Modesty Survey – Homeschoolers Anonymous

That Time Mary Pride Put the Modesty Survey on Blast

January 21, 2016May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Mary Pride is considered by some to be “the queen of homeschooling.” She is one of the founders of the Quiverfull movement, the anti-feminism author of The Way Home, and the publisher of the wildly popular magazine “Practical Homeschooling.” I have previously covered problematic aspects of her worldview, including her thoughts on domestic violence and child abuse. Her belief that women’s use of contraception turns men gay is also bewildering.

That said, Mary Pride is also an expert at putting people on blast. Normally she puts her archenemies — child advocates, feminists, and LGBTQ people — on blast. But sometimes even her peers are not spared. The best example of this comes from her trash-talking of Alex and Brett Harris’ 2007 “Modesty Survey.” The following passage is from page 221 of the “Afterthoughts” chapter added to The Way Home‘s 25th Anniversary Edition in 2010:

Speaking of our daughters, I would like to say just a few words about the “Modesty Survey” and other attempts to “encourage” young ladies to dress according to some ill-defined, ever-shifting male standard of “modesty.”

The bottom line here is the belief that women’s dress can cause men to fall into ungodly thoughts. If I had the space, I would have plenty to say about this. For now, consider just this:

The only female features that the Bible says cause potential male downfall are “eyes” (Prov. 6:25): literally “eyelids,” as in the KJV.
The “strange woman” (KJV) or “adulteress” (NIV), who is by no means a Christian sister, leads a young man astray by her smooth speech (Prov. 5:3), not by her outfit.

Those arguing for the “Burqa Lite” standard of Christian dress also fail to explain how young men who faint at the sight of a Christian ankle are supposed to control themselves when out in the world.

Doctors see naked women. Missionaries see half-naked women. But we don’t expect them to go insane with lust.

Proverbs 7:6-27 describes a woman leading a man astray. She is loud, defiant, dressed like a prostitute, and deliberately talks him into committing adultery. Even so, the passage is all about how he should have known better.

I’m all for modest dress, but not because Christian men are going to fall into temptation left and right if various arbitrary skirt lengths, etc., are not met. In the New Testament, “modest” dress refers to “spending a modest amount on clothing,” not to the amount of cloth and where it is draped. “Modest” dress is contrasted with ostentatiously expensive clothing and hairstyles—and the passage is talking about how to dress for church (1 Tim. 2:8-10)!

This preoccupation on men’s part with women’s modesty is misguided and proto-Islamic. Once again, the older women should be teaching the younger what is appropriate. Neither older nor younger men are responsible or authorized to instruct the younger women in this area.

There are, of course, problems within this passage, including Pride’s penchant towards Islamophobia. But still…

burn

Lies Purity Culture Taught Me: Sam’s Story

July 23, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team3 Comments

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Ryan Hyde.

HA Note: All names have been changed to ensure anonymity.

My lightbulb moment occurred in my sophomore year of college. I was 19 years old when I woke up half naked in my debate partner’s twin-sized bed with an astounding lack of regret. Using the word whirlwind to describe a romance is probably clichéd, but it definitely captures those first few months of that spring semester. Despite telling him that I was a firm believer in “waiting until marriage” and that “I wasn’t one of those girls who found loopholes – no sex, of any variety,” and despite him saying he would respect that belief, within a few days we were cuddling on his couch, toeing the line to second base. A few weeks in, I had come to campus on a Saturday – in popular homeschool fashion, I lived at home for the first few years of college – to do some homework. I had begun texting back and forth with Mark*, and he told me to get home before snow hit. I blew it off and went back to finishing up my paper. When I got to the parking lot, it had iced so badly my car started skidding before it even made it to the road. I tried calling a few girlfriends, but they had all gone back home for the weekend. I anxiously texted Mark, and he politely offered his couch. We spent the weekend in his dorm, and I lied to my mother saying I was at one of the out-of-town-girlfriends’ apartments.

I did not sleep on the couch once that weekend.

We did not have sex that weekend. However, we came close enough that I should have been racked with guilt. I wasn’t though. I was only worried about what consequences would come from me sleeping with (literally) Mark.

In the following weeks, Mark treated me the same as he always had – with respect, kindness and that playful banter people get when they’ve hung out for a while. This is not to say that we pretended the previous weekend hadn’t happened; we continued to have impromptu sleepovers.

You see, when I say that my now-boyfriend treated me the same way that he always had, I mean that in that moment I realized that the purity teachings my mother had drilled into me were wrong.

Purity culture obsesses over keeping your virginity until marriage. I won’t delve into the religious aspects of it, because keeping yourself pure for God, if you so choose to, is not something I like to denounce. However, purity culture has a number of almost “secular” reasons to exist. One of these is that if you remain pure before marriage, you won’t experience pain and heartbreak. (Because apparently, you can only have your heart broken if you’ve had sex with a person.)

Another secular reason to stay pure is that men supposedly don’t respect women who put out. I remember reading countless comments from teenage boys on the Rebelution Modesty Survey that said something to the effect that they had more respect for the girls who were saving themselves, for the girls who were modest. That girls who dressed immodestly and behaved indecently disgusted them. This was even said to be true for boys who weren’t Christian. (Dannah Gresh’s Secret Keeper had a little anecdote in it about how these two guys had a goal to sleep with a different girl every night, and yet these two guys still wanted “a different kind of girl” to settle down with.) So in my head, this atheist man who I was sharing a bed with was supposed to see me as less. All he was doing though, was seeking more of my company, asking my opinion on things, and letting me decide whether or not to initiate physical contact between ourselves. In a few words – respecting me. I even tearfully asked him one afternoon if he thought I was damaged goods, for I’d read many articles that day condemning what I was doing. His response was somewhere along the lines of “what the hell are you talking about?”

