Thank you! I am 56 years old and have a 30 year old daughter and 24 year old son. I grew up hearing these messages myself from my father, a pastor. I learned that it was up to me to dress so as to not cause a Christian young man to “stumble”. We lived in a college townWhen I got married I assumed my husband lusted after every pretty woman he saw-that’s what my dad said guys did. It took me years to believe my husband when he said he didn’t-you can notice someone’s looks but then you just move on. What? Guys can actually have self control? Thankfully we raised our kids differently, even though we were in evangelical circles and purity culture was rampant. Our daughter is a strong vibrant woman with a wonderful husband and our son respects women and has healthy friendships with them. But it’s taken me years to “reprogram” from the painful things I was taught. I am so grateful for your ministry and I will buy this book!
The message that "Boys can't help but lust." probably hurt me the most. It's so interesting how the Bible ephasizes self control on the person who is lusting and most mainstream Christian books emphasize more responsibility on the one being lusted after. It's like make it make sense! Love your work, Sheila
I was lectured continually on how my uncles struggled to keep their eyes away from my pre-teen/teenage body. One of my uncles called me his second wife and would kiss the back of my neck and play with my ponytails whenever I was around their family. My parents told me I needed to wear "better" clothes because apparently sweatshirts and baggy jeans was not good enough. I was a big-chested girl from age nine onward and I developed quickly. It didn't matter how many layers I wore -- boys (and men) looked. But I was told I was the one at fault for causing them to stumble into sin.
The adults in your life should’ve reported your uncles for sexual harassment of a minor. That is pervy, pedo behavior and your parents should’ve stepped up. I’m so sorry you were failed.
Yay! I just popped my almost 5 month old son into his jumper in the kitchen so I can wash dishes. I usually turn on a podcast or video for myself. I said to him, "alright buddy... let's listen to what Miss Sheils and Miss Rebecca have to say today so you and your brother and sisters can be emotionally healthy." LOL. Yay! A new episode! I share so much of your stuff with my teens. Thank you! Your voices are a familiar sound in our home.
When I was in middle school in the '00s, we had "The Babe Seminar," brought in by the local Assembly of God church. It was well attended and I went because a lot of my friends were super excited about it. It was supposed to be about how to be a modest babe, I guess. The speaker was a former model who bragged about how she had the chance to sleep with an unnamed famous Hollywood actor, but said no because she was such a great Christian. Anyway, she talked about a lot of modesty garbage, but there's one piece of advice that stuck out to me. See-through and short tops were really in style at the time, so her solution was to just wear a bodysuit under all your clothes. Not only would that be incredibly uncomfortable and hot in the summer and just plain impractical, the only bodysuits you could really get back then were the old lady shapewear bodysuits. Are 14 year olds seriously supposed to wear bodysuits designed to suck in old ladies' fat? The best part was when she said, "[The bodysuits] come in skin color so no one will even know you're wearing one!" So, IF you believe that--which I didn't because those bodysuits do NOT look like skin--isn't that insanely counter-productive? Because if a teenage boy sees your bodysuit sticking out under your top when you sit down or bend over, and he doesn't KNOW it's a bodysuit, isn't he going to be burning with lust anyway? What does the bodysuit actually accomplish? 😂😂😂
Dude this is so on point. I'm 26. I didn't even grow up in the Christian purity culture but I was exposed to it when I converted 5 years ago. Still since I was a kid I've struggled with these feelings about modesty and sexuality and men objectifying me and all that making me basically feel ashamed of my body and wanting to hide yet feeling like I was being so wronged and of course it only got worse after going to the church I first went to when I converted... It really does feel like I'm not allowed to just exist. And like I wish to be like a child without this sexual notion about me like I feel so frustrated that my body is sexual to men that it makes me want to be some kind of sexless being so I don't have to deal with such things. Then again I've been raped and assaulted many times so this may just be trauma from that. But I really feel the whole modesty issue and it's so good to hear other women speak out about it. Thank you SO MUCH.
I think it makes sense that the ideas of men not being able to help lusting and the visual thing are connected to vaginismus because it's basically like saying that men can't help but do bad to you and thus they WILL hurt you. So it makes sense for the body to be in defense mode after that. Like your body has to protect you from harm.
Would you ladies be willing to do a video in analyzing the book Lies Young Women Believe by Dana Gresh and Nancy DeMoss? The old and new version? I feel like there's very questionable msging in there too.
I keep saying this, but I truly believe it. The Church has been lazy and needs to do the hard work of reaching to the underlying issues....what do healthy relationships look like? How do you love and respect yourself and others? And many others. It's just easier to give a list of rules. We need to do the hard work of being the Church.
This is the best episode! Thank you for being passionate about your girls from the bottom of my heart 🧡. It is wonderful to know that there are others advocating for better!
This brings up so many memories of bringing up my youngest daughter in extreme purity culture. Her youth group made her write a purity letter to me promising to save herself until marriage. She didn’t want to, because she wasn’t certain she could do that. Rather than lie, she wrote a letter telling me she couldn’t promise that but maybe someday she could. Her Christian school had a zealous single principal who was obsessed with appearance. He told her she was “eye candy” for the boys. They had a mother/daughter assembly to talk about modesty. The leader was a single woman teacher who taught about the 2 finger rule to check how low your tops are. She literally said God doesn’t want to see your flesh. I wanted to stand up and say, “God sees me in the shower, and He is perfectly fine with my flesh.” 😤 They taught that if you wore layers, the outermost layer had to meet modesty standards because men would fantasize about what was underneath the top layer. So literally the frumpiest v-neck jean jumper with a turtleneck underneath didn’t pass the code. Unfortunately, my daughter did eventually dress to entice boys in a public school. I truly think this extreme teaching was part of her problem.
