Continuing our Lenten book club with Part Three! (The previous discussion can be found in the last two posts. The bolded words are the chapter titles.)
Against the Curing of Womanhood: We need to stop medicating women out of femininity (just as we need to stop “treating” little boys for being boys). Since the time that Shalit wrote this, the “cure” has stepped up considerably, and now includes the attempt to excise the girl right out of her body via puberty blockers and breast removal surgery.
One thing I really want to say is that girls are far, far too stressed out in our culture. The push to achieve is too much. Most people are not meant to achieve in the ways we ask of our children — and the ones who are meant to, will.
Another factor that Shalit just doesn't address is the effect of contraception on the female psyche. Attacking one's healthy reproductive system is just never going to end well, psychologically or any other way.
Modesty and the Erotic: Although this isn't a topic I would delve into too much, I think it's worth saying that women who embrace their traditional roles really do seem to have a lot more fun being with men and in their marriages. They also seem to have better friendships with other women.
What worries me about the conversations that I read and hear when girls and women are talking to each other outside of the modesty discussion — when they are just “amongst themselves” and assuming certain common factors of modern life — is how terrible they find the very things that ought to be delightful. Ordinary pleasures that women of another era waited for and then enjoyed are totally burdensome to women today. The quiet satisfaction of intimacy between two honorably joined persons is a mystery so deep now that it is simply unknown to most — they don't even suspect it exists.
Because they are expected to be so sexualized from the get-go, college girls speak of needing to get drunk in order to be able to have (not to speak of enjoy) sex. I know it's a daring thought, but what if remaining chaste until marriage actually removes this problem entirely?
Even seemingly innocent — yet constant — contact with the opposite sex creates deformations, and I believe that those of us who are committed to modesty on one level need to confront the deadening effect of having to tamp down one's normal, healthy instincts on our children whom we think we have protected.
The anecdote at the bottom of p. 178 has stuck with me ever since I read it about 20 years ago. It's the one about the rabbi who cautions the teenagers that it's “not kosher” to go off together, boys and girls, camping in the wilderness.
When they assure him that nothing untoward will happen, that “We've been doing this for years, we grew up together, we went to kindergarten together… we even share sleeping bags” — he responds in a way that is perhaps unexpected — but very wise:
“In that case, you don't need to see a rabbi… you need to see a shrink. You're in big trouble.”
What does he mean? It's like I have said before when I've written about purity: It's a good thing that young people have healthy sexual responses to each other! There's something very wrong if they don't! Something so wrong that it will cause mental illness.
And a lot of parents trying to oppose the current madness make this mistake. They are functional puritans and prudes, not lovers of chastity — at least, they have simply forgotten or repressed the knowledge of what it is or ought to be, to be a healthy, attractive, and vigorous young person!
There's a reason the church opposes co-education, especially as adolescence approaches. It's not only to prevent liberties from being taken. It's to ensure that boys and girls will be interested in each other when the time is right. You can see how there needs to be prudence even in families. Cousins are cousins — they are also boys and girls. We don't want them to be too familiar, but we also don't want them to shut down emotionally. The best thing is to observe the proprieties at all times!
Ironically, as Shalit points out, young people are rebelling against their libertine parents, “returning to even older rules — often, those very rules of modesty their own mothers once called sexist.” (P. 192)
Pining for Interference: Shalit makes the excellent point that the sexual revolution made it so that there is really nothing to look forward to. Divorce — even the possibility of divorce — takes away hope.
