Teaching Modesty
At some point in your child’s life they’re going to notice with increasing interest how people dress. In this article, I will focus on girls—how they dress and how they observe the clothing of others.
To illustrate my intended principle, one day your daughter might make a comment about an outfit worn by a model on the screen—or about the clothing worn by a friend or any woman who is obviously dressed to be highly attractive. THIS is your chance to love and teach.
You say, “Tell me what you see.”
She will likely respond with something non-committal, like “I don’t know,” or “She’s cute.”
Then you point out item by item, why she would be dressed like that, and the pattern is fairly uniform:
- The clothing is tight—or form-fitting—in areas that draw attention to those body parts.
- The smile is meant to attract the attention of the viewer, not just a natural expression of how she feels.
- The body posture suggests a certain frame of mind.
- Skin is exposed in a suggestive way.
In most cases, the smile, body posture, body parts, and skin exposure are meant to be “attractive,” but the attraction isn’t to her geometric or architectural form.
The goal of the woman’s image is a sexual attraction, and this is so common—nearly universal—as to be “normal.” Often people dress this way without consciously sexualizing themselves, but that’s still what is happening.
Your daughter needs to know that women who dress to be sexually attractive are effectively selling themselves as sexual objects, and the men they attract are not the ones they want to live with or raise children with for a lifetime.
You might be having a similar conversation as you see her walking out the door to school, in which case you would make some of the above observations with her in front of a mirror.
The goal here is NOT to demonize sex in any way. It’s to PREPARE our children for the delightful addition of sex to a committed relationship.
Why Teaching Modesty is Important
Before an age where your daughter might consider marriage, she is not ready to sexualize herself. Tell her that sex is great fun, but that before marriage, it can be fatally distracting emotionally.
Girls need to hear, “What is CUTE to you is almost uniformly SEXUALLY attractive to boys and men.” That is not your daughter’s fault, but she does need to be aware of what is happening. There is more to be found on this subject in the Parenting Training.
Do we need to teach modesty to our boys, as well as our girls? Of course, but immodest dress among boys tends not to have nearly the negative effects of girls and women dressing inappropriately.
We do need to teach boys about lust, one example of which is found in the Video Answer: Teaching Our Children Sexual Respect.
We must take the responsibility of teaching modesty in dress to our children. Negligence of that responsibility has consequences we cannot afford—nor can our children.
