Welcome to Thomistic Womanhood. In today’s video, this is going to be part two of the modesty debate. So in this video, I’m going to talk about some reasons why I think modesty is worth the trouble and it’s something you should consider.

Welcome to Thomistic Womanhood. Happy Thomistic Tuesday. So talking about modesty. These are the arguments that I think are.. there at least my arguments for it. I’ve kind of dressed modestly since I was a teenager, and these are the arguments that made it worth it for me. Again, we had a video where I went through all the two arguments that I think are kind of stupid arguments for it or they’re kind of not as compelling. This is the argument that kind of convinced me that I think is the most compelling for why you should dress modestly. Again, this is just from my point of view, it was kind of twofold.

So the first part of this argument is kind of negative, and it kind of just proves that our world is far away from how it should be. And the second argument, I feel like is a little more positive. And it’s a slight spin on the whole “ladies dress modestly” kind of argument, and I hope it’s a little more positive of a spin on that one.

Dressing Modestly Protects You

So the first subpart of my point of view on this. Dressing modestly protects you. And here’s what I mean by that. When you’re going about your life. You’re running into strangers, you’re going to the store, you’re seeing your co-workers, your whatever like as part of life, us women, we don’t live in this sheltered area. 18 hundred’s time where women never left the family estate, unless they had a chaperone friend with them, women go out and about, we drive around, we have jobs, we’re very independent and, liberated in that way. And that’s good. I don’t see anything wrong with that but that does expose us to strangers. And the problem with strangers is that strangers don’t love you. And I think some people can say, you’re taking a too dark view of it. And I don’t think that’s the case. The problem with immodestly dressing, wearing revealing clothes, whether they’re revealing through tightness or they’re just revealing through, the fabric is just leaving parts of your body like out in the open air showing. The problem with that is your granting a certain kind of knowledge to the strange men, Strangers that are men that you’re running into as you go about your life when you dress to show every curve, I would like to make the case that it’s risky instead of empowering. And again, I know this is not the way clothing is sold, so just do a thought experiment with me for a little bit. This may sound really like, weird, but just keep an open mind. What I’m saying is, when men have the knowledge of how your body looks, down to what’s your bra size, because a lot of shirts are tight enough to where you can tell your bra size. You can tell whether you have childbearing hips or not, and a lot of men, that’s the kind of knowledge they know what kind of body you have. And a lot of men sexually objectify women, this is still a problem in 2020 unfortunately, and when they have that knowledge of how your body looks, they can then make a judgment call and go, is that the kind of body I would enjoy having sex with? And I know you’re like, oh, men don’t think that and it’s like, some men don’t, some men are decent, and they try to look past that. But a lot of men don’t. And especially in our porn saturated culture. A lot of men are very used to seeing women in a sexual way. And again, this is not the way the world should be, men should not be doing this. It’s true. But it is how it is. In a lot of cases. I don’t want to say in every case, there are plenty of decent men. But that’s kind of that is the problem you can have with strangers.

And so when a man sees what your body looks like, he’s able to make a judgment call whether he finds that attractive or not. And then he can jump from there and Well, I would like to sleep with her, and that can lead men to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do. And I’m not even talking about rape. Okay? Obviously, that’s wrong. I’m not saying like, if you go out in a miniskirt, some guys gonna drag you in a back alley and rape you. That’s not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is it’s going to slightly add an element of maybe corruption to your interactions, because he’s going to have in the back of his mind what he can get out of you. Not necessarily what he can do for you, because your benefits now, and again, the female body is very beautiful. I’m not saying this is because the female body is bad or sex is bad.

Fundamentally, women are beautiful. God made us beautiful for a reason. The female body is beautiful for a reason. And men find it attractive for a reason. You know, those are not inherently bad things. Sex is not an inherently bad thing. However, in our fallen human nature in our fallen world, we don’t always act the right way about beautiful things, things that are beautiful and that have enormous benefits. We often don’t appreciate those things. And have you ever heard the saying, you got to take care of the goose that lays the golden eggs. A lot of I think there was like a fairy tale where they had a goose that lays golden eggs. And instead of taking care of the goose, it would continue laying golden eggs. They just tried to grab all the golden eggs and just left the goose to die. In our fallen world. That’s what often can happen. I’m not saying it’s always gonna happen, but it can happen. It’s a significant risk. It’s there. And that’s what I feel like when you’re dressing very revealing. It does add an element of risk. And because these men will come into your life. And you’ll think they’re good men, and they’ll say and do things to get you in bed because they already saw what you look like. And we’re like that, I want that, and so that can be a problem. To me. That is the negative case for modesty.