I became a committed Christian at a very young age in a nominally Catholic unbelieving family, which confounded everyone. So I got negative pressure in that way, but was committed to biblical morals from the start. So while I got alot of sometimes abusive pushback for my faith, I thankfully never got the modesty message. Instead the message was about not growing up too fast. So there were milestones for ear piercing, makeup, mini skirts etc. There was messaging about dressing to not be an easy target in certain situations, but this was never about being responsible for someone's lust, it was about easy prevention and self defense (I was allowed a lot of leeway for independence being out and about later as a teen not always in protected circumstances, and the tips were very accurate and practical in this sense). Never had body image issues or purity fallout, just healthy biblical morals, and was stunned when I got to seminary when the explosion of this message was underway. Side note: I have learned that the confident body language I either learned or naturally developed growing up that can be a deterrant for standard issue assholes or predators here in the US typically actually put me more at risk in other countries where women are severely oppressed, because this type of body language is unacceptable in a woman and men will want to put you in your place violently. So I had to adapt quickly.
I’ve seen quite a few videos on the modesty message and the damage it has done to women in church. But this is the first time I’ve heard of the message being twisted to promote p3d0ph1l1a. Thanks for covering this topic. I’ve left this comment on a few other videos and I want to leave it here as well. C.S Lewis talked about this in his book Mere Christianity. He said that chastity and modesty/propriety aren’t necessarily the same thing and are actually distinct from one another. Here’s a quote from Mere Christianity, the chapter on sexual morality: “The Christian rule of chastity must not be confused with the social rule of ‘modesty’ (in one sense of that word); i.e. propriety, or decency. The social rule of propriety lays down how much of the human body should be displayed and what subjects can be referred to, and in what words, according to the customs of a given social circle. Thus, while the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rule of propriety changes. A girl in the Pacific islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might both be equally ‘modest’, proper, or decent, according to the standards of their own societies: and both, for all we could tell by their dress, might be equally chaste (or equally unchaste). Some of the language which chaste women used in Shakespeare’s time would have been used in the nineteenth century only by a woman completely abandoned.” Lewis also points out that someone who breaks these social standards is not always being immodest: “When people break the rule of propriety current in their own time and place, if they do so in order to excite lust in themselves or others, then they are offending against chastity. But if they break it through ignorance or carelessness they are guilty only of bad manners. When, as often happens, they break it defiantly in order to shock or embarrass others, they are not necessarily being unchaste, but they are being uncharitable: for it is uncharitable to take pleasure in making other people uncomfortable.” Lewis is also very realistic about the differing standards in society. Having grown up in the conservative Christian culture, I’ve seen what a stumbling block the issue of modesty is for many people - and I don’t mean men who struggle with lust. Men and women alike too often judge others based on the way they dress. Conservative women take pride in their own standard and look down on women who are “less modest.” And on the other hand, women who come from more relaxed backgrounds sometimes judge their conservative counterparts as being legalistic. Lewis’ solution? “I do not think that a very strict or fussy standard of propriety is any proof of chastity or any help to it, and I therefore regard the great relaxation and simplifying of the rule which has taken place in my own lifetime as a good thing. At its present stage, however, it has this inconvenience, that people of different ages and different types do not all acknowledge the same standard, and we hardly know where we are. While this confusion lasts I think that old, old-fashioned, people should be very careful not to assume that young or ’emancipated’ people are corrupt whenever they are (by the old standard) improper; and, in return, that young people should not call their elders prudes or puritans because they do not easily adopt the new standard.” [A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.] (The bracketed part wasn’t written by Lewis. It was written by the person who wrote the article I copied and pasted this quote from.) 😂 Keep in mind that Lewis wrote this back in 1952. 71 years ago! Long before our culture became so hyper sexualized and a good decade before the sexual revolution. Just goes to show how wise he was. Basically the point C.S Lewis was trying to get across is that modesty is less of a biblical law and more of a biblical principle and social rule. Chastity is the actual rule that Christians are bound to. Thus, modesty at its core is subjective and changes depending on the time, location, and culture. Also there’s nothing wrong with flaunting your wealth via clothing. As long as you’re wearing the appropriate clothes for the appropriate setting, it’s all good. That’s my two scents. Stay safe and keep spitting fire 🔥 for the Lord sisters!✌️
Growing-up i was friends with girls who did dress more on the extreme-end and now that you pointed it out i realize that you are right. They had core needs being neglected. They had parents (namely fathers) who were, if not physically absent, then they were emotionally absent. My neighbor who i grew up with, and hung out with regularly i never once heard her father say "i love you" or "i'm proud of you" or even acknowledged when she did something right. He only spoke to her to criticize or to remind her of a chore he wanted done & it reflected in the boys and later men she'd have romantically in her life. She dated users and abusers, all who would abandon her the moment things got tough. Girls who are dressing in more shocking ways, and who are "boy crazy" dont need judgment. They need love. They have gaping holes in their hearts that they are trying desperately to fill and modesty messages like the ones i heard growing up and that you mentioned just confirm to them that they are worthless and they are unlovable.
I appreciate your podcasts, have been binge-listening, and plan to buy your book/s. Thank you for your work. I think 100% that men should not lust after women. At the same time, I think women AND men should dress modestly. I do not allow my daughter to "dress like everyone else" because most girls are wearing crop tops and let their bum-cheeks hang out the bottom of their shorts. In other words, many girls frequently dress in self-objectifying clothing. They also wear too many hoodies and sweatpants, but that's a different topic for a different day! So should we not teach out daughters modesty? If so, what do you think we should teach them? I think we should teach modesty and I personally teach it to my daughter in terms of what's appropriate for the situation: eg, it's not usually appropriate to wear formal wear to a picnic, flip-flops to the opera, nor is it appropriate to walk around scantily-clad at the grocery store or school (or anywhere else except at home, in my opinion!). I also teach that what we wear sends a message about ourselves to others, whether or not we intend it to. For example, the more respectfully we dress, usually the more respectfully people will treat us. I've seen how people change around my husband when he wears a suit. People held open doors for us when my daughter was wearing a fur coat her grandma sent her. When we clothe ourselves with dignity, we are often treated with more dignity. Should people be treated with dignity no matter what? Of course, but we have to work within the culture we are swimming in and just as words carry meaning, so does clothing. Of course, there will be many different opinions on modest dress but I don't like the alternative of letting my daughter gravitate towards pornified outfits that the culture around us wears. Yes, the female body is beautiful and powerful but isn't there a way to be feminine and pretty and classy without objectifying oneself?
