Why We Should Dress Our Little Girls Modestly
by Regina Doman
Few topics online generate more heat and less light than modesty. Years ago I swore off writing about modesty directly because it’s so fraught with the possibility of misunderstanding. There are multiple reasons for this: first, everyone has a different picture in their imagination of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable modesty, and these standards can vary to an alarming degree. Second is that women see themselves as residing in their body (their body is literally “themselves”) so any discussion of the body becomes a very personal discussion about themselves and how they are perceived, and given that most of we women, especially when we are teens, tend to have low self-esteem by default, it’s very difficult for a woman to remain objective when evaluating an argument for modesty without feeling that she or her family are personally being judged and found wanting. Yet since dressing is very much a part of culture and culture recovery, it does need to be discussed at some point, and I have spent decades pondering how to address this topic fruitfully and persuasively. So here I go, hopefully with several decades of accumulated wisdom and experience in the trenches.
Modesty is the one topic where a face-to-face private conversation seems to have no more weight or impact than a text message or a phone conversation or even an online article. Each medium is fraught with the two difficulties outlined above, and the face-to-face conversation may seem even more personal and hence judgmental. So I am going to resort once again to the written word, but I am going to illustrate it with copious pictures so it’s at least clear what’s in my mind when I talk about modesty. I think that’s an important point which modesty commentators often forget, and it will hopefully at least dispel the first difficulty.
You may not like the pictures or my sense of style or may find it impractical to dress your own children similarly. Totally fine! Dressing is obviously a complex issue and fashion and beauty allows for a fantastic range of styles adapted to taste and situation. But I hope to inspire and at least make it clear what’s in my womanly imagination when it comes to dress. If you are interested in a deep dive on woman’s dress, you may want to consult my articles here and here and here on the subject.
Now, if you are a woman (or a man) who personally does not think that modesty is an issue, there is no need for you to read further or to repost my article to your groupchat with outraged comments. If you see no problem with sports bras and tight shorts on women in public, if bikinis are just fine beachwear in your estimation, and if strapless skin-tight, cleavage-exposing, high-slit prom dresses are just a fashion statement with no metaphysical ramifications whatsoever, all I can say is: this article is not for you. God bless you!
But if you have children who will someday become teenagers and you are casting a nervous glance over what teens and adults are wearing today and experiencing some cognitive dissonance between that and your Catholic faith—-if you really do value modesty, but previous experiences with modesty-rules enforcement has left a bad taste in your mouth—if you feel twinges of conscience no matter how you dress and no matter what you put your children in and just want some clarity on what to wear and not wear so that your family will be well-dressed without looking weirdly out of step in society—if you are frustrated that the incredibly powerful world-changing ideas in the Theology of the Body seem to be locked in some kind of hermetically-sealed decontamination unit so that they never change the way Catholics actually dress—then I am writing this article for you, dear parent (or future parent), in case it might be helpful.
To Begin With: Definitions
The difficulty with the word “modesty” is that it is a sort of catch-all world with several overlapping and interconnected meanings, some of which which show up in the actual dictionary definition. I have found it helpful to distinguish the different meanings in this way (the terms are my own):
Interior modesty: this is the virtue of modesty as a branch off of humility. A modest person is one who doesn’t show off, who is humble and receptive as opposed to prideful and defiant. This is a virtue that we all need as Catholics regardless. It is not optional. My argument is that this disposition is the proper foundation of everything that comes after it—but since it is a virtue, you, as a parent or teacher or administrator, obviously can’t enforce it. You can model it, try to instill it, articulate it, teach it, persuade to it, but you can’t make someone else be modest in this sense. Obtaining the virtue of interior modesty is up to the grace of God and their free will. As a Catholic, I pray that I will have this virtue of interior modesty and that it will naturally flower into the way that I choose to dress. As a parent, I pray that this connection will happen in the minds and hearts of my children. But since they are my children, I can’t merely plant the seeds: I have the responsibility to tend them, to water and fertilize and build a sort of trellis that they can grow onto. Ultimately interior modesty is part of a conversation between the soul and Father God, and when the soul recognizes their infinite worth and value to God and the dignity He has given them as human persons, they can develop this virtue properly: for us women, this is coming to know ourselves as a daughter of God who is precious in His sight and who needs to treasure herself (her body) as worthy and similarly precious. For more on humility and modesty, see Aquinas.
