It is possible that this modesty double standard may be starting to change—not because of a shift in women’s sexual proclivities, however they may bill it, but because of an increasing understanding that women, too have sexual urges and desires and are, yes, visual creatures. This makes me wonder whether an eroding of the modesty double standard might at all affect the strong patriarchal nature of these groups’ understandings of sex and gender relations.
I recently looked through some old photo albums from my teenage years. Oh, the memories that brought back. Clothing in the conservative Christian homeschooling subculture, especially the quiverfull variety, is quite the topic. I want to use some pictures to illustrate some points here, but I blog under a pseudonym so I really can’t use my own. So instead I’m going to use some pictures of the Duggars as illustrations, given that they’re already quite public.
I was fascinated by a recent post by Lana on clothes shopping as an ex-fundamentalist girl.
In the end, I don’t actually think the author herself was clear on whether she used the chocolate cake example to illustrate how immodestly clad women tempt men to rape or tempt men to lust. And perhaps that elision is part of the story here, part of the problem with the rhetoric of purity culture. The way the author talks about “how easy it is to break down” and eat the cake when it’s staring you in the face is problematic regardless of which way it was intended.
A Guest Post by Abel. But really, what I took to heart from all this talk about how obsessed men were with sex was not just that there was a rapist inside of me. It was that apparently I had a broken rapist inside of me. Because, honestly, I never felt so overwhelmed by semi-exposed skin that I couldn’t control myself. I spent years thinking there was something wrong with me.
Yesterday I came upon two posts that discuss the way men’s absolute fixation on women’s bodies undermines their ability to see women as anything other than objects for their consumption, gets in the way of women being valued for their talents, interests, or achievements, and results in the policing of women’s bodies and activities. One looks at evangelical modesty doctrines and the other looks at the reception of a young Doctor Who fan’s TARDIS dress.
“…seriously, guys actually think that women dress for them? What sort of thought processes do they imagine go into picking out clothing? For me it’s mostly ‘is this clean?’ ‘does it more or less match’ ‘will my mother say it makes me look like an old woman with too many cats’ ‘would I get looked at funny for walking around the mall like this’ ‘is it comfortable enough to wear all day’ …”
Growing up in a conservative evangelical home, I was taught that the way women dress can “cause” men to “stumble,” i.e. to think lustful thoughts or fall into sexual sin, and that Christian women should dress modestly so as to help their brothers in Christ avoid sin. Cause. Did you see that word? Cause. It wasn’t a typo. I can’t believe now how clueless I was to the destructiveness packed in that one little word.
“My name is Joy; I am a 42-year-old wife and working mother of 2. I was raised in an evangelical home that was fairly well-integrated into mainstream culture. My mother is a conservative evangelical and my father is a progressive evangelical (think Jim Wallis). I grew up to question some of the foundational evangelical tenets I was taught due to personal experiences and academic explorations. I still identify as a Christian, but a liberal/progressive one. Which means sometimes I am a little bit agnostic and other times I feel fairly traditionally mainline Christian.”
“Hi, my name is Julie. I’m twenty years old. I was brought up with a mixture of evangelical and fundamentalist beliefs. I am the middle child in a family of ten kids, though we were not Quiverfull, my dad just wanted a large family. I was a Christian until I was eighteen and then I drifted towards agnosticism. I am now an atheist.”
“I’m Lina, and I’m everywhere I thought I wouldn’t be. I grew up as a homeschooled pastor’s daughter, firmly on the side of the religious right, and am now vastly more liberal and married to a girl, V. College is really where things changed for me; I went to a conservative Christian school, and by the time I graduated, I couldn’t give a shit about God. I’m currently a nanny for almost 4 year old twins, and trying to support V as she completes her Master’s and we start a photography business.”
“I am a 23 year old male currently residing in the “bible belt”. I grew up in a conservative Christian family and church in Colorado and experienced a falling away during and shortly after college. I currently consider myself somewhat of a progressive Christian or “spiritual refugee”. I try to make the focus of my religious practice on loving others. I am bi, but currently not out.”
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