And from personal experience, most men just do not know how to act about a beautiful woman. And they just immediately jump to a place of Well, I’m going to try and get this for me, men are all about getting resources. This is why they’re into money. This is why they’re into fast cars. You know, this is why they’re into tools. They’re into getting things so they can use them to do other things. And the problem is, a lot of men view women as a thing to be gotten, so they can do things that make them feel good.

Let’s just put it at that. And so that can be a risk for women. And also, I watched someone’s YouTube video when I was researching for this. And he was talking about modesty. And he made a really good point. He said in physical intimacy in the sexual act, trying to keep this G rated for anybody young who’s watching this. He said, women have to tolerate a high degree of vulnerability in that and that’s why he said, there has to be a high level of trust, or sadly, a high level of intoxication for women to go through with it. And it’s true if you think about it not to be vulgar. But if you think about it, a woman has to allow a foreign object into her body for this. And, that’s why men or women a certain amount of respect and deference about this area, When it comes to sex, they owe women respect and they don’t have a right to be pressuring us into things. Because for us, it is a more vulnerable situation, you know, but sadly a lot of men don’t see it that way. And that’s why I do think when you dress modestly, you save yourself a lot of trouble.

I was once talking to my sister. And we were both raised Catholic and she’s kind of since left the church doesn’t really practice anymore. And she was complaining to me one day, she’s like, Gloria, I have such a problem with stalkers. I get these creepy guys all the time, and they just won’t leave me alone. Why do you never have stalkers? That’s not fair. Like why what’s and so I told her I said, Look, the reason I don’t have it is because I dress modestly. When I’m talking to these guys. They know there’s no sex on the table because they can’t see as well you know? What’s going on there? So I do feel that when you dress modestly, it kind of almost makes it clear that you’re going to be a little difficult in that area. And so a lot of guys will just go elsewhere where there’s less of a challenge, frankly, this whole business of men like a challenge, like, I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s always true. So that’s the reason that I feel is a very negative reason we live in a fallen world. A lot of strange men are not good men. And if they can’t see what’s on display, they can’t want it to the point of causing trouble for you. So again, that’s a very negative reason, but that’s a reason that I have personally found compelling.

I went to public school, I didn’t go to Catholic school, and I heard up close and personal what men think of women and our bodies and some of the thoughts and plans they have for it. And that’s when I was kind of like, there might be something to that whole modesty thing. So that’s the first kind of like sub thing.

It Matters What We Wear

So for the second argument, or like the second sub-argument, this one was a little harder for me to kind of figure. Like, it’s something I do intuitively. So it’s kind of hard putting it into words, but I’ll try. And again, this is just from my experience, this is not a judgment on anyone, but I kind of feel like, it matters what we wear. That’s the first thing about it. I think that clothing is a self-expression. It is something we do to make a statement about who we are as a person and how we expect to be received by the world. And I think we all instinctively know that. Even if you know, when we get criticized for our clothes, or somebody points out, like, you should be dressing modestly and you’re not, I get as offended as anyone else. Because we all instinctively know, especially as women, we all know that our clothing is an expression of who we are. And so it can be super offensive when somebody is like, you shouldn’t wear that or you shouldn’t wear this because I feel like a lot of us, myself included, we kind of identity with our clothing, you know, it means a lot to us. Like I still have clothes I wore in college because they were cute outfits, and they weren’t immodest or anything. They were modest clothes. But you know, at the various points in my life, there’ll be certain outfits that I value and I like and I’ll hold on to them.

I’m not a big picture taker, and I’m not into. I do have some knickknacks. I’m looking around my apartment right now and I do have some knick knacks, but when it comes to things that have sentimental value to me, my clothes, hands down, like I will pull out a shirt and I’ll just instantly remember all the places I win in that shirt and the memories. Like for me, it’s like photographs. A lot of people take pictures, and they have photo albums. I keep my clothes and I look at my clothes. So I know it’s weird, but again, for me, our clothes just mean a lot. They do matter. And I think for some of us, especially if you’re watching this, you’re resistant to the whole modesty concept. You’re like I don’t want somebody telling me what I can or can’t wear. I respect that. I can sympathize with that. But I do think that, in that vein, you’re right. You’re it does matter what you wear. You should be able to use clothing to express who you are. And I think the fear of dressing modestly, because it is so hard to find modest clothes, can be kind of scary and you think, Oh, I’m not going to get anything that expresses who I am. And that can be a scary thought, but I’m here to say that you can look cute and dress modestly. I am eccentric. I’m really into clothing and like fashion design. So I have weird things that I look into like Gothic Lolita clothes. I love them. You should check them out if you want to like super eccentric, really feminine clothes like look into that. But I don’t know some of some versions of it. Most of it is really too frilly but whatever. I’m going off on a tangent. Maybe we’ll do a video about that later. But yeah, you’re right. Clothing is self-expression. It should be something you do to show who you are. And I agree with that. And so for me dressing modestly is about getting to express who I am.

