Posted by:
NeverMo in CA
(
)
Date: May 08, 2018 04:39PM
summer Wrote:
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> I wonder when the modesty standards for women
> (i.e. covered shoulders, even for women that
> haven't been through the temple) came into play?
> When Mormon moms started dressing even young girls
> as if they were covering garments? To me that is a
> sign of fanaticism. We've all seen the photo of
> the BYU homecoming queen with bare shoulders,
> probably from the 60s.
>
> The Catholic church, and the moderate to liberal
> mainstream Protestant churches, on the other hand,
> got more lax about dress. I wear pants to Catholic
> funerals, and no one bats an eye. I've seen
> parishoners exiting church in sundresses. In some
> churches business casual is fine, and in others
> it's come as you are (jeans are perfectly okay.)
> When I was growing up, women wore head coverings
> to church and dressed in their Sunday best.
Summer, most of what you say is true; in fact, I am always struck on occasions when I am in a Catholic church how many people of all ages dress like borderline slobs. Even at a family baptism I attended a few years ago, out of six or seven couples having babies baptized that day, only set of parents had bothered to dress up. The others were wearing jeans and T-shirts. I was a little shocked they hadn't at least made more of an effort for their own children's baptism.
Having said that, however, I have also noticed much more recently that the "modesty" crap for girls has even begun creeping into the Catholic church...or perhaps I should say "re-entering," since I am sure my mom experienced it in the 50s and early 60s. Case in point: My niece had her First Communion three years ago, and she, along with some of the other little girls in her class, wore beautiful, sleeveless Communion dresses. They were long, full-skirted dresses, but sleeveless. For the neverCatholics on this board who may not know, Catholics generally undergo First Communion in second grade, so at seven or eight years old.
However, this year, my nephew had his Communion, and his mom told me that the parents were instructed this year that girls could not wear sleeveless dresses unless they had a sweater or shrug to cover their--gasp!--eight-year-old shoulders. She was disgusted by this new rule. This is the same parish and same Catholic school at which my niece underwent the same ceremony in her sleeveless dress only three years ago.
And then there was that news item quite recently about the Catholic high school somewhere that announced it would provide "modesty ponchos" for girls who arrived at the prom in too-sexy dresses (though I guess the school later dropped those plans). So, even with some Catholics something weird is going on with "modesty." I'm not saying there should be no dress code standards for high school students, by the way, but modesty ponchos? And ANY rule requiring young children to "cover up" I find truly warped. Who the hell is fixating on little girls' shoulders?