Archive for the 'Modesty' Category

Hair length, skirt length, body odor and a bulge in the jeans: what we should and shouldn’t say to loved ones

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 10, 2008
in Clothing and Fashion, Favorite Posts 2008, Modesty and Relationships
. 29 Comments

Last Wednesday’s post about controlling boyfriends got quite a few comments. The post dealt with two young women whose beaux wanted them to stop wearing short skirts, or to stop having lunch with decidedly platonic male friends. I don’t want to re-visit that post, but I have been thinking about the ways in which we negotiate reasonable and unreasonable requests from romantic partners. What is “reasonable” is obviously culture-bound, but that doesn’t mean that some frank discussion about the limits of compromise isn’t going to be helpful.

It seems to me that there is a colossal distinction between a partner’s expression of aesthetic preference on the one hand and a fear (or jealousy) based desire to control on the other. (And let’s be clear, the line between the desire to “protect” and to “control” is a fuzzy one, and when speaking about adults, the language of the former almost always masks the true intent, which is the latter. Obviously, the advice a parent gives to a 12 year-old about how to dress is different than that a boyfriend gives to a girlfriend.) For example, it’s not inappropriate to say the following:

“I really like it when you wear black, it suits you.”

“Since you asked, I actually prefer the blue shirt, as it matches your eyes better than that magenta one you were considering.”

My wife has, at the moment, very short hair. I like very short hair on her, and indeed, prefer it on most people of both sexes. That’s an aesthetic preference on my part, and it’s one about which my beloved is not ignorant. Over the course of our nearly six-year relationship, she’s cut it very short and grown it out past her shoulders. When it was long, I never begged her to cut it, but when she asked, I never lied about my preference. “You look beautiful regardless, dear, but if you want to know my own opinion, I think you are at your most spectacular when it is very short.” Continue reading ‘Hair length, skirt length, body odor and a bulge in the jeans: what we should and shouldn’t say to loved ones’

“Ginormous breasts” at the gym: a response to Isky about the male gaze and responsibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 12, 2007
in Clothing and Fashion, Modesty and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 51 Comments

My friend Isky sent me an email this week that revisits, yet again, the subject of women, clothing, and the male gaze. I asked him to look at the posts in the modesty category, particularly these (one, two, three) that summarize my views fairly well. Still, Isky seemed to want a specific reply to his situation. As the whole discussion may be triggering or repetitive for some, it’s below the fold. Continue reading ‘“Ginormous breasts” at the gym: a response to Isky about the male gaze and responsibility’

A covenant with my eyes: some long thoughts on looking

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 2, 2007
in Christianity, Marriage, Modesty, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 22 Comments

Here’s the weird thing: the overall trend in terms of hits to this blog is upwards, though it’s been fairly flat these past ten days. On the other hand, the overall trend in terms of number of comments is down slightly, even as the number of visitors rise. But what’s really going way up is the number of emails I’m getting from folks asking questions about various aspects of what I’ve posted about. Requests for advice have jumped from about one a week to about three a day, which still puts me way below an “Ask Amy” but does make me wonder about this shift.

“Marian” writes a long note about her husband’s habit of staring at one particular type of much younger woman:

From the beginning, my husband has had the dreadfulL penchant of ogling a very specific type woman: young, blonde and petite. Shall I describe myself? 5′10″, dark brown hair and eyes, and as I mentioned, 47. When I say ogling, I mean ogling to an extent I have never encountered. For instance… there is a blonde, young attractive woman at the church we attend and for quite some time he would sit the whole service and stare over at her. He began making a point to attend that particular service, although he knows I prefer to go to a later one. I remember one service where he missed a congregational response because he was so engrossed in looking at her. When I confronted him about this he finally did admit that he thought she was pretty, and I asked him why that would cause him to stare incessantly at her. His reply, and I quote, “it’s like having a beautiful bouquet in front of you. You don’t want to just glance at it, you want to savor it.”

Again, my question is, why would any 50 year old, happily married man, feel a compulsion to stare obsessively at ONLY young, blonde women? He does not look at attractive women our age, nor does he look at young, pretty brunettes. He has admitted that is the “type” he is attracted to. Let me state I am in fairly good shape for a woman of my age, I’m quite eclectic and tend to wear trendy clothing and jewelry, and when I dress to the nines for an evening out on the town I get enough comments from friends, including men friends, that I know I am not exactly a troll.

I am not asking what I should do to solve the problem, that will be up to me. I am merely wanting to know your opinion about why he would continue to do this.

Marian and her husband have apparently seen a counselor, and my first piece of advice is to continue to do just that. As for the attraction to much younger blondes, I’m in no position to figure out why someone has the particular “type” they do have. I’ve never had a physical type to be attracted to; have never preferred women from a particular ethnic background or with a particular hair color. I’ve always been a bit mystified by men and women whose tastes are so particularly narrow. I do know from talking to some of my friends who do have one particular “type” that many of them settled on this type in early adolescence, sometimes as a response to one particularly powerful early crush or obsession. (One of my friends in school only liked brunettes, and that, he said, had everything to do with Kate Jackson, the actress from “Charlie’s Angels”. It was the show he was obsessed with when he first hit puberty, and she became the “it” girl of his dreams.)

But while I am hopelessly unqualified to analyze the roots of an obsession, I am qualified to say that unless Marian’s husband is suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, he’s got full control over his eyes and where they wander. The myth of male weakness says that “men can’t help but stare”, but the honest truth is that we long to attribute a personal unwillingness to exercise self-control to a universal masculine failing. “All men do it” and “We (men) can’t help it” are lies we tell collectively, and we say them so often and with such conviction that we do a good job of convincing ourselves (and sometimes, we convince the women in our lives as well.)

There are many versions of Marian’s husband’s remark about the beautiful bouquet. “Just because I’ve already ordered, that doesn’t mean I can’t keep staring at the menu” is one I hear quite often. These remarks are rooted in the sense that infidelity ought to be narrowly defined as a specific set of actions. But even for most folks who aren’t Christians (and bound by Matthew 5 and Jesus’s admonition about lusting in the heart), there’s a sense that we’d rather our spouses not long for and fantasize about others. Fidelity isn’t just about what we don’t do with our genitalia, it’s also about where we direct our hearts and our thoughts. As Marian’s letter makes clear, “merely” ogling has great power to wound.

But choosing a partner is not like ordering a meal in a restaurant. And women are not lovely bouquets of flowers. It’s demeaning and troubling to compare human beings to objects, even objects as lovely as roses. (Poets, of course, have free license. The rest of us don’t.) A bouquet doesn’t care how closely you scrutinize it; most women know how acutely uncomfortable it can be to have a man (particularly a man old enough to be their father) staring at them. It’s a rare young woman who has never been discomfited by the penetrating gaze of an older man. The power of that gaze to disquiet and to hurt is real. The French tulips don’t care how long you gaze; the young blonde at church being ogled by Marian’s husband very well might.

Similarly, the soup I ordered in the restaurant last night isn’t offended if I wonder out loud, even as I’m sipping it, as to whether or not I ought to have ordered the salad instead. “Continuing to look at the menu” sends a message to our partners that we’re not entirely comfortable with the finality of the decision we’ve made.