Social modesty: this is the recognizing that our dress is a gift to those we are in relationship with. To begin with, the way we women dress affects other women. It can set up a competition: it can indicate our disinterest towards them or our own poor self-esteem. Or it can delight and inspire other women in a gratifying way. (Think of how often we women give genuine compliments to each other: “I love those earrings!” “That color looks so good on you!”) Rules on dress found in schools, workplaces, professional situations, and apostolates (or even for Mass) reflect social modesty and are best understood as a form of charity: we are making our dress a gift to others by dressing appropriately for the situation or task, by elevating the environment we share, by showing that we are acting intentionally to become a part of that environment, that we are saying “yes!” to the task at hand and altering our dress to best enable it to succeed. I mention this because so often we Americans (or maybe it’s a fallen human being thing) (or maybe it’s just me) tend to bristle at any imposition on our bodies. Again for women, our bodies are our selves, so being told how to dress for a situation can feel to us like being told how to adjust our psyches or change our personalities. Men, who tend to see their bodies as separate from themselves, even as tools they are using (and their bodies are admittedly extremely useful tools) bristle less (unless it involves suits and ties in a casual and non-air-conditioned environment). To a man, wearing long sleeves and pants in a tough situation like construction or warfare just makes sense. When it comes to rules, I believe it’s important as parents to help children draw the connection between loving others (we are commanded to love everyone as Catholics, after all) and following the rules set up by others in different situations. The connection is not obvious, even to many adults who might assume that all rules about dress are simply about control, so recognizing that dress is a gift to others and a way of loving them is an important step in maturity. I connect social modesty with following Christ, and in a way, it is shouldering a cross to surrender the way we dress to the task of loving others.
Cultural modesty: this is the form of modesty that is interior modesty incarnate: that apart from any situation or any rules, one dresses in a certain way because they are Catholic and love Our Lord and want to magnify Him in their dress. This is the kind of dress exhibited towards those who know nothing about you, except that they saw you on the street—or in the airport—or on the beach—or at the grocery store—or in the workplace—and so on. Dress can communicate our deepest beliefs to others in an easy and accessible way. When done with care and artistic beauty, adopting or creating cultural modesty is a fantastic method of evangelization. This is the kind of dress Fulton Sheen talked about in his speech calling for women to begin “an apostolate of beauty.” Culture is lived ideals, whether those ideals are your own or ones received from your ancestors or your society. Here is where the disconnect between interior modesty and cultural modesty is most sharp and most frustrating. It shows up when chastity educators lecture teens while wearing revealing miniskirts (true story from the 90s!). It causes painful frustration among groups of Catholics. I will point out here that cultural modesty is deliberately evangelical in nature—and can be powerful and culture-changing when done persuasively and beautifully. It is allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to others through how you dress. But to expect teen girls who aren’t even sure if they want to stay Catholic to “evangelize” by wearing longer skirts is to put the cart way before the reluctant and apathetic horse, and can cause frustration on all sides.
In listening to many conversations on modesty, I find Catholics are stymied by mixing up these three different aspects: interior modesty (virtue), social modesty (charity and rules) and cultural modesty (building a new way of dress or recovering traditional styles to evangelize). It is particularly unproductive when the assumptions behind each tightly packed term are not shared. Women can feel their relationship with God is being judged, or that their fellow women don’t care about building relationships with others, or that the rules enforced in high school should become normative for every situation and stage of life.
If adult women are so prone to misunderstandings, it’s not surprising that the situation is far worse when teenagers who have faint understanding of the reasons for anything are involved. By far the most toxic mix is teen girls and their parents (especially on prom night), because the parents, whose own ideas on modesty may be either hazy or hard as crystal, are hampered by their desire to protect the self-esteem of their beloved daughters.
It’s no wonder that modesty issues are a hot mess and the headache of pastors and school administrators. The average father, husband, boyfriend, or parish priest would willingly choose to have their fingernails pulled out by Antifa thugs than to ever confront the women they know about modesty. At least with Antifa, the men would know they were suffering for Christ, whereas stirring conflict over modesty seems pointless and only results in tearful women, angry exposes on social media and outraged letters to the bishop.