It was then that I realized that perhaps the things that I had been taught were not all-encompassing truths that could explain the universe.

And true, while before I had gotten involved with Mark, I was slowly warming up to the idea that homeschool teachings weren’t entirely true. I still operated under the framework of conservative Christian homeschooling – when arguing with my parents about letting me do certain things, I still used Biblical evidence, I still used homeschool teachings to finagle what I wanted from them. I was reading articles online, trying to find someone saying that you could be Christian and engage in premarital sex without losing some part of yourself. Forcing myself to adhere to this framework made me intensely unhappy – which was ironic to me, because my parents told me that in the end, I’d be happier for following these beliefs. It was only when I had my lightbulb moment, half-naked in Mark’s bed that I let myself build a new worldview for myself that was not based on what my parents had drilled into my head. It was then that I was free, and able to think for myself and create a new framework in my head that led to true happiness.

When “Respect” Involves “Disgust”

December 20, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on December 5, 2013.

Growing up in a conservative evangelical home, I believed that we were the ones who truly respected women. I believed that our young men—the young men in my homeschooling community—were being raised to treat the women around them, of whatever age, with respect.

I was wrong, very, very wrong.

A reader recently pointed me to an article on World Net Daily that presents a fictional scenario where an “normal” girl, Jane, is ordered by a judge to leave her public school and be educated in a homeschooling family*. While the entire article is a fascinating portrayal of conservative Christian homeschoolers’ perception of the average public school student, I was struck in particular by one short paragraph, three simple sentences—sentences that say so much.

When Jane tries to slut it up with the boys in the class [i.e. the homeschool boys she’s now being taught alongside], they look at her in disgust. Yes, she might be sexy, and yes they have hormones, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to act upon primal urges. They’ve been raised with manners and to respect girls.

It does not work this way.

You cannot follow “they look at her in disgust” with “they’ve been raised with manners and to respect girls.” If they were raised to respect girls, why are they looking at Jane in disgust? Because that’s not respect. Perhaps the author’s definition of “respect” is something very different from that found in the dictionary or what the word is usually understood to mean. Perhaps the author actually means that these boys were being raised to respect girls who were worthy of respect—girls who were properly demure and modest and chaste, as evangelical sexual standards require.

Several years back, the Harris brothers, homeschool graduates who founded The Rebelution, conducted a “Modesty Survey,” asking teen and twenty-something evangelical males what they thought was modest and, well, not modest. If you scroll through the results, one thing that becomes clear is that these young men, most of them products of the same evangelical homeschool culture as myself, have a great lack of respect for women who do not dress “modestly,” and in some cases even openly disdain them. Here are a few examples:

You have less respect for an immodest girl than for a modest one.

There are many Godly men out there, as I’m sure this survey will prove, that are dying to give you their utmost respect when you choose to follow God’s leading in this area of modesty in your life.

Please don’t take modesty lightly. As your brother in Christ I value the relationship that I will have with my wife someday. When I am tempted because of you I lose a part of myself that I am trying to save for her.

Guys really do respect and honor girls who have the willpower to keep themselves pure and looking pure.

God made you a thing of beauty. A thing to be admired and respected. When you dress or act in a way that draws attention to your body, you make it easy for the guys around you to reduce you to the level of a disgusting toy—using you to mentally satisfy their fantasies. . . . Would you rather be the tool by which guys satisfy themselves or the beautiful thing God created you to be, pure for your husband?

I respect and love girls that are modest so much more than those who do not.

And then I start remembering other things about growing up.

I remember the disgust that always suffused any conversation about pop stars like Brittany Spears, or any woman who dressed immodestly.

And that disgust? It was taught. It was something we could read in the reactions of our parents and our friends’ parents. We watched it, we mirrored it, and we learned it. It was something taught from the pulpit. Beware those sinful immodest wayward women!

Of course, the Modesty Survey is full of comments by young evangelical men urging young women to understand that what mattered about them was not their outward appearances but their hearts. They said this to assure young women that they didn’t need to dress sexy to impress. But the irony here is that these same young men, in urging women to dress just so and telling them of the dire consequences for not doing so, were actively reducing women to their clothing and telling them that outward appearances actually do matter—a lot. After all, if what matters is what is inside and not what is outside, why so much emphasis on what is on the outside?

Why tell women in one breath that it is what is inside that matters, not what is on the outside, and in the next breath that if they show cleavage they will as a natural consequence be objectified and robbed of humanity?

The irony is that we were told that women who dress immodestly will be objectified by the men around them, and that dressing modestly ensured that you would be seen as a person rather than a piece of flesh when in reality we were actually actively taught to reduce women dressed “immodestly” to nothing more than their bodies, to see only midriff and cleavage and therefore disrespect and dehumanize them. We weren’t taught to see them as people but as sluts, whores, and home-wreckers.

We were the ones objectifying, judging, degrading. We were the ones we were warning them about.

