If anyone doubts that the choice to wear immodest clothing is made knowing they are immodest, then let me put Of Pants and Passions in the light of Sacred Cowgirls, and make my riddle plain.
Cowboy clothes are impractical for everything except being a cowboy, and even that allowance is suspect. A good pair of steel-toed boots or even Keens have more utility. Coveralls provide better hygiene. Nor is there is a need to have a pledge of allegiance and a prayer to open a rodeo. Neither the riders nor the animals gain any skill or rodeoness from them. These body coverings and ceremonious coverings are chosen regardless of their material impracticality because they love them. In the case of cowboy clothes, they love them so much that it is preferred for women to cross-dress and bedazzle their butts, rather than to fail to uphold cowboy culture.
Meanwhile, Christian culture–the aggregate choices of a Christian life– can go to Hell. Because they do not love them. There is a reason that Cowboy Churches seem more cowboy than church; why they fail to produce as many sound, faithful, loving Christians and instead produce shucks-y people who like the idea of country living, low taxes, and sassy, spangled-ass women.
If you are like me and have been seeing and doing things wrong for your whole life, things like this are hard to hear, All the talk of the “utility” of immodest workout clothes, sports uniforms, comfort clothes, etc. is an alluring sidetrack. It appears like a shortcut through the wilderness of moral choices, but it leads to sheol.
Your heart will tell you lies to make sin appear reasonable. Friends and even respected elders will make to you excuses for immodesty. They will gossip about you, talk down to you, call you the American Taliban, project sex-obsession upon you; anything to try to make you feel bad for choosing modesty before trivialities. That’s what uber-efficient work-outs, amateur sports, or a smidgen more comfort in the supermarket are: trivialities. Do not be deceived! You must choose what you love.
Things that We have Heard and Known 
Plus one Internet Point for naming the source of the post title.
Samson said to them, “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle.”
Judges 14:18
Well done, Max, and welcome.
First thing I thought of was the movie “There will be blood,” where the oil baron says to the doofus-y guy, “I drink *your* milkshake” (referring to directional drilling).
Thank you. It’s fascinating how society accepts the plausible deniability that goes with these clothing choices, despite the glaringly obvious fact that every man in the world manages to do his workouts, sports and shopping just fine in baggy clothes.
Interesting. Thanks. Seems I have a blind spot here to fix.
@DS
Hey man: Welcome to the club.
@max bright –
Good point. In the spirit of equality, you would think women would agree that working out in the same clothes as guys is perfectly doable. Really the claim that they need super tight clothes in order to workout is rediculous.
Back in july I played some co-Ed soccer with my fiancé (gf then). She wore some shorts that came up to about mid thigh, and when she sat down looked more like a swimsuit than shorts in my eyes. Later that night I told her if we were married I would have asked her to wear something different. She was very surprised. I didn’t see why she couldn’t wear longer shorts, as several of the girls we played with did (wearing men’s type basketball shorts, which should be completely comfy for a girl if they are for a guy.)
However, she respected my wishes and a later that week gave me all of her shorts of the same length to me in a bag. She just never realized they were not modest b/c her father never said they were. He has a wife and four daughters, so he likely gets tired of fighting the FI with that many women around all the time and let it slide.
In the end I told my fiancé she could keep the shorts for winter running to wear over leggings, but not for bare skin weather…her act of submission and respect meant a lot to me (ladies take note, respecting your man, like Ephesians 5 teaches, is the best thing you can do for your man).
My fiancé is very very modest with all her other dress, so I hold the belief that this one instance was more of a state of ignorance than anything else. I’m a man from a not so clean background, so I know exactly what most guys are thinking when they see a young women baring some skin. I think she gets that to an extent, but is a girl without a lot of knowledge in this area. She has been sheltered quite a bit and has a genuinely innocent side that can be a pitfall to her at times as well. I think the church fails in a big way here, which has been discussed by Cane recently.
I never dated or pursued a christian woman that has no problem getting a beer or dinner at a pub/bar etc. They would never admit it but I know what most men in those places are thinking when they walk by them, what their C**k would like in those young women’s mouth. The girls act like that’s crazy, but you know they know it too, and like it to an extent. It’s a hard issue to teach girls about men without portraying them all as animals…it’s just about the quality of the men.