I wish the exaggeration was merely humorous, but the misunderstandings caused by modesty are damaging and real. I’m sure every Catholic knows someone who is a casualty of the modesty wars. One courageous vicar in our parish was literally reassigned when he thoughtfully addressed the topic in a homily at daily Mass. Subsequent priests at our parish decided that the only safe way to address the issue is by keeping the temperature in the church cranked to near zero during the summer months and hoping for the best. On the polar opposite end of the scale, a mentally unbalanced man took to writing nasty letters to women in our parish he thought were scandalously dressed and had to have a restraining order put on him. (I was the recipient of such a letter.)
That both good priests and unstable individuals receive similar blacklisting for addressing modesty should tell us that something is very wrong here.
Sad to say, I have to lay most of this blame on us Catholic women. Our very desire for solidarity, compassion, and self-esteem works against us and can make us rush to the rescue or demand compliance each time the issue surfaces. Despite this I want to ask all Catholic women reading this to turn their minds to this problem and help to solve it, because despite all that I have written above, I truly believe in the power of Catholic women to change the world when we come to an agreement. If more of us thought more about modesty, fashion, and beauty—if more of us choose to care and intentionally work together instead of merely reacting to hurt feelings, poor fashion offerings, and posts on social media we disagree with—we could begin to solve this problem.
So this is all preamble to one solution I want to propose for families: if you are a parent, and care about modesty, and want your daughters to incorporate all three levels of modesty into their lives as adults, then do this first: dress them modestly when they are young.
We are body-soul composites and our Good God has ordained that we begin life by experiencing it in our bodies first and foremost. A baby is all-body, whole-body: he or she experiences love and care primarily as care for their body: nursing, hugging, clothing, clean diapers and comfortably warm environments. Only later do they begin to recognize love—or lack of it—in their bodily experience.
The fact that babies don’t seem to experience any shame over being naked reflects their innocence as well as their interior focus on themselves. A baby is born in relationship to others, especially their mother and father, but by the design of God, their needs are self-centered. Since babies need to be fed and clothed and cleaned by others, their lack of shame is the kindness of God. Adults enduring incontinence feel ashamed when others need to change their diapers: babies are free from any of that sting. It’s only when the child has experienced a sufficient amount of independence and learned a certain level of self-care that they normally begin to experience a reluctance to be seen naked, a reluctance which normally grows stronger as they approach puberty. It’s very important first of all for adults to respect this desire for modesty as they would respect it in an adult, and not to violate it except when necessary (for example, when the child needs to be examined by a doctor).
Here is where our society is rather stupid about children. Fashion and style is the incorporation of ideals: someone in the fashion industry has an ideal that they chose to incarnate in a particular cut or style of clothing and promote it to the world. Certain elements of society have thought it cute to dress children in miniature versions of immodest adult clothing, including bikinis, crop tops, and hot pants. Some parents find this creepily sexualized and reject it, but other parents have no problem with it. I’m not sure why, but I suspect that some parents find sexuality a burden and want to allow their children the freedom to be as naked as possible because the children are innocent. They get upset if you express a concern that other malevolent adults or teens might take advantage of their children’s public near-nudity: but honestly I think it should be a valid concern in an age of smartphones, cameras, and the ability to make money from porn. Merely wishing to protect my child from predatory photographers is a good reason to dress them modestly—but it’s far from the only one. I don’t parent out of fear, although as a parent I strive to be vigilant.
But I think many parents, especially those with many children, just dress their kids in what’s available online and in their local Target. Since fashion is social and contagious, many parents simply buy what they see other children that they want their children to interact with wearing. This is especially true of immigrants trying to figure out American norms, as well as broken families who want to please their children more than to parent them. So tank tops and tight pants are typical toddler wear, as well as short dresses for toddlers that show their diapers or underwear or even bare bottoms. I do understand that this might be the easiest way for overwhelmed parents who only want their kids to have matching shoes and a clean t-shirt in church.
But dressing children this way is slothful. T-shirts, tank tops and briefs are underwear, not proper clothing. Sundresses with spaghetti straps, especially in chilly air conditioning, are not really coverage. Rubber shoes are not proper footwear. Polyester clothing meant for sports and exercise isn’t meant to be a child’s daily wear. Too many children, both boys and girls, are just poorly dressed in general. Again, by the Creator’s design, children experience life bodily, and what they do and experience with their bodies matters. And children experience the care their parents take in dressing them as love, even as an image of the providence of God.
