Today's post comes to you in three parts: harassment and objectification, modesty and culpability, and dancing and situational propriety. I know that spring and summer are prime time for all of the Super Sanctimonious Christian Modesty Posts, and yes, I am hopping on the bandwagon. But this time I've given a little more thought than usual to the topics I'm going to discuss. I have begun, of late, to think about various things more complexly, as an author I like is fond of saying. It's still quite new to me and I have a long way to go, and I'm hoping that when I return to posting here more often, if in fact I do that, I will not continue to echo the immature and self-righteous tone which I have occasionally taken in the past. This post will be my first chance to correct that, so if you read my blog, thank you for sticking around, bear with me while I get the hang of this, and please, please comment to let me know what you think. Part of this new "thinking complexly" thing is actually desiring to hear and consider the opinions of others, and I want to hear and consider yours.
First things first, I would like to discuss street harassment and the objectification of others. Defining my terms, street harassment is when a person in some public venue makes an unwanted gesture, comment, or other kind of sexual advance toward another person. This has happened to me quite a lot this spring, and because by its definition it is unwanted, it irks me. I've talked it over with friends who have also experienced it, and boy, does it make for some interesting stories. For the most part, it is normally some older man on the street making strange comments about me, like the time I was told that I have beautiful feet (true story), which is toward the less extreme end of the spectrum. However, the fact that I have never been physically touched or threatened or cursed at does not mean that the behavior is any less creepy or that it makes me feel any less violated. I am not a commodity for public consumption, and I do not appreciate being treated as one.
This unfortunate phenomenon is not exclusive to the women I know, or even to women; it's something anyone can experience, and it's part of a habit we have in our culture of objectifying others. Objectification has been happening in some form or another probably since before we became Homo sapiens, and has become especially prevalent because of the way we advertise many goods and services now. People are frequently used in ads either because of their attractiveness, fame, or perceived social standing to sell things to other people. We're used to this and often don't see anything wrong with it, as when we commonly acknowledge that "sex sells" with no indication of how we feel or what we think about it, because "sex sells" is a fact of life for us. I don't particularly enjoy our cultural habit of seeing other people as objects, whether we do it to sell a product, attain release, or merely because it's second nature. Other people are people, and we all have inherent value, and I would rather live in a world where we think of all people first as who they are, rather than how they can be used.
In many Christian circles, the problem of objectification typically leads very neatly into the "solution" of modesty. Because in these same circles objectification is seen as something that men do to women because they are attracted to them, the solution to the problem of men objectifying women is for women to cover up their bodies to prevent men from objectifying them. This is a silly solution to the problem mainly because one person can never really have complete control over another, and so a woman covering more of her skin will not stop a man from thinking about her because it addresses a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself. A man has to take responsibility for his own thoughts and actions because he is ultimately in control of what they are and how they affect other people. This is true of all of us, and men are certainly not the only people who objectify others; women objectify men and other women with just as much regularity, so nobody's hands are clean here.
Many times, however, the biggest problem with this way of thinking is where well-meaning folks place the blame for the problem of street harassment, objectification, and all of their fun relatives, i.e., on immodestly dressed women. The solution becomes modesty for the sake of others, the control of a woman and her choices by other people who are giving more thought to their own comfort and ease of life than they are to her and whether they have self-improvement to do. Each person is responsible for their own thoughts and actions and the consequences of the same, and while I personally think that being dressed in a way that does not show a lot of skin shows respect for oneself, if I judge or objectify a man or woman who shows more skin than I think is appropriate, that is primarily my problem and definitely my responsibility to fix. The onus is not on anyone else to control me in this way, especially if I don't want them to control me in any other way, and the same goes for everyone else.
One of the ways I have tried to rein myself in on this front is with the idea of situational propriety. It's how I decide what to wear and how to act and it is how I govern how I think about other people, and for the most part it works. Is what I am doing/wearing/thinking appropriate for the situation in which I find myself? Yes? Fabulous! No? Well, I'll need to change that. This is also why things like street harassment and Christian Modesty Discussions annoy me; because there isn't always one fixed standard for what is appropriate, and when there is people still act like there isn't, and when there isn't people often act like there is. I am totally guilty of acting in both of these ways, and it has often earned me a heaping helping of humble pie, my favorite dessert.
The best example I have which ties all of this together is my new found love, ballroom dance. Because ballroom dance is a set of different dances with their own histories, rhythms, and styles, there is certainly no fixed standard of modesty and behavior for all of it. The costume and behavior which accompanies the waltz, a 17th century European dance, is much different from those which accompany the samba, a late 19th/early 20th century Brazilian-West African dance. Because of these differences, it wouldn't be appropriate to wear the same costume for both or to try dancing the same way. The samba is much faster and more sensual than the waltz and requires a much skimpier costume for ease of movement (this is for the lady), and when it is done in the context of Brazilian Carnivale is even more revealing. None of that would be appropriate when dancing the waltz, but none of it is inappropriate when dancing the samba. Likewise, the waltz is slower and more graceful than the samba and its costume generally covers more skin on top and bottom. None of that would be appropriate when dancing the samba, but none of it is inappropriate for the waltz.
Much the same with attire, behavior, responsibility, and attitude toward others, each of these things needs to change with the situation. Are there some things which our culture will always find objectionable or inoffensive? Yes, probably, but there are fewer of those things than modesty hawks would like to think and more than extreme advocates of personal responsibility would like to think. Harassing and objectifying others is objectionable, a pair of shorts is not always. Modesty and propriety are inoffensive, forcing them on others to have control over them is not. I think if more people were to stop and examine themselves, we would likely have fewer of these silly and annoying things to think about, and more time to enjoy the dance. I imagine we would all have a little more fun that way.
