What Do People Notice When They Look at You?

When I was young, I went through a phase of being very scrupulous. (Is it just me, or was anyone else ever young and scrupulous?)

I remember knowing that God wants us to dress modestly. I didn’t understand why, or the differences in male and female nature that made modesty important. But I knew it was a rule, and it had something do to with men being attracted to women.

Where's the line between seductive and attractive? And who's responsible for it?

But I couldn’t figure out where the line was. Was it bad for men to be attracted by the sight of a woman? Was I supposed to make myself completely physically unattractive to them?

Fortunately, that seemed unreasonable even to me, and my inborn teenaged girl’s desire to feather my hair and experiment with fashion and make-up overwhelmed my early scrupulosity.

But they were good questions. Does dressing modestly mean completely obliterating every trance of femininity in our appearance? How completely are we supposed to be hiding our bodies, anyway? Should the burlap bag, or the shapeless plaid jumper, be the next big fashion trend?

Fortunately, other smart, holy people have wondered the same thing. Here's what they think.

St. John Paul II is still my “go to” guy when it comes to issues of sexual morality. His book Love and Responsibility is amazing on many, many levels. The discussion on modesty is one of my favorite parts. He says that modesty is about inspiring a reaction to the “person” and not just to the “parts.” It is about presenting that person as a good in and of herself, and not just the body as a possible object of enjoyment.

St. JPII says that, “Shame is the tendency, uniquely characteristic of the human person, to conceal sexual values sufficiently to prevent them from obscuring the value of the person as such.” But modesty isn’t just about what we’re concealing. It’s about what we’re revealing.

In deflecting attention away from the “sexual values,” we are hopefully turning that attention toward the deeper attributes of the person. As St. JPII says: “The spontaneous need to conceal mere sexual values bound up with the person is the natural way to the discovery of the value of the person as such.”

Men and women were created to be attracted to each other's minds and bodies.

He says, however, that we conceal those sexual values, “only to a certain extent, so that in combination with the value of the person, they can still be a point of origin for love.”

In other words, God created men to be attracted to the female form, and vice versa. And when we fall in love with each other, the male and female shape of our bodies is not completely irrelevant to the process.

If you don’t believe me, think about all of the deeper traits and characteristics you’re looking for in a spouse. Now what if, while walking through an enchanted forest, you found all of those attributes in a talking cardboard box?   What level of “attraction” would you experience?

So it makes sense that what we put on our bodies is a part of this.

He goes on to say, in what I find one of the most illuminating passages of the book, that

“The accentuation of sexual values by dress is inevitable, and is not necessarily incompatible with sexual modesty."

He continues, "What is truly immodest in dress is that which frankly contributes to the deliberate displacement of the true value of the person by sexual values, that which is bound to elicit a reaction to the person as to a ‘possible means of obtaining sexual enjoyment’ and not ‘a possible object of love by reason of his or her personal value.’”

How refreshing is this? The virtue of modesty in dress doesn’t require us to completely hide the fact that we’re women. That wouldn’t be possible, nor would we want to if we could. We’re women. We have women’s parts. We don’t have to pretend that we don’t. We just need to avoid dressing in such a way that those parts are the first—or only—thing people notice when they look at us.

In other words, we don’t need to wear the shapeless plaid jumpers.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be found attractive by others.

I've found it interesting that some men, who clearly understood the virtue of modesty, have also pointed out that women don’t need to dress “dumpily” to be modest. This is something that a lot of women don’t understand.

Look, I admire any woman who makes it a priority to dress modestly. She’s trying to please God, and that earns points in my book any day of the week. I do think there are some women who take it too far.

There could be a lot of reasons for that. I suppose in some there may be an inordinate fear of sexuality, or of any level of attractiveness to the opposite sex. Some, as I said, may be very healthy and well intentioned, but taking their understanding of modesty to an extreme conclusion. If a little cover-up is good, then a lot of cover-up must be better.

But, as one of my friends says, putting on make-up in the morning is an act of charity. The point is that the rest of the world has to look at us. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that to be a pleasant experience.

The most important thing to remember is that we carry the image and likeness of God in our bodies.

What’s more important, we carry the image and likeness of God in our bodies. That’s a very, very good thing. We want the way we dress to reflect that. When we take a healthy (as opposed to excessive or immodest) pride in our appearance, we are demonstrating to the world that we respect ourselves, and the Lord who created us.

Comments from many good guys I’ve heard from over the years, show that good, God-following men don’t want women to dress like nuns. They want nuns to dress like nuns, of course. But not the women they date, or the women they work with or spend time with.

Men appreciate women who take pride in their appearance. Not excessive pride, of course. Nobody likes to wait for hours while a vain woman primps and paints and sprays. No man likes to hear “does this make me look fat?” And a woman who will never ride a bike—or a convertible—because it might “mess up her hair” is not a lot of fun to be around.

But a woman who dresses appropriately—and attractively—is doing a favor to the men around her. And that’s a good thing.