It is important to note that there’s a world of difference between the penetrating gaze and the appreciative glance. One thing we all have is a strong aesthetic sense. Most of us can appreciate beauty in another human being without experiencing actual desire for that person. Most men, for example, are much better at evaluating another man’s attractiveness than they let on. Most women know plenty of young men who fiercely deny even noticing whether their friends are handsome or not, but their denials have everything to do with homophobia and nothing to do with a genuinely impaired aesthetic sensibility. Women are allowed, in our culture, to be more open in their praise for each other’s appearance. But we don’t allow men to express aesthetic judgments unless they are accompanied by expressions of desire. Because we insist (entirely falsely) that men’s judgments about beauty must be tied to their libidos, we shame men out of praising the looks of their male peers. We also teach men that sexual attraction must go hand in hand with a recognition of female beauty. By insisting that real men only find beautiful what they also find desirable, we limit the potential of our brothers and husbands and sons to be full and complete human beings.

What all this means is that I have a great deal of difficulty in believing that Marian’s husband is ogling these young blondes out of a pure aesthetic admiration. His staring makes his wife uncomfortable, and no doubt also makes the women at whom he is gazing so intently uncomfortable. Whatever the origin of his fixation on blondes young enough to be his daughter, he owes it both to his wife and to the women he finds so fascinating to exercise control over his eyes. More importantly, we need to do a better job of equipping men to have two key things that most currently lack:

1. an honest vocabulary for beauty that allows them to develop appreciation for loveliness without sexual desire

2. a sense that they are as much in control over their eyes as over their hands.

In my own life, I have — like most folks — a keen appreciation for beauty. But I can separate an admiration for beauty from sexual desire. As a heterosexual man, I can admire the chiseled features of a handsome young athlete without wanting him sexually. I can acknowledge a beautiful woman in much the same way. But I am aware that aesthetic appreciation can slip into outright desire if I’m not careful. I remain gently vigilant, but not to the point of pretending to ignore that another human being is lovely to look at.

I’m also aware that I have a responsibility to look at other people in a way that honors all of my commitments. If my looking makes my wife uncomfortable, I need to rethink how I gaze. If my looking at someone’s outsides keeps me from caring about their insides, I need to rethink how I look. If my looking makes the object of my gaze feel awkward or confused, I need to change how I look. My right to delight in another’s beauty is not unlimited; it is restrained by my commitment to my spouse and my commitment not to reduce other human beings into mere objects. As a Christian, I am called to make a covenant with my eyes, not to cut myself off from the beauty of creation, but to make sure that my eyes do not lead me to want to appropriate that creation for my own selfish purposes.

Rethinking — and rejecting — an old post about Naomi Wolf, porn, and modesty

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 30, 2007
in Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Modesty and Porn
. 18 Comments

Vanessa at Feministing takes issue with Naomi Wolf’s cover piece this past weekend in New York Magazine: The Porn Myth. It’s not a new article, it just seems to keep getting recycled. I commented on it back in May 2004.

One of the things about blogging for several years: one’s opinions and views evolve, and one is then left with the interesting archival evidence of that evolution. While consistency is surely a virtue, so too is a willingness to rethink one’s stance on key issues, especially in light of new information or further reflection. So, since Wolf’s piece reappeared online this week, I’m going to revisit what I said in 2004. More to the point, I’m going to reject much of what I had to say three years ago.

I am as thoroughly anti-porn as it gets, as any visitor to my pornography archive will quickly read. (That sounds more titillating than it us.) I agree with Wolf’s view that pornography tends to destroy authentic sexual appetite. She writes:

The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.

Wolf talks of chats with college-aged women who relate their anxieties about competing with pornography, and what she writes rings true with me. Where Wolf falls down — and where Vanessa was right to challenge her, and I was wrong not to do so in 2004 — is that Wolf urges women to adopt modesty and concealment as a strategy for reenergizing the male libido. Wolf is enchanted by the story of an observant Jewish friend of hers, a woman who allows only her husband to see her hair, and the rest of the time, keeps it concealed under a wig or a scarf. Wolf writes:

I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.”

The red flag for me in 2007 (which wasn’t there in 2004) is the verb in bold. The implication is that in and of themselves, men lack the incentive and the ability to maintain a strong and vibrant sexual focus solely on their wives. It’s a great passage from Scripture she quotes, mind you, and one I love. Married men are called to direct all of their sexual energy towards their wives, even as both they and their wives age. But it’s not women’s job to “create mystery” in order to keep men excited! While marriage is surely a partnership, it is deeply misguided (if very traditional) to suggest that wives must strategize to keep their husbands from straying in act or thought, with flesh-and-blood mistresses or with cybersex.

The story Wolf tells of her bewigged friend Ilana is frustrating for this very reason. Wolf is on awe at what she imagines is the steamy eroticism of this very traditional Orthodox marriage, and is convinced that it is Ilana’s modesty that is the cause of the continued strong sexual charge between husband and wife. Coming at the end of an article about porn, it’s hard to miss the implication that Wolf is convinced that if more women would simply be more like Ilana (creating “mystery” by hiding themselves), more boyfriends and husbands would be more sexually excited by enduring monogamous relationships.

What’s wrong with this seemingly commonsensical analysis is, of course, that it’s rooted in the notion that men are hardwired to pursue “everlasting novelty.” The everlasting novelty thesis of male sexuality suggests that women who want monogamy from their male mates need to pursue an aggressive strategy in order to overcome a man’s “natural” programming to stray, to seek out what is new, to become fascinated with seeing (or touching, or possesing) new skin. According to this thesis (so memorably satirized in Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale) women need new outfits, new hairstyles, new transformations on a regular basis in order to fool their husbands and boyfriends into thinking that they are somehow a series of different women. Call it the “familiarity breeds contempt” theory of enduring sexual attraction.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for two people experimenting with new ideas for keeping their sexual life fresh and exciting. I understand completely that routine is indeed the enemy of eros. But there’s all the difference in the world between urging men and women not to get stuck in sexual ruts, and suggesting that women need to conceal themselves in order to capture and hold male attention. The former bit of advice doesn’t place any gender-based onus on one partner more than the other. The latter suggests that the male longing for everlasting novelty is women’s problem to solve, and that’s absolutely, shockingly, indefensibly wrong.

Whether or not promiscuity is hardwired into the male brain is ultimately irrelevant. Humans have free will strong enough to trump any programming. Just as we can learn to pee in toilets rather than wetting ourselves, we can learn not only to practice monogamy but to do so with enthusiasm. What I find so wonderfully challenging about monogamy isn’t just staying faithful. Not sleeping with other people, not flirting with other people, not fantasizing about other people — heck, that’s just the beginner’s class! (All good stuff, mind you.) The advanced class in monogamy work is maintaining strong and enduring sexual excitement. Monogamy is not merely about what you don’t do with others, it is also — at its very core — about what you do do with your partner. It is a mandate for both parties to be creative, to be persistent, to be brave. As a husband, my responsibility is to keep my sexual energy focused on my wife no matter what she wears, no matter what she weighs, regardless of whether or not she covers her gorgeous hair with a wig or a baseball cap or lets her curls down in public. My wife has the same responsibility towards me. This doesn’t mean we are obligated to please each other; it doesn’t give either of us the right to demand sex. But, practicing the mutual submission that Scripture calls us to, it means we don’t expect the other to be in charge of keeping us excited, aroused, hot.

Nothing exasperates me more than the enduring myth of male weakness. Nothing infuriates me more than the suggestion that it is women’s responsiblity to keep men focused, to keep men faithful, to keep men aroused. Naomi Wolf is, as far as I’m concerned, spot on accurate in her indictment of pornography. But her suggestion that women ought to adopt modesty as a strategy to keep their present (or future) boyfriends and husbands on track and away from porn is dead wrong.

Note: this thread is for feminist or feminist-friendly comments only.