That’s why going through the trauma of dressing wriggling toddler boys in button-down shirts and pants for Mass matters. That’s why giving girls pretty dresses that cover their shoulders, chests, and thighs for Sunday matters. You are bringing them before the Holy God Almighty Who they cannot yet recognize. But they experience the ceremony and the change of routine as something important. So this is a good reason to first of all dress both our boys and our girls not only modestly but to dress them well, far above the least-common-denominator offerings our culture accepts.
When God became a Zygote and grew into a Fetus, He transformed gestation. Elizabeth and John the Baptist in utero recognized Christ and experienced Him as the saving God even before He was implanted in Mary’s womb. When He became a Baby born of a woman and nursed at her breasts, He transformed infancy and childhood. The Church recognized at once that the mere innocence of children, as opposed to the righteousness of a moral adult, was forever valuable and She immediately began to value, baptize, and catechize young children. The early Christians were distinguished in Rome by the fact that they buried the bodies of babies killed by abortion or infanticide, as the hundreds of niches for children found in the catacombs testify. God had become Baby, and now all babies are precious. The primacy Catholics give to the pro-life fight against abortion and contraception continues to reflect this today.
But womanhood was also transformed by the Blessed Mother. Her body carried God, and every part of the body involved in motherhood, from the breasts to the stomach expanded by pregnancy to the thighs that carry the baby (as well as opening the way to conception in the marital act) became precious. Every image of the Blessed Mother shows her covered from her shoulders to her knees for this reason. The veil, still worn by Jews at prayer and by nuns today, indicates her holiness, her being set apart for God from birth, but the iconic coverage of her body symbolizes the reverence we should show for every female body. This is not fear of sin: this is reverence. It’s reverence for the pattern set by Our Lord.
Note that traditional dress in most parts of the world also covered these parts as well. Much of these standards are practical and fall under the category of social modesty. When a woman covers herself from her shoulders to her thighs, she is fit for most work that is suited to her, and she can even work in close proximity to men without men being unnecessarily distracted by glimpses of breasts, etc. Since we as Catholics believe that men and women are equal in dignity through baptism and that grace enables every person to live chastely, we want men and women to work together. I love belonging to a Church that believes in co-education of boys and girls so that both sexes can work together and learn together—and learn from each other. Socially, modest dress enables and allows this freedom between the sexes.
I want that freedom for my daughters. That is why I believe it is important for parents dress their little girls with those parts of their body covered so that the girls grow used to that amount of coverage. In this way, girls feel that covering those parts of their body is normative, and that their shoulders and thighs are uncovered only for specialized reasons—such as swimming or dancing.
Here I recognize that some Catholics want to object: what about boys? Shouldn’t they be modest as well? Why is it wrong for girls to be topless if men can walk around shirtless?
Some of the answer to this objection is sheer common sense. American women don’t walk around topless because their breasts make doing this uncomfortable and for most of us women, it would scarcely be flattering. And even Marvel movies recognize that there’s something precious about a woman’s breasts that makes most people prefer that they be at least somewhat covered in public. A man’s body is made for work, and hence most cultures allow that men doing difficult and sweaty work are allowed to strip down. And we Catholics have an icon for male nakedness, one that we are confronted with each time we enter our church: Christ on the Cross. There, He, in His nakedness, did the greatest work of all: saving the human race.
Hence most Catholics are visually comfortable with men and boys occasionally being shirtless if the need or situation makes it suitable. But the same iconography of the Blessed Mother next to that same Crucifix should make us realize that women are meant to be different.
How ironic is our foolish modern world: in formal settings, women are expected to strip down to near nakedness in the name of fashion, while men assiduously cover themselves from neck to toe in suits and tuxedos. How sharp is the juxtaposition in the Catholic Church: the Man Who is God is naked, and the Woman who is human fully clothed and glorified!