If the answer to lust and sexual assault is for women to cover up, one has to wonder why sexual assault and rape is still common in Muslim communities. Answer: Because it's the minds and attitudes of the men who assault women that are the key factor. Being covered up doesn't prevent men with perverted thinking from using their imaginations, and if you teach boys to view women as sex objects to which they are entitled rather than God's image-bearers, they will likely grow up to be the kind of lust-driven creatures you told them they were. Also, where's the modesty message for men and boys? Here's mine: *Put a shirt on!* Women are just as capable of lusting after attractive men as men are of women, and most men don't have much worth seeing, anyway, so stop acting like you're God's gift to mankind.
The book The Story of John G. Paton or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals records John G. Patton’s work as a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands, a violent civilisation where everyone, both men and woman, wore little or no clothing. John Paton wrote about a native man and woman on those islands who became Christians. They requested he marry them but feared they would die because a few men wanted to marry the woman: In a few seconds, Yakin entered and if Nelwang’s bearing and appearance were rather inconsistent with the feeling of worship (he was wearing a shirt, kilt and tommahawk, John G. Paton felt it inappropriate to wear an emblem of violence to church)- and what on earth was I to do when the figure and costume of Yakin began to reveal itself marching in? The first visible difference betwixt a Heathen and a Christian is that the Christian wears some clothing, the Heathen wears none. Yakin had determined to show the extent of her Christianity by the amount of clothing she could carry upon her person. Being a Chief’s widow before she became Nelwang’s bride, she had some idea of state occasions and appeared dressed in every article of European apparel, mostly portions of male attire, that she could beg or borrow from about the premises! Her bridal gown was a man’s drab-coloured great-coat, put on above her native grass skirts and sweeping down to her heels, buttoned tight. Over this she had hung on a vest and above that, again, most amazing of all, she had superinduced a pair of men's trousers, planting the body of them on her neck and shoulders and leaving her head and face looking out from between the legs - a leg from either side streaming over her bosom, arid, dangling down absurdly in front! Fastened to the one shoulder also there was a red shirt and to the other a striped shirt waving about her like wings as she sailed along. Around her head, a red shirt had been twisted like a turban, and her notions of art demanded that a sleeve thereof should have a loft over each of her ears! She seemed to be a moving monster-loaded with a mass of rags. The day was excessively hot, and the perspiration poured over her face in streams. She, too, sat as near to me as she could get on the woman’s side of the church. Nelwang looked at me and then at her smiling quietly, as if to say, “You never saw in all your white world, a bride so grandly dressed!” I little thought what I was bringing on myself when I urged them to come to church. The sight of that poor creature sweltering before me constrained me for once to make the service very short - perhaps the shortest I ever conducted in all my life! The day ended in peace. The two souls were extremely happy, and I praised God that what might have been a scene of bloodshed had closed thus, even though it were in a kind of wild grotesquerie!
I think a modest heart posture is important. BUT I have experienced a very adversarial relationship with my body over the years and to this day if I feel good about how I look there’s a part of me that also feels dirty and like I’m “asking” for sexual attention. And I’m talking about fully clothed - very modest clothes.
You are FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made. There was reverence in God’s creation of you! If God reveres you and your body, you can too. Hold your head high 💗
😭... So can either Sheila or Rebecca or anyone tell me if these books of Sheila's will help with healing from trauma and generally unlearning toxic beliefs about women and sex and such? I only just started going to therapy and it's still very general at this point and so these books are targeting specific issues that I struggle with A LOT so I wonder if it would be good in addition to therapy... I want to heal so bad 😢I feel so broken and tortured inside Lord help me
I think they really would! A lot of counselors are now using our books with evangelical women with trauma from past teachings, and it helps a lot. (But therapy is also a really good idea!)
@@SheilaWrayGregoire Thank you so much for your reply. I hope I can get your books and start reading them asap. The Lord bless you and your family and guide us all in his love. 🙏
I was molested. Being told that all men are thinking about me naked and fantasising about having sex with me and if I wore the wrong clothes they would do this even more was very frightening. Women who have been raped/molested don't want men behaving sexually towards them, not even in their thought life because it's traumatising for them. But the church teaches the only reason a girl might be dressed "immodestly" is because she's proud. They don't say the woman might be poor, or the girl might not have had sex yet, kissed a boy or been on a date, so she doesn't know what clothes arouse men. But being told that there are no clothes in the universe that might attract a bad man didn't help either. because when men leered at me, or touched me when i didn't want them to, that re-traumatised me and opened up old wounds. Dressing differently did reduce men's bad behaviour towards me. So, I think there needs to be a balance of saying there are outfits that attract bad men, but those men are bad men. You are not the bad person, the man who sinned against you is.