What is actually taught is disrespect for women, disgust even—unless, of course, they live up to proper purity standards. Those good, proper pure women, they should be respected, and even placed on a pedestal. Those other women? Forget it. And I’ve rarely seen this as clearly stated as in that World Net Daily article.

*****

* The World Net Daily article was written in response to a judge ordering some homeschooled children to attend public school, and was an attempt at parody. The situation involved joint custody, a mother attending a cult-like church, and a concerned father, but this was of course ignored by homeschool advocates, who portrayed the ruling as an assault on homeschooling as a whole.

Our Bodies, Our Selves: The Other Other Side of Modesty

June 28, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team13 Comments

Our Bodies, Our Selves: The Other Other Side of Modesty

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Last week Brett Harris wrote about “the other side of modesty.” For so long, the conservative Christian conversation about modesty and purity has appeared disturbingly and humorously lopsided. Modesty teachers exhort young women to dress in certain ways so as to not lead young men to lust, and young men are exhorted to help preserve young women’s “emotional purity.” By constructing a purely fictional binary, where men are sexual and women are emotional, modesty and purity teachings have flourished.

Then Brett came along and threw a small wrench into the binary modesty machine, saying,

If I’ve learned anything from the original Modesty Survey it’s that these discussions can be dangerous. For one thing, talking about modesty and lust in the same article can imply that immodesty causes lust, which is a destructive lie.

I commend Brett for this because it is a start. To make any causal relationship between a woman’s outfit and a man’s actions is flat-out dangerous and destructive — end of story. But I also believe that the binary modesty machine, that he just threw a wrench into, is a machine that his own hands helped construct. Brett, and his brother Alex, authored the Modesty Survey themselves 6 years ago in 2007. They were seventeen at the time, and they hoped to do something good for other young men and women, but what they did caused significant harm.

When Brett wrote his latest article for The Rebelution, he began (I hope) the process of owning that harm. Brett said,

By our silence we send the message that modesty is a female issue and lust is a male issue.

There are lots of things I don’t agree with in modesty and purity culture. There are probably lots of things I don’t agree with Brett about. But we do agree on this — that, by their silence, they did indeed miscommunicate.

This miscommunication has caused real damage. It has created so much pain for young women, so much confusion for young men, and perpetuates some of the most ugly and destructive myths that empower rape culture to thrive today.

Admitting there is a problem is the first step.

What the solution is, well, that’s where Brett and I immediately begin to disagree.

Brett’s solution is well-summarized by the following paragraph of his:

The only difference between me and the immodest girls on campus was that I had a male shape and they had a female shape. So what was going on? I felt fit and confident in my body and wanted to show it off. This is exactly what my sisters in Christ have been carefully instructed not to do. So was I doing something wrong? If I’m going to be consistent, yes I was.

Honestly, I admire intellectual consistency. So in a sense I admire that Brett is willing to immediately begin the process of applying the same standards he has long applied to women to himself.

But, really?

This paragraph of his feels unnatural because I believe it supports a completely different solution than his: realize there is absolutely nothing wrong with “feeling fit and confident in one’s body and wanting to show it off.”

Why should Brett feel guilty about working out, taking care of his body, and then being so joyful about his body that he wants to share that joy with others? He put in some hard work. He did hard things (sorry, I had to say that). Be proud of who you are and what you look like. Rejoice in that. Live your life.

If you spent years creating the Sistine Chapel, I’m pretty sure you’d want to share your artwork with the world. I don’t see any difference between human art and the human body. In fact, the similarities are striking, in my opinion. Whether you are Christian or atheist, or whatever you are, you must grant that the human body is a work of art.

What modesty and purity culture has refused to consider, what Brett cannot quite embrace, is the idea that being happy or proud about the beauty of your body, and intentionally accentuating that beauty, is totally ok.

Do you know how insecure some women can be about their bodies? Have you ever thought about the overwhelming and debilitating insecurities that plague them when bikini season rolls around? Even if purity culture was not doubling their guilt with fear tactics about men and lust and hell and salvation, women would have an abundance of worries. Am I too fat? Can you see my cellulite? Why can’t my tummy look like that celebrity? Does my bikini bottom cover the freckles on my ass?

We are so obsessed with how big or small a bikini top can be that we forget that, for so many women, they just want to enjoy their own damn bodies, thank you very much. That woman that wears a bikini, or goes to a nightclub in a mini skirt? It is thoroughly possible that she wore that just to look cute. Not to tempt guys, or get laid. Maybe she just wants to feel good about herself, to feel beautiful. **

Sorry to break it you, but: It’s not all about men, y’all.

And whether you are male or female: there is nothing wrong with being proud of your body.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to show off the body that you have.

If you keep in my mind that we live in a world that is polarized between the extremes of commercialized sexuality, slut-shaming, body-shaming, and purity culture, I think you can see that a healthy acceptance of our bodies is so desperately needed. Our bodies are our selves, in such a fundamental and core way. We do not need more people telling us to hide our bodies, to be afraid of them, or to be ashamed of them. If you are so afraid of human sexuality that you resort to one of those tactics, you are doing something very wrong.

We do not need to hide our bodies. We need to show them.

The solution to our culture’s commercialized sexuality isn’t looking the other way at the mall when you pass Victoria’s Secret. The solution to commercialized sexuality is grounding it in the reality of what bodies actually look like: celebrating our bodies how they truly appear. Celebrating the stretch marks of pregnancy. Accepting the scars of our youth. Embracing our birth marks and our moles, our fat rolls and our baldness.

