Modesty Is Always Beautiful

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “So what we saw at the airport, we saw scandal, 25 percent of the women half naked from the waist down, another 25 percent of the women clothed and might as well be half-naked in these god awful, sick things that I believe you ladies call yoga pants.  If you’re going to wear yoga pants in public, for heaven’s sake, wear a t-shirt or something around the crotch area, please.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  So what we saw at the airport, we saw scandal, 25 percent of the women half naked from the waist down, another 25 percent of the women clothed and might as well be half-naked in these god awful, sick things that I believe you ladies call yoga pants.  If you’re going to wear yoga pants in public, for heaven’s sake, wear a t-shirt or something around the crotch area, please.  There are young men out there that are ogling you.  They are being scandalized and tempted by this.  For Heaven’s sake, and for the sake of other people’s sanity and other people’s modesty and purity, put some clothes on.

Now, I may be a weirdo, but I view women in public with the yoga pants on as being naked from the waist – they, for all practical intents and purposes, are nude.  They are nude from the waist down if they don’t cover that thing.  Yet it doesn’t seem to matter.  No one is aware.  Folks, it is a 1/16^th of an inch thick piece of Lycra that separates us from full lower-body, public nudity.  It really doesn’t separate us.  Is no one traumatized by this?  What kind of a society does this?  What kind of society – how many of you heard Friday’s program with our movie review with Debbie Schlussel demanding to know, or asking me: Mike, you don’t possibly agree with what Jeff Daniels said?  America is the greatest country in the world.  No, it’s not.  There’s no proof for this.  I didn’t want to get into an argument over it, but most of what Daniels said in that clip is true, certainly about the younger generation.  Does it have to be this way?  Is this really the best we can do?  For Heaven’s sake!

Listen to this.  Writing in June of 2013 – I actually used this.  I’ve tried to get Ms. Stimpson on the program.  I can’t remember why we couldn’t get her on.  I actually read this back in June of 2013, back in the old station in the old country.  Many of you had inquired about it and were very excited about it and thanked me for bringing it to attention.

[reading]

Wondering how not to talk to young girls about modesty?

Then look no further than the New Jersey junior high that banned strapless dresses from its eighth-grade prom.

In late April, Sharon Moffat, the principal of Readington Middle School announced the ban, explaining that the dresses were “distracting to boys.”

Her explanation triggered a mini-media firestorm, with parents denouncing Moffat as sexist and bloggers indicting Moffat for “slut-shaming.” A dance scheduled at the school on April 26 was even canceled when a threat was made against Moffat’s life.

Where did such a seemingly innocuous decision go wrong?

Clothes reflect dignity

First, the school started the conversation by focusing exclusively on what’s good for the boys.

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“If we want women to dress in a way that reflects their dignity, we need to rethink the language we use,” explained Janet Sahm, co-founder of Verily Magazine. “We can’t pit women against men, simply telling girls they have to cover themselves for the sake of the guy.”

Instead, she said, a better conversation about modesty begins with understanding the reasons women dress suggestively in the first place.

“All women desire to be beautiful,” said Sahm. [Mike: Honey, you appearing half naked or naked from the waist down is not beauty. It’s shameful. There’s nothing beautiful about it.] “We desire to be seen as valuable, precious and worth fighting for. The way we communicate that is through the way we present ourselves.”

[inset]

Make It Modest

Problem: A low-cut top or dress.

Solution: Pair it with a camisole.

Problem: A dress/shirt that bares too much back or shoulder.

Solution: Pair it with a cardigan.

Problem: Jeans or pants too tight across the backside.

[Mike: Folks, I don’t know when this other trend – if you don’t have the yoga pants on – all the jeans today – I asked my daughter about this. Do they not make loose-fitting jeans any longer for women or for young girls? The jeans are now painted on with a spray paint can.]

Solution: Pair them with a long cardigan or tunic.

Problem: A skirt or dress that’s too short.

Solution: Pair it with leggings or skinny jeans.

[end inset]

That desire is good. After all, women are made in the image of God, who is beauty. But what’s not good is desiring the wrong kind of beauty — a beauty that equates “attractive” with “sexy” — then communicating that desire through clothing, which reflects that limited understanding.

“When you wear something that shows more body, it’s easy to get a quick reaction, a quick high. But it’s really only a shadow of what you’re looking for,” Sahm said.

And that’s where modesty comes in. [Mike: In case you don’t know, Americans, modesty is as virtue. Modesty and not bombing the Syrian Army and killing men in a war that’s not declared, in a country that we are not currently at war with, that’s an immodest act.  Apologizing it away and saying they shouldn’t have been there to begin with is another act of terrible pride and immodesty. These things are related.]

Modesty as a virtue

Contrary to what many a young girl (and grown woman) thinks, modesty is not a synonym for frumpy. It’s not about wearing burlap sacks and denying feminine beauty. Nor is it merely a list of fashion do’s and don’ts.

Rather, modesty is a virtue, one which recognizes that the Fall made men more prone to using women and women more prone to letting themselves be used.

[end reading]

Mike:  This is the thing, girls, ladies.  When women dress in these various states of undress and immodesty, they are asking, whether they know it or not – [mocking] “Well, there’s something wrong with the men.”  There is something wrong with the men.  You’re not assisting them by continuing to dress this way.

