot’, yeah Montana, brutal. But as someone who works outside, I have learned that light white long sleeves and pants actually keep you cooler than being naked. So much for the pragmatism. I like women, I am probably the only person in the world to write a letter like this to the editor. Large fields of flesh are distracting and annoying and it takes a lot of effort not to look. Looking is only the first step but we all know how sin works it starts small and progresses, if we let it. And even when we don’t want to let it. But I guess this Rachel person is too busy looking for her self esteem amongst all the archaic practices that were foisted on her by evil white patriarchy. So ladies do me a favor and don’t go out in public in your underwear, I mean bikinis.