It makes sense that young people want their parents to interfere for their own good (just as it makes sense that there will be what I call “attitude” if only to make the interference seem really legitimate!). What do we want? A happily ever after! How will we get it? By following the rules built up over the millennia to protect us from the many and various forms of evil that the human heart can cook up — and actually, it's fairly simple: Keep sex for marriage, as something sacred:
“… But more significantly… as a way of insisting that the most interesting part of your life will take place after marriage, and if it's more interesting, maybe then it will last. And, the hope of modesty continues, if it lasts, maybe then you can finally be safe. Instead of living in dread, feeling slightly hunted, afraid someone will call us to account and abandon us, maybe then we can rest…. Modesty creates a realm that is secure from an increasingly competitive and violent public one.” (P. 212)
Beyond Modernity: For real solidarity with each other — and to protect our girls, we need to return to what Shalit calls “the cartel of virtue.” This concerns not only modesty in dress but also the conviction that sex belongs in marriage only.
I would suggest that we take to heart the danger represented by deadening. One can rein in one's unbridled passion, but I think we are seeing that awakening normal sexual feelings is difficult, precisely because one has gotten to the point of not caring.
In the time since Shalit wrote, it seems to me, looking at what girls actually wear, that the pendulum has gone way over towards just not being sexual at all — not overtly sexual but also not even sexual in a sublimated way.
One reason that leggings remain a fixture among women who in any other culture and time would be prime marriageable age (here I mean leggings and yoga pants full stop, no skirts or tunics) is precisely that they feel androgynous and yes, safe.
No amount of railing about how their tightness is provocative to men's imaginations will have any effect, because they don't feel that way. In a sense, the leggings-and-North Face-jacket phenomenon (and all its offshoots) is the perfect storm of the death of real chemistry between men and women that Shalit laments: It's un-sexy (or un-flirtatious) to women and pornographic to men.
Fashions (or lack thereof) signal something more serious: An apathy borne of just having to cope with too much stimulation on all fronts. We need modesty and we need it now!
bits & pieces
- A gripping story of the bank heist of the century.
- John Cuddeback with a thought-provoking post: Make Your Home Like a Renaissance City. (I highly recommend his blog for men, especially. ) I would say — It's not so hard to understand the connection between music and architecture (or design in general) — this was a standard way of thinking in medieval times. Music concerns harmony, which is a mathematical relationship that can be expressed in sound or in stone or paint. For the best explanation of this vital connection, I recommend David Clayton's book The Way of Beauty. (affiliate link)*
- Douglas Wilson on The Greatness of Insignificant Service — C. S. Lewis' Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. ~ This is a keen insight from the author of the article, one which I sensed but never put into words, about the main characters in the novel: “Mark is driven by a desire to get in, whatever the cost, and Jane is consumed by her desire to stay out, at all costs.” ~ And Wilson reminds us of an important warning from Lewis himself, which every parent should take to heart, and which forms the impetus for everything I write here, especially on education, and why my standards seem sometimes to be so impossibly strict when it comes to children's literature: “It must be remembered that in Mark’s mind hardly one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging.”
- Take a break from flogging your high schooler over five-paragraph essays, and enjoy this ultimately much more formative tour de force by Flannery O'Connor: Living with a Peacock. Yes, read it together! Yes, this is a way to write!
- A New Cathedral for Montenegro – Thoughts on the Architecture — a really breathtaking construction that is both traditional and creative.
- A solid meditation on spiritual growth during Lent from Debra Black.
- Imagine if you turned on your tap… and wine came out! This actually happened — in Italy, of course!
from the archives
- *I wrote about David's book here.
liturgical year
St. Matilda — and next week we have St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's! So be prepared!