Division Shopping-Plaza Drama “Wow, that dress looks good. You should buy it,” Michelle says. “Yeah,” says Jade. “It flatters you in all the right places, and the colour looks great on you.” Sarah tugs at the hem of the dress she’s wearing, seeing if it will stretch any longer. “It’s a bit short don’t you think?” “Silly,” says Michelle. “There’s no such thing as too short. There’s nothing wrong with it at all. Come on, let’s get it.” Sarah stares at her reflection. She turns side on, smoothing her hand over her tummy. Then, she stands backwards, twisting her neck around, so she can view how the frock looks from behind. “Yeah, I don’t know,” she says. “I think we should keep looking. I don’t think we’ve found the right dress yet.” Jade sighs. She places her hand on her hip and says, “I hate shopping with you.” “Yeah,” says Michelle. “You can always find something wrong, even with the prettiest of dresses.” Sarah’s cheeks burn. “Sorry, but I don’t think God would want me wearing it, and I don’t want guys sexually harassing me. You know what they’re like.” Jade’s eyes harden. “God doesn’t care what you wear, and if boys have an issue with it, that’s their problem, not yours.” Scowling, Michelle slings her bag over her shoulder. “Come on, Jade,” she says. “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s go sample perfumes instead.” Jade follows Michelle out of the store. As she steps out the door, she turns and says, “From now on, Sarah, you can shop on your own.” Divided Households Luke 12 says, Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you not at all but rather division. For from now on, five in one house will be divided: three against two and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father and mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. This means, that although God sometimes saves whole families not everyone in a family will accept Jesus. This will cause friction because Jesus promised that the world will hate us if we become Christians because the world hates Jesus. Sadly, sometimes “the world” includes members of our own family, and they hate us for the decision we’ve made to follow Jesus. 1 Peter 4 says division will even separate us from our non-Christian friends when we decide that we’ve spent enough of our past life walking in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. When we repent of this way of living, the Bible says our unsaved friends, will think it strange and will speak evil of us, and it’s my experience that not only does the gospel cause this kind of division but “modesty” dressing does also. Relationships with people I loved with great affection and devotion, which seemed intertwined, unbreakable and never ending, now barely exist. Not because I’ve threatened nuclear war with Ukraine or because I’ve plotted an invasion of Taiwan, but because I chose that I would keep my shoulders, back, tummy and thighs covered when I received teaching that told me that it pleases God. An Isolating Choice Christians classify dirty movies, partying, nightclubbing, getting drunk, doing drugs and having sex outside of marriage as sins, but when you’re young, it seems that’s all most people enjoy. If you refrain from these activities, you spend a lot of time on your own because most people aren’t Christians and when you do meet a Christian, most Christians seem terribly busy and so they can’t help you fill in your desolate, solitary life with more wholesome activities. As a younger woman, I even rang up Christian ministries asking if they needed a hand, but those ministries were dead and not doing much and so they didn’t have anything I could join in with. I found that isolation so painful. I felt like I would die, and that loneliness intensified when, after receiving modesty teaching, I realised I must now class shopping with friends as an activity I should avoid because when I chose clothes that covered more of my body, my friends would get angry or laugh and scoff. They also made cruel comments. Not only did I get told that I looked less pretty than women who had their shoulders, backs, tummies and thighs showing, I was told that I looked ugly. That puzzled me because, although my clothing had changed, I still had the same face and figure. Another thing that confounded me is that although modesty dressing doesn’t eliminate sexual harassment, when I wore fewer revealing clothes, I found it reduced it. I wondered why my friends didn’t feel happy that I had found something that cut down the number of times I experienced unwanted sexual behaviour. Getting mocked and derided, that’s not enjoyable. So, overtime, I stopped shopping in groups and started shopping alone. I even decided, that if I married, I’d shop for a wedding dress on my own because I knew buying a dress with more coverage would upset those watching me. I would also have no bridesmaids, I decided, because that would save me the drama of shopping for bridal party dresses. That’s difficult for a girl because one of the main ways females make friends and bond when they’re young, is by shopping for clothes with each other, and when I watch television shows of women shopping for wedding dresses with their family and bridesmaids, it seems, in most cases, it’s a wonderful memory they can share with each other in years to come. Swimming, something I love, also became an immoral activity that I either refrained from or did alone because instead of wearing only a swimsuit, I now wore a t-shirt and boardshorts on top. That also made people angry or induced more laughter and mocking. I find that strange because it’s well known that Australian’s have a high incidence of contracting skin cancer. Treatments for skin cancer can cause disfigurement and sometimes people with skin cancer die young, such as a family member of mine. Swimming and exercising alone, that’s not fun and it’s not always safe, but because of all the animosity my t-shirt and boardshorts caused, it became the only way of enjoying it. I think that’s sad. Be Kind It’s my experience that if a man or woman believes your outfit doesn’t fit their modesty rules, they approach you with anger. Those angry rebukes deepened the isolation and boredom I experienced because a lot of times my outfit did meet the modesty rules but because the outfit was red or because I’d worn nail polish or a hair clip, I still received an angry reprimand. I hope that will start changing. I hope we will start realising that not all women are part of the Duggar family, a family which all seemed on the same page about what constituted a modest or an immodest outfit, and because of that, when a woman chooses that she will keep certain areas of her body covered, she experiences great seclusion and monotony because her former friends now speak evil of her. She may also experience division, even in her own home, with five in one house divided: three against two and two against three. Father divided against son and son against father and mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law with much loved relationships that seemed intertwined, unbreakable and never ending, now barely there.
I was VERY BUSTY as a teenager. I wore jeans and t-shirts only so that I would never tempt anyone. I was molested by a teacher for most of my sophomore year of highschool....
I've watched several of you guys' videos and one thing I feel that you miss is that boys and men naturally gravitate to the feminine form. And it's ok. The church I grew up in taught us that going in the way you naturally go that it's sinful...
I am curious what other modesty cultures talk about this. Eg muslims. Are they told it is for observance to God, or do they create the same sexual temptation messages?
@@TheEllaTB Job 42:15 says that a woman's beauty is a blessing. Modesty teachers often go to the extreme and classify physical attraction as lust when it's not. Some modesty teachers make women feel ashamed for being beautiful, but God made women beautiful. It's not something we should shame people for.
Thank you! I am 56 years old and have a 30 year old daughter and 24 year old son. I grew up hearing these messages myself from my father, a pastor. I learned that it was up to me to dress so as to not cause a Christian young man to “stumble”. We lived in a college townWhen I got married I assumed my husband lusted after every pretty woman he saw-that’s what my dad said guys did. It took me years to believe my husband when he said he didn’t-you can notice someone’s looks but then you just move on. What? Guys can actually have self control? Thankfully we raised our kids differently, even though we were in evangelical circles and purity culture was rampant. Our daughter is a strong vibrant woman with a wonderful husband and our son respects women and has healthy friendships with them. But it’s taken me years to “reprogram” from the painful things I was taught. I am so grateful for your ministry and I will buy this book!