This is just who we are.

We do not need to be afraid of our bodies. We need to learn to be brave.

We have one shot at this body thing, people. One shot. I do not care whether you are an atheist or a Christian or a Buddhist — you still end up with the same basic principle. Be grateful for life. Be grateful that you are here. Be grateful for the skin and bones and blood and hair that surrounds who you are and makes you you.

Both commercialized sexuality and purity culture create the same problems, the problems of anorexia, bullimia, body-shaming, fat-shaming, and so forth. It really shouldn’t be that controversial, either, to make the triangular connection between commercialized sexuality, purity culture and rape culture. The similarities are striking. Instead of being so afraid of our bodies that we end up mirroring the opposite side of commercializing bodies, we need to re-center ourselves.

We do not need to be ashamed of our bodies. We need to celebrate them.

That woman flaunting her breasts in a low-cut shirt, the one you think should feel ashamed? Maybe her mother died of breast cancer. Have you ever thought of that? Maybe her decision to look good, show cleavage, and be proud of her breasts has absolutely nothing to do with you because you are a man — maybe, in fact, she has no idea you exist, so you thinking her showing her breasts has anything to do with you is just ridiculous and self-centered. Maybe she loves her breasts, because her mom had big breasts, too. And her mom died last year, on this very day. And that woman is celebrating that she is still alive, still has beautiful breasts, because everyday she misses her mother and wishes she was still here with her.

Did you ever think about that?

I never did. Then one day, during Breast Cancer Awareness Week, I heard a friend say what breasts meant to her as a woman. It had nothing to do with men or lust or sexuality. It had everything to do with accepting her body, accepting that cancer ran in her family, and — as she put it — “enjoying the body that God gave me while I still have time.”

And you know what? Even if some woman is just proud of her breasts because her breasts look awesome, more power to her. Your body is yours, and her body is hers. ***

I am sick and tired of how neurotic we make both men and women feel over this issue.

Our bodies are our selves.

Let us love them and love each other.

*****

Notes:

** A different topic that is extraordinarily relevant, but would be tangential from the central message here of loving your body, is how even our standards of beauty are male-centric. I mention a few examples throughout this post — bikinis, mini skirts, and low-cut blouses — and the fact is, those are often the standards for beauty that our society sets. An equally important aspect of fighting both the commercialization of sexuality as well as purity culture is to empower women to dress how they define beautiful, cute, or sexy, rather than dressing how men define those things. A woman can feel just as beautiful, cute, or sexy in a sun dress or a pantsuit as she would in a cocktail dress. Yet society is going to dictate which outfit to wear, thus warping our standards of beauty. In a very real sense, then, both the commercialization of sexuality and purity culture end up at the same place: telling women what they can or cannot wear, what is or is not beautiful, and all according to male standards. Society needs to learn to give that power to women — giving them the autonomy and freedom over their bodies that is rightfully theirs.

But that is a topic for a different post.

*** Part of owning your body, by the way, is to take ownership of what you do, feel, and think, and not passing any semblance of responsibility of that onto another person or person’s body. But again, that is also a topic for a different post.

Enough Already with the Modesty and Purity Hype

June 28, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team12 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published on June 27, 2013.

The other day my 18-yr old daughter posted this picture on my Facebook with the comment, “What I tell you every time”:

It cracked me up. But what was interesting to me was noticing the large amount of Facebook friends, also former homeschool kids, who were clicking the “like” button. It was as if they were saying, “Yea, what she said!” I loved some of the exchange in the comments.

Our good friend who acts like our adopted son, who opens our front door without knocking, and raids our fridge commented:

Was he a beautiful black man like myself?

His comment got a few likes. I laughed. My 23-yr old son replied:

Yet when guys do that it’s looked down upon…sinful…creeper status…et cetera. Oh the irony.

Ouch! I think he’s right. There does seem to be a distinction that it’s semi-okay for girls to look at guys, but not the other way around.

Several years ago in 2007, there was a modesty survey put out by homeschoolers, Brett and Alex Harris (Brett and Alex’s dad is Gregg Harris’ son, homeschooling pioneer and ther older brother is Pastor Josh Harris, of Covenant Life Church in MD).

Here’s an excerpt from the survey page:

The Modesty Survey is an exciting, anonymous discussion between Christian guys and girls who care about modesty. Hundreds of Christian girls contributed to the 148-question survey and over 1,600 Christian guys submitted 150,000+ answers, including 25,000 text responses, over a 20-day period in January 2007. For more information, click here.

It has been endorsed by Shaunti Feldhahn (best-selling author of For Women Only), Nancy Leigh DeMoss (author,Revive Our Hearts radio host), Albert Mohler (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), Shannon Ethridge (best-selling author ofEvery Woman’s Battle series), and C.J. Mahaney (Sovereign Grace Ministries).

TheRebelution.com is the home of Alex and Brett Harris and online headquarters for the Rebelution, defined as “a teenage rebellion against low expectations.”

This survey started out in homeschool circles and quickly spread throughout young teens and adults in Christendom all over the internet, denominations, states, and even the world. I believe the modesty survey was well-intentioned, but the results have not been all positive. Instead, we have discovered a host of other issues that lie beneath the church’s sometimes over-emphasis on modesty and purity.

