Just in time for those folks who – like me – buy their seasonal clothes on clearance at the end of the seasons!
Recently, over at the Catholic Answers Forums the following question was posed:
I bought SPF50 “rashguard” shirts for my sons ($13 at Target), and someone asked me if it was for modesty. Umm, really it was for sun protection; I didn’t even consider bare chests a modesty issue for my sons. What do others here think?
I respond:
15 years or so ago I might have told you a bare-chested teenage boy is no big deal. Given the changes in our culture and the pansexualism running rampant, from vanity body-building to “meterosexuality”, honestly, I would say have your sons wear shirts.
People can stick their head in the sand if they wish (not saying you are) but the “gay 90s” and beyond have demonstrated that boys/young men/men are prone to every bit the sex-object/vanity/immodesty temptation that women have to deal with.I know plenty of guys who spend hours at the gym and are doing so for the same reason women are spending mega-bucks on dresses that cover less than a postage stamp. Little hint? It ain’t so people will notice their shoes.
But traditions of modesty aside, both are trying to get the opposite (or sadly the same) to notice chests/tummies/bottoms. With pretty much the same and in mind.
Don’t think your boys don’t also run the risk of being oogled by dirty old men (or women! School teacher affairs anyone??), or succumbing to the temptations of vanity that, especially in our modern culture, are getting pretty dangerous. People need to put all chauvinism aside and realize that raising a little “stud” is just as bad (maybe worse) than raising a girl who could be labeled a four-letter “S” word.
Besides, it DOES offer sun protection. (And – for me – other folks at the beach don’t have to see my french-fry gut!!!)
I don’t want to come off as a prude, as a kn0w-it all, or as an expert. I am not. I am just swimming (no pun intended) like the rest of us in a culture that has reduced ALL of us – men and women – to would-be sex symbols.
Comedian Jim Gaffigan – one of the actually funny comedians out there who doesn’t rely on being crude and has some literate and cerebral overtones – has a routine about judging people by attractiveness. When an attractive person smiles at you, you think “They’re nice.” When an ugly person smiles at you you wonder “What do they want?”
People are assesed immediately based on attractiveness. Attractiveness is assed immediately based on sexual appeal. And sexual appeal?
Well this is more than a little bit telling. What 20 years ago in my tract-home, rust-belt, post-ethnic, suburban existence seemed pretty benign in our backyard pools, seems “iffy” now. The one piece my grandmother might have worn that revealed a very little cleavage (honestly only a tad bit more than the first photo in this post) wasn’t so bad then because, well, women have breasts. It’s not immodest to simply be what you are if we all have a healthy idea of who we are. (And what we are here for.)
Now women are breasts. Men are chests. The idea of what are bodies are meant for have been radically skewed. Not the Catholic ideal of worship, work, procreation… But pride, pleasure and vanity.
To be sure there is a sense of modesty that, after the fall, we do well to abide by – I am certainly not advancing the idea we could run around naked like Adam & Eve in a pre-fallen world.
The worse it gets, the more prone we should be to take precautions to not get sucked into it.
What do you think?