If all else is as it should be in her family, when a little girl is raised to cover her shoulders, chest, stomach, and thighs at all times, she learns to protect these parts of her as precious by default. There is no need for the parent to give a lecture or explain the reasons: the parent simply buys the appropriate clothes so that her daughter can be pretty and comfortable and ready for any activity. She doesn’t need to be afraid of climbing trees or doing cartwheels or riding a bike. She can play kickball and do swing dancing and sit next to boys in school and bend over dissected frogs in science class with them without worrying about her necklines or hemlines. That’s what we want her to have: freedom.
Minidresses may be cute on toddlers but they can be mortifying in high school if a girl catches a male classmate glimpsing her underwear. Crop tops are one thing on a five-year-old and a completely different experience for a curvy girl during a co-ed volleyball game. Adolescence and encountering the opposite sex is fraught with terrors and missteps even in the best of cases: immodesty makes it so much worse.
It can be difficult to find lovely and modest clothing for girls, especially once they leave the toddler and youth stages. When your daughter reaches junior sizes, finding longer skirts or pretty tops that don’t show cleavage or even simply a decent pair of shorts or jeans at local stores can become the impossible dream. (I just engaged in this quest with my teen daughter, and I wish the buyers at Wal-Mart could have seen her tears and near-absolute despair at finding appropriate shorts for her job as a camp counselor. It’s almost cruel that we make this so difficult for our teenaged daughters!) But given that pre-adolescence is the time when girls are coming into their own likes and dislikes, I think it’s worthwhile for moms (and dads) to become actively engaged in helping them shop, not leaving them to the throes of the mall. My husband’s longtime response to seeing one of our girls wearing something immodest was, “I don’t want you to wear that again. Let’s go shopping and find something we both love to see you wear.” Again, our society is too lowest-common-denominator casual when it comes to clothing, so any attempt to teach and elevate style is a move in the right direction.
To briefly treat the subject of pants versus skirts (you can find the longer take here), I dress my little girls in skirts until they ask to wear pants. This has worked out pretty well because all six of them have grown up to be comfortable in skirts. (That same teenager just reported that she managed to play a pickup game of ultimate frisbee in a dress skirt which I think is amazing.) I did make their childhood skirts to the knee or below, and always gave them matching shorts or bloomers so my girls could be as active as they wished. (When I bring my babies in public, I always cover their diapers because it seems to me that adults noticing a baby’s diaper are always assessing whether or not it needs to be changed, and that kind of doesn’t feel respectful to the baby.)
To summarize, dressing little girls modestly as I described above has these benefits:
- It helps girls understand modesty as normative without any adult explanation.
- It requires more care and forethought from their parents which can result in a more elevated and appropriate mode of dress.
- It does protect children visually from malevolent or foolish individuals looking to exploit them with photos or videos, etc.
- It gives girls the freedom to move and to engage in any sport or activity without worry.
- It enables girls to have more freedom in their relationships with boys in terms of engaging in the same activities and tasks.
This is all without the parents having to explain or justify anything. The daughters just experience modesty as part of their rich home environment and family culture and the reasons behind it don’t need to be articulated. Of course, if your children ask, it’s certainly fine to give them reasons. Anything I mentioned above about the reverence to the female body or Our Lady can be explained, but a parent might also say to the younger child, “This is how our family does things,” and that can be that.
However, once a girl begins the journey of changing into a woman, she does need an explanation so she can make these values her own. And that explanation is going to involve some aspects of male sexuality. The fact that men are more visually attracted to the curves and contours of a woman’s body, that bad men make exploit a woman because of it, that even the best men can be confused or distracted by it—that entire ball of thorny strands of fallen human nature and simple God-given masculinity is going to need to be gradually unwound for your daughter in a delicate and age-appropriate and individually-tailored way. And parents need to equip themselves to do this.
How NOT to do it
Can I tell you the WORST time to introduce your daughter to the concept of modesty? Especially social modesty?
Early adolescence.
…Which is when most girls are going to hear a modesty talk from a parent, priest, or teacher for the first time.
