Purity Culture Not Quite Reconstructed

How do I explain modesty without falling into old, false tropes?

Pictured Above: a Very Modest Woman. (Photo by Rana Sawalha on Unsplash)

My seven-year-old came out of her room ready for school wearing her black, ruched, tiny-mushroom-emblemed belly shirt. I’m a millennial and I call them belly shirts. It’s not dramatically revealing but it shows just enough skin to ride a fine line for our family’s (in progress) dress code. As well as the school’s.

“Ugggghhh, why?” she responded, predictably.

Here is where I am supposed to have a satisfactory answer. She’s not interested in hearing, again, that it’s against the family and school dress code, she wants to know the reason. That reason is still tripping me up.

I was raised in the height of purity culture where girls were responsible for dressing modestly so that boys could maintain their sexual purity. Showing skin (certain areas at least) would put them on a slippery slope; if we “flaunted” them with temptation, they might not be able to control their thoughts or actions. We couldn’t let our brothers in Christ down!  

2 Peter 3:3 was pulled out all the time, “Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— rather let it be the hidden person of the heart.” I was really into clothes and hair at this time (still am) and remember tearfully confessing my vanity one summer evening to my counselor at Bible camp. I was just so sorry for letting my appearance take over what was really important.

There is far more to purity culture than this, but the cumulative effect of modesty enforcements was one of deep shame for me. After a certain point I didn’t even ask for spaghetti strap (again, millennial) tank tops, short shorts, low-rise jeans or anything else borderline. One of my high school teachers told my dad at a conference that he appreciated, “how modestly Crisanne dresses, not like some of those other girls,” and I internalized modesty even more. I was good at it, yay! I usually wore cardigans and loose shirts to try to find confidence in not looking too much like a woman.

Honestly, I still struggle to this day with the association between clothing and shame. Wearing tank tops in public tends to generate low-level anxiety if I’m not actively speaking words of confidence to myself. I can’t do short shorts. I have dresses still waiting to be worn outside the house. Even with a husband that loves me deeply and has walked the full purity culture journey and reversal, the struggle is real.

I’m still unsure of what makes modesty modesty. It seems that culture is, and has always been, the single, biggest determiner. Scoop neck shirts, once scandalous, are now fairly conservative. Most girls would never think twice about showing forearms or lower legs that were unchaste in the past. Will we look back at crop tops and think, “they were freaking out about that?”  

All this to say, if I had asked my parents what my seven-year-old asked me, the answer would have been straightforward, “You can’t show your belly because that would be a distraction to the guys around you.” In a way, I envy the simplicity of that answer. No more thinking required. But now that I believe in more complex reasoning, and don’t want my daughter burdened with clothing shame, what do I tell her?

I long to give my daughter an answer that makes sense, that takes her dignity into account, that doesn’t hold her responsible for other people’s thoughts, but still encourages her to be responsible and to love her community. But the “why” of modesty still has me stumped. Maybe it’s because I’m starting with the word modesty. Maybe the starting point should be something different.

So this Substack ends in a very unfinished way. There’s quite a bit more thinking and reading to be done, I have a feeling curve balls are coming my way. Do I have faith framed in a way that can make sense of them?