I was 13 years old when I went to the local YMCA for a youth pool party. I was hanging out with my friends when a Young Women’s leader came up to me and asked, “Do you have a shirt you could put on over that?”
The swimsuit? A tankini. It looks like a one piece, but comes with a tank top and bottoms. It’s supposed to be a modest two-piece swimsuit.
The problem was, about an inch of my skin was showing.
I responded “no”, and she went on her way. But the sense of shame and embarrassment stuck around. Why was it necessary to make that comment? The boys were running around shirtless and no one batted an eye.
A year later, I was in my third year of Girl’s Camp. A couple of my friends and I were wearing leggings. Our Young Women’s leaders asked us to change because there were members of the Bishopric around.
What kind of message is that sending? Are bodies of young girls inherently sexual, needing to be policed? Why was it up to me, a teenager at the time, to control how grown men saw me?
Girls are sometimes told that the way they dress can “send the wrong message” to the boys and men around them. The idea of “sending a message” can become a dangerous one. It implies that girls who are sexually assaulted were “asking for it” based on what they were wearing.
Why should we assume girls are dressing for anyone but themselves?
The way modesty has been taught places responsibility on girls and women to prevent men from objectifying them. This perpetuates a cycle of shame and hyper-vigilance, as they will worry about how they are perceived rather than just being comfortable in their own skin.
College of Family, Home and Social Sciences Dean Ben Ogles gave a devotional speech in 2018 titled, “Agency, Accountability, and the Atonement of Jesus Christ: Application to Sexual Assault.”
In a section called, “Victim Blaming,” Ogles shares a powerful message clarifying that the perpetrator alone is responsible for an assault.
“Let me be very clear about the responsibility for sexual assault. The perpetrator is responsible for their actions,” he said. “A victim was deprived of their agency, and they are not accountable for what happened to them without their consent—no matter what they were wearing, where they were, or what happened beforehand. They did not invite, allow, sanction, or encourage the assault.”
Dressing modestly has nothing to do with the actions a man chooses to take. We all have our free agency, and suggesting that men can’t respect women based on the clothes they wear is harmful to both parties.
Take the former reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” for instance. It followed a giant family of fundamentalist Christians who engaged in extreme modesty practices — not allowing their daughters to wear pants and requiring long skirts. This modesty didn’t stop the eldest son from molesting his sisters. He was also recently arrested on child pornography charges.
The point here is this — nothing the girls did would have made a difference in whether their brother chose to violate them. If preventing sexual assault was as simple as dressing modestly, this wouldn’t have happened. But sexual assault is the fault of the perpetrator and never the victim.
So why put responsibility on girls to dress modestly in hopes that it will prevent desires in men? Shouldn’t we have more faith in men? How demeaning is it to assume they are so out of control that something like shoulder skin would send them over the edge?
Teaching girls they need to dress modestly because of how men will potentially see them creates shame they internalize and place onto others. Kids repeat what they hear from adults. Growing up, I would look at how other girls dressed and deem it “immodest,” judging them for something I now see as so inconsequential.
Putting all the energy we spend as Church members judging girls for what they wear into something more constructive would do wonders. Focus on preventing sexual abuse by looking at its perpetrators, rather than the victims. Teach everyone to respect themselves but in a way that makes them feel comfortable, not ashamed.
— Emma Gadeski
Editor in Chief