In early adolescence, hormones are swimming through a girl’s body, changing her chest size, making her face pudgy and/or pimply, and every part of her feels new and wrong and not her—and now this body (which she believes is her very self) is suddenly her problem. She feels everyone is looking at her constantly and judging her. Crippling self-consciousness is suddenly her new norm and impossible to ignore. Her nerves are on a rollercoaster where she feels anxious about everything then sporadically self-forgetful and even crazy and then aghast at how utterly stupid and clueless she was last week. She cries over things that never used to bother her. She’s getting her cycle, cramps, PMS, maybe the pain of endometriosis, and her hair and skin make her feel like an alien cretin. To make matters worse, social media influencers or even the girls she sees at church seem so perfect and poised and with way more money and fashion sense. Additionally, the boys she thought were kind of cute in grade school have turned into coarse, smelly, foul-mothed lunkheads who are either a) similarly awkward and self-conscious or b) even more awkward and completely clueless. Now it’s the boys who have cooties, and if the boys have phones, they may be gaming addicts or sports addicts or sneakily looking at porn.
Speaking of porn, if she’s seen it, she’s horrified at what being a woman and having sex apparently means: her nightmares are full of thongs and bondage and choking and who knows what other sewage. No wonder that she might want to wear nothing but hoodies and sweatpants and curl into a ball with her stuffed animals and Instagram.
This is the girl that you’re going to have a conversation about social modesty with? Or worse, this is the girl that you are going to instruct about dressing modestly on the fly, as she’s hurrying out the door to school, or after she’s spend 48 hours perfecting her outfit for her first dance?
What could possibly go wrong?
Additionally, because you have waited to approach this topic, you are not going to give her a conversation about freedom and empowerment. You are going to be forced into giving her rules and restrictions. You are going to be telling her that she has to stop wearing that crop top or that bikini, or that tank tops or those Daisy Dukes—in other words, all her childhood clothing she’s grown up seeing as part of her very self is now going to be forbidden to her. She can’t wear flirty miniskirts or peek-a-boo keyhole shirts or backless lace-up shirts or that cute dress with sleeves that fall off the shoulder. Whether it’s because she has to follow rules at a teen group or Catholic high school or college or some other stricture, she suddenly has to plaster herself with fabric which in her imagination will make her look like a dork or a Muslim—or even more horrifying, she will look like a homeschooler! Or Mary Philomena from the parish who only ever wears jean skirts to her ankles! Leave aside the fact that your daughter secretly suspects she’s hideous no matter what she wears. And that she cries in the dressing room every time she tries to pose for a selfie because she is convinced she’s ugly.
And what’s the reason she has to obey all these fashion restrictions in the name of modesty?
Because of the boys.
Because of the young men around her who might be led into sin because of something she is wearing. Not just sin, but mortal sin. The worst kind.
And the young men she’s supposed to defend from mortal sin with the shield of bad fashion choices? These boys are likely in seventh grade, arguably the historically low point for the male sex. When your daughter hears this lecture, flashing through her mind will be the pimply, arrogant, foul-mouthed, porn-watching, gaming turds in wide sweatpants and sleeveless t-shirts with ball caps on backwards whose presence she has to endure in class. Or even weirder specimens of the male gender that she’s forced to sit next to in youth group.
Do you think you can convince her to dress with social modesty in mind?
Good luck!
I’m catastrophizing here, but I think you get the point. When modesty is brought up this late in the game and limited to the relationship between the sexes, the chances that 80-90% of girls (and their parents) will mishear what is being said are pretty high and that the battle over modesty norms will stretch throughout high school, college, and even into adulthood.
To further muddy the issue, more than likely, the first cute and attractive young man whom your daughter talks to about modesty will swear up and down that he couldn’t care less what she wears, that this sort of stuff doesn’t bother him, etc. etc. (remember what I said about Antifa thugs and fingernails) and your daughter will be convinced she has proof that modesty concerns are some kind of psyop and that her dad has serious repression issues. I have heard of exceptions of courageous and honest young men! But most young men spot the minefield just quickly as the husband answering his wife’s query as to whether her outfit makes her look fat. They understand that there’s no right answer that’s both acceptable and truthful.
No wonder modesty conversations have become toxic third-rails in every Catholic circles. No wonder the most fearless and thoughtful Catholic influencers, especially our good priests and holy laymen, seem to reap nothing but confusion and wrath no matter what they say or how nuanced they make it. No wonder that Catholics are searching for rulebooks from the 1950s or standards from the 1800s. No wonder that calls for simple common sense result only in weeping video testimonies from former teens who felt violated by a modesty talk or an offhand comment from a church leader. (For clarity on the mortal sin issue, see Aquinas.)
