Long Dresses, Flowing Hair, and a Brash Attitude

Aesthetic Modesty vs. Actual Modesty

A while back, when I was not in the ministry, my wife and I found ourselves in a conversation with a young college student at the church building. She had long flowing hair and wore matching dresses. She was naturally beautiful, but we found her to be quite brash in her attitude.

That morning in the foyer, the conversation somehow turned to women wearing pants. She had brought it up. She was all about femininity. She said there were only two kinds of pants: sexy pants and man pants, and women should not wear either.

I joked that there was at least a third category: sexy man pants.

We laughed and moved on.

Several months later, I noticed she was posting what I would call very sensual illustrations online. In many of them, the woman looked somewhat like her. I tracked down the artist and discovered he (George Petty) was well known for creating pin-up art, including a fair amount of outright pornography.

He was talented, no doubt, but it was very odd to see a woman who was so outspoken about external modesty posting sensualized artwork that so clearly traded on sexual allure.

So I questioned her about it and told her I thought it was inappropriate. Her response was, “If it stumbles you, I’ll take it down.”

I told her this was not about me being stumbled. It was about the images themselves being inappropriate and immodest. She pushed back hard. Another woman who was mentoring her also challenged her on it, and she eventually took them down.

But the whole thing was framed as accommodating men’s weakness rather than recognizing the deeper issue.

Not long after that, she had a falling out with the church. The last time I ran into her, she was wearing very tight pants and still carried that same brash spirit.

There is a difference between aesthetic modesty and actual modesty.

Some people adopt the outward trappings of conservatism because they are visible and legible. Long dresses, flowing hair, carefully curated femininity.

Those things can be good in themselves, but they can also become costumes, a way of signaling that you are more feminine, more righteous, and more set apart than everyone else around you.

At that point, modesty has already been lost, even if every inch of skin is covered.

Biblical modesty begins in the heart. It is tied to humility, self-possession, and what Scripture calls a gentle and quiet spirit in 1 Peter.

A woman quietly shaped by Christ will often grow into external modesty over time. When the externals are adopted apart from inward submission to Christ, they often become just another means of self-display.

That is why so much of the modesty-and-femininity discourse that is popular right now feels wrong to me.

Much of it substitutes comparison for personal holiness. It is often a contest to prove who is more masculine, more feminine, more traditional, or more righteous.

It runs on competition before men, not reverence before God. That has always been a temptation, but social media has turned it into a driving force for both sexes.

Anyhow, I would far rather see a woman with a gentle and quiet spirit who is still growing in her outward understanding of modesty than a woman who has perfected the external aesthetic while still carrying a wild, unsubmissive heart.

P.S. We have no problem with women wearing pants, though not all pants are equally modest.