The message that "Boys can't help but lust." probably hurt me the most. It's so interesting how the Bible ephasizes self control on the person who is lusting and most mainstream Christian books emphasize more responsibility on the one being lusted after. It's like make it make sense! Love your work, Sheila
I was lectured continually on how my uncles struggled to keep their eyes away from my pre-teen/teenage body. One of my uncles called me his second wife and would kiss the back of my neck and play with my ponytails whenever I was around their family. My parents told me I needed to wear "better" clothes because apparently sweatshirts and baggy jeans was not good enough. I was a big-chested girl from age nine onward and I developed quickly. It didn't matter how many layers I wore -- boys (and men) looked. But I was told I was the one at fault for causing them to stumble into sin.
The adults in your life should’ve reported your uncles for sexual harassment of a minor. That is pervy, pedo behavior and your parents should’ve stepped up. I’m so sorry you were failed.
Yay! I just popped my almost 5 month old son into his jumper in the kitchen so I can wash dishes. I usually turn on a podcast or video for myself. I said to him, "alright buddy... let's listen to what Miss Sheils and Miss Rebecca have to say today so you and your brother and sisters can be emotionally healthy." LOL. Yay! A new episode!
I share so much of your stuff with my teens. Thank you! Your voices are a familiar sound in our home.
Cultures that completely cover are not devoid of people who lust. Covering does not solve the problem.
Exactly!
When I was in middle school in the '00s, we had "The Babe Seminar," brought in by the local Assembly of God church. It was well attended and I went because a lot of my friends were super excited about it. It was supposed to be about how to be a modest babe, I guess. The speaker was a former model who bragged about how she had the chance to sleep with an unnamed famous Hollywood actor, but said no because she was such a great Christian. Anyway, she talked about a lot of modesty garbage, but there's one piece of advice that stuck out to me. See-through and short tops were really in style at the time, so her solution was to just wear a bodysuit under all your clothes. Not only would that be incredibly uncomfortable and hot in the summer and just plain impractical, the only bodysuits you could really get back then were the old lady shapewear bodysuits. Are 14 year olds seriously supposed to wear bodysuits designed to suck in old ladies' fat? The best part was when she said, "[The bodysuits] come in skin color so no one will even know you're wearing one!" So, IF you believe that--which I didn't because those bodysuits do NOT look like skin--isn't that insanely counter-productive? Because if a teenage boy sees your bodysuit sticking out under your top when you sit down or bend over, and he doesn't KNOW it's a bodysuit, isn't he going to be burning with lust anyway? What does the bodysuit actually accomplish? 😂😂😂
Dude this is so on point. I'm 26. I didn't even grow up in the Christian purity culture but I was exposed to it when I converted 5 years ago. Still since I was a kid I've struggled with these feelings about modesty and sexuality and men objectifying me and all that making me basically feel ashamed of my body and wanting to hide yet feeling like I was being so wronged and of course it only got worse after going to the church I first went to when I converted... It really does feel like I'm not allowed to just exist. And like I wish to be like a child without this sexual notion about me like I feel so frustrated that my body is sexual to men that it makes me want to be some kind of sexless being so I don't have to deal with such things. Then again I've been raped and assaulted many times so this may just be trauma from that. But I really feel the whole modesty issue and it's so good to hear other women speak out about it. Thank you SO MUCH.
I think it makes sense that the ideas of men not being able to help lusting and the visual thing are connected to vaginismus because it's basically like saying that men can't help but do bad to you and thus they WILL hurt you. So it makes sense for the body to be in defense mode after that. Like your body has to protect you from harm.
Would you ladies be willing to do a video in analyzing the book Lies Young Women Believe by Dana Gresh and Nancy DeMoss? The old and new version? I feel like there's very questionable msging in there too.
I keep saying this, but I truly believe it. The Church has been lazy and needs to do the hard work of reaching to the underlying issues....what do healthy relationships look like? How do you love and respect yourself and others? And many others. It's just easier to give a list of rules. We need to do the hard work of being the Church.
This is the best episode! Thank you for being passionate about your girls from the bottom of my heart 🧡. It is wonderful to know that there are others advocating for better!
Thank you! 😭 tears within the first 15 minutes… you have said so many things I couldn’t put into words
This brings up so many memories of bringing up my youngest daughter in extreme purity culture. Her youth group made her write a purity letter to me promising to save herself until marriage. She didn’t want to, because she wasn’t certain she could do that. Rather than lie, she wrote a letter telling me she couldn’t promise that but maybe someday she could.
Her Christian school had a zealous single principal who was obsessed with appearance. He told her she was “eye candy” for the boys. They had a mother/daughter assembly to talk about modesty. The leader was a single woman teacher who taught about the 2 finger rule to check how low your tops are. She literally said God doesn’t want to see your flesh. I wanted to stand up and say, “God sees me in the shower, and He is perfectly fine with my flesh.” 😤 They taught that if you wore layers, the outermost layer had to meet modesty standards because men would fantasize about what was underneath the top layer. So literally the frumpiest v-neck jean jumper with a turtleneck underneath didn’t pass the code. Unfortunately, my daughter did eventually dress to entice boys in a public school. I truly think this extreme teaching was part of her problem.
I became a committed Christian at a very young age in a nominally Catholic unbelieving family, which confounded everyone. So I got negative pressure in that way, but was committed to biblical morals from the start.
So while I got alot of sometimes abusive pushback for my faith, I thankfully never got the modesty message. Instead the message was about not growing up too fast. So there were milestones for ear piercing, makeup, mini skirts etc. There was messaging about dressing to not be an easy target in certain situations, but this was never about being responsible for someone's lust, it was about easy prevention and self defense (I was allowed a lot of leeway for independence being out and about later as a teen not always in protected circumstances, and the tips were very accurate and practical in this sense).