“Do Hard Things”, but not that hard: a response to the modesty survey and the Rebelution

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 26, 2007
in Body, Christianity, Faith, Men and Masculinity, Modesty, Relationships, Sexuality and Youth
. 28 Comments

Last week, Jill linked to the results of a “modesty survey”. The survey collected responses from more than 1600 young Christian men, all of whom deigned to tell young women “what they really think” about dress and modesty. (Questions were submitted, anonymously, by more than 200 young Christian women.)

I’m not a social scientist, so I can’t vouch for the methodology of the survey. I am an evangelical, a gender studies professor, and a volunteer youth minister who works with teens at church, however. I’ve got a “dog in this hunt”, as it were, and I find the results of the survey disheartening, even appalling. If you browse the results, you find many gems (the best of which Jill has already noted in her excellent post). I found this one, written as a “final thought to young women” telling:

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.

This is one of the most disturbing aspects of the sort of theology that seems so darned prevalent among the male respondents. One of the overriding themes of the gospel is that respect isn’t earned; Jesus embraces the very people (including women) whom the rest of society finds most disreputable, and he rebukes the very folk who assume that their lives and morals are above reproach. To say, as this anonymous lad does, that “we are dying to give you (our) utmost respect when you choose” to be modest is to misconstrue the Gospel message.

Christ reminds us over and over again that anyone can love the lovable; the test is to love the enemy. In the same way, we are called to respect and treat with equal human dignity those whose clothing choices we find most challenging. To paraphrase our Lord in Luke 6:

If you respect only those whose bodies and dress do not tempt you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ respect those who arouse no desire within them. . And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ do that.

In other words, the Christian life is about rejecting the notion that human relationships are quid pro quo. To live an authentic Christian life is to live out one’s commitments with those who (intentionally or not) challenge those commitments, not merely those who reinforce them.

What I find especially galling about the modesty survey is that it is hosted by some folks who call themselves The Rebelution. They explain it here:

The official definition of the ‘rebelution’ is “a teenage rebellion against the low expectations of an ungodly culture.” When you look around today, in terms of godly character and practical competence, our culture does not expect much of us young people. We are not only expected to do very little that is wise or good, but we’re expected to do the opposite. Our media-saturated youth culture is constantly reinforcing lower and lower standards and expectations.

The word ‘rebelution’ is a combination of the words “rebellion” and “revolution.” So it carries a sense of an uprising against social norms. But in this case, it’s not a rebellion against God-established authority, but against the low expectations of our society.

Oh heck, I’ll sign on to that. I’m all for challenging young people to lead lives of justice, of compassion, of hard work. I’m resolutely committed to the notion that young people today can embrace lives of service, of sharing, and, when called for, of self-restraint. But the bold rhetoric of “rebelution” is completely undercut by the modesty survey’s suggestion that most young men are, in fact, fundamentally weak and need their “sisters in Christ” to protect them.

To promote the idea that men’s sexual desire is stronger than women’s is not counter-cultural; it’s buying into a belief widely held in contemporary society. To promote the idea that young men’s lust is so powerful that it is nearly impossible to control without the active assistance of “modest” young women simply perpetuates one of the great cultural lies of our era: the myth of male weakness. The modesty survey, far from reflecting any true counter-cultural insights, simply reinforces two nasty untruths widely believed by Christians and non-Christians alike: first, that most young women do not themselves have a strong sexual drive; second, that male lack of self-control is at least in part due to female irresponsibility.

On the Rebelution site, they claim that their movement has a Viking battle cry: “Do Hard Things”! They write:

Here’s The Rebelution’s challenge: Do hard things. Learn a lesson from the Vikings. Do hard things and you will carry the battle every time. If you are willing to take on responsibilities that others delegate or neglect you will gain the benefits of that exertion.

Too often we delegate the responsibility for our education, our character, our future, etc. to others who hold far less of a stake in how things turn out. And more often than not a failure to perform in the areas of character and competence are due to a lack of past exertion.

Gosh, leaving aside the whole silly Viking thing, that’s a message I like. This distance-running, workaholic, over-committed, underslept, vegan professor and activist digs the idea of “doing hard things.” I’m a great believer that we are called to carry a cross, called to do the hard work of building a just and peaceable Kingdom. Whether his classmate is in sweats or a miniskirt, a young man’s responsibility to see her as a complete human being is always the same. When we teach young men that self-control is not contingent on women’s dress, then we really do teach them to “do hard things.” But such a message is clearly too radical for the folks at Rebelution.

UPDATE: Kate asks some excellent questions here. It’s a long meditation on the “theory of desire” (particularly the one articulated by the Modesty Project folks), and raises some interesting challenges to all Christian narratives of sexual desire.

“Tell Your Boyfriend I Said Thanks”: some thoughts on women’s t-shirts, class, competition, and sisterhood.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 25, 2006
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism and Modesty
. 102 Comments

This summer, at least on the PCC campus, I’m seeing a tremendous revival of the vulgar t-shirt.  Many of my students have the most extraordinarily hostile –and occasionally funny — messages across their chests.

What bothers me most, however, are the ones that play on traditional female rivalries and anxieties.  "Tell Your Boyfriend I Said Thanks" read one I saw in the hall yesterday; "Tell Your Boyfriend to Stop Calling Me" read one from last week (on a different young woman, mind.)  T-shirts like these — and there are others — trouble me more than the ones that read "All American Bitch" or "So Many Men, So Little Time".  Displays of sexual bravado like these may be somewhat embarrassing and juvenile, but they aren’t designed to do damage to other women.

If there is one consistent lament I hear from the women in my feminist studies classes, it’s about the presence of intense competition in their lives.  Not academic competition, but sexualized competition.  As has often been noted here on this blog and elsewhere, this competitiveness on an "attractiveness market" is more intense in a community college with primarily lower middle class and working class students.  To generalize enormously, the less privileged the background, the more intense the sense of competition among young women.  Far too many young ones grow up with a sense that their sexual desirability is a more marketable commodity than their intellectual accomplishments; this is all the more likely to be true in families where there isn’t a history of women going to college.  (If you don’t believe me, visit any American community college on a hot day — and then visit an elite university in the same weather.  You’ll see more mini-skirts and heels in five minutes at Pasadena City College than you will in five hours at Berkeley or Stanford.  That’s anecdotal, sure, but don’t take my word for it — try it yourself.)  The bottom line: class and sexual competitiveness among women are, to say the least, not unrelated!

I realize it’s problematic for a fortyish man from a relatively privileged background to "tut-tut" with annoyance at the realities of the "attractiveness market" on which so many (but by no means all) of my young female students compete.  But as I’ve said over and over again, at least part of living a feminist life is learning not to see other women as rivals.  You can’t be committed to women’s liberation and see other attractive women as one’s enemies.   One of the sad fruits of a sexist culture is the sense of isolation that many women have from one another.  Internalized misogyny and competitiveness do not rest easy with a belief that women ought to be seen as complete human beings.

It’s unlikely, of course, that any young woman is going to be directly threatened by the "Tell Your Boyfriend I Said Thanks" shirt.   But it’s also equally unlikely that the shirt is intended to be interpreted ironically, as a wry commentary on the state of women’s competitiveness and anxiety.  The shirt makes a claim about the wearer and her desirability — and it suggests that attractiveness is a zero-sum game for women.  The sexier girl gets attention from other girls’ boyfriends.   Fear about playing that game — and losing at it — is a major factor in the lives of many of the young women with whom I work.