In the aftermath of the modesty survey, some young men policed the clothing of their female friends and graded the way she dressed by a modesty scale in their head. The way she dressed became a distraction, interfering with relationships. Young ladies were told that they might cause a man to stumble by the way she dressed and this created a lot of pain for young ladies who were burdened with a responsibility they really had no business carrying. And then we had the issue of what to do with young ladies who had curvy figures and no matter what clothes were worn, the curves could not be hidden. Some young ladies resorted to changing eating habits which led to eating disorders to lose weight in order to minimize those curves. Didn’t God create those beautiful curves? Wow, this modesty thing was now crossing the lines into intentionally altering one’s appearance because of not passing a “modesty” scale.

I don’t want to get into all of the problems that came out of this survey because it is very easy to do a Google search and you could spend days reading blog articles and sometimes hundreds of comments on particular popular articles. I really was hoping that after 6 years and hundreds of articles that this subject would die down.

Wouldn’t you know it, the same authors of the infamous modesty survey at the Rebelution blog just last week published a new article: The Other Side of Modesty, this time dealing with guys and how they dress. Really? Do we need to go there? I suppose maybe the young ladies might appreciate a little pushback or balance from their sisters in Christ, but come on. Can we be done with this already?

At our former church, there was almost an obsession on modesty and the topic of sexual immorality came up quite a bit. This was a common verse we heard and probably most of us have it memorized just because we heard it so often:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:27-28

I think sometimes we confuse looking with lusting. And that is important to note.

I have a funny story from several years ago. Now, this is “my” version because my young adult kids have a slightly different version. But until they have their own blogs, you get to read my version.

My daughter, Hannah, was probably around 19 yrs old or so and driving with her learner’s permit, so I was in the passenger seat, and my other daughter who was around 12 years old was in the back seat. A police officer pulled us over because of a burned out brake light. Let me be straight up. The police officer was a fine-looking human specimen and while my kids were used to hearing from the pulpit about how evil and lustful our eyes are, after the police officer went back to his patrol car, I said aloud to my daughters that I wouldn’t mind being pulled over again by that officer. If I remember correctly, there was a pause and then some surprised laughter coming from the girls. Their mother, a married woman said that? They were not expecting that comment from me and frankly, I don’t know if I was expecting that comment to slip out, either. Oh well, it came out loud and clear.

Did I cross the line? Some might think so. I don’t agree. You see, there seems to be a fuzzy line that brings confusion and can start to border on legalism, if not into full-fledge legalism. We were created in God’s image. God saw that what He created was good. At that moment, when I noticed that cop, and acknowledged what God had created was good and called it as such, some people have a problem with that because they think of verses like this:

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28

Was I looking at this guy with lust? No! He was just nice looking guy. Don’t you think everyone from teens all the way through adulthood know when we are looking at someone with lust? Everybody knows what that feels like — you know – – those feelings we get in our body, the places our mind goes. It’s a no-brainer. My brain did none of those things when I looked at that fine specimen.

I have read of men being physically attracted to women dressed in full Muslim attire with burqa and head coverings. Isn’t that something? We need to realize that women and men, no matter how they dress, will be eye candy for someone. We’ve got two issues going on and I think if we look at these two issues in a non-legalistic way, we can find some helpful guidelines.

• Looking is not the same as lusting. It’s okay to appreciate God’s creation. The key is to do it without lusting. We all know when we have crossed that line. It does not take a rocket scientist to tell us those signs that are happening in our body. If you happened to cross that line, acknowledge it, ask God to forgive you, and move on knowing that His grace is sufficient for you and me.

• Dress modestly. I think most of us can figure out what that means and I also think that as we mature in Christ, the boundary lines may change from time to time. We all know when we are dressing with the intent to attract the opposite sex and we all know what it’s like to dress when we are going to see grandma and grandpa. This is pretty simple. We can figure this out.

As a homeschooling mom of 20+ years, I fell into the modesty/purity hype and created all sorts of rules for my kids. I regret that it had negative consequences in my family. I’ve stopped obsessing about hemlines, etc. When I stopped obsessing about my boys walking past Victoria’s Secret at the mall and turning the television channel when we saw a young lady wearing a bikini on television, amazingly, my children stopped obsessing.

So, in conclusion, I hope we can learn to treat one another with love and grace on this topic… and appreciate God’s creation

The Big Swimsuit Question: A Roundup of Posts and Thoughts

June 28, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team16 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’s blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. It was originally published on May 30, 2013.

It’s summer time. Time for the big swimsuit question.

As a woman who used to swim in athletic shirts and an athletic top to ensure proper modesty, i know what the modesty teachings are. However, I don’t agree with them anymore.

I feel that modesty culture demeans and harms both men and women, promotes unhealthy thoughts, and operates based on stereotypes and misunderstandings.

I’m posting links to some posts on the subject, along with highlights, and my thoughts will follow.

There’s been this post about modesty and The Bikini Question making the rounds, and it feels very rape culturey. Defeating the Dragons explains how it promotes rape culture, as well as how futile it is for a women to try to dress in a way that certain men won’t objectify her.