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Carol Kennedy says
Leila, I was so struck by that story of the Rabbi as well! It reminded me of my days at an Uber-Catholic university where the young men and women were all trying hard to be good and knew where to draw the line (or approximately at least) on physical intimacy, and yet the dating/courtship/relationship situation seemed very broken. I can remember having discussions with young women there about what exactly “dating” was–a state of being? Or an activity? Since my own teenage years “dating” has been a state of being–“We are dating” means we have some sort of semi-committed relationship that others should not infringe upon. It becomes a sort of pseudo marriage–and outside the serious Christian circles most definitely assumed the full physical relationships. Inside those serious Christian circles it is like playing house–these couples spend all their time together, they are seen as a pair by there peers, and they are “off-limits” to the interest of others as if they were married. But they aren’t. My impression of my mother’s generation is that for her “dating” was an activity. You went out on dates with young men, they escorted you to a dance or took you out to eat. Eventually you might have a steady date, but that was often a lot less serious than we think of today–it might be the guy you could depend upon to take you to the dance. The pressure to choose and commit was a lot less and the woman’s modesty guided her as to what to allow–including how often or how many times in a row she dated the same man. But then the sexual revolution hit and it was assumed (though it wasn’t as true then as it is now) that you were intimate with your date. Suddenly, in more modest circles, dating several men was considered “sleeping around”, whereas 10 years earlier it might have been “I went to the dance with this young man and the next Saturday I went out for pizza with this other fella”–both situations being assumed to be above board and chaste. So, today’s seriously Christian youth live under this confusion. In a small Catholic college a date is practically an engagement (only slight exaggeration here). You went out to dinner? You are now “DATING” (state of being) and all the pressure is on. Young men often feel too pressured, young women often feel too desperate to please. When really they need time to get to know another person both in groups and one on one, without pressure for physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy or commitment. And the “courtship” model found in lots of evangelical circles seems to just increase that pressure exponentially!
Maria says
I’m copying your comment onto my notebook, I have never thought of this perspective. Truly interesting!
Leila says
Carol, some may remember me commenting last year on “the dating project” started by a professor at Boston College (there was a film I went to see about it). The professor makes a similar point about “hooking up” — that it is actually ambiguous and young people hide behind that ambiguity. It makes it possible for them to be unchaste, chaste, or uncommitted — but most of all, to perpetuate the culture of not getting married and not saving sexual relations for marriage.
It’s a problem!
Jana says
For the past couple of decades, I’ve noticed that the Obituaries in my hometown newspaper for the older folks who had been married for 50 and 60 years often included the tidbit that the spouses had met at a dance.
When we had a common culture of dances and good music, the old folks and the young folks went to the same dance hall on Saturday nights, and the old marrieds did their matchmaking and teasing and urging the young men to ‘get out there and ask the young lady to dance.’ And in five minutes of dancing, the young ones got enough of a sense about whether they wanted to dance with each other again, no obligation either way. Many of those dances were the catalyst for long and fruitful marriages.
My parents and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents went often to the Dance Hall or the Waterfront Big Band Dances that still go on in my hometown. Some go as faithfully as they would go to church on Sundays. Even now, Contra Dances and Caeli dance societies are found in many communities, and a weekly or monthly dance could be started anywhere that willing pardners, committed musicians, a good floor, and a community wishes to gather.
Donna L. says
What a treat! We took folk dancing for only a year with live music and a great mix of young and fun teens! My kids had a blast and I even got to dance with my Beloved Husband–which was a sweet way to spend time together! Alas, the instructor left to go to college–and his family had to move away, too. I’d love to start something like that again–so wholesome, fun and a great way to meet others without all of the drama~
Jana says
Donna, yes, do that! I like how you said it, no drama. The return to modesty is in great part a return to normal.
(Not normal-in-our-time, mind you, but normal compared to all those who have gone before. Imagine putting a civilized person from any other century in the middle of a typical high school dance, or even wedding reception. They would need smelling salts!)
Lisa G. says
I have one more chapter to read, but I do want to say that the most shocking thing in this whole book, to me, was the Prozac issue. I had no idea.
Leila says
Many, many girls and women are on anti-depressants. Knowing this changes how I think about some people and how they present in conversation and in their choices. It’s eye-opening. I find that it explains a detachment that I wouldn’t otherwise understand.
Grace says
Auntie Leila, I am very interested in your comment about cousins. I’ve been struggling with this topic in my own family – can you give some practical tips on how to delicately teach our children (especially our daughters) how to be modest even with male cousins? My 7 year old daughter adores her 10 year old male cousin but I am finding myself more and more telling her “you need to give your cousins some personal space” and “no hanging on your cousins!”. I see this in my extended family as well – I have been horrified to see my teenage cousins sitting on each other’s laps and just being way too physically intimate with hugs, etc. Please guide me on how to teach my children to have healthy relationships with their cousins!