Good job Max! It was at my fingertips! LOL.
@ DS
We all have blind spots. We are all tricked by the lure of “convenience.” It doesn’t have to be about clothing. It can be about anything, really. As Cane said, we chose what we love, and unless we are careful, what we love is often the world.
I’ve thought about working out in a blind fold or literally walk around in a blindfold. It’s sad I can’t see my wife’s ass as much as I see every other woman whether I’m in the gym or going to the store.
typo can’t = can.
never mind it was right the first time around.
I see leggings every where I go now. Thanks Cane.
Oh, and I totally got the title reference but like on Jeopardy, the other guy rang in first.
I posted this over at the “Pants and Passions” thread.
Clearly, when a person is committed, he/she is willing to inconvenience him/herself to remain true to his/her commitment.
To be fair, I don’t think it’s necessary to go to the lengths to which the Duggars go, though I admire their commitment. My oldest three girls are in their teens now and becoming distressingly (to me) curvaceous. They wear surfing shirts and shorts for swimming, with a normal 1-piece bathing suit underneath to prevent any accidental immodesty on the water slides.
You won’t mistake them for boys dressed like that, especially with all the “cute” designs available. And they don’t look Amish, either.
No one’s ever said so to my face, but chances are that other parents (including Christians) think I’m weird for making my daughters dress that way. If so, let’s keep in mind that “weird’ is synonymous with “peculiar”.
Mission accomplished. On to the next.
You know Oscar, I thought about this a lot the past couple of days. Our girls are way more covered up than other young women, and it’s especially noticable in the summer time. We do have standards, despite my comments regarding exercise wear, and they are stricter standards than most. No one wears yoga pants here (no one even owns any). Biking shorts are covered with another pair of shorts, etc.
We don’t require that jeans be particularly loose and I think that’s mainly because my husband doesn’t like my jeans loose and so they buy theirs the same way. And yes, I know that there are some who find that potentially problematic from a modesty standpoint. We do the swimsuits with board shorts deal and it works well.
The overarching issue is of course, that women are either desirous of or oblivious to the ramifications of the choices they make and while I am not in lock step agreement with Cane on this ( I do agree with him on most of it), I am appreciative of the opportunity to think it over, evaluate motivations and have my daughters do the same.
@Elsepth
As my job gives me opportunity to travel, I saw the wearing of yoga pants and leggings explode in the coastal cities two years ago; DC, NYC, SF, etc. I came home and warned my daughters that tights and whatnot wouldn’t fly in the Caldo house. “Oh, no, Dad. We’d never want to do that!”
This past year, “Well, how about this outfit?”
Nope.
girlsinyogapants dot com exists for a reason. To show women how comfortable exercise clothing is, right?
I’d like to make a point in defense of the- already obvious and acknowledged- fact that women do dress for attention, in hopes that it will draw a correlation with the yoga pants phenom:
The dominant physical drawback of today’s western females is a big gut. Whether from too much sugary soda or too many babies, guts are everywhere.
No matter how big the gut, if you slap on a pair of yoga pants, there is instantly *something* desirable about your body. A booty.
I think the yoga pants fad is much more of an attempt at making ugly women feel beautiful {like fat barbie} than anything else.
If the majority of women were flat tummied and busty, tube tops or the like would be the norm.
More evidence to back this is a comment somewhere in a recent post of yours where someone noted the almost unintentional male shift that now finds women’s butts as the most desirable feature and uses Kim K. as the reason.
Nowadays, no matter what men prefer, a woman’s butt is her most desirable feature because she has no other features, due to obesity.
Point blank- yoga pants were designed to assist every woman to be able to enjoy the feeling of being lusted after, even if she is not attractive.
Thank you for allowing me to comment.
@younggodlywomen says:
February 5, 2015 at 11:02 am
“No matter how big the gut, if you slap on a pair of yoga pants, there is instantly *something* desirable about your body. A booty.”
Uh… no. It doesn’t work that way. Although a lot of women seem to think it does.
Yeeeeeeeeeeah Oscar is right on this one.
It also doesn’t fit my experience of less attractive (re: overweight) girls tending, on balance, to wear sweatpants more often than yoga pants.
