“Immodest” – the new Scarlet Letter

I came across a post today about a 17-year-old girl who was kicked out of her own prom because some of the fathers who were chaperoning insisted that she was causing the young men on the dance floor to have impure thoughts.

It’s important to note that the requirement for the dress code was fingertip-length, and hers was slightly longer than that. She says much of the outrage is because she has long legs and is tall. Probably. But a paragraph at the end made me catch my breath.

When we walked out of the prom, frustrated and angry and feeling very disrespected and violated, some of the people in my group shouted profanities at the security guards, and I personally flipped them off. I putting this part in the story because I want everyone who reads this to know that we shouldn’t have reacted so immaturely to their unfair and disrespectful actions, and we’re all adult enough to admit that. But what I want to know is if the people involved in this situation at the Richmond Homeschool Prom are adult enough to own up to their wrong actions as well.

(Read the rest here)

This is a young woman of integrity — in fact, she seems to have far more integrity than the chaperones at her prom can boast of. The chaperones, both men and women, refused to even entertain the possibility that teenage (or adult) males can and should take control of their own thoughts. If they cannot do that, they should remove themselves. But of course, that was not suggested. Instead, the girl with long legs and curves, whose dress was in fact longer than many other dresses in the room, was humiliated and kicked out of her own prom.

Let me repeat that: this 17 year old girl was told that because her body has curves (like women’s bodies do), it might cause men to sin, and must be removed from male sight.

That is sick.

If people keep fighting the modesty war in a certain way, by insisting on objective standards, by coddling and demeaning men by insisting that they can’t control their own thoughts, and by treating girls with great figures who are wearing totally appropriate clothing like whores simply because they have curves in all the right places, this is where it’s gonna end. In a teenage girl getting kicked out of her own prom because the fathers can’t deal with the impure thoughts she might cause their sons (or themselves) to have.

We have got to remember that when it comes to sin, we only have control over our own. Our choice to sin or not to sin. Our choice to intentionally provoke or not to. Our choice to reject a thought or indulge in it. Our choice to take responsibility for the custody of our own eyes, or to keep humiliating young girls so that we don’t have to do the hard thing, the mature thing, the right thing.

Clare didn’t blame the security guards or the chaperones at the prom for making her so angry that flipping them off was the only thing she could do. She took responsibility for her actions, owned up to her anger and admitted that she did something wrong. Maybe those fathers and their sons should take a lesson from her playbook. Maybe we all should.