There are two aspects to that. The first thing is like, I’m a woman, I take that seriously. I appreciate that I’m a woman and I’m different from men. You know, men and women, we have a lot in common. You know, we’re both humans. We both love and hate. There’s a certain, I guess, for lack of a better term, certain personhood that we both have, but in general, there are a lot of differences between men and women. And so when I dress, I like to convey that I am of the female persuasion, and I wear clothes that make it clear, I’m not a man. I tend to wear a lot of skirts, the whole skirts versus pants. That’s another debate for another time. But I tend to wear skirts as much as I can. Because again, I’m really into femininity and womanhood. Obviously, I have a channel about it. So for me it’s like, wearing a skirt is like this highly symbolic thing that I want to do. Again, I know not everybody’s like that, but that’s how I am. So for me, yeah, my clothing, I want to make it clear that I’m a woman,  and that it’s kind of hard. You know, like, you’ll look at what I’m wearing. I’m wearing a striped shirt like it’s not super feminine. It’s a little skirt. You can’t see in the end at the bottom here, but whatever. So yeah, the first thing is, I want to look like a woman. I’m a woman.

And the second part of that is I, and I’ve given this a lot of thought, Yeah, I was raised Catholic, but I went to public school. I was not raised in a very sheltered home. Let’s put it that way. And so I’ve had a chance to consider both ends of the spectrum and so I do feel that as a woman, I’m valuable, whether I’m hot or not. And so that’s also another thing when I dress and again, I’m not putting you down. I’m not saying that, if you don’t think this way, you’re insecure or you’re only dressing for male attention. It’s not that I know a lot of things like clothing. It’s not all about male attention. But for me, again, going back to that risk factor, I do like to not necessarily put everything on display because I want to kind of vet men a little bit. And I noticed you get a sweeter side of men when there are more benefits on the table than you otherwise would. And I think sometimes dressing more modestly tends to kind of give you a more accurate idea of who this guy is because there are less benefits to try and sway his judgment. The extreme example of this we see with pickup artists, if they’ve decided they want to get you in bed, they’re going to be super nice. Now that’s way on one end of the spectrum. I’m not saying every guy like that, but kind of illustrates my point. So, I do think that I have value whether I’m hot or not. And that also kind of, for me takes some of the pressure off and like, helps me kind of like, think about how I want to convey who I am.

And you know, I also think that if you look throughout history, having somewhat loose flowing clothes on women, that also signified something, historically, women would wear that, and men wouldn’t always do that. Not always, obviously, you had judges and men that would wear robes sometimes in certain cultures, because again, I’m like, really into fashion and I’m always looking at like, what different cultures wear what they used to wear, you know? And so it’s not accurate to say like men never wore skirts or men never wore loose clothing like sometimes they did. But in general, you know, they would do it when they wanted to be imposing intimidating, you have judges, things like that they don’t we don’t have, well, judges still wear it a little bit, you know, but when it’s some event of great dignity, you know, even men will wear robes like graduation, high school graduations, you know, everybody wears a long flowing robe because it’s dignity, you’ve made it through, the first leg of your education,  that’s something to celebrate and I do feel that it was maybe a little bit of a leisure thing, women tended to wear looser flowing clothes, because a lot of them weren’t out working in the fields, you know, guys tended to wear the tighter, kind of more maneuverable clothes, because they were off out and about, women often had, as I said, it was often a leisure thing. They had more leisure in life, and so they had the luxury of wearing clothes that maybe weren’t as utilitarian.