But, this article, like every other article I’ve read on modesty, emphasizes that it a woman’s obligation to help protect men from our bodies. It’s our duty to make sure that we make it possible for men to forget that we’re a woman– which is, frankly, impossible. I don’t care how loose your clothes are– if you have T&A, there’s no getting rid of it, there’s no hiding it.

emily joy allison talks modesty and purity culture in her new post about How To Be a Lady:

LET’S GO AHEAD AND TIE A WOMAN’S CHARACTER DIRECTLY TO HER CLOTHING WHY DON’T WE. Yeah. That seems like a good idea. Also let’s shame women who’ve been disrespected or mistreated by men by making them think it must have been their fault somehow for wearing the “wrong” clothes and attracting the “wrong” kind of men. And to top it all off let’s pretend like Christian men do (and should) actually treat women better who “appropriately cover themselves.”

Another good post about the problems for both men and women inherent in modesty teachings: “Modesty, Body Policing, and Rape Culture: Connecting the Dots.”

Shaney Irene has this post about Why The Modesty Survey was a Bad Idea (for the record, Shaney, I forgive you. i’m thankful that you are writing against it now.)

In offering a platform to over 1600 guys, many of whom shouldn’t have been given it, we lent legitimacy to some very dangerous ideas.

Many guys admitted to losing respect for girls who didn’t live up to their ideas of modesty, feeling “disgusted” or “angered” by these same girls, and even going so far as to say, “…she loses her right to ask guys to stop looking at her like something to be had…you are asking to have guys stare at you.” The word “cause” in relation to guys’ lust also made a frequent appearance.

and now for my thoughts:

I feel like the biggest problem with the modesty culture is the confusion between lust and attraction. i never once have heard anyone make a distinction. It’s as though it’s a sin for a man to notice a woman is attractive.

Look, people. i’m visual. And the dude who plays Thor is attractive. I noticed. That’s not cheating on my husband. that’s not me wanting to rape the actor. That’s just me, noticing a very attractive guy is attractive. I’ve seen men that were so attractive, it makes me blush. For real. It doesn’t mean i’m lusting. I am not fantasizing. I wouldn’t ‘do’ anything with him.

But there’s nothing wrong with me or the guy, if i notice he’s attractive. If I start having sexual fantasies, that’d be objectifying and mentally unhealthy.

Here’s a big secret: women can be visual, too. I’m more visually oriented than Luke. And there are a lot of guys objectively more attractive (and by that I mean, with really ripped abs) than him. it’s okay. i still find him breathtakingly handsome and i love him more than anybody. He’s the only dude i intend to ever [expletive deleted] with. But I’m gonna notice Batman’s biceps. And it is okay. And anything beyond that is my responsibility to deal with.

The flipside of that is, if a guy sees me in a bikini and notices i’m attractive, or more likely, notices i am very curvy, there is nothing wrong with that. I am very curvy. No suit is gonna hide that.
If he ogles me – and I have been ogled while dressed modestly before and my young and frightened response was to dress rather more frumpily and blame it on my ‘accidental immodesty’ – that is all on him. It’s not my job to try my hardest to dress in such a way that people will treat me with respect; and as noted in many of the blogs above, it does not work; oglers are pretty much oglers. As far as keeping a man from sinning – him noticing I am a woman isn’t going to ‘make’ him sin.

And if a woman judges me as a slut because i’m a curvy woman in a bikini, that’s all on her too.

So much for my opinions on modesty culture in general, now for the chocolate cake analogy in the post, which many people think is wonderful. I found it a problematic analogy. It made me angry that a woman enjoying herself at the beach – happening to bare a midriff rather than not (perhaps because she can’t find a well fitting one piece or tankini, perhaps because she likes how she looks, who knows) is considered the same as following a dieter around with something tempting.

I am a person, dressing for me. It would be more like if i ate a cake at a cafe and you walked up and shoved your face into it and ate it all up, and blamed me for you stealing it, because i should be tempting you with my cake in public.

Unless I am deliberately and provocatively and obviously flirting with someone, he has no reason to think my clothing is an invitation to him. (and even then he still wouldn’t have any right to touch me without a clear verbal invitation or permission).

I am planning to go to the lake this summer, and i will be wearing my bikini. partially in protest, but mostly because it’s flattering, comfortable, stays in place better than any suit i have, and will allow my body to get some sun, and there’s really no reason for me not to, if i’m comfortable in it.

Dianna Anderson is joining the bikini club too. (For the record, i have another suit i’ll be wearing when we go to the in-laws to swim, out of courtesy to their beliefs and because i would be the only one in a bikini, and i’m not comfortable with that.)

Ashamed Of My Own Skin: Lily

June 12, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Lily” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warning: this post contains references to eating disorders and self-harm.

“You may not wear that.”

This phrase, and others like it, made up a large part of the soundtrack of my journey into womanhood. Modesty, and all of the accompanying clothing restrictions, were part of the homeschool community of “keeping our daughters pure until marriage.”

As young girls, my sister and I were told that dressing modestly was important, in order to not be a stumbling block to men. I remember hearing modesty talks and going to modesty “Fashion Shows” as young as 10 or 11. Before my body even began to develop into that of a woman, I was told it needed to be covered up. Why? To protect the eyes, minds, and hearts, of men.

Of course, I was only in middle school, and my sheltered self didn’t understand the idea of sexual attraction. I was skinny and developed relatively late, and so the legs, chest, and shoulders that I kept covered were those of a child. Before I even developed womanly curves, then – I learned to be ashamed of my own skin.

