Is There a Way to Talk About Modesty That Doesn't Objectify Women? Part 2

Defining Our Terms: Broadening the Scope of Modesty

Before we can actually talk about modesty, we have to do some work in defining terms. The thing about words is, their definitions change based on how people use them, even if their use of them is “incorrect.” Take the word “irregardless” : by all rights, this shouldn’t be a word because it contains the nonsensical, double negation of an “irr-” prefix and “-less” suffix. But, regardless, people kept using it, and now it enjoys a place in the Dictionary.

In its most general definition, modesty doesn’t refer to adequately covering our private, sexual parts. It has to do with having a demeanor of humility; not thinking too highly or drawing undue attention to oneself. Today, the term has come to almost exclusively refer to the covering of the private parts of our bodies (and especially, how much women cover their bodies). This is just part of how language works, and I’m not going to belabor the point too much, or insist that people stop using the word that way, but I do want to draw attention to it because many of our English translations of the Bible use the word “modesty” for the Greek word, αἰδώς.

Like the English word “modesty,” αἰδώς connects to the idea of shame, appropriate humility and self-effacement. When, in English, we ask, “Have you no sense of shame?” we’re getting at the sense of what this word means: an awareness of what is shameful versus what is honorable, and choosing to avoid things that would rightly earn us shame. 1 Timothy 2:9 uses this word when Paul is talking about women dressing with “modesty”:

I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

Now, if Paul ended his thought after “modestly, with decency and propriety,” it might be fair to think that there was a problem in the church with women coming to church in clothes that were revealing too much of their bodies. After all, first-century, Greco-Roman sensibilities certainly would have agreed that revealing too much of the body was shameful. But Paul goes on, elaborating on what he means by dressing “modestly,” and it actually has nothing to do with how many yards of fabric he wants the women of the church to wear.

Women’s clothing here is being censured primarily for its extravagance, which would have constituted an unseemly display of wealth. Gold, pearls and expensive clothes were clearly not something that everyone in the church could afford, and elaborate hairstyles such as would have been worn by wealthy women in the first century required the assistance of a slave to arrange. This is not the first time that the Scriptures get on women’s case for parading their wealth around through their clothing. In Isaiah, the haughty daughters of Zion are rebuked for indulging in an unseemly display of cosmetic luxury - luxury that they had obtained through the oppression of the poor (Isaiah 3:13-26). Rather than embarrassing the poorer women in the church by showing up decked out in gold and jewels, Paul wants the women of means in the church to have a sense of humility; “shame-facedness,” as the KJV translates it.

I want to point out that at no point in this text does Paul bring men’s struggles with lust into this conversation about modesty in women’s dress. As much as we might like to force this text into the modesty paradigms we’re used to, women simply aren’t being told to dress this way to “keep men from stumbling.” In fact, it seems very likely that other women are the victims of this kind of immodesty.

I also want to point out that since at least some of the members of the early church were slaves and the poor, there were probably women in the congregation who simply didn’t have adequate coverings. Think about how many times the Bible uses the idea of nakedness to convey poverty. In the modern world, where clothing can be mass-produced cheaply and there is a ready supply of excess clothing, in most countries (not all) even the poor have access to clothing that at least satisfy the demands of decency. This was not the case in the ancient world, where it was extremely time-consuming to manufacture clothes, and the poor were in very real danger of not being able to afford them. If there were women in the church who weren’t adequately covered up, it probably wouldn’t have been because they were “showing off their bodies.” This would have been all the more reason for the wealthy women of the church to adorn themselves with good deeds - perhaps following the example of Dorcas, who we’re told in Acts 9 made beautiful clothes for the women in her church - instead of with luxurious clothing and elaborate hairstyles.

Someone on Twitter yesterday quoted C.S. Lewis as saying that modesty is a form of charity. I agree with this, as I agree that all the virtues find their ultimate reason in the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” But given our modern definition of modesty, I’m afraid that what many people may understand by that, is that modesty is a way for women to show charity to men by protecting them from seeing anything that might excite sexual interest.

The problem is, women covering up does not solve the issue of male lust, but it does give men an avenue to domineer and harass women in the name of “purity”. And when the women and girls in a community cede their authority over their own bodies to the men who have appointed themselves as the community’s modesty tsars, they are actually opening themselves up to sexual predators. Grooming is a set of behaviors implemented by predators to prepare their victims to accept their abuse. One of the warning signs of grooming is when an individual exerts “undue influence or control” over the victim. Another way that sexual predators groom their victims is to discuss sexual topics with them. A hyper-fixation with modesty in a community allows a predator to do both of these things: exerting control over girls’ or womens’ clothing and appearance by holding “biblical modesty” over their heads, and at the same time openly discussing men’s sexual responses to seeing too much of the female body. Some of the most indecent speech I heard growing up, came from men who were explaining to me why women need to cover up.

According to the Bible, loving our neighbor through what we wear involves much, much more than adequately covering our sexual attributes. And yet, many Christian men want to narrow modesty down to how much women must cover, then center their subjective attraction to certain kinds of female bodies in certain kinds of clothing as the sole, determining factor in women’s choices about what to wear. In short, if a man experiences the feeling of sexual excitement, then the women in his line of vision must be dressed immodestly and should be expected to adjust accordingly … until the next time he feels sexual excitement, when it all starts over again. And this is a deeply problematic way of looking at modesty, even if it’s applied “in moderation.”

But, as much as I want us to gain a broader understanding of what modesty is, I don’t want to let semantics sideline the conversation that people are sincerely trying to have about how clothing, nakedness, privacy and sexuality relate to each other in Christian morality. I don’t want to pretend that the Bible has nothing to say about the privacy of human bodies, and the appropriate covering of ourselves. But in this series, I do want us to do some major overhauling of how and why we look at our bodies as private spaces.