Never had body image issues or purity fallout, just healthy biblical morals, and was stunned when I got to seminary when the explosion of this message was underway.
Side note: I have learned that the confident body language I either learned or naturally developed growing up that can be a deterrant for standard issue assholes or predators here in the US typically actually put me more at risk in other countries where women are severely oppressed, because this type of body language is unacceptable in a woman and men will want to put you in your place violently. So I had to adapt quickly.
I’ve seen quite a few videos on the modesty message and the damage it has done to women in church. But this is the first time I’ve heard of the message being twisted to promote p3d0ph1l1a. Thanks for covering this topic. I’ve left this comment on a few other videos and I want to leave it here as well.
C.S Lewis talked about this in his book Mere Christianity. He said that chastity and modesty/propriety aren’t necessarily the same thing and are actually distinct from one another.
Here’s a quote from Mere Christianity, the chapter on sexual morality:
“The Christian rule of chastity must not be confused with the social rule of ‘modesty’ (in one sense of that word); i.e. propriety, or decency. The social rule of propriety lays down how much of the human body should be displayed and what subjects can be referred to, and in what words, according to the customs of a given social circle. Thus, while the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rule of propriety changes. A girl in the Pacific islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might both be equally ‘modest’, proper, or decent, according to the standards of their own societies: and both, for all we could tell by their dress, might be equally chaste (or equally unchaste). Some of the language which chaste women used in Shakespeare’s time would have been used in the nineteenth century only by a woman completely abandoned.”
Lewis also points out that someone who breaks these social standards is not always being immodest:
“When people break the rule of propriety current in their own time and place, if they do so in order to excite lust in themselves or others, then they are offending against chastity. But if they break it through ignorance or carelessness they are guilty only of bad manners. When, as often happens, they break it defiantly in order to shock or embarrass others, they are not necessarily being unchaste, but they are being uncharitable: for it is uncharitable to take pleasure in making other people uncomfortable.”
Lewis is also very realistic about the differing standards in society. Having grown up in the conservative Christian culture, I’ve seen what a stumbling block the issue of modesty is for many people - and I don’t mean men who struggle with lust.
Men and women alike too often judge others based on the way they dress. Conservative women take pride in their own standard and look down on women who are “less modest.” And on the other hand, women who come from more relaxed backgrounds sometimes judge their conservative counterparts as being legalistic.
Lewis’ solution?
“I do not think that a very strict or fussy standard of propriety is any proof of chastity or any help to it, and I therefore regard the great relaxation and simplifying of the rule which has taken place in my own lifetime as a good thing. At its present stage, however, it has this inconvenience, that people of different ages and different types do not all acknowledge the same standard, and we hardly know where we are. While this confusion lasts I think that old, old-fashioned, people should be very careful not to assume that young or ’emancipated’ people are corrupt whenever they are (by the old standard) improper; and, in return, that young people should not call their elders prudes or puritans because they do not easily adopt the new standard.” [A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.] (The bracketed part wasn’t written by Lewis. It was written by the person who wrote the article I copied and pasted this quote from.) 😂
Keep in mind that Lewis wrote this back in 1952. 71 years ago! Long before our culture became so hyper sexualized and a good decade before the sexual revolution. Just goes to show how wise he was.
Basically the point C.S Lewis was trying to get across is that modesty is less of a biblical law and more of a biblical principle and social rule. Chastity is the actual rule that Christians are bound to. Thus, modesty at its core is subjective and changes depending on the time, location, and culture. Also there’s nothing wrong with flaunting your wealth via clothing. As long as you’re wearing the appropriate clothes for the appropriate setting, it’s all good. That’s my two scents. Stay safe and keep spitting fire 🔥 for the Lord sisters!✌️
Make it plain. Thank you. Rage and lament over what this has done to harm so many kids.
Growing-up i was friends with girls who did dress more on the extreme-end and now that you pointed it out i realize that you are right. They had core needs being neglected. They had parents (namely fathers) who were, if not physically absent, then they were emotionally absent. My neighbor who i grew up with, and hung out with regularly i never once heard her father say "i love you" or "i'm proud of you" or even acknowledged when she did something right. He only spoke to her to criticize or to remind her of a chore he wanted done & it reflected in the boys and later men she'd have romantically in her life. She dated users and abusers, all who would abandon her the moment things got tough. Girls who are dressing in more shocking ways, and who are "boy crazy" dont need judgment. They need love. They have gaping holes in their hearts that they are trying desperately to fill and modesty messages like the ones i heard growing up and that you mentioned just confirm to them that they are worthless and they are unlovable.
I appreciate your podcasts, have been binge-listening, and plan to buy your book/s. Thank you for your work.
I think 100% that men should not lust after women. At the same time, I think women AND men should dress modestly. I do not allow my daughter to "dress like everyone else" because most girls are wearing crop tops and let their bum-cheeks hang out the bottom of their shorts. In other words, many girls frequently dress in self-objectifying clothing. They also wear too many hoodies and sweatpants, but that's a different topic for a different day!
So should we not teach out daughters modesty? If so, what do you think we should teach them?
I think we should teach modesty and I personally teach it to my daughter in terms of what's appropriate for the situation: eg, it's not usually appropriate to wear formal wear to a picnic, flip-flops to the opera, nor is it appropriate to walk around scantily-clad at the grocery store or school (or anywhere else except at home, in my opinion!). I also teach that what we wear sends a message about ourselves to others, whether or not we intend it to. For example, the more respectfully we dress, usually the more respectfully people will treat us.
I've seen how people change around my husband when he wears a suit. People held open doors for us when my daughter was wearing a fur coat her grandma sent her. When we clothe ourselves with dignity, we are often treated with more dignity. Should people be treated with dignity no matter what? Of course, but we have to work within the culture we are swimming in and just as words carry meaning, so does clothing.
