Sunday, January 31, 2010
4:15 PM | Posted by
Unknown
I have decided that there is something decidedly wrong in the way we approach modesty with our children. Currently we teach them that the woman is the prize jewel in the life of any man. We teach our daughters to behave modestly, extolling the the virtues of chastity, and cleanliness of thought and body. We spend many a lecture teaching them that they have great power over the men in their lives, how many a young man made it on his mission and into the temple because of the virtues of the girl he was dating. Our wives are taught, as are we that when dressing ourselves we should never wear anything that would require that our garments be altered or exposed, thus keeping us modest, and the thoughts of those around us on more wholesome things.
So why is it that when I walk around the campus at BYUH (or any other place in the United States) I see LDS women dressed in tight spandex pants, jeans into which they could never have fit without having first liquefied themselves before pouring themselves into the jeans? They wear tops that are either too low in front or not long enough to cover their belly. Why are the pants worn so low as to make one wonder how on earth they stay in a vertical position? I can't tell you how many times I have seen one of these young sisters bend over only to show the entire waistband of her g-string underwear, along with a few inches of what little is left of what is below the waistband. And have you noticed that the heavier a young woman is the more likely she is to wear form-fitting clothes? What is that all about? I can't count the number of times I have thought to myself how sad it is to have some sweet young lady walk past me with every roll of fat proudly displayed under the tight top that rarely ever makes it down to greet the top of her pants. It never even occurred to me that people have so many differently shaped navels until the girls started to wear all these tight clothes.
It is so difficult to carry on a conversation with a person when you don't dare look at them anywhere but in the eye. Ewww! What if turnabout was fair play? What would we think of a young man who wore spandex tights to class, shirts that were so tight you could bounce a quarter off the space between his pecs or wore his pants so low that imagination became a lost art? Ewww! again!
Like I said at the beginning, there is something wrong in the way we approach the teaching of modesty to our young people these days. If they are listening, then why aren't we seeing it in the way they dress in public? I would like to say that it is only because they are caught up in the fashions of the world, but too often I see their mothers in the same kinds of clothing. I guess I can't really blame the innocence of youth if they are coming by their fashion sense from the examples set by their mothers.
Like most things in life, examples are rarely universal. I know plenty of very modest women who have very ferociously dressed daughters, and many men who are the epitome of decorum whose son's pants either need to come off or be pulled up rather than hang in the limbo that is neither dressed nor undressed. There just seems to be a lot of great rhetoric being spun, but much of it is not being translated into actual demonstrable examples in our young people's dress.
So why is it that when I walk around the campus at BYUH (or any other place in the United States) I see LDS women dressed in tight spandex pants, jeans into which they could never have fit without having first liquefied themselves before pouring themselves into the jeans? They wear tops that are either too low in front or not long enough to cover their belly. Why are the pants worn so low as to make one wonder how on earth they stay in a vertical position? I can't tell you how many times I have seen one of these young sisters bend over only to show the entire waistband of her g-string underwear, along with a few inches of what little is left of what is below the waistband. And have you noticed that the heavier a young woman is the more likely she is to wear form-fitting clothes? What is that all about? I can't count the number of times I have thought to myself how sad it is to have some sweet young lady walk past me with every roll of fat proudly displayed under the tight top that rarely ever makes it down to greet the top of her pants. It never even occurred to me that people have so many differently shaped navels until the girls started to wear all these tight clothes.
It is so difficult to carry on a conversation with a person when you don't dare look at them anywhere but in the eye. Ewww! What if turnabout was fair play? What would we think of a young man who wore spandex tights to class, shirts that were so tight you could bounce a quarter off the space between his pecs or wore his pants so low that imagination became a lost art? Ewww! again!
Like I said at the beginning, there is something wrong in the way we approach the teaching of modesty to our young people these days. If they are listening, then why aren't we seeing it in the way they dress in public? I would like to say that it is only because they are caught up in the fashions of the world, but too often I see their mothers in the same kinds of clothing. I guess I can't really blame the innocence of youth if they are coming by their fashion sense from the examples set by their mothers.
Like most things in life, examples are rarely universal. I know plenty of very modest women who have very ferociously dressed daughters, and many men who are the epitome of decorum whose son's pants either need to come off or be pulled up rather than hang in the limbo that is neither dressed nor undressed. There just seems to be a lot of great rhetoric being spun, but much of it is not being translated into actual demonstrable examples in our young people's dress.
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