I’ve never met Jennifer, but it sounds like I’m her ghost writer!
I agree…women who ‘dress to get attention’ have self-esteem issues. They obviously don’t feel they can attract attention and be admired for their character, personality, or wit. From Barbie™ to Miley, hooker-chic is the norm.
Dressing with dignity is now an art form. Why does it sometimes feel like it ought to be considered an Olympic sport?
Bits of Jennifer Ferryman’s column, The Fight for Modesty below
Turn on the TV. Take a stroll in the store. Go to church and you’ll see it: Females dressing as though the new fad is straight “hooker.” That may be a little crass, but seriously, when you pick up a magazine or just try to watch the news, you’re bombarded with an obscene amount of skin. Sex sells, so they say. And “they” be right.
Western society bases the vast majority of craving upon “eye candy.” It doesn’t matter that magazines rely upon skilled computer graphics for brushing and touch ups. It doesn’t even matter that the average woman is a size 12 or 14. No one wants to see a “fluffy,” realistic woman. We’re all Barbie™ girls in a Barbie’s™ world, now. (Speaking of which, here’s a fun fact: If Barbie was an actual person, her
From teen idol Miley Cyrus' "Wonder World" Tour (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
dimensions would be a 42D chest, an 18-inch waist and 32-inch hips.) No wonder we call Hollywood socialites “plastic”. When I take my little girl through the toy aisle, there only a few Barbie™ dolls that are even appropriately dressed! Ken, watch out Barbie’s™ on the prowl again…
What’s all this about?! Why do I want my seven year-old child playing with a doll who looks like she just stepped off a Los Angeles street corner?
Here’s a bigger problem: the sense of immodesty has quietly crept into our churches. I remember my mouth falling open when I watched a family take the platform at church. Their daughter, about sixteen at the time, was wearing jeans that wouldn’t hide her Strawberry Shortcake™ UnderRoos if she turned in the wrong direction. This wasn’t a family who didn’t know any different. This was a family who had been in the church for generations. Even women come in dressed as though they are hitting Club 56, rather than stepping into a house of worship.
You know, you don’t have to wear a burqa, but would it kill ya’ to wear a tank top under that peep show?! And just because you think you have nice legs at your age, doesn’t mean that I need to see your middle-aged thighs. Hitch it up, honey!
But there are two underlying issues at play here: dignity and respect. First, if a woman feels the need or desire to wear revealing clothing, she clearly has a self-esteem issue. Why does she feel the need to draw us in with her “assets?” Is there a personality or self-esteem deficiency? Secondly, the respect issue is two-fold. She doesn’t respect herself enough (as stated before) and she, obviously, doesn’t respect me or my spouse. The only body that my husband’s eyes need to be focused upon is mine. I trust that he isn’t out searching for a little eye-candy, but, neither do I want him to be fed to the wolves! (He is human, after all.) If I had sons, I’m sure it would be a temptation to tie a blind-fold upon his innocent eyes for over half of his life! If a woman respects another woman, then she respects the men in her life, too. She doesn’t dress provocatively in order to catch an eye.
I have no doubt that someone reading this will wonder if I have a self-esteem complex. Let me be clear. No. Sure, I, like 99.9% of Westernized women would like to change one or more aspects of my outer appearance, but the bigger issue is that I have my own little women to raise. And I have a husband whose character and integrity are important to me. And I will fight, tooth and nail, for it.
http://www.dakotavoice.com/2010/11/the-fight-for-modesty/trackback/
Other also read:
I agree with the author of this article, obviously. But it’s interesting to read the comments section note the suggestion that Mrs Ferryman’s head shot is somewhate alluring in itself. It points to the fact that modesty is more than being covered up. It also refers to gaze and posture and attitude. There are several modest clothing websites whose models display a come-hither stare with a hand resting on a jutting hip. Modesty is more than clothes, ladies!
I agree with the author. I am a 50 something female. I see so many women even at the office showing their cleavage (even older women with wrinkly skin). It just drives me crazy. It’s like women don’t have any self-respect anymore. I also can’t stand immodestly in young girls and at Mass. I blame a lot of it on the media. We’re just a bunch of clones trying to imitate shallow celebrities. (Colleen, I just discovered your website and I like it. )
Thank you, Terri!!!
I don’t understand why flappy upper arms and wrinkly cleavage is ‘sexy’… And yes, I agree the media takes a great share of the blame. But so do the Fathers…the ones in our homes and the ones on the altars. Sadly, many priests tell me that when they preach about modesty, the MOTHERS will come up to them after Mass and complain!!! What has our world come to…
While I’m not saying we will even be able to speak up at every turn, more people need to speak up more often as far as modesty is concerned. Also, I don’t like it when males are silent, certainly when it comes to gals wearing pants, because they’re afraid of what the testier females may say. If I based when I spoke up on making sure I didn’t offend the “womyn”(I didn’t make that term up; in fact, there’s a music festival in Michigan with that word in its name, but that’s another story), I’d likely talk to only those who already saw the light, and they’d be ridiculously few and far between. The feminists and the moral degenerates have done a thorough job of trying to shut people up, which needs to stop.
Colleen, you hit the nail on the head so thoroughly it’s scary. However, we can’t hold the mothers blameless. In fact, how some of the mothers dress and think(and not always with their husbands’ approval; some husbands even go through the fire to get the females in their households to see the light) defies words.
If what I read means even the least bit, Jennifer is such a poster girl for talking sense into people on the wrong path, I’ll have to hug her hello if I should meet her. Colleen, you too are so worthy a soldier for Our Lord’s precepts that, if I meet you, I will be honored to hug YOU hello. If what I know about you means anything, you are too good a person to shake hands with.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. However, it seems like if a female isn’t dressing “straight hooker” at Mass, she’s dressing masculine, and both are wrong. Both violate 1Tim. 2:9-10 and, in the case of females dressing male, Dt. 22:5.
Yesterday, a friend of mine’s son had the nerve to wear jeans(which I don’t have a problem with away from churches, provided it’s not a place where decorum would say otherwise, and if it’s a male wearing them; females are to stay away from pants); if he was my son he would have worn non-denim pants(he had the nerve to blame my friend for his wearing jeans to Mass). He also, apropos of my letting it be known that pants are not to be worn by females, said otherwise(I recommended his father, and a female friend of ours, read “Dressing with Dignity”, which I will get another copy of, and I will also get another TAN-published book, “Liturgical Time Bombs in Vatican II”, written by Michael Davies).