How to do it
Parents, if you want to avoid this scenario, think long-term strategy. “Train up your children in the way they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
If you have dressed your daughter from babyhood in modest clothing, then hopefully when she encounters her changing body (from a girl’s point of view, her changing self), she will not have to make wild adjustments in how she dresses. First of all, you will need to teach her about the female body and the source of all these changes. Here’s a fantastic mom-daughter course that will help you do just that! Secondly, pre-and-early puberty is actually a fantastic time to step in and teach your daughter about beauty. This is when you take your gangly pre-teen to get her ears pierced, to have her nails done, to go dress shopping with mom and big sisters to teach her how to make herself look fantastic. Teaching beauty is hard, but it’s so much easier when the heavy lifting of modest norms has already been done. That is the kind of adolescence you want your beloved daughter to have. It’s worth working towards!
And when the time comes to give her the Talk, which as a good mother, you need to do, then you can let her in on the secrets of the great and mystical union that is the sexual act, created by Our Father God to bring a husband and wife together to create new life. And then you can begin to teach her about boys, men, and her vocation, and all that terrifying and exciting aspect of life. Modesty then becomes how chastity is incarnated into her daily life and hopefully her walk with God. Depending on where she is as a follower of Christ, then you can begin to talk about not only social modesty when it comes to men but also cultural modesty as evangelization.
This becomes easier if you’ve laid years of foundation of the habit of modest dressing so that you can transition into teaching her how to dress beautifully.
Suppose you have any older daughter and you haven’t laid this foundation yet. It’s not too late. Hopefully some of the above will be helpful in approaching the topic. Finding a site or a store with marvelous clothing and a nest egg laid aside to buy a complete new wardrobe if necessary would certainly sweeten the deal.
Aside from that, one good way to approach the subject with an older daughter is to educate her about the terrible scourge of porn in our society. Lay out the problem of a poison trap set for an entire generation of young men. Matt Fradd’s testimony is a great one. Inform her about the connection between porn and the evil of sex trafficking—and the international fight against it. Let her see how porn is something that ruins the lives of both men and women. How porn poisons the good relationships she want to have with young men. Let her understand the desperation of young men and kindle the sympathy in the great heart of the average teenage girl.
Ask your daughter: Do you want to know one way you can help these young men battle their addiction? Dress modestly. AND beautifully. That way they can encounter YOU when they look at you, not merely a body. And friendship with a real woman is what they crave, and it’s so much more attractive than that trash online that makes them isolated and in despair. That way, their friendships with you can be free from any taint of unnecessary temptation. They can enjoy looking at you in a healthy way, because feminine beauty is the great gift given to the human race by God and women are meant to magnify that beauty. Authentic beauty, expressed and fashioned in dress, radiated from a humble spirit, fearless and unafraid, is one of the most powerful forces on earth. If you can get your girls to care and to love, they just might in their generosity extend that love and charity to their brothers. Despite all their shortcomings, teenage girls can become incredible powerhouses of change when they are led to wisely channel their natural God-given empathy. No wonder so many teen girls are found among the saints!
It can be hard for a self-hating girl who’s judged herself as not making the cut to see this, especially if she does not feel loved by her own dad or the men around her. Dads, this is where you need to lay a good foundation. You need to love your daughter and tell her that she’s beautiful, starting at age 3 and age 6 and 9 and 12 and 15 and 18 and 24 and every year in between and beyond. Buying her cute and modest clothes whenever she needs it will help too.
So if you want your girls to dress modestly, start early. And moms, yeah, this means you may need to model it yourself. It’s patently unfair to ask your teen daughter to dress more modestly than yourself—and the teens would tell you so. Traditionally, married women would “dial down” their own dress as their teenaged daughters grew to womanhood just so that the daughters would have their moment to shine: yet another form of loving social modesty extended from one generation to another.
But now I’m throwing the ball back into the moms’ court. It’s not time for another lecture on modesty: it’s time for intelligent long term planning and strategy as to how we Catholic ladies can turn this situation around. We might even let the men in our lives be able to speak honestly and make their contributions without judgment. I write this article with confidence that God will give us the grace to find a way.
This item 12806 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
