On Style...

A while back I wrote a post titled, What are Thongs? It touched on the way in which the skimpy aspect of women's fashion is finding its way into the church. Touchstone magazine's blog linked to an article by Dennis Prager titled, Why young women are exposing themselves: part one. Prager states,

Thanks to feminist doctrines that pervade education from kindergarten through graduate school, men and women increasingly believe that the sexes are largely identical. Therefore, the arenas wherein women can feel and demonstrate their feminine distinctiveness have narrowed appreciably... In the past, expressing one's femaleness was done through expressing femininity. In addition to the female roles of wife and mother, there were numerous ways of doing so. One was, of course, dress. But in the name of equality and comfort, distinctive female dress -- such as dresses and skirts -- has been largely abandoned... Today, instead of women wearing feminine clothing, they either wear essentially male clothing (such as pants and pants suits) or flesh-baring sexually provocative clothing. Feminine attire -- i.e., clothing that is very female but not very revealing -- is rare.

Recently, in the local paper, there was a reader-commentary by a homeschool mom. In it she commented on her twelve year old daughter and her twelve year old cousin:

These girls are on the brink of adolescence, but they don't fit the "conventional" image of most girls their age. They have a radiance about them that simply glows. Their minds are still innocent, their clothing is modest and their purity is apparent immediately. These qualities are in sharp contrast to current trends among "tweens," such as "freak dancing" at middle school dances (grinding bodies together), a nightmare for school principals everywhere. According to data published in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, 10 percent of girls are losing their virginity before age 13 and 19 percent by age 14. In some middle schools, oral sex has become all the rage, seen as nothing more than a ticket to the "in crowd."

In the world... but not Of. I recently saw a young female in our church wearing skin-tight stretch pants along with an equally tight tank top that seemed to be missing a lot of material. I do not know who this woman is but my inclination is that she is a very young Christian. I hope that some of the mature Christian ladies at church take her aside and lovingly explain to her the inappropriateness of her actions. In part two of his report, Prager states:

...as a service to any woman who is confused by the difference between "cute" and provocative as regards women's clothing, this may help. What you often call cute or attractive, men see only as a sexual come-on. If you wish to dress for sex, you should be entirely free to do so. But if you want love and attention, you have to know the difference between dressing for sex and dressing to be cute and attractive. The more skin men see, the more they think sex, not love. And that includes guys your age, your male teachers, your clergyman, your mailman, and the old man next door.