“Uh… no. It doesn’t work that way. Although a lot of women seem to think it does.”
The whole “fat acceptance”/”show off your body at any size” movement is also pushing this. Yahoo has been spamming articles about “plus size supermodels” lately.
The thing about those women is that they are 1) very pretty and 2) they are hour glass shaped. This means that despite being overweight, they do not represent the body type of the average overweight woman.
Not even close. Coming from a community of people where a woman can easily carry an extra 25 pounds and having men chasing her if its stacked right, I know how this kind of fallacy picks up steam. But the same woman who is apple shaped is overlooked or even ridiculed as “bad bodied”.
Unfortunately the whole Kim K. butt trend has a lot of women fairly deluded about the reality of not only their health, but their figure. I’m carrying an extra 20 myself and I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked why I’m trying to lose weight.
But you all are too quick to dismiss the fact that stretchy clothes give an illusion that one can fit into a smaller size than she actually can. Which is why I refuse to wear them. It forces me to come to grips with my true jeans size.
Elspeth: That’s true. The woman in the Yahoo article has a very pretty face and is curvy enough to suit a lot of men. As you say, the average woman who wants to drop 20-40 pounds looks nothing like that. So the “fat accepters” use the same tactics that their “super thin/plastic surgery” enemies use. No surprise there.
@Elspeth says:
February 4, 2015 at 6:19 pm
Obliviousness is definitely an issue, and it’s understandable in teenage girls. That’s why dads need to exercise veto power over their daughters’ clothing choices, and educate them about men’s (and the girls’) sinful nature. Unfortunately, most dads these days lack the guts to do so. Kind of like this sad sack of a dad.
“Biking shorts are covered with another pair of shorts, etc.”
My sister, younger brother and I all ran track and cross country in high school. Track shorts – for both men and women – are TINY. We all wore spandex shorts under our track shorts for modesty’s sake. There are ways to get around the problem without going full Amish. Most people (including Christians) simply don’t want to.
” It also doesn’t fit my experience of lessattractive (re: overweight) girls tending, on balance, to wear sweatpants moreoften than yoga pants. ”
This is simply due to laziness. I am addressing the ‘yoga pants are high fashion’ trend and not in an excercise setting because as Cane rightly shows us, this setting is a red herring.
I screwed up the quotes on my reply to Elspeth. Maybe I should break down and get a Word Press account.
[CC: Fixed.]
YGW,
This is simply due to laziness. I am addressing the ‘yoga pants are high fashion’ trend and not in an excercise setting because as Cane rightly shows us, this setting is a red herring.
You misunderstand me, which is my fault, as I am referencing an earlier post I made. I saw, on Facebook, a photo of a jazz class. The more attractive girls in the class wore yoga pants. The less attractive girls wore baggier sweatpants.
Stretchy points may make ladies look more attractive to a point, but for the most part overweight women are not going to look any more attractive stuffed into skintight pants. If anything they look less attractive, which is the reason they’ll avoid it more often than more attractive ladies.
It is a red herring, but this is just not a good example.
@Cane Caldo says:
February 4, 2015 at 7:32 pm
“As my job gives me opportunity to travel, I saw the wearing of yoga pants and leggings explode in the coastal cities two years ago”
My new job requires lots of travel as well, and I’ve noticed lots of women wearing yoga pants at the airport. I’ve noticed, however, that the vast majority who wear them are young and slender. Why? Because they know they look good wearing them. The overweight ones who know they don’t look good wearing yoga pants mostly don’t.
If it was all about comfort, that wouldn’t be the case.
By the way, thanks for fixing my crew-up.
Malcolmthecynic,
” which is the reason they’ll avoid it more often than more attractive ladies. ”
I am certain that collectively, you gentlemen have seen far more regions of this country and are much more qualified to make a blanket judgement than myself, whose opinion was solely based on what I see in one city and my individual thoughts on the matter.
I am more than likely very wrong that yoga pants were designed for and are mostly purchased by bigger women.
Take care.
One question which comes to mind: Are yoga pants any less revealing than the controversial full body scanners the TSA has been pushing?