And now the other aspect of this because the big objection to that can be, well, what about women in slavery? What about women that had to work? Because if you look back in history, sometimes they still would stick to somewhat more flowing clothes. And the reason for that is, and again, this is another reason that I think is very valuable. And it’s part of what I mean when I say I am expressing who I am as a woman. It’s also the fact that we can bear life, we can have children, this body that we’re covering, literally produces human babies out of.. I don’t want to say out of thin air, because obviously, men have something to do with it. But we are literally like baby-making machines. Like that’s kind of cool. And it’s kind of sad because human life is so taken for granted nowadays. And just the way we pass on governments and property and stuff, the familiar Connection is less there. So, and to contrast and make my point like, let’s look back in history when dynasties and kingdoms and being properties and estates were passed down through the family line, suddenly, a woman’s ability to have a kid was like a make or break thing. It was a huge deal. People really valued the fact that a woman had fertility and could have a child and carry on the line. Like that was a big deal. You know, I remember one time I was watching a trailer for a movie. And there was this king and they were like this nomadic, it was like a biblical movie, you know, kind of like back in those days when people were nomadic and they had tribes and stuff, and there was a king of the tribe. And he had all these men like trying to overthrow him, and it was a very dangerous, chaotic time. And I remember they show in the trailer, this scene of the Queen, his queen escaping and running off into the desert and everybody was freaking out, because she either was carrying the king’s child, the heir or like everybody knew she was the only one that could have the heir. And so everybody, like all the bad guys were like, Oh, go after her and get her, you know? And it was because of her fertility, her ability to have that heir suddenly, everybody was like she, . she was pretty important and I just remembered seeing that scene and I thought, wow, we’ve come so far from that, you know, now we just like medicate away our fertility and women’s ability to do that you know, and have children is just it’s like trampled underfoot like nobody values it. But back in olden times, that was a life or death matter. You know, that King if he couldn’t have an heir, his whole kingdom ends And he can get killed and all this stuff, he can get overthrown. And, you know, his claim to the throne is not as strong if he can’t continue. So a woman becomes super crucial to that, you know, and even nowadays, men have their head on straight, still kind of understand that to a certain degree. But it just goes to show that as women, we have a lot of dignity just from the fact that we can have children. That’s a big deal. You know, we can continue the human race. That is why historically women were not put in battle. That’s why on the Titanic, they said women and children first, it’s because we propagate the species. That’s a huge deal. And I think when you’re wearing more modest clothes, you are covering the human, the female body, it’s true, you know, you’re covering up more, it can feel stifling, but think of it this way. We come Things that are valuable to us. Have you ever heard the saying don’t flash your cash, you cover up your cash when you’re traveling, you don’t want pickpockets, the, you know, they tell you don’t flash your valuables don’t flash your cash because it’s valuable you keep it covered. And the same thing you know, like, like a diamond or not a diamond, a pearl, you know, like an oyster pearl is in the oyster, very hidden, you know, and then again, diamonds, you know, you buy a beautiful diamond ring, it’s in a box, you know that it’s like fitting to the beauty and the dignity of that diamond, the value of it. So, as women, I think that I think I challenge you to think of covering up not as stifling, but as expressing the value of what’s being covered.

The female body is beautiful, it’s good. It’s not dirty or shameful. Neither is sex, but we’re valuable. Like we can continue the human race, our bodies do that, like the whole body, you know. And so obviously, our breasts in our womb are like, mostly involved in that. But the whole body is, you know when you become pregnant, your whole body is, you know, undertaking that process of growing that human being, and that that is so incredibly valuable, you know, as a society, we’ve lost sight of that. And so yes, we see modest clothing is something that’s like, stifling, but it’s not. I challenge you to be a little more open-minded and think about it differently, that it’s actually, covering your body is because it’s valuable because it’s beautiful.

So, yeah, food for thought. Again. Now, when we say covering the female body. There’s a limit to that. Obviously, I’m not saying that we have to like to wear burkas and or wear like ugly ones, shapeless bags. When I say modesty What I mean is, you know, I think your clothes should have some sort of sleeves. It doesn’t have to be down to your wrist but you should have some sleeves, your neckline you know, you should try to keep it fairly reasonable, maybe a couple of fingers past your collarbone. You don’t need to be like showing everything unless it’s a fun night at home with your husband, whatever you do what you want,  your skirts, pants, shorts, things like that. I think they should be about knee length. They don’t have to be at your ankles. Some people get scrupulous, and they’re like, oh, you’re you should be covered up here and you should wear ankle-length dresses and they’ll even quote like the 1800s and be like, well women wore that back then and I think that’s a bit overkill. Again, the modesty standards or sleeves, have a somewhat reasonable neckline. Have a knee-length skirt. Try not to be too tight in your clothing. Again, if a guy can tell your bra size, or he can tell that you have childbearing hips. It’s probably too tight, and again, that’s like the negative part of dressing modestly, you know, because it’s hard finding clothes that fit that. But like I said before, it’s worth it because you’re expressing who you are as a woman, and you’re expressing the value and dignity that you have. Now, that is not to say that women who don’t dress modestly don’t have dignity. I’m not saying that you know, every woman has dignity regardless of how she’s dressed. Okay, so I just want to make that clear.

But it’s food for thought, again, I don’t know who you are watching this, you know, you’re probably a grown adult you can wear what you want, but food for thought. It’s something to think about, so anyways, I hope that was helpful. If you have any comments or questions, let me know. This is a hot topic. This is not a fun thing to talk about. This is something I kind of dreaded making a video about. And then it’s like, I saw a video of a guy talking about it and I was like, I have to make my video about this.