Of course, there will be many different opinions on modest dress but I don't like the alternative of letting my daughter gravitate towards pornified outfits that the culture around us wears. Yes, the female body is beautiful and powerful but isn't there a way to be feminine and pretty and classy without objectifying oneself?
Such a needed message for all women who have grown up being ashamed of their bodies. Thank you.
😭 ...Thank you.
Awesome conversation
If the answer to lust and sexual assault is for women to cover up, one has to wonder why sexual assault and rape is still common in Muslim communities.
Answer: Because it's the minds and attitudes of the men who assault women that are the key factor. Being covered up doesn't prevent men with perverted thinking from using their imaginations, and if you teach boys to view women as sex objects to which they are entitled rather than God's image-bearers, they will likely grow up to be the kind of lust-driven creatures you told them they were.
Also, where's the modesty message for men and boys? Here's mine: *Put a shirt on!* Women are just as capable of lusting after attractive men as men are of women, and most men don't have much worth seeing, anyway, so stop acting like you're God's gift to mankind.
You can look feminine and be modest. Also, we are called to be set apart from the world, not to be culturally appropriate.
The book The Story of John G. Paton or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals records John G. Patton’s work as a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands, a violent civilisation where everyone, both men and woman, wore little or no clothing. John Paton wrote about a native man and woman on those islands who became Christians. They requested he marry them but feared they would die because a few men wanted to marry the woman:
In a few seconds, Yakin entered and if Nelwang’s bearing and appearance were rather inconsistent with the feeling of worship (he was wearing a shirt, kilt and tommahawk, John G. Paton felt it inappropriate to wear an emblem of violence to church)- and what on earth was I to do when the figure and costume of Yakin began to reveal itself marching in?
The first visible difference betwixt a Heathen and a Christian is that the Christian wears some clothing, the Heathen wears none. Yakin had determined to show the extent of her Christianity by the amount of clothing she could carry upon her person. Being a Chief’s widow before she became Nelwang’s bride, she had some idea of state occasions and appeared dressed in every article of European apparel, mostly portions of male attire, that she could beg or borrow from about the premises!
Her bridal gown was a man’s drab-coloured great-coat, put on above her native grass skirts and sweeping down to her heels, buttoned tight. Over this she had hung on a vest and above that, again, most amazing of all, she had superinduced a pair of men's trousers, planting the body of them on her neck and shoulders and leaving her head and face looking out from between the legs - a leg from either side streaming over her bosom, arid, dangling down absurdly in front! Fastened to the one shoulder also there was a red shirt and to the other a striped shirt waving about her like wings as she sailed along. Around her head, a red shirt had been twisted like a turban, and her notions of art demanded that a sleeve thereof should have a loft over each of her ears! She seemed to be a moving monster-loaded with a mass of rags.
The day was excessively hot, and the perspiration poured over her face in streams. She, too, sat as near to me as she could get on the woman’s side of the church. Nelwang looked at me and then at her smiling quietly, as if to say, “You never saw in all your white world, a bride so grandly dressed!”
I little thought what I was bringing on myself when I urged them to come to church. The sight of that poor creature sweltering before me constrained me for once to make the service very short - perhaps the shortest I ever conducted in all my life! The day ended in peace. The two souls were extremely happy, and I praised God that what might have been a scene of bloodshed had closed thus, even though it were in a kind of wild grotesquerie!
I think a modest heart posture is important. BUT I have experienced a very adversarial relationship with my body over the years and to this day if I feel good about how I look there’s a part of me that also feels dirty and like I’m “asking” for sexual attention. And I’m talking about fully clothed - very modest clothes.
You are FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made. There was reverence in God’s creation of you! If God reveres you and your body, you can too. Hold your head high 💗
😭... So can either Sheila or Rebecca or anyone tell me if these books of Sheila's will help with healing from trauma and generally unlearning toxic beliefs about women and sex and such? I only just started going to therapy and it's still very general at this point and so these books are targeting specific issues that I struggle with A LOT so I wonder if it would be good in addition to therapy... I want to heal so bad 😢I feel so broken and tortured inside Lord help me
I think they really would! A lot of counselors are now using our books with evangelical women with trauma from past teachings, and it helps a lot. (But therapy is also a really good idea!)
@@SheilaWrayGregoire Thank you so much for your reply. I hope I can get your books and start reading them asap. The Lord bless you and your family and guide us all in his love. 🙏
Did not realize that other people use the term "horn dog" besides me. ha ha ha!
I was molested. Being told that all men are thinking about me naked and fantasising about having sex with me and if I wore the wrong clothes they would do this even more was very frightening. Women who have been raped/molested don't want men behaving sexually towards them, not even in their thought life because it's traumatising for them. But the church teaches the only reason a girl might be dressed "immodestly" is because she's proud. They don't say the woman might be poor, or the girl might not have had sex yet, kissed a boy or been on a date, so she doesn't know what clothes arouse men.
But being told that there are no clothes in the universe that might attract a bad man didn't help either. because when men leered at me, or touched me when i didn't want them to, that re-traumatised me and opened up old wounds. Dressing differently did reduce men's bad behaviour towards me. So, I think there needs to be a balance of saying there are outfits that attract bad men, but those men are bad men. You are not the bad person, the man who sinned against you is.
section about "intoxication" may be cry 😥
Division
Shopping-Plaza Drama
“Wow, that dress looks good. You should buy it,” Michelle says.
“Yeah,” says Jade. “It flatters you in all the right places, and the colour looks great on you.”
Sarah tugs at the hem of the dress she’s wearing, seeing if it will stretch any longer.
“It’s a bit short don’t you think?”
“Silly,” says Michelle. “There’s no such thing as too short. There’s nothing wrong with it at all. Come on, let’s get it.”
