Modesty and Discovering Beauty as God Intended P1

Modesty has always been a struggle for me, the concept and justification for it, that is.  I always thought, I’m not walking around displaying my body nor do I have overt sexual intentions connected to the way I dress. So why then do I have to be held at fault for what someone else thinks when they look at me? My heart is pure in the way I dress and I saw no reason to cover myself from head to toe for the sake of some person out there who couldn’t control his/her thoughts and where they took them.  

Then I happened to come across a passage in the bible in the letter of St Paul to the Romans, chapter 14 and it really spoke to me. In it, St. Paul says, specifically verse 14 onwards :

“I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died.”.

Later I came across a second passage in his letter to the Corinthians, chapter 4 verses 9 onwards:

“Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.”

While reflecting on these passages, in the manner of Lectio Divina, I thought to myself, how can I apply this to me and my life? The first thought that popped in my head was the question of modesty and something else I'd be thinking about, wearing a veil during mass. I was particularly struck by St. Paul’s thought process on how he did not think anything was unclean in and of itself but if something we do is considered unclean by another, then not only may we be causing them to sin but we are also acting without love.

I do not believe there is anything we can do as Christians, that is greater than love. It is the purest form of finding our Savior in the very people he loves and reflecting his love to them. So if I realize that this is my greatest duty as a Christian, then I will look for any way to avoid showing the opposite to my fellow people. If this means going out of my way to show someone love, then so be it. If the saints and martyrs were willing to suffer pain and torture for our Lord, can we not suffer the ‘inconvenience’ of modesty for his sake?

Additionally, I'd like to point out the women who dress in long sleeved clothing or burkas in the Middle East, to those of you who claim you simply cannot carry on in this heat without short shorts etc. I think its all about what you get used to, forming a habit, so to speak. When I hit puberty at 12, in Saudi Arabia, my Keralite mother told me, it is time to dress better since I was becoming a woman and advised me to wear nothing that showed my shoulder or anything higher than my knees(accounting for modesty demanded by both Catholicism and our Indian culture). Let it be noted that cleavage never was and still isn't a huge issue for me, mostly due to the lack of one. From that time, when I was more angry I had to give up my favorite sleeveless shirt that had a tiger on it (I was a strange little tomboy), than the fact that I couldn't wear sleeveless anymore, I have followed her advice.

I am today, so used to wearing clothes this way that I cannot imagine not doing so, even in the most sweltering of heats. When I went to WYD in Madrid, we went through Italy and let me tell you, it was not easy wearing a cardigan in that heat when we walked everywhere in true pilgrim style, but I did it. Similarly when I lived in India, it was not easy wearing even full length jeans in that heat (which is why I switched to Indian clothes really quick in my time there), let alone cardigans, but I still wore one if I had a sleeveless top on or wore a dress or something. I'm not showing off or wagging my finger at you, I'm saying, I know its difficult, but it can be done without wanting to melt into the sidewalk or give up and wear paperbags. I also learned from those two experiences that it much easier to just hold out, no matter how cute the top, and buy one with sleeves/appropriate enough coverage to wear in the summer, than to have to wear a cardigan or under-layers with a super cute but sparse top. This is something I try very hard to practice now, in the Indian-skin-burning heat of Texas, and find it a much more comfortable and quick option. The long term habit I formulated as a child, has now made dressing appropriately an instinctive thing in my life. So I would advice mothers to start as soon as possible with your children because 12 may be too late for kids growing up here in the land of freedom.

Secondly, I have heard this point put forth, to dress when going to church, as you would in meeting a king. If you were to go to meet the Pope, or the Queen of England, how would you dress? Would you wear jeans and a raggedy shirt or put some effort into how you look. I'm not saying God won't listen to your prayers if you're in jeans (and I find that hard to believe) or that I have never worn jeans into church, but you wouldn't wear short shorts or ripped clothing to see a dignitary, right? So whenever you have the time for it, dress well when going to church or at least make yourself look neat and clean and 'respectable' (I'm not really sure what it means in terms of dressing but it seems like a very motherly thing to say here). Just like your mother would like to see you with your hair combed neatly and in nice and neat clothing when you go outside, I feel our Heavenly Father would probably want the same and our Mother Mary too :). Couldn't you just imagine her smoothing down that cowlick or cleaning up that smudge of dirt on your face with her blue mantle?  God is infinitely more deserving of our respect and dignity than any human on earth, so dress like you're going to meet a King, because well, He is one.

Thridly, I realized modesty is not a 'This is my body, I do what I want' deal. In fact, I think that is a highly selfish argument that should be equally inapplicable to both men and women. I think it is genuinely heartbreaking that men who may want to welcome a child into the world and be fathers are not even given a say in the termination of a child they helped father just because a woman carries said baby and presents the above argument. How can you claim right over the baby when his DNA is only half yours? It is truly a statement, that showcases how much you value yourself over someone else. I think we often forget that mankind would be nowhere if at some point, we did not think past ourselves. I'm getting sidetracked though, so back to the topic.

A third motivator towards modesty for me, is something my mother says about dressing appropriately when we go to church , and this includes all genders and is kind of a very generalized rule of thumb, which is always great. I say that, because sometimes I feel like modesty turns into this blaming the woman thing and something that makes her feel terrible instead of helping her and also, it gets very nitpicky about lengths and about gray areas and about personalizing etc. My mother was taught to: "Never dress/behave in a way that would detract any attention from God at church". This means, anything that may distract someone from mass, prayer etc. I like this because its not exactly a pure modesty clause, but covers vanity and behavior in church as well. This includes anything revealing but also anything that takes hours to put together or is highly attention drawing (which may be skin showing or may be a screaming fashion statement of some sort) and outfits that were compiled for the sole reason as to acquire compliments or attention. This also includes, any behavior in church that would distract others from God, the exceptions being of course things we cannot control like coughing or sneezing or the songs of our little ones. This thought always directs me to a realization that in coming to church, we come together to adore God, and we must all help each other to focus on the real reason we are there instead of detracting, by our dressing or behavior, the attention due to Him alone.

For a more indepth look into what modesty really is, take a look at P2 of this article! Here is a hint, it's not being covered from head to toe.

Why clothes alone don't make modesty. It requires a change of our thought process- both of women and more so, of men. Seriously, I think the guy in the pink scarf if ogling at her ankle. Her frickin ankle!!