I have long, thick, dark brown hair, and my aunts and other extended family women will joke about the blessing and the curse this thick dark hair is for all of us – because it grows everywhere. Face, chest, sideburns, arms, legs, stomach, eyebrows. As I turned 11, 12, 13, 14, even – I grew more and more self conscious of my hairy legs and dark upper lip. I would timidly ask my mom how to take care of it, embarassed by my own body.

“You’re still a little girl. That would look awful if you plucked your eyebrows. You would look so bad.”

Athletics became unbearable – not just because of the long, knee-length shorts that stuck out from the crowd – but because of the dark, thick hair on my legs. “It’s time to pluck the stache!” joked one of my girl friends at a homeschool co-op gathering – not knowing my shame and embarassment that came from not being allowed to.

Makeup, shaving, and tweezing would have made me look too adult-like, said my mom. Looking too adult-like was an aspect of immodesty. Immodesty was a stumbling block to men, and I should be ashamed of myself for the way that I was leading boys on. My mother once told me that the fact that my hair smelled good was a valid reason for other homeschool mothers (of boys) to be angry at me: after all, I was a stumbling block to their children.

I stopped eating, quit athletics, and ran alone in my neighborhood. My 96 lbs at 5’4″ at age 14 dropped down to close to 80. The dark hair on my body grew finer and more plentiful, and my breasts stayed almost completely undeveloped. I hid food every chance I could, and threw myself into school and more homeschool co-ops and extracurriculars so that I would be able to skip meals and say I had already eaten. My nose started bleeding about twice daily, and I bruised easily – even from small bumps, I developed large bruises that stayed for weeks.

Feeling embarassed and ashamed of my body was now a regular part of my life, and self-abuse became a way to deal with those feelings. I started cutting my upper legs – a place that I knew would always be hidden away from the world, thanks to modesty restrictions. My parents explicitly didn’t believe in privacy for teenagers, and I began to cut myself more and more because it was the one thing that I could keep secret. Although I was allowed no control of my own body, the secret scars I left underneath my modest clothing was something that I could control.

When I confided in a male friend about my self-injury, my parents immediately found out thanks to heavily monitored spyware on my computer. At this point, I weighed in the mid-80s and look and acted incredibly depressed and unhealthy, but my parents saw my issues as rebellion against their authority that should be broken instead of mental and emotional issues that needed to be treated seriously. They loved me dearly, but refused to admit that self-injury and anorexia were “real” disorders. The few times that I went to the doctor during this period, they strongly reccomended my parents allow me to attend sessions with a medical therapist – but they refused, as they saw no potential benefits from a medical professional hearing about my “rebellion”.

I was 14. My mother started coming into my room immediately when she saw me leave the shower and make me take my towel off so that she could check my naked body for scars. If I was in public with her and wearing shorts, she would pull the fabric of the shorts back on my thighs to see if I had cuts on my legs, or pull the waistband of my shorts down to check my hips.

I started showering less, wearing clothing that was harder to remove, and cutting myself in even more “private” places. As it got less convenient for her to check my fully naked body, and more time passed since she had found cuts, she stopped remembering to check – but it was much, much longer until I stopped cutting.

As for my weight, she mostly dealt with it by telling me how awful I looked. “You’re sickly,” she told me.

As I went through high school, I got better, mostly from interacting with parts of the homeschool community that simply didn’t know about my self-harm. I played music with a successful band and worked hard for leadership in academics, and eventually graduated and was able to cut financial ties, and subsequently a lot of the manipulation in my life.

I have three points from this story.

First of all: If you are struggling with self-injury, an eating disorder, or anything else: get help. Get medical, professional, help. One of the resources that children in the public education system have is private, personal access to guidance counselors who are trained to recognize problems like this and point children in a direction where they can get help. In a homeschool situation, well-meaning parents are not always able to understand or recognize the mental/emotional issues behind things like self-injury. When there are no other adults present who are able to help a child/young teenager and parents have ultimate authority, it can be hard to find help sometimes.

Get help though – any way you possibly can. One thing that I learned after graduating high school was that my mental issues almost always should be discussed with a medical professional, as well-meaning church elders who I talked to would almost inevitably point me back to my parents. Self-injury is not something that can always just be “fixed” by praying to quiet your “rebellion”. It is real, and as a human being, you deserve real help. Don’t be afraid to seek it out.

Secondly: To anyone who is struggling – it gets better. Someday, you will be on your own, with access to clothing and makeup/skin care stores that you can purchase from, free from guilt. Someday, you will have friends who never would have known that you had a dark unibrow. Someday, the way you look will be your choice, and you won’t have to be ashamed anymore. It gets better. I know what it feels like to be shamed into not being beautiful. I know what it feels like to be told that your simple desire for hygiene and feminine attractiveness is slutty, sexual, and wrong.

It’s not wrong. Wearing a v-neck is not wrong. Wearing makeup is not wrong. Plucking your eyebrows or waxing your upper lip is not wrong. It is not wrong for you to want those things, and it is wrong for them to make you feel ashamed of wanting those things. You shouldn’t have to lash out at your own body because you are ashamed of wanting those things.

Finally: I am an undergraduate education major, and I teach young students and teenagers in the public schools on a regular basis – and, let me tell you, conservative, non-distracting clothing is not what the homeschool community or the Modesty Survey or Josh Harris or anyone says it is. If you want to dress conservatively and not be distracting, dress professionally. Wear those heels and dark jeans and a sweater. Wear dress slacks and a button-down shirt, and guess what? It’s okay if it’s form-fitting! It’s okay if it makes you look attractive! It’s okay if you’re wearing lipstick! After multiple years in the real world interacting with real people, I am finally beginning to realize that conservative and “modest” clothing is not what we were told it is, and it can bring about real, serious, body-image emotional and physical harm to girls who have never learned to love their own bodies.

