Discernment exercise re "sexy" "hot" clothes

This is one of my series of blog postings that are mostly directed at young people (or, I guess, the young at heart, but I’m not leaving out those who are the weary salts of the earth of this society either). But mostly I need to help the young people develop skills of faith, reason and discernment that really are poorly understood and rarely taught at all anymore.

This is directed to young people where the subject is dressing in hot and sexy outfits in public. I know that readers probably assume (with an eye roll) that I’m either just addressing women with this post, that I’ll say something hypocritical, or that I’ll be a prude lecturer. You would be wrong on all accounts! This is for young men and women to read, and it provides an exercise in discernment.

Suppose you, young lady, wore a typical very “hot” and revealing outfit one day. Now pay attention, boyfriend of this young lady, since the exercise applies to you too. So you walk around the town with this outfit, and at the end of the day a researcher surprises you, telling you that she had been following you around and interviewing the people who saw you. Suppose that she provided you with statistics indicating that at least one man felt less admiration for the beauty of his wife or girlfriend as a result of seeing you In that outfit. As follow up is conducted, it is found indeed that secretly he has come to think less of his girlfriend or wife, and that he even has flashes of thinking of you, that stranger, in the hot outfit when he is being intimate with his girlfriend or wife. This is the quiz: How do you feel about that?

Too many young women do not dress “hot” because they are pleasing their boyfriend or husband, or because it really is the “required fashion.” Too many young women would have pleasure knowing they wrecked the satisfaction of another couple (perfect strangers, not rivals). And guys, what kind of gal are you dating (or married to) if she is one of the ones who finds glee at transposing her sexy image onto the brain of a previously happy couple, so that a stranger now looks at his girl or wife thinking she is not as hot, and feeling diminishment of her in his eyes?

I suggest that all young people give themselves this quiz. If you are a person who would have genuine glee knowing that your “hot dressing” “ruins it for someone else,” then you have quite a problem. If you are dating someone who feels that way, oh boy, watch out. Is that someone you would be proud of? (“Hey, my gal likes to dress hot, hoping that perfect strangers will ditch their girls, or at the very least, feel less ‘hots’ for them than they did before.” You’d really think that’s indicative of nice character?)

There’s nothing wrong with dating, or marrying, who you feel is the hottest around. In fact, I would hope that you do honestly feel that way, using loving eyes. However, once you have the hottest around, would you not wonder why she feels she has to dress in a way that harms what we call “the custody of the eyes” of another couple, people she doesn’t even know? I would feel quite icky if someone told me that because I dress provocatively that her man no longer thought she was hot, and worse, thought of me instead of her, even when with her.

Actually, I’ve been on the receiving end of that, where I’ve been hurt by other women tempting the guy I cared about with all out neon flashing "ho" exposing fashion in order to get him entranced. And so it goes.

But my point is that there is a secret agenda among the sexualizing of young children through inappropriate clothing, and then these confused values are carried forward into young adulthood. It is a terribly serious problem, and is part of the reason there is such rampant sexual abuse. I’m not dragging out the old canard that rapes and so forth happen because of “provocative” clothing. I am saying that young women, and men, are not asking themselves “Why” they REALLY feel they have to dress with extreme provocation rather than more modest chic. This exercise is a way to help my readers (and their parents) to have a kind of “truth or dare” session with themselves and find out that many of you dress provocatively for a sabotaging reason, and that is not healthy for you individually or for our rapidly coarsening and dangerous culture as a whole. I know what I’m talking about. I came of age during the “mini skirt” revolution and I wore them and they were fine. They were nothing at all like how many young girls and women dress today. The mini skirt was a social statement and as such was often combined with those old devices called stockings or tights (yes, I wore fishnets!) and they were not at all what the fashion is today, which is basically whore on two sticks. Back in the “mod” and “rocker” clothes time in my day (plus the hippie dippie times, ha) women were not trolling in order to rob other women of their men’s admiration. It really was not the mindset of the culture. I cannot tell you how awful this change has been, and how extremely uncool. As fashionable as we tried to be (think Janis Joplin, for example) women were not trying to dress to mess with men’s minds in a “whore on the troll” way as they are today. It is totally depressing and a bummer trip for me to see this so prevalent now.

I hope this gives you something to think about and I’d be thrilled if it gets even a few people to move back to fashionable but more modest chic. And guys… remember, listen to “mom” here, are you really doing good if you hang with a lady who wants to home wreck the eyes of people she doesn’t even know, and would find that a source of satisfaction if she knew? Not cool for you, dude, trust me on this.