This is a post that I've been sitting on for quite a while now. I know that, thus far, this blog has been strictly a writing blog. But this is an issue that I feel strongly about, and I didn't think it would be reasonable to make an entirely new blog just for the sake of a single post (besides what would I call a new blog anyway). So with that said, here we go.
Petition to stop teaching the modesty lesson to young women as “you need to be modest so that the boys won’t be tempted”.
Seriously, it’s awful and it’s not doctrine. The big problem, though, is that people don't even realize how awful this kind of talk can be.
And for those of you who are thinking "what the heck is this girl talking about"-- you probably weren't raised a Latter-Day Saint, ergo never had the "modesty lesson". That's fine, and all you really need to understand here is that at some point in their church-going career, the girls get a lesson about the clothes that Latter-Day Saints wear, i.e. modesty.
Anyway.
When you teach the lesson like this, you teach a girl-- a young, impressionable mind-- that it is her responsibility to make sure that the boys are doing what’s right. You are teaching her that when a boy looks at her butt (which, let's be honest, will inevitably happen), then it’s her fault. You’re teaching her that if a boy says something about her body that makes her uncomfortable, then it’s her fault. You’re teaching her that if a boy touches her inappropriately, then shame on her, because she should have worn a shirt with a higher neckline. You teach her that she's responsible for Everyone.
And it might be Just One Lesson, and Not That Big Of A Deal. And, as a solitary case, it is, as they say, NABD (Not A Big Deal). But it's a mindset that we have come to accept in teaching young women, and I want it to stop.
The best way to get it to stop is, obviously, to teach the modesty lesson differently. But the thing is that I don't think certain people know how to teach it differently. So let's just sit back and just Think About It for a bit.
How About This:
Instead of teaching a girl that it’s her responsibility to keep boys’ minds out of the gutter, teach her that she should dress for nobody on earth but herself and that, frankly, the clothes she wears are nobody's business but her own. Teach her that her body is sacred, and that modesty is a way to respect that. A girl’s modesty is not between herself and a boy. It's not between herself and her Young Women leaders. It’s between herself and God.
And for crying out loud, enough with the phrase “modest is hottest”. Please don’t teach my future daughters that their only purpose in this world is to be hot.
Seriously.