I’ve had four entries up in recent weeks on modesty, women’s dress, and male self-control. Having insisted six ways to Sunday that lust is always the problem of the luster, I stopped short of saying that we ought not ever consider others when we dress ourselves.  And yes, if what another woman wears makes you feel jealous and insecure, that’s as much your problem as it is for a man who is aroused by the same display.  But I draw a distinction between the accidental and the intentional.  A woman who is perceived as beautiful will be envied — and perhaps even disliked — by a few of her female peers regardless of what she wears.  That’s not her fault.  But if she wears a "Tell Your Boyfriend I Said Thanks" shirt , she’s being quite deliberate about her desire to elevate her own status in a mildly shocking but deeply competitive manner.  For that she is responsible, as in a small but significant way, she’s choosing to be actively hostile towards other women.

Let men learn to use the “will muscle”: some further thoughts on faith, sin, sex, and clothing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 20, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Faith, Modesty and Sexuality
. 39 Comments

In the ongoing discussion about men, women, clothing, modesty and self-control, Camassia offers a fine contribution.  In the comments, a reader named Jose makes the case that while Christian men are responsible for controlling their lust, women do have an equivalent responsibility for what they wear and the reactions it may cause. Jose writes:

Improper or provocative attire is certainly a disruption and a distraction for which the tempter can and should be faulted. It can reach a point in which the priest or pastor should ask the tempter to leave the congregation.

I wrote in reply:

Jose, to dress provocatively with the intent of arousing lust is sinful, I’ll agree. But to dress without that desire, and then to become the object of lust from another, is not. If a woman wears what she finds comfortable, and ends up being the object of desire, she is entirely blameless. Now, IF the woman in front of me in church is consciously, actively, attempting to seduce the men in the pews around her, then of course she’s also at fault.

But that’s rarely the case, and we know it.

Jose came back:

There is intention and there is ignorance…. In spite of all the talk about increasing cultural sensitivity these days, too many people simply do not get it. They walk into a church with provocative dress and offer the unacceptable excuse that it was not their intention to provoke anyone. They imagine it’s the problem of the one provoked rather than the provocateur. As Chip Frontz says, both may have a problem, but it is the provocateur who incited it.

Now, if Jose comes over here, he’s welcome to provide a bible verse in support of what strikes me as an indefensible position. 

I do believe we are responsible for our intentions.  If I teach in tight, "sexy" clothing with the intention of distracting or arousing my students, I commit a sin as a Christian and an error as a teacher.  If a woman, putting together her outfit for church, says "I hope this causes Mr. Jones in the pew behind me to lust for me rather than his wife", then I’m happy to agree that she’s sinning.  As Christians, we ought not deliberately, consciously, and intentionally encourage sin in others.

I’m not trying to open the difficult theological question of whether ignorance is a sin.  But even if I grant that in some instances ignorance can be sinful, it is not "ignorance" for a woman to be unable to consider all of the possible ways in which a man might respond to her clothing.  She might be able to guess that wearing a bikini to church might not be appropriate, but what of Mr. Smith with his foot fetish, who will be transfixed by her feet in open-toed sandals? It’s absurd to accuse women of sinful ignorance for being unable to anticipate all of the possible reactions their sartorial choices may inspire!

To live in community is to recognize that the choices we make impact those around us.  We stop at red lights not because we want to, but because we acknowledge that others on the road have different agendas than our own and we need to honor them.   We all, Christian or not, ought to periodically stop and check our motives for most of the things we do!  I’m certainly all in favor of all of us becoming kinder, more thoughtful, and more responsible.

But there is a difference between taking into consideration the needs of others and taking responsibility for their reactions!   Perhaps we ought all to do the first, but not the second.  In the end, other adults are responsible for how they react to our dress and our bodies.  To say otherwise is to treat our brothers and sisters as infants.  To make women equally responsible for helping men avoid lust suggests that grown men are akin to children in need of guidance and protection from watchful mothers.  Telling women that "you ought to know what men will think when they see you in that" sends a disastrous message: women need to save men from themselves, because men lack the will, the self-control, and the maturity to avert their eyes and redirect their very thoughts.  Though many men have allowed their "self-control" to atrophy, the fact that the muscle is weak from disuse doesn’t mean it can’t be built back up. And if we insist that women do the spiritual "heavy lifting" for men by taking responsibility for men’s lusting, that "will muscle" will stay spindly and underdeveloped.

To borrow Jose’s language, to be a provocateur is a conscious and willful act. To allow oneself to be provoked is also, in the end, a conscious and willful act.   Deliberately attempting to provoke a married or otherwise committed person into lusting for you is, I think, genuine sin.  But dressing for comfort or for aesthetic enjoyment without the intent of seduction is not sin, regardless of how those who view you happen to respond. 

The real meaning of modesty: “coveting” and “kosmios”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 17, 2006
in Christianity, Clothing and Fashion, Modesty, Sexuality and Vanity
. 24 Comments

Looks like another hot and humid day in Southern California.  I have the same classroom for all three of my summer courses, and it is exceedingly well air-conditioned.  Many of my poor students who dress for the heat end up shivering in the freon blast.  I’ve always suggested that they layer a down jacket over swimwear — the only way to be truly prepared for the unpredictable nature of our college’s ancient heating and cooling system.

I’m thinking more about modesty this morning.  I wrote about the topic last Thursday, primarily in response to the pastoral letter from the Catholic Bishop of Amarillo on women, dress, and attending mass.

I never finished the koine Greek classes I started, but I do know enough to know that the word the New Testament uses  that is usually translated as "modesty" is kosmios.  Kosmios generally means "orderly" or "proper", neither of which are helpful words in clarifying skirt length!  Given the subjectivity of what it is that different cultures and different individuals regard as "proper", it’s hard to find evidence anywhere in the New Testament that suggests a clear standard for how much skin women were to reveal.

But one aspect of modesty is well-covered (pun intended) in the New Testament: the importance of avoiding displays of wealth. In fact, the New Testament only explicitly defines immodesty not in terms of revealing flesh but in terms of ostentatious displays of property.

1 Timothy 2:9: I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes…

Gold, pearls, and expensive clothes are set up as the opposite of kosmios; the decency and propriety here is economic rather than sexual. 

1 Peter 3:3-4:  Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

These are the two most explicit references to how women ought to dress in the entire New Testament.  In neither instance is there any evidence of concern with dress as a symbol of sexual impropriety.  In both cases, the emphasis is on avoiding crass displays of wealth — particularly gold and expensive outfits.

But Bishop Yanta didn’t preach a sermon based on the New Testament understanding of modesty. Had he done so, he would have found no support for his position in the use of the Greek kosmios.  What he did is what so many folks across the theological spectrum regularly do: he took a word that had one meaning in the first century A.D. and reconfigured it to fit his own contemporary political agenda.  I’ll be the first to admit that many of us on the religious left do this; we are as sure that we know what the bible means when it speaks of "justice" as the right is when the bible speaks of "modesty."  In many cases, we’re likely flat-out wrong.

It’s telling that most churches in America are so attentive to issues of sexual propriety and deliberately unconcerned with economic display.  Imagine if Bishop Yanta had had the courage to preach a truly biblical homily about modesty!  Building on 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, he could have asked his congregants not to wear gold, platinum, or diamond jewelry to Mass!  He could have preached against the sin of wearing designer labels, or of pulling into the church parking lot in a 7-series BMW.   Such a sermon would have been far more closely based on the original use of kosmios!

In the comments below last Thursday’s post, we’ve been debating back and forth as to whether or not women have a responsibility to dress themselves in a way that will "protect" men from lusting.  For both biblical and psychological reasons, I’ve argued "no".  But for the sake of discussion, let’s suppose I grant the conservative case that women are at least partially responsible for the lust their bodies arouse.  If that’s true, is not the well-dressed rich man equally responsible for the envy he arouses with his Rolex?

