Plain and Simple

The other night my wife and I watched a movie called The 19th Wife, a tale based on events which occurred in a Mormon sect which still practices polygamy. It was broadcast on Lifetime (yes, I sometimes watch chic-flicks,) so the theme was the degrading of women trapped in polygamist societies. I was fascinated by the twisted theology, but really struck by the representation of the close-knit family structures (common among all Mormons) and the modest dress of the women.

Living in the Midwest, I am used to seeing the Amish in their buggies or on the streets, men in plain shirts with black trousers and women in pale blue or grey full-length dresses with long sleeves and high collars. These women stand out in modern western society, as do some Mormons, as fashion iconoclasts. More radically, Arab women, regulars on the nightly news these days, appear almost alien in their burkas. I am not a sartorial historian, but it seems that women in “civilized” societies have always appeared in public dressed in what I would call modest attire. ( I am consciously ignoring bare-breasted Polynesians and naked African bushwomen.)

The evolution of epidermal exposure in women took place quite rapidly. In less than one generation, roughly thirty years, they went from mostly covered to nearly naked. On the beaches and at poolside from the late 1960’s onward, women brazenly dress in small patches of cloth that would have brought about an arrest for indecent exposure scant decades ago. In modern media we get treated to displays of feminine flesh everywhere from the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to the Victoria Secret runway exhibitions. The early TV censors must be rolling in their graves.

Having raised two daughters and lived with one wife through the worst of the feminist unleashing, I continue to be troubled by what we Christians accept in women’s attire. I am a typical male (I think) in that I admit to finding the female form a pleasure to look at. I also know enough phychopathology to understand that erotic exposure is like an addictive drug: what starts with a little peek must ultimately descend into leering at complete display. Frequently pornography leads to criminal acts against women by frustrated men. No, not every Playboy subscriber ends up a rapist, but nearly every rapist has a history of pornographic dalliance. Sadly, the “community standards” measure of what is obscene no longer works in my opinion. Community standards have sunk to obscene levels.

Our terrorist enemies are despicable in their tactics, but not so far off in their opinion that modern society has fallen prey to the greater enemy of our souls. I am not lobbying for a return to Amish style dress or burkas for all women. I respect the Amish and Mormons (if not the Arabs) for holding the line on modesty. The Amish and their nineteenth century ways are not going to catch on anytime soon (unless our economy fails completely.) But those of us who hold more traditional beliefs could learn something from the radical fringes of our religions. The Apostle Paul cautioned against using freedom as license. How did we so casually cross that line?