Why Modesty?

This is an awesome Catholic guy named Jason Evert talking about why modesty is important from a guy’s point of view. Very insightful. Check out his other videos too– this guy rocks! -Jen

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By Jennifer Loch
Latter-Day Saints believe in covering the shoulders for modesty, and I recently received this email from an LDS teen:

“Ok, so i still have a hard time staying modest. Especially when summer is around. I went shopping yesterday and i found it so hard to stay away from racerback styled tank tops. I don’t understand why its such a big deal, i could see spaghetti straps but racerbacks? Its not like guys get attracted to our shoulders like more feminine parts of a womens body right? I just don’t understand, i’ve fallen in to the habit of just slipping on a tank top everyday for school, putting on a sweatshirt for seminary and taking it back off the moment i get back in the highschool building. Even my mother has started noticing. Please help me understand why tank tops are so bad?”

I felt the same way when I was a teen. I wore tank tops, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t supposed to wear them. It’s not that wearing a tank top is so bad; there are worse things you could be wearing, or doing for that matter. Tank tops are comfortable and I loved wearing them. But I also felt guilty that I wasn’t following the rules of my religion and it crept into my mind that I could break other rules as well, so it lead to other things.

I’ve heard that you should think of it like a test; it’s a part of the religion that you believe in, so you believe that God is asking you to do it. He’s asking you to do something that you might not understand, but if you obey him you are proving your obedience to him, and he will bless you for it.

If you’re looking to date a good LDS guy who goes on a mission and lives the gospel, he will be looking for the same in you. If a guy like that sees that you aren’t following the rules, he might think that you don’t live the gospel in other ways and you aren’t the kind of girl for him.

Shoulders may not be as sexy as cleavage, but men do find them attractive. It’s not something they think about, it’s more subconscious. Now that I’m married and wear garments, my husband has said on several occasions when I wasn’t dressed or was wearing a swimsuit “Oh, your shoulders! I never get to see them when you’re dressed. I never thought about shoulders being sexy but now I see why garments cover your shoulders and back because they’re really sexy.”

And if you think about it, most outfits that are supposed to look sexy show your back and/or shoulders. Just think about what the female celebrities wear on the red carpet. It’s almost always something that shows the shoulders or back. When I wore tank tops, I always thought I looked better in them than in tops that covered my shoulders. “I have nice shoulders,” I thought. But it actually goes back to the fact that subconsciously we think of showing shoulders as more attractive, sexy or glamorous, and that’s why I thought I looked better in tank tops.

When I got married at 20, it was frustrating because I didn’t have much I could wear with garments. I wished I had prepared earlier by wearing the kinds of clothes I could wear with garments. I had to change my habits, get rid of some clothes, and start layering.

Sometimes I miss the cool comfort of a tank top, which makes me wish I hadn’t been spoiled by wearing them in the first place. But I still buy and wear tank tops; I just use them as layering pieces now. So you can still get use out of your tank tops while covering your shoulders. Just wear them over or under something that covers the shoulders instead of wearing them alone. Wearing a little shrug over a tank top can be a good place to start.

Hope this helps!     -Jen

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By Rebecca Reichl
Sometimes modesty is just frustrating. Do you ever feel like you’re just never going to be able to get it right? Do you ever wish that you could just not have to struggle with it? Do you ever think, “You know, it would really be nice if for once I could just go to the store and buy an outfit like a normal person?”

Me too. For me, modesty is one of those practical virtues that is so pretty in the ideal. If, lying in bed at night, I were to do word associations for “modesty,” the list would be so inspiring. Femininity. Godliness. Grace. Beauty. Elegance. Confidence. Chastity. The list goes on. In my head, modesty is a sign of maturity, a sign of a girl who cares for others, a sign of self-respect and self-worth. In my head, modesty is an ideal, an admirable achievement of a lovely woman.

And then . . . I go shopping. Then, I have to get dressed for school. Then, I have to go to a wedding. Then, I get frustrated.

Modesty isn’t easy. And, while it doesn’t have to be drudgery, sometimes it seems like life would just be a whole lot easier if I could just erase my beliefs and start over again.

It’s at this point in my moment of self-pity that I need to slow down and take a minute to remember why modesty matters in the first place.