I believe there’s an important caveat to this discussion. If a woman wears yoga (or similarly tight) pants with a long, loose-fitting shirt or blouse, the modesty factor goes way up. She’s still showing off her legs and some guys may imagine what her mid-section looks like, but it’s a big improvement nonetheless.
Now if she’s working out or working in the yard and constantly bending over, that defeats the shirt/blouse’s purpose.
@Dalrock
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
@YGW and John
It’s important to remember is that this discussion isn’t about yoga pants, but modesty.
Cane – Understood. But since so much of the recent discussion has been about those pants, I wanted to clarify that.
Cane,
I was under the impression that this was less about “the choice to wear immodest clothing”, and more about that the choice “is made knowing they are immodest.”
I brought up yoga pants because my intention was to back up your claim that women dress to be lusted after by pointing out that unattractive women also {and more often, though that was not an agreeable point} wear these so that they have an attractive physical feature by drawing focus away from their fat tummies and to their rears.
I apologize for taking the focus away from your post if my comment did do so.
Well fat women can be immodest too, and men sleep with (and marry, quiet as it’s kept around these parts!) big women all the time. I see plenty of fat chicks in immodest clothing and there isn’t really a significant difference in the amount of immodesty exhibited by fit or unfit women unless you account for age. Say over 40. And that only sometimes.
Dalrock,
From what I know those full body scanners are next to useless and basically just show lumpy images of people.
@YGW
I appreciate it, but you have said nothing for which to apologize. My comment was not meant to re-direct back to one specific thing, but to discourage dissensions. Modesty is a big subject, with plenty of room for you to talk about fat women envying skinny women’s attention, Oscar to talk about haughty women in yoga pants, and for John to talk about wearing tunics over them.
I heard your support in your words, and I agree with you that unattractive women also choose to be immodest for the sake of attention; that they will accentuate the features they believe can get elicit lust. More broadly (rimshot!) we recognize that any woman who wants more attention will wear immodest clothes to get it. I have seen many big butt women wearing tights to accentuate their butt (even more often their boobs are chilly), and there are an awful lot of women wearing immodest clothes because they consider themselves “butter-faces”.
People of all colors comment on my site, but I suspect Malcolm is among the whitest. He will have no truck with junk in the trunk, and so (if I am right) it stands to reason that he will have a somewhat harder time imagining women pretending themselves as lusty.
For myself, I tend to pity the fat and ugly women who attempt to incite lust, but I can get rather angry at the attractive ones who make much of themselves. Dressing like that is unfair fighting, and they are taking advantage of men’s good graces.
People of all colors comment on my site, but I suspect Malcolm is among the whitest.
Now, how did you POSSIBLY guess that???
(I am of 100% Italian descent. Seriously. Both sides of my family going back who knows how many generations, all Italian.)
Cane,
That was a very kind response. Take care.
Well fat women can be immodest too, and men sleep with (and marry, quiet as it’s kept around these parts!) big women all the time
This is a fact. Last summer I took my son to the local parks quite often. I was amazed at how many big woman / skinny man couples I saw. I don’t believe I saw one couple where the woman was thin and the man was not fit. Even many of the single women were over weight, I’d say well over half.
I remember being amazed at the number of men who were willing to play family court roulette with women who were not all that attractive (IMO most men will risk almost anything for an attractive woman). There was a time when I would have thought that it must be their personalities, but I’ve long since learned that lack of physical attraction does not guarantee inner beauty nor the ability to appreciate.
Some of the woman did dress inappropriately at the parks, but not as many as I’ve seen at Walmart.
First, Tina Fey is one of the best comedy writers out there and “Mean Girls” is pure comedy genius because it is so true so often. “30 Rock” also did well here because Fey was able to ignore her own worst impulses to often point at true things.
Enough has been said here but, “even more often their boobs are chilly”. So. Much. Truth.
But I think it is worth being said that modestly dressed women can be very attractive. I…um…many years later can still remember that red headed sophomore from my senior year who wore that stunning blue dress one day. She was covered completely modestly from head-to-toe but only religion saved me from dragging her off into a cave.
Pingback: Some Recommended Reading | Donal Graeme
Dear Cane,
I have the privilege of guest posting for Lori Alexander. I wrote a post after reading here and submitted it to her. You are linked and quoted in the article. It was posted today. Take Care.
I am pleased to be helpful.