Sarah stares at her reflection. She turns side on, smoothing her hand over her tummy. Then, she stands backwards, twisting her neck around, so she can view how the frock looks from behind.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” she says. “I think we should keep looking. I don’t think we’ve found the right dress yet.”
Jade sighs. She places her hand on her hip and says, “I hate shopping with you.”
“Yeah,” says Michelle. “You can always find something wrong, even with the prettiest of dresses.”
Sarah’s cheeks burn. “Sorry, but I don’t think God would want me wearing it, and I don’t want guys sexually harassing me. You know what they’re like.”
Jade’s eyes harden. “God doesn’t care what you wear, and if boys have an issue with it, that’s their problem, not yours.”
Scowling, Michelle slings her bag over her shoulder. “Come on, Jade,” she says. “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s go sample perfumes instead.”
Jade follows Michelle out of the store. As she steps out the door, she turns and says, “From now on, Sarah, you can shop on your own.”
Divided Households
Luke 12 says, Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you not at all but rather division. For from now on, five in one house will be divided: three against two and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father and mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
This means, that although God sometimes saves whole families not everyone in a family will accept Jesus. This will cause friction because Jesus promised that the world will hate us if we become Christians because the world hates Jesus. Sadly, sometimes “the world” includes members of our own family, and they hate us for the decision we’ve made to follow Jesus.
1 Peter 4 says division will even separate us from our non-Christian friends when we decide that we’ve spent enough of our past life walking in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. When we repent of this way of living, the Bible says our unsaved friends, will think it strange and will speak evil of us, and it’s my experience that not only does the gospel cause this kind of division but “modesty” dressing does also. Relationships with people I loved with great affection and devotion, which seemed intertwined, unbreakable and never ending, now barely exist. Not because I’ve threatened nuclear war with Ukraine or because I’ve plotted an invasion of Taiwan, but because I chose that I would keep my shoulders, back, tummy and thighs covered when I received teaching that told me that it pleases God.
An Isolating Choice
Christians classify dirty movies, partying, nightclubbing, getting drunk, doing drugs and having sex outside of marriage as sins, but when you’re young, it seems that’s all most people enjoy. If you refrain from these activities, you spend a lot of time on your own because most people aren’t Christians and when you do meet a Christian, most Christians seem terribly busy and so they can’t help you fill in your desolate, solitary life with more wholesome activities. As a younger woman, I even rang up Christian ministries asking if they needed a hand, but those ministries were dead and not doing much and so they didn’t have anything I could join in with.
I found that isolation so painful. I felt like I would die, and that loneliness intensified when, after receiving modesty teaching, I realised I must now class shopping with friends as an activity I should avoid because when I chose clothes that covered more of my body, my friends would get angry or laugh and scoff. They also made cruel comments. Not only did I get told that I looked less pretty than women who had their shoulders, backs, tummies and thighs showing, I was told that I looked ugly. That puzzled me because, although my clothing had changed, I still had the same face and figure. Another thing that confounded me is that although modesty dressing doesn’t eliminate sexual harassment, when I wore fewer revealing clothes, I found it reduced it. I wondered why my friends didn’t feel happy that I had found something that cut down the number of times I experienced unwanted sexual behaviour.
Getting mocked and derided, that’s not enjoyable. So, overtime, I stopped shopping in groups and started shopping alone. I even decided, that if I married, I’d shop for a wedding dress on my own because I knew buying a dress with more coverage would upset those watching me. I would also have no bridesmaids, I decided, because that would save me the drama of shopping for bridal party dresses. That’s difficult for a girl because one of the main ways females make friends and bond when they’re young, is by shopping for clothes with each other, and when I watch television shows of women shopping for wedding dresses with their family and bridesmaids, it seems, in most cases, it’s a wonderful memory they can share with each other in years to come.
Swimming, something I love, also became an immoral activity that I either refrained from or did alone because instead of wearing only a swimsuit, I now wore a t-shirt and boardshorts on top. That also made people angry or induced more laughter and mocking. I find that strange because it’s well known that Australian’s have a high incidence of contracting skin cancer. Treatments for skin cancer can cause disfigurement and sometimes people with skin cancer die young, such as a family member of mine. Swimming and exercising alone, that’s not fun and it’s not always safe, but because of all the animosity my t-shirt and boardshorts caused, it became the only way of enjoying it. I think that’s sad.
Be Kind
It’s my experience that if a man or woman believes your outfit doesn’t fit their modesty rules, they approach you with anger. Those angry rebukes deepened the isolation and boredom I experienced because a lot of times my outfit did meet the modesty rules but because the outfit was red or because I’d worn nail polish or a hair clip, I still received an angry reprimand. I hope that will start changing.
I hope we will start realising that not all women are part of the Duggar family, a family which all seemed on the same page about what constituted a modest or an immodest outfit, and because of that, when a woman chooses that she will keep certain areas of her body covered, she experiences great seclusion and monotony because her former friends now speak evil of her. She may also experience division, even in her own home, with five in one house divided: three against two and two against three. Father divided against son and son against father and mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law with much loved relationships that seemed intertwined, unbreakable and never ending, now barely there.
I was VERY BUSTY as a teenager. I wore jeans and t-shirts only so that I would never tempt anyone. I was molested by a teacher for most of my sophomore year of highschool....
I'm so sorry 😞
I've watched several of you guys' videos and one thing I feel that you miss is that boys and men naturally gravitate to the feminine form. And it's ok. The church I grew up in taught us that going in the way you naturally go that it's sinful...
I am curious what other modesty cultures talk about this. Eg muslims. Are they told it is for observance to God, or do they create the same sexual temptation messages?
In all the land were found no women so beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers - Job 42:15
What does this have to do with the podcast?
@@TheEllaTB Job 42:15 says that a woman's beauty is a blessing. Modesty teachers often go to the extreme and classify physical attraction as lust when it's not. Some modesty teachers make women feel ashamed for being beautiful, but God made women beautiful. It's not something we should shame people for.