I hope that one day I teach my future daughter(s), who will most likely also have dark hair all over, small breasts, and a great smile, how to dress in a way that makes them feel attractive. I hope they feel confident enough around me to ask me for makeup or shaving or clothes advice, and I hope that I am able to help them learn how to dress attractively and appropriately for all situations.

Maybe, just maybe, they will grow up a little bit more comfortable in their own skin.

Why The Rebelution’s Modesty Survey Was A Bad Idea: Shaney Irene’s Story

April 10, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team19 Comments

HA note: Shaney Irene’s story was originally published on March 13, 2013, on her site ShaneyIrene.com. She was homeschooled and was a former moderator on the Rebelution forum and now describes herself as a “thinker, reader, and writer” who is “passionate about adoption, youth ministry, and ending sexual abuse.” This story is reprinted with her permission.

On Valentine’s Day 2007, The Rebelution unveiled the Modesty Survey. Girls submitted questions, and guys responded. As a moderator of the Rebelution forum, I was really excited about the project. I posted it on Facebook, forwarded it to my youth pastor, and talked about it with anyone who would listen.

Six years later, if you ask me what I think of the Survey, I’ll tell you I regret having been a part of it, and I wish the project didn’t exist.

What happened? Well, basically I realized there are a lot of problems with modesty as taught in American Christianity, and the Survey hands a megaphone to some of the worst of those problems.

Perhaps the biggest and most disturbing problem is that we gave a platform to guys just because, well, they were guys.

We had no way of knowing whether the respondents had a healthy understanding of their own sexuality, knew the difference between attraction and lust, truly respected women, etc. We gave legitimacy to the idea that they had a right to speak about women’s clothing choices simply because they were male.

Just because a person is male doesn’t mean their opinions on modesty are legitimate. And, quite frankly, it was inappropriate for us to promote the idea that men should teach women what clothing choices are appropriate. It reinforces the false idea that modesty is something that women do for men, an idea never found in the Bible and fraught with its own set of problems.

In offering a platform to over 1600 guys, many of whom shouldn’t have been given it, we lent legitimacy to some very dangerous ideas.

This is the same attitude that says victims of sexual assault and harassment who wear “immodest” clothing are “asking for it.” This is the attitude that allows pastors to think that “What were you wearing?” is a legitimate question to ask when a woman reports being sexually harassed or assaulted. It’s the attitude that allows stories like this to happen.

We gave this attitude a platform.

(Ironically, all of the guys were asked to sign a petition in which they admitted that their lust was entirely their own fault. We missed the contradiction we were presenting.)

We also promoted the idea that modesty is primarily expressed through clothing choices.

While modesty as an attitude of the heart was given a lot of lip service, you simply can’t get past the fact that the vast majority of the 148 questions were about clothes.

The idea of modesty was inherently connected to the idea of not being a “stumbling block” for men, instead of being connected to the ideas of humility and self-respect. Modesty in Scripture is about not flaunting oneself. When Paul tells women to dress modestly, he’s basically saying, “Hey, let your beauty be about a beautiful heart, not about dressing extravagantly to impress others!”

But when modesty is about not “causing men to stumble,” it becomes about someone else’s reaction, not the state of one’s heart.

The survey allowed little to no room for the idea that, “Hey, maybe just because the majority of guys think a girl is being immodest, doesn’t mean she actually is.”

This is further reinforced by many responses from guys that made a direct correlation between a girl’s clothing choices and the state of her heart. Multiple guys made comments such as, “It changes everything about what I think of her,” “I feel sorry for them, because they must value their looks a lot, and esteem themselves a lot in their body, rather than in their relationship with the Lord,” and “…my opinion of her character lowers quite a bit.” In making these statements, the guys are making assumptions based solely on one factor: clothing.

You can’t say modesty is a heart issue, then make assumptions about a person’s heart based on their clothing choices. That’s backwards.

The last problem I’ll mention is that the Survey did nothing to differentiate between healthy, normal biological attraction, and lust.

Unfortunately, there are lots of guys who are led to believe they are the same thing. So when they find themselves physically attracted to a girl, they feel guilty. By asking guys to go through a list of questions about clothes and think about their reactions, we unintentionally reinforced unnecessary shame for those guys who didn’t understand that their biological reactions are not the same as lust.

(For further reading on the problems that modesty teachings present for guys, I recommend these posts by Preston and Dianna.)

When these concerns were brought up when the Survey first launched, we justified its existence through disclaimers and clarifications. Not once did someone say, “You know what, disclaimers don’t exempt you from the problems with the Survey.” Six years later, after hearing many stories on how modesty teachings have hurt people, I’ve realized it’s true: good intentions don’t erase problems.

So while I still think that modesty is important, the Survey approached the topic from the wrong angle, used incredibly problematic methods, and ultimately does more harm than good.

If you are a girl who has felt pressure from the Survey, I’m so sorry. If others have used it to control you, devalue you, or question your discernment, I’m sorry. You are free to ignore the Survey and to make decisions based on the Holy Spirit’s leading and input from friends and family that YOU trust.