[reading]

Modesty helps a woman make choices about fashion, as well as about how to speak, move and interact with others, all so that the beauty of her whole person, not just the beauty of her parts, shines forth. [Mike: In the airport in Atlanta yesterday, I saw the ugliness of the parts. Boy howdy did I.] In that, the Catechism tells us, modesty affirms feminine beauty and awakens in others “a respect for the human person.”

“Modesty isn’t primarily a ‘no,’” summed up Sahn. “It’s a woman recognizing the depths of her own dignity and beauty.”

Starting young

[inset]

Buy Modest

Modest, but stylish clothing does exist. And you don’t have to look far to find it. [Mike: Then they give a list of retailers that – I’ll post this in today’s Pile of Prep. There’s a list, if you’re looking for vendors, where you can locate modest clothing for young girls. It does exist. You can find it.]

[end inset]

In a culture where even 6-year-olds strive to be sexy, cultivating that understanding of modesty in young women isn’t easy. Which is why Justine Schmiesing, a mother of seven who lives outside Pittsburgh believes the conversation about modesty must begin well before eighth grade.

“You can’t start talking about modesty when kids are teenagers,” explained Schmiesing. “Even when they don’t quite understand what the words mean, it helps to introduce phrases like, ‘That’s not modest’ or ‘That’s not appropriate’ and to talk about their body as a temple of the Holy Spirit.” [Mike: [mocking] “Mitter Church, you had to ruin it there. You had to bring your stupid Catholic catechism into it now. No wonder nobody wants to dress modestly.”]

Equally important, she added, is making the conversation about fashion choices a positive one that looks at how girls can choose colors, styles and sizes that help them look their best.

“So often, the girls dressing the most inappropriately are just copying what they see in the magazines,” said Schmiesing . . . [Mike: How many of you people remember the magazine that I read to you from, the one that had the story about the actor that was boasting and bragging that she had an abortion and how wonderful it was because it let her keep her job as an actress on television? That magazine was targeted to 13- and 14-year-old girls.]

For that same reason, both Sahm and Schmiesing agree that girls need to see other women setting a good example. [Mike: Well, don’t go to the Atlanta airport because you won’t see them.]

“So much with modesty is about showing, not telling,” said Sahm. “Women of all ages need to see women who exemplify modesty and live it in an integrated way, who are beautiful, fashionable and confident.” [Mike: I think that’s precisely right. You can be beautiful, fashionable, but modest.]

What that ultimately means is that if mothers and teachers, aunts and friends want to have a more constructive conversation about modesty than the one currently taking place in New Jersey . . .

[end reading]

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Mike:  This was written three years ago.  It’s only gotten worse since then.  I’m telling you, folks, I should have taken photographs, but then if I published the photographs of the naked-from-the-waist-down women that I saw cavorting about the Atlanta airport as if they were cavorting about a supermarket or their own homes, in front of their own husbands, in front of their own children – just think about that.  Does that make it any better?  If I posted the photographs, I’d scandalize some of you people.  You’d see them and say: Mitter Church, I can’t unsee that!

[reading]

. . . They have to understand that the source of their dignity and beauty isn’t their clothing size, but the God who created them and loves them. [Mike: The foundation of all graces that come from virtues is humility. This is all traced back to our society, our civilization’s seeming incapability of promoting, defending, and practicing humility. As St. Faustina wrote in her diary, daily almost: Lord, humility, humility, ever humility. I have not enough of it.] They have to recognize their own worth, seeing themselves as subjects to be loved, not objects to be used. And they have to dress and present themselves in a way that reflects all that.

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That doesn’t rule out talking about how immodesty affects men [Mike: That’s where I come in because I can tell you that immodesty affects men. I know a little bit about how to try and protect myself and my eyes and what I might think to do after I’ve been exposed to women who, for all practical intents and purposes, are naked or nude from the waist down. What about all the other 95 percent of horndogs meandering about that same airport that have no care for that? Not only do they not know how to do it, they don’t even think they should do it.] or establishing dress codes like the one set by the New Jersey school. As Sahm pointed out, “dressing more modestly can help you understand your dignity. Virtue can work its way from the outside in.”

But it does re-focus the conversation, helping women recognize, as John Paul II wrote in Love and Responsibility, that, “Modesty is good, first and foremost, for the woman herself.”

[end reading]

Mike:  If you’re listening to me on an app and you’re on the way to an airport right now, folks, and you’re going to go about an airport today, let me assure you, you can put my little monologue here to the test.  Let me assure you, when you take notice of it – you don’t even have to go to an airport.  Go to the supermarket today and you’ll see women and men showing up to shop for items in their pajamas, another fashion trend that Boxcar Willie would be ashamed of, would be horrified at.  You can put my theory into test.  When you’re aware – I think part of our problem in the Western world today is awareness.  We are so desensitized with all the hideous electronic devices that we’re all connected to and constantly staring at that we cannot conceive of the good, the true, and the beautiful, because all we’re looking at is pixels.  They may contain photographs of good, true, and beautiful things.  There’s nothing like actually seeing them, though, is there?  Where do you see these things at today?  Where are they?

End Mike Church Show Transcript