Bishop Yanta quoted the Commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife". If you read his sermon, that’s the only kind of coveting he refers to.  But Exodus 20:17 reads:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Bishop Yanta is engaged in the classic modern conservative mistake: elevating sexual sin to a level of greater concern than economic injustice.  The Commandment makes it clear that coveting one’s neighbor’s wealth (symbolized by house and donkey) is as great an offense to God as coveting his spouse.   In modern terms, there is no theological difference between staring longingly at someone’s jewelry or brand-new car and staring longingly at the exposed body of the woman in front of you at the altar rail.  Both are acts of coveting — but the good bishop, like most theological conservatives in this country, comes close to giving a free pass to those of us who want to indulge our materialist fantasies.   The longing for someone else’s body is labeled the sin of lust, while the longing for someone else’s car is refashioned (in the modern American heresy) into praiseworthy ambition!  That’s just rotten exegesis, Bishop Yanta.   If you’re going to preach on kosmios, know what the word means!  And if you’re going to preach on coveting, preach the entire commandment, my brother!

As some unknown wag put it, the great conservative American mistake is to suggest that "the sins of the pelvis are greater than the sins of the pocketbook."  But a close reading of either testament of Scripture suggests that our forefathers and foremothers in faith considered the display of wealth to be at least as egregious as the display of the body, if not more so.  And they considered the longing for material possessions to be as sinful as the longing for one’s neighbor’s partner.  Though a few churches (like the Mennonites) generally preach a holistic understanding of modesty, one that embraces both the sexual and the economic, too many leaders are like the bishop of Amarillo: obsessed with the thongs that creep up over the backsides and out of the low-rise jeans of young female parishioners, and blind to the watches and rings that adorn the fingers of their parents.

A good bishop gets it dead wrong: more on women’s clothing, male desire, and God’s gift of self-control

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 13, 2006
in Body, Christianity, Faith, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Modesty and Sexuality
. 28 Comments

Continuing our theme of modesty, male weakness, and women’s clothing, Jill at Feministe links to this unfortunate letter by Bishop John Yanta of the Catholic Diocese of Amarillo, Texas: Modesty Starts with Purification of the Heart.  Here goes:

This time of the year, I (and am sure many of you also) hear complaints about a lack of respect and reverence for the house of God, the sacredness of the Lord’s presence in the liturgy, and lack of respect for others and the lack of consciousness of the battle for purity in which the opposite sex finds itself even while attending Sunday Mass.

Immodesty in dress is governed by two citations from God’s Law:

1) The Ninth Commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Exodus 20:17);

2) Jesus said: “Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).

To live our daily Faith as children of God (baptism), disciples of Jesus, and temples of the Holy Spirit, we are faced with moral choices constantly, many times a day. Conscience can either make a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law, or on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them (CCC: Catechism of the Catholic Church #1799).

Dressing or putting on one’s clothes is a moral act and wearing them is a moral act. There are different appropriate modes of dress for different occasions, e.g. in the privacy of our home, with our spouse only or with our children in our home, at work or school, in mixed company, at the lake or swimming pool, grocery shopping, at church, etc.

I don’t know where the good bishop got his theology degree.  But his choices from Scripture do not support his thesis! Both the Commandment and the passage from Matthew 5 address coveting and lust; both place the onus for avoiding lust solely on the one who is lusting, not on the object of the desire! 

Where, oh where in Scripture does Jesus say: "Women, attend to your dress that you may keep your bodies concealed and not distract your brothers"?  Did I miss that verse?  Is it perhaps in one of the Gnostic Gospels?

Jill, writing from a secular perspective, does a decent job of fisking Bishop Yanta’s letter.  But it’s vital that Christian men reject the bishop’s shoddy exegesis.  (I’m still enough of a Catholic to feel awkward about criticizing someone who carries the crosier).  What I find so compelling about the issue of lust in both the Old and the New Testaments is that women are not held accountable for male distraction and desire.  While secular culture does expect the male flesh to be weak, Christ Himself calls us to personal holiness — and that holiness is in no way, shape, or form contingent upon the behavior of even the most scantily clad of our fellow congregants.   The bishop quotes a homily given by Father Dominic Mary; that priest opined:

“To knowingly and intentionally dress like this (scantily) is sinful, and can be even seriously sinful, because one can become a temptation to sin for other people. We are all weak and can easily fall into many sins of impurity by someone else’s immodesty."

Let’s hear the Scripture to go with that assertion, Father Dominic!  I know, it’s dreadfully Protestant to demand Bible verses, but for heaven’s sake, the good father’s inverting the whole Gospel!  Bishop Yanta reaches with a reference to Galatians 5:26, which refers to "provoking another" (the only two words from the passage Yanta quotes).  But read in context, it’s particularly inappropriate to pull from Paul.   Let’s add in the four previous verses:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

The warning against "provoking" refers to being "conceited", while the previous verses (the bold is obviously my own) better capture the Christian case that to live in the Spirit is to have conquered one’s passions and to have the capacity for self-control.   Paul ought not be misused to hold women accountable for a male refusal to embrace this vital gift of the Spirit.

Sometimes, I hear my fellow Christians quoting Christ’s warning against "causing another to stumble."  I’ve often heard that verse used to justify insisting upon public modesty; many a woman in conservative churches has been explicitly warned that her breasts or legs, if not adequately covered, might lead a man to stumble.  But we’re off course if we use that famous line in this regard; Jesus uses the phrase only in regards to small children — not to adults:

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.

Well, unless a woman can be convinced that the grown man staring down her blouse counts as one  of the "little ones" to which the Lord refers, Mark 9:42 ain’t much use in making a case for women covering up.

Am I suggesting that we ought not have any standards for churchgoing attire?   Well, I’m a shorts and t-shirt guy myself.  I know better than to confuse corporate attire with genuine reverence, though I have no problem with those whose sense of worshipfulness is heightened by putting on their "Sunday best."   (On matters like this, I think Paul’s word in Romans 14:2 is applicable — to each his own.)  But whether the woman across the aisle from me is young and comely or wizened by age, whether she is in a miniskirt or wearing hijab, my eyes and my thoughts are still under my control — a control that is one of the promised gifts of grace.   I will not be tempted beyond what I can bear, and if it seems I am, the fault is mine — and mine alone. 

I’m in an ornery mood today.  Perhaps it’s the heat.  Perhaps it’s lack of sleep.  (Perhaps it’s  as my Kabbalist friends say, and starting today we’ve entered the three most negative weeks of the year, culminating on Tisha B’Av.  But that’s another topic.)   But honestly, I’m angry when my fellow Christians, men in positions of great leadership, seriously distort the radical message of our faith.   If our faith is so shallow that it can be rocked to its core by a bra-strap or a bikini, then we need to reconsider our receptiveness to grace itself.

Biology and bladders, excuses and explanations: why I’m tired of hearing about testosterone

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 7, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Modesty and Sexuality
. 191 Comments

It’s blazingly hot.  After several weeks of light exercise as I coped with grief over Matilde and my father, I’m easing back into regular working out.  I’ve boxed and Pilate-ed today, and am ready for a long, steamy run up some local mountain tomorrow morning.  And somehow, I need to work in time to watch tennis, cycling, and World Cup.  Viva Italia and all that.

The comments below Wednesday’s post on the "sausage casing girls" article are revisiting familiar territory: the interplay of women’s dress and men’s "hardwiring".   "Perplexed", for example, writing about men’s ability to control the urge to stare at women’s bodies, says

I think it’s more about a hardwired response in men - it’s an arresting sight - something men are compelled to view, often against their better judgement.

