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I couldn’t wear black as a child. It was too sophisticated.
As a mother raising three daughters in today’s culture, I wish all I had to worry about was the color of their clothing. My poor sisters remember when all their friends were wearing pants with zippers while they were condemned to polyester and elasticized waist bands.
Zippers were masculine!
I first started thinking about modesty in regards to my children when my oldest, just shy of four, pointed out that the women on my aerobics video were practically naked. In between step-touches my mind exploded. I’m desensitizing my children in my own living room! Forget my little girls, I’m the innocent victim of the fashion industry! And I’m the mom!
Let’s face it, we are surrounded. We live in a sexualized culture. Forget the swimming pool. It’s in the mall at the lingerie stores, on posters, in music and MTV, on the DVD covers at the video store, magazine covers at the grocery store and even in our churches.
We can’t continue to stick our heads in the sand. I’ve found myself looking to others in the church for my standards, but sadly realized that in doing so, I was allowing my standards to slip. It may be up to you to draw the line and stand up for virtue and purity. Who can find a virtuous woman, indeed?
The obvious way to promote modesty (besides modeling it yourself!) is to point out the wrong and right way to dress. This doesn’t have to be a judgemental free-for-all. Make a big deal over how feminine and beautiful Mrs. So-and-so always looks, and praise your children for their right choices. Find them teenage role models who exhibit modesty. As they grow and become teenagers, spell out the reasons leaving no room for doubt.
If we don’t do more to advocate modest apparel, we’re selling our children over to lust. The church needs to produce Prince Charming’s motivated by love not lust, and chaste women who don’t promote visual adultery.
The fashion industry is beckoning, and modesty needs to ‘walk tall and carry a big stick’.
You are absolutely right. I see this tendency every day in my work (being a high school teacher). It almost seems like girls compete in showing more nakedness every day, and we as teachers are not supposed to react, because clothing is a personal matter !
My church is a very small congregation, and we do not have these kinds of problems, luckily for us, though one may notice some tendencies in bigger churches nearby.
There is one more aspect of this – the material one, because fashion is costly, and one often sees young girls saving their money by not eating properly.
I must sadly say that ‘modesty’ has become a very odd notion in this world of feelings and selfgratification…
Just my three pence 🙂
Anna
Sadly, society deems that we bare all. It is almost impossible finding clothes that nothing is being exposed. Luckily, at my church we don’t have that much of a problem, but sometimes, some girls do tend to dress a little riske.
I have boys and my worry is that they will not respect women because of the way they dress. My job is teach them to love them as Christ loves them.
Someone one said that we could change all that by refusing to buy things that are not right– and to a point they are right. But as the majority of society continues to encourage, promote, and glamorize those that show too much skin it will continue to be an area that Christian parents have to struggle to choose things that the children will like to wear that are still modest.
My daughter says that when she grows up, she’s going to have a clothing store that caters to the modest crowd! Great idea, huh. Of course, she is also planning on being a horse trainer, missionary, midwife…and wants a passle of kids!
An out of state friend of mine, said that they had to leave their church because of the short skirts the girls would wear sitting on stage with the choir. My friend has 6 sons, and her husband voiced his concerns over this attire and the undesirable “view” to their preacher, who decided not to do anything about it.