Leila says
Grace, you are on the right track. Hugs and kisses are fine, but it can be carried too far! Also, the sexes need privacy — for sleep, changing, and bathing. Maybe some of our readers can chime in, who have grown up with lots of cousins or who have extended families now who have prudence in these matters. That would be wonderful!
Maria says
I’m a young woman, 24, and I started wearing skirts/dresses almost exclusively a few years ago, (before even becoming catholic). This happened almost as an uncounscious response to androgeny, before this I had what my mother called my uniform: shapeless jeans with green sweaters. I don’t know what happened first, the skirts or the feeling more feminine, don’t know whether one caused the other, but I’m much more comfortable in my own skin as a woman now. And though I prefer long skirts, I actually prefer short skirts to pants.(I don’t think pants are wrong, I just don’t like them.). I definetly think that androgeny is something rarely mentioned in these types of discussions, so I was glad to see it. Also, the Rabbi story is spot on.
Eric Horne says
These problems, surrounding chastity and the proper way to behave and awake healthy sexual interest, pose a challenge even for those involved with and trying to live their faith.
I used to work with college students in a campus ministry setting, and was surprised at the very real lack of interest the men had for women. Either young men didn’t know how to initiate romantic interest in the women, or once they did, there was no progression of physical or emotional intimacy in the direction of marriage. Couples dated for years, even after graduation, without tying the knot, and all the while staying relatively chaste.
It’s not that I would have liked to see couples get physically involved before marriage, but rather it seemed that in an attempt to reign in any unchastity, they silenced very important natural desires. The women were as frustrated experiencing this as I was observing it (probably more). The couples wanted to be married, they just didn’t make moves toward that end, and were happy relating to each other as close friends or brother and sister.
I remember being young and in love myself, and trying to live the Church’s teaching. Once we knew our vocation to marriage, and to each other, we weren’t wasting time, and saw there were many advantages to a shorter engagement and an earlier wedding.
Now, it seems the men don’t know what to do with a real woman. Perhaps the prevalence of pornography in our society has produced Catholic men who predominantly associate sexual interest and desire with sin, and so avoid it in their romantic relationships as they avoid it on their phones, even to the point of delaying marriage.
Eric Horne says
To be clear, I am not trying to judge these fine young people in any way, but I am confounded that there is some influence in their lives, secular or religious, that gets in the way of what for centuries has been a normal progression of human development and family life.
Leila says
Your observations coincide with mine. It’s almost an excess of reserve. Where is the biological imperative? Where’s the fiery love? Who wants to wait, once you know you want to get married? When I hear couples placidly mentioning that their engagement will be for years I… I just don’t get it.
Claire says
Totally agree with this point! I don’t understand delaying marriage longer than you absolutely have to…
Lisa says
I also do not understand these long engagements! Mine & my husband’s engagement was 5 months, and that felt too long!
Claire says
Not related to the book study (I hope to pick up a copy soon), but I’m trying to recall a beautiful reproduction of the Annunciation I saw and I think it may have been here – perhaps a picture in your home? It wasn’t a hinged triptych but I think it’s divided into three parts with a gold frame…I want to say Fra Angelico but I can’t find one online that’s divided into sections like the one I’m remembering. Does that sound familiar at all? Sorry for the random question and thanks in advance for any help!
Kelsey says
I very much related to Shalit’s words on divorce, and the specter of divorce for those children whose parents remain married.
I assumed through most of my growing-up years that my parents would probably one day divorce. They did not, (I speak in the past tense because my father passed away five years ago,) but they went through difficult times and it was very apparent to me from a young age. It is true that it made my life seem quite unstable, even though I did not actually endure that rupture.