Just yesterday, I was talking to one of the guys I know well at my boxing gym.  He’s just about my age, and is very, uh, single.  He’s fond of rhapsodizing about the virtues of promiscuity, repeating over and over again that it’s "natural" for a man to want many partners and to become dissatisfied with monogamy.  My boxer friend, like Perplexed and countless other folks, insists that male sexual behavior is rooted less in culture and more in biology.  Rarely do any of these fellows have a sophisticated understanding of physiology, but they often will make noises about testosterone, the Y chromosome or some other aspect of our DNA.  Regardless of the biological details they reference, the point is always the same: men are "hardwired" to stare, ogle, lust uncontrollably, cheat, what-have-you.  Call it the "all men are dogs" or the "I can’t help it, it’s my nature" excuse. 

I’m not a scientist.  I have only a college-educated layperson’s understanding of hormones and genetics.  But I have no intention in debating science with those whose understanding of the field is more sophisticated than my own.  I may have a hubristic streak, but I know my limits!  For the sake of discussion, I’ll concede that testosterone and the Y chromosome have a real impact on male sexual desire.  I won’t question the hard-wiring.

What I do question as a pro-feminist man is whether our "nature" is ever an excuse for poor behavior. It’s one thing to acknowledge the very real presence of physiological factors that influence our wants; another thing altogether to suggest that men have little or no control over how they respond to those influences!   What I find so exasperating is that so many men confuse an explanation for an excuse, denying their own ability (or that of the "average man") to resist and control those impulses.

I wasn’t born knowing how to control my bladder.  It’s natural for me to pee on myself whenever the need occurs; it’s what I did for the first two years of my life (and, intermittently, a bit beyond, but that’s another story!)  I drink lots and lots of caffeine these days; my bladder gets full quite often.  The urge to pee isn’t in my imagination — it’s a biological reality!  But from an early age, I was taught that there was an appropriate time, place, and manner for relieving myself.  As a child, I was taught that I could master the very real, very powerful, demands of my body.  I often go out to coffee with friends and colleagues, and sometimes they buy me very big ("Venti") drinks.  It is natural that within under an hour after consuming all that liquid, I need to pee very badly.  But it would be absurd if I blamed my friends, or Starbucks, for "making me need to pee";  I’d be laughed at if I wet myself and then claimed I had no control over my bladder.  I am convinced that when my commenters suggest that men "can’t help but stare" at a woman’s exposed breasts or legs or bottom, they’re making just as indefensible an argument.

In my avocational work with teen girls and boys in youth groups, I never, ever try and talk them out of the reality of sexual desire.  (Indeed, one important task of progressive youth work is acknowledging the biological reality of female lust, a subject that tends to unnerve a surprising number of young and not-so-young folks.)  I’m happy to have "my kids" share what they’ve learned in science classes about hormones and chromosomes and their influence in our lives.  Hear me on this, readers: a feminist theory of male accountability and an honest understanding of biology are not incompatible!  But once we affirm the very real power of human desire, we work to refute the myth that desire alone justifies action.  Even at sixteen, in the midst of the tempest of puberty, sexual self-control is as real a possibility for young men and women as control over urination.  The difference is that they’ve been taught from near-infancy that the latter is a biological impulse they can master, while far too many young boys are taught that it is women who are responsible for managing male desire.

It would be absurd to deny that many young men are aroused by the sight of an attractive woman wearing revealing clothing.  What pro-feminists deny is that women are somehow responsible for male arousal.  A girl in a mini-skirt is no more responsible for her classmate’s lust than the barista at Starbucks is for my full bladder!  I have as much control over where my eyes linger as I do over what I choose to drink; whatever physiological reactions I experience as the result of either activity (drinking coffee, ogling) are my responsibility and mine alone. While in other fora we can have long and interesting discussions about dress codes and "appropriateness", pro-feminist men ought to be adamant that whatever the imperious demands of our flesh, the human will is stronger still.

“What was she thinking?” A long post on feminism and the “sausage-casing girls”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 5, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Modesty, Sexuality and Vanity
. 40 Comments

Robin Abcarian had a rather snarky piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times about what she calls the "Sausage Casing Girls", those young women who dress in styles entirely too small and tight to fit their bodies: Letting It All Hang Out.  It begins:

THE Sausage Casing Girls are everywhere this summer, their muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans, clothes shrink-wrapped around fleshy bodies that look as if they’ve been stuffed — like forcemeat — into teensy tops and skintight pants.

I don’t know about you, but I became instantly defensive and wary after that sentence.

Still, Abcarian does touch on something important:

One is tempted to applaud the Sausage Casing Girls; after all, Southern California is an epicenter of body consciousness, and here they are thumbing their noses at the idea that they must be whippets or Lindsay Lohans to wear the current styles, which for the last several seasons have been exaggeratedly body-hugging and skin-revealing. Perhaps all that self-esteem building has finally paid off.

But this phenomenon does not appear entirely to be about self-acceptance and the conscious abandonment of repressive physical ideals. It is far more complicated than that. Yes, there are plenty of young women who can confidently say that they are happy with their less-than-svelte shapes — and that is to be applauded. But there are many others who in the rush to be fashionable are unable to admit that they are larger than they wish to be, or that their bodies just don’t look good in the clothes they are choosing. Instead of reveling in their big, beautiful bodies, many girls instead are deep in denial, pouring themselves into clothes that are putting them in a python squeeze.

I hear this sort of discussion all the time from my students and my youth group teens.  Call it the "What was she thinking?" phenomenon, after the question that so many young women pose when they see a peer wearing clothes that, to their mind, are much too small for her body.   On this blog, I’ve regularly made the case that "Sisterhood is easier in winter", and yesterday’s Abcarian article is a fine case study of that unfortunate truism.  When the weather turns warmer and clothing styles become more revealing, many women do become more energetic in the "verbal policing" of the clothing choices of their peers!

Whether she’s aware of it or not, Abcarian is engaged in a classic behavior: substituting supposedly objective judgment about aesthetics for the less socially acceptable (but still ubiquitous) condemnation of fat and revealing clothing.  In other words, the progressive Los Angeles Times wouldn’t print a similarly long article in which the author decried miniskirts and tube tops as fashion choices for adolescents; that sort of op-ed might only be found in a conservative magazine.  But the Times is perfectly happy to run a long piece which, in only somewhat sympathetic language, asks again that nasty sotto-voce question: "who does she think she is to think she can get away with that?"  For Abcarian, aesthetic ridicule ("muffin tops?") is an acceptable form of criticism because it’s rooted in supposedly value-neutral fashion sensibilities in a way that moral criticism is not.

Abcarian is right, however, about the dearth of choices that so many young women have for summer fashions.  Tight and revealing clothing, modeled by the likes of Paris Hilton, is easily found in malls and stores from Nordstrom to Wal-Mart.  And it’s certainly true that the social pressure to dress according to these fashions — combined with the sheer unavailability of other choices — means that a great many girls and young women will find themselves squirming and pulling and tugging to get their bodies into clothes that seem, objectively, to be too danged small.

Abcarian is also right about the huge psychological impact that sizes have on self-esteem, even when virtually everyone recognizes that the numbers used in women’s clothing are arbitrary and unreliable:

"Everyone wants to buy a small size, even if it looks terrible," said psychologist Nancy Etcoff, who directs the Program in Aesthetics and Well Being in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. "There is shame in buying sizes that are above 8, which some think is already a big size."

Etcoff said that one of her patients, a 16-year-old girl, was traumatized in front of friends when one held up a pair of her size 7/8 jeans and said, "You wear these? I could get two of me in here."