There’s a reason that I associate all those wonderful words with modesty – it’s because they’re all true! The girl who is modest is beautiful. She is elegant, confident, feminine. She respects herself, and she respects those around her.

The heart of the question is – who am I doing this for? It’s not for your parents, or for your church. Ultimately, it’s not even for the guys around us. Dressing modestly is our chance to let purity shine through. It’s our chance to be confident in our femininity, without degrading ourselves into an object. It’s an opportunity to display maturity and to uplift those around us by showing the loveliness of a tasteful woman.

The next time you’re getting dressed or going shopping and start getting frustrated, give yourself a little pep talk. Look your mirror in the eye and tell that disgruntled girl staring back at you that modesty is beautiful. Modesty is feminine. And so are you.

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By Brianne Ogden
For as long as I can remember, Church has been a fashion show of sorts. Whether it was trying to dazzle the Priests or outshine the other Laurels, when Sunday morning rolled around, clothes went flying.

Also, for as long as I can remember, Sunday mornings have been a frantic, frenzied, chaotic couple of hours. It was thirty minutes in the shower, shaving my legs to perfection. An hour in my closet, inevitably resulting in half of the contents on the floor in a colorful mound. Forty-five minutes spent on my hair, straightening it or pinning it until my forearms ached. Matching eye shadows, the perfect belt, a few rings, a brooch, and on those particularly rushed mornings, closed toed shoes to cover up chipped toenails. And that was just High School.

When I entered college, I found myself in a completely different playing field. Living in Huntington Beach, California for my first year, I found myself encompassed in a virtual Vogue fashion spread. My first week at church, girls were walking into the stake center like models off the catwalk.

Pencil pinstriped skirts with silk designer blouses. Authentic vintage dresses from the 50’s. Four inch heels, patent leather, bright red. Gucci, Fendi, Prada. Perfect nails to match the headband, perfect headband to match the shoes, perfect shoes to match the skirt. Every young college girl with stunningly coifed, beach bunny blond curls.

And there I was, in my pleated forty-dollar skirt from Nordstrom, the one that always got me a compliment or two back at home. Only here—it was my Schwinn ten-speed compared to their luxury private jet.

From then on, it was an hour in the shower. An hour and a half on my hair, plus the two hundred dollar dye job. It was two hours every Saturday night painting my nails, carefully inserting fake eyelashes, and ironing that Armani blouse, that had me in debt for a month, to perfection. It was fret and time spent on color coordinating every last detail.

This process was enormously draining. By the time I settled in my seat at church, I was so uncomfortable. Nothing felt natural. It was a constant battle. I had to sit in a way that my dress wouldn’t wrinkle, but in a way that showed my most flattering angle. I couldn’t move my head too much, it wasn’t worth it to risk messing up my painstakingly pinned up hair. Taking all that into consideration, bending over to pick up the hymnbook or my scriptures off of the ground was out of the question.

What was I getting out of church? Sadly, this was a question that never made it past all of the superficial, shallow worries in my mind.

I am older now. Sometimes I won’t shave my legs for a week. If my nails are chipped, I’ll deal. But there will be a Sunday here and there that if I can’t find a flawless article to wear, I feel like crawling back into bed and sleeping until my wardrobe transforms into something more satisfactory.

A couple of weeks ago while in England with some friends, I was getting ready for church when I realized that I packed absolutely nothing suitable for church. When really I had a few options, only none of them were appealing to me at the moment. It wasn’t until my friend said something to me, that my whole entire perspective on the situation did a one-eighty. She said, “Heavenly Father does not care how stylish you are.” Such a simple notion. Why had it taken twenty-four years for me to realize it?

As young single adults, living in a fashion-soaked generation, it often feels like looking cutting edge is the only thing that matters. Sometimes we give up what we want most, for what seems important to us at the time. I gave up years of my life to that superficial little devil on my shoulder.

I went to church that beautiful day in England. My dress was a little less than stylish, a little less than cute. But for the first time in my life, I cared about how my Heavenly Father saw me, and not how all of my peers saw me. I felt utterly content.

Brianne Ogden attends Southern Virginia University, where she is currently studying philosophy and serving as the Editor in Chief of the school’s newsmagazine.

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