Donna L. says
I, too, found the points of divorce spot on. I wrote in my journal at a relatively young age that I thought my Mum and Step-father would divorce after I witnessed terrible relationship issues. They did, and I believe they are both happier apart. For me, as I worked and attended college I was strongly opposed to getting married because I feared it would end in hostility, negative family feelings and then, divorce. After living through two divorces first as a child and then a teen, I believed that “happily ever after” was a fairy tale. This is not to blame my parents at all–I believe they did the best they knew at the time. Through a miracle, I found my Beloved at a Catholic wedding, when I was 20, and in the middle of my college career. I asked him to wait for me to finish, partly because I wanted to see it through, but also, sadly, because I didn’t really have any good role models for a happy, respectful, loving couple who had stayed married and I was AFRAID! He was patient, and we were engaged for over 3 years before our wedding. This summer we will celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary–and I am grateful to God for the grace and patience we both have!
Victoria says
Oh thank you for this post; I have wanted to read this book for years but still haven’t.
This is helping my husband and I clarify some thoughts we have had recently. We often talk about the leggings fashion trend, and while I wear leggings under my clothes for warmth, it seems unthinkable to both of us for me to go out in them, or even walk around the house in front of our sons wearing them. But, at the same time, it seems so utterly normal to see women wearing leggings as pants, even at Mass, we hardly notice. We keep talking about why that is, and I think that you hit the nail on the head here: there is so much overt, sexual imagery out in the world, you just tune it out, like tuning out the sound of an air conditioner that’s on all the time. And I can also see how wearing the same “uniform” that everyone else wears can feel safer.
Also, thinking about unnaturally suppressing sexual desire is connecting a lot of dots for me. I think it explains a lot of the difficulty that some Christian spouses have after marriage switching from “suppress” mode to “express” mode that both others and myself have tried to attribute to other causes (such as poor sex education, not enough talking about sex, too much courtship-culture pressure, etc.) when really the cause is simply too much familiarity between the sexes at the wrong seasons of life! Such a simple idea with a lot of explanatory power! I think it’s going to change how we plan to raise our children when they enter the teenage years.
Oh my gosh, though, we have lost so much. We don’t have organic communities where people are on the same page about this stuff and are willing to help each other guide young adults to good spouses. Well, Jewish communities have remained very tight-knit and have a lot of cultural agreement with each other, but Christian communities do not (at least where I live).
Lisa says
I have never gotten comfortable wearing leggings as pants at home or in public either! Only under dresses or tunics! I like what you said about the loss of communities where people agree about these things. I feel like in so many areas, my thoughts on education, modesty, beauty, etc don’t fit in with the Christian community that I’m in. I would love to find more like-minded people where I live, but it’s hard!
Monica says
Regarding praying “screenless” as a family at home, I whole-heartedly agree. I have thought more than once, crowded together in our Icon Corner by candlelight, that memories of these Quarantine services might be some of the sweetest I take from their childhood.
Leila says
This sense of atmosphere is well worth considering. It’s up to us to provide the “medium” or environment for our family’s life together. We must be very wary of the way we present all the things we love. Marshall McLuhan was right: The medium IS the message.
Beth says
Leila – I loved the book on modesty. My daughter is 12 and is starting to enter the “I care about fashion and what I wear” age. Do you have any book recommendations for her age? I increasingly find that if I can direct her to a good book or resource she absorbs more than if I’m talking at length on a subject to her. We have provided good guidelines for her up to now but I’m finding it so challenging to find cute, modest clothing. Not frumpy but stylish and classy. Any recommendations there too?
Leila says
Beth, I think the old-fashioned stories (like Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins) are best… and also just the short little things we say, as exemplified in the post. Not a sermon by any means, just an observation here and there.
As for clothing itself, I think our readers need to chime in! Maybe I’ll try to do a post about it. I personally don’t have resources other than thrift stores– it’s been 11 years since I have had to dress a 12 yo!