Both Abcarian and Etcoff suggest that young women’s attachment to numerical sizes is so strong that they will "deny reality" in order to fit into the size they think they ought to be.   After all, though the article doesn’t point this out, young women tend to self-describe using sizes: "I’m a 2" or "I’m an 8". You don’t hear those gals saying, "I generally wear a 6"; instead they frequently say "I am a 6."  The size becomes more than a measure of hips, waist, and inseam; it becomes a key component of identity itself. If a young woman wants to think of herself as a "4", for example, then, as Abcarian and those she interviews suggest, she may do everything in her power to squeeze into a "4" rather than wear a larger size.  The psychological cost of admitting that the smaller size doesn’t fit is simply, apparently, too high to pay.  Physical discomfort and the risk of public ridicule are thus less important than maintaining one’s self-concept as a 2,4,6,14, what-have-you.

So what’s the feminist answer to this problem?  Is it a problem at all? 

As a pro-feminist, I’m aware of the uneasy relationship between feminism and fashion.  There’s a tendency within the loosely organized feminist community to never criticize a woman’s clothing decisions.   The very notion that there might be an objective standard of beauty is one of which feminism is traditionally very critical; we who work in this field are understandably reluctant to judge women’s personal fashion choices.  We tend to save our criticism for the fashion industry and the media, while remaining deeply respectful of the personal sartorial decisions of women.  Hence my anger at the rather nasty (to my mind) way that Abcarian’s article begins.

But feminism does care about women’s physical and psychic comfort.    While we might dispute whether or not certain jeans styles are more appealing than others, we can easily agree that physical comfort for women is a fundamental feminist good.  We ought also to agree that body acceptance and good self-image are also laudable and important goals.  There isn’t a quick-fix solution that can provide young women with these comforts.  Simply encouraging young women to "cover up" and resist the imperatives of Teen Vogue doesn’t get very far.   It’s one thing to ask a thirty year-old woman to opt out of the "beauty myth"; another thing altogether for older folks to ask sixteen year-olds desperate for attention to also opt out and refuse to "play the game."  When we do that, we tend to come across as patronizing old people who "just don’t get" how intense the pressure to be fashionable and desirable truly is.

The first phase of the solution is clear: non-judgmental conversation.  Young women, perhaps particularly the so-called "sausage-casing girls", are not nearly as in the dark about what they look like as Abcarian imagines.  A few may be brimming with genuine self-confidence, but others are anxious and defensive and wary of condemnation, or worse, ridicule.  No matter how well-meaning older folks might be, saying "Honey, that just doesn’t look good on you" is only likely to reinforce that anxiety and defensiveness.  Giving young women an opportunity to open up, safely and without risk of judgment, is key.  Let them begin, as they surely will, by talking about "other girls" and their fashion decisions.  If the environment is safe enough, the conversation can gently turn to a young woman’s own self-image.

There’s a lot in the Abcarian article to discuss and unpack. As feminists, we must be careful to direct the brunt of our criticism not at young women but at the cultural and economic institutions that form and shape their ideals and their self-image.  At the same time, we must work with these young women to help them resist and respond to deeply unhealthy messages about their bodies. And we’ve got to find a way of doing that that will be heard and received.  That will mean doing what Abcarian could not do: suspending our own culturally-shaped aesthetic sensibilities, biting back our own well-meaning criticism, and actively listening to the concerns, desires, and fears of the young women with whose bodies we are apparently all so concerned.

More on bare chests and privilege

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 16, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness, Chinchillas, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Men's Movement and Modesty
. 43 Comments

I’ve got one eye on the Mexico-Angola match, and another on the computer.  Once I finish this post, I will dive into some serious grading.  I’m still wracked with sudden and intense bouts of grief over Matilde, but that is to be expected.  No one said this would be an easy time.  (I can say that we may be adopting two older chins later this year from Michigan, but that is still tentative.  We are committed to these most extraordinary of animals, of course, no matter what — we just need much more time to celebrate Matilde’s life and cope with her unexpected loss.)

I’m taking a break from blogging about my views on teaching feminism; my attempts to explain (even when written after considerable reflection) only seem to exacerbate the gulf between my weltanschauung and those of many other feminists whose work I respect. (Violet’s response to yesteday’s post is here.)   We can continue to be allies even while we mystify each other, and I remain happy to be provoked and challenged by those whose ultimate goals I believe I share.

It seems an eternity ago, but it’s only been a week since my "Hey, put a shirt on!" post.  I did want to address an important point made in the comments beneath that post made by Helen.  She writes:

Frankly, I’m offended by men running shirtless, although it does depend on the situation (it really pisses me off in town but if I were out in the country or mountains I might not be as bothered, I don’t know). It’s just a smack in the face that I have to be so careful about what I wear and I’ll still get hassled, whereas there’s some guy running around half naked and confronting me with his naked chest. Of course, I’m not forced to look at him, but a mostly-naked person out of place (in a sea of clothes, sometimes) is likely to attract your attention before you look away.

I am curious as to how the expression "your rights end where mine begin" fits into this. I think you could argue that a man’s shirtlessness does actually infringe on other people’s rights and thus it’s not entirely unexpected that some people will respond negatively. I just try and ignore it when I see it and I’m not defending the person in the car who should have kept his comments to herself, but I thought I’d share my opinion on why that might have bothered her (especially since it was a woman).

Helen makes an important point.  As a man, I can (legally) run shirtless.  I run shirtless because it’s much more comfortable, particularly on longer runs, to do so.  I’d rather be a bit too cold than a bit too warm, and I can do without all the chafing issues that even a Coolmax shirt presents on a long run.  (And don’t get me started on horror stories about bloody nipples.)

But women can’t run with a completely bare chest.  For many women — perhaps most — wearing at least a jogging bra is essential for comfort.  But it’s possible that there are women who would be quite comfortable running entirely bare-chested, but aren’t allowed to do so thanks both to laws about public nudity and to cultural prohibitions.  Leaving the sport of distance running aside, it’s clear that there’s a double standard when it comes to the exposed chest in our culture.

One of the things about privilege is that it isn’t always enough merely to recognize it; one has to be willing to renounce it.  If I read Helen correctly, she’s suggesting that male feminists should think twice about running about bare chested  — not for aesthetic reasons, but for reasons of solidarity.  Until women have the same freedoms that men do, men should — whenever reasonably possible — avoid taking advantage of unearned masculine privilege.

I can think of a clear parallel to gay marriage.  I know two straight couples who have told me that they aren’t going to get married until same-sex marriage is legalized.  These couples believe that heterosexuals should make a conscious effort to renounce "special privileges" as an act of solidarity with their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.  As one of my friends in one of these relationships put it to me, "You can’t simultaneously work to end injustice while benefiting from injustice.  While we all as privileged Americans benefit from injustice in ways we can’t avoid, we do have a choice whether or not to legally marry — and it’s a choice we should choose not to make until that choice is available to everyone."

I think that’s what Helen may have meant about men going shirtless in public.  I can wear a running singlet without too much discomfort; shouldn’t I be willing to do so in order not to enjoy a right that my sisters cannot?  On the other hand, it’s easy to take this to an extreme quickly: should I refrain from using a urinal in the men’s room because only toilets are available in the ladies’ loo? 

I’ll be running up the mountain bare-chested tomorrow morning, mind you, but I’m interested to hear what my readers think about naked chests and unmerited privilege.

“Hey, put a shirt on!”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 9, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Modesty, Sexuality and Sports
. 19 Comments

The run up Brown Mountain — through heavy mist — was a delight.  Just as I was reaching my car after the hard 13-miler, someone in a passing car yelled "Put a shirt on!"  (I always run shirtless if the temperature is over 50, not out of a desire to display my paleness but out of a commitment to comfort).  The words stung.  I don’t know if the yeller was critiquing my body, suggesting that it was the sort that shouldn’t be out shirtless, or if they were generally opposed to folks exercising bare-chested.  Either way, I was surprised at how much it hurt!  And it reminded me again of how much worse this sort of thing is for women.  Incidents such as this morning’s are rare indeed in my life — but they are ubiquitous in the experience of the women I know and run with.

Of all the nursery rhymes I grew up hearing, one repeats a great lie:

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.  Would that that were true!  For years, that rhyme led me to believe that I was oversensitive when I allowed other’s remarks to get under my skin; it also (in my younger days) made me less sympathetic to those who complained about the pain of verbal harassment.  But I’ve come to recognize that that simple rhyme repeats a great lie.  Broken bones often heal faster than broken spirits.

I cheered up in Pilates; my wife and I do a joint training session, and my wife — soccer fanatic that she is — brought a small portable television which she managed to watch even while doing our usual demanding contortions on mat and "reformer."  And as I sit here typing this, Ecuador has just scored a goal against Poland, and my wife is outdoing Andres Cantor in her vocal reaction… It’s going to be an exciting month….

Thinking about women, sports, and hazing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 17, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Feminism, Modesty, Sexuality and Sports
. 8 Comments

There’s been a fair amount of attention this week to the issue of hazing and women’s college sports teams.  Earlier this week, a website published a number of photos depicting the Northwestern University women’s soccer team conducting an initiation for new players.  The women are shown being forced to chug beer, give lap dances to members of the men’s soccer team, all while various words and pictures are drawn on their bodies.  This morning, the same site has pictures from a dozen other colleges and universities, almost all of which focus on hazing/initiation rituals involving various women’s sports teams.  All of the colleges involved have anti-hazing policies, and all (naturally) prohibit underage drinking.

I’m not giving the name of this particular website, though national newspapers like the New York Times have linked to it and it’s easy enough to find.  I looked at a few of the pictures on the site and then chose not to view any more.  In the national media, the faces of the women involved are obscured, but on the site that the Times linked to, they are in full view.  Though it was obviously foolish for the teams involved to photograph their hazing rituals and post the pics on the internet, I grieve the embarrassment the young women involved must now be feeling, and I have no interest in staring pruriently at the various details of their humiliations.

What I’ve seen tells me what I already knew: the kind of hazing that goes on on contemporary college campuses is more or less identical to what happened when I was an undergrad twenty years ago.  The essentials, then and now, are these: forcing the pledges/initiates/rookies/frosh to undress (at least to their underwear); forcing them to consume large amounts of alcohol; asking them to "perform" sexualized dances in front of members of the opposite sex.  The Northwestern University women were required to give lap dances in their underwear in front of members of the men’s soccer team — while the Quinnipiac College men’s baseball team is shown on the site stripping and dancing for a group of unidentified women.

As an adult who struggled with problem drinking for years, I am of course greatly concerned by any ritual that requires that folks consume large amounts of booze in a short period of time. I have no sympathy for those who see binge drinking as an essential rite of passage; I’ve seen the damage it can do to lives and bodies. 

As a feminist, I’m grieved to see that ritualized sexual humiliation is still such a vital mainstay of initiation practices.  It’s not new, of course.  When I was a freshman at Cal, I flirted with the idea of joining a fraternity (one to which my grandfather, a great-grandfather, and numerous uncles and cousins had belonged). In the end, I decided not to, both for reasons of principle and because I worried that I wouldn’t fit in with the fraternity culture.  I had lots of friends in the Greek system, however, and I heard their initiation stories.  One of my former wives was a Pi Phi in the late 1980s; she told me that she had never gotten over her hazing.  She recalled being stripped down to her underwear, and all the "actives" (members) of her sorority took magic markers and wrote on her body — circling areas that they thought "needed work" and writing commentary about her attributes.  She said she laughed at the time — but years later, she would still sometimes gaze at those parts and think about the criticisms and obscenities she had seen written there.

I’m a fierce fan of intercollegiate sports.  With the possible exception of golf, I love to watch men and women play any NCAA sport.  (I’m very excited about the upcoming NCAA women’s college world series, as I have a particular heart for softball.)  I know the good that sport has brought to my life, and I’ve seen it bring discipline, health, camaraderie, and character to a great many young people.  I’m not one of those professors who "goes easy" on the jocks, but I’m not someone who wishes that intercollegiate athletics would disappear, either.  And as a fan of sports — and former athletic department tutor at UCLA –  I’ve got at least a passing understanding of how vital it is to build close community on a team.

I think initiation rituals can be very valuable.  Requiring frosh or rookies to go through a series of steps before they are accepted as full-fledged members of the team is healthy.   It is axiomatic that to suffer together is one way to build community.  But not all suffering is the same!  Forcing the frosh to run extra laps or do extra push-ups or go through a weekend of brutal fitness camp can build community and fellowship just fine — all without a drop of alcohol and without a single lap dance.  Requiring frosh to put on silly skits that don’t involve vulgar humor, nudity, or intoxication can have a similar bonding effect.    The problem is not with the nature of sports teams/fraternities/sororities, or with initiation rituals — the problem is with a culture that connects that valuable process of initiation to ritualized sexual degradation and binge drinking.

One of the reasons that this sort of hazing troubles me so much is because it is so fundamentally antithetical to what sports can be in women’s lives.  The beauty of sports for women, at the high school or college level, is that it teaches women that their bodies are not merely decorative objects to be gazed at.  It teaches women that their sexuality and their potential reproductivity are not their greatest assets.   Sport — at its best — teaches girls that their bodies are strong, and powerful; it teaches the athlete that she can transform and control her flesh for her own delight as well as for the good of the team. It turns objects into subjects, turns the passive active.  I’ve seen sports from softball to track to soccer to basketball do that for countless women and girls in my life, and I rejoice in it.  And thus I grieve when I see young female athletes forced to use their bodies so differently — as objects of public, sexualized ridicule — all for the sake of creating community that could so easily be created in a different way.

I’m not at all sure that suspension is warranted in the case of the Northwestern women’s soccer team (and the other teams revealed today), but clearly, greater oversight and education are badly needed.

“Nothing To Lose But Your Clothes”: taking on an editorial about stripping

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 27, 2006
in Body, Faith, Feminism, Modesty, Pasadena City College and Sexuality
. 51 Comments

I don’t always read the weekly Pasadena City College Courier, but I did pick up a copy last Thursday. On page two, I found this "Soapbox" editorial from the opinion editor of the paper, Don Martirez: Deep in Debt? You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Clothes.  It’s a brief piece, encouraging financially strapped PCC students to consider stripping:

According to the Department of Education, "84 percent of black students and 66 percent of Latino students graduate with debt. And 39 percent of all student borrowers graduate with unmanageable levels of debt." This means that about half of the people who graduate from school will never crawl out of debt because they owe too much. Imagine being bankrupt for the rest of your life.

Why not get ahead while you still can, before college ends? This is America for Christs’ sake, the land of the free, and you’re free to make money if you really want to.

You’re young, talented, outgoing, and want to get paid. Stripping isn’t illegal. People are killing and dying for the same thing strippers do every night — and that’s bringing home the bacon… Stripping doesn’t have to be a long-term career move, it could be a short-term gig, a simple means to a goal, something to pay the rent while you’re focusing on school. Student by day, stripping b