Almost a year ago, ITM was dreamed up by two writers– AG and MInTheGap– as a place to go one step further than the Modesty Survey.  We would venture into the land of modesty with a mission to present modesty visually in discussion.

Why?

Because it was obvious from reading the survey through that there were many different opinions on modesty.  You would have respondants vary on every question– and at the extremes.  You would have things that I would consider modest labeled as immodest, and the comments that you read afterwards said, "Well, this could be ok– if…"

To me, that wasn't as helpful as it could be.

Central to our mission would be two key ingredients.  The first, writing.  We would write articles promoting modesty and attempting to encourage readers to be modest.  The second was the quick review.  Quick in that we would take a quick look at a photo and give some key points about what was or was not modest so that people could see what we were talking about.

The target audience consisted of those that were on the fence on the topic and those that may not know whether something was modest.  We were looking to help those that usually hung out on the borderline, or may be oblivious to what they were doing.

On the very first day, we launched with a design that had a woman with crazy hair and wearing a strapless dress, and we got nothing but grief.  People were concerned that there were men that would be stumbling over the image, and we started the "is strapless modest" discussion.

It was a good discussion, but this current design soon replaced the first one.

I'd like to say that solved the issues.  It didn't.

At first, the QRs were taken from a online newspaper– in order, male and female.  Erin and MInTheGap took turns doing the reviews and the reviews of male outfits were getting monotanous.  There weren't as many comments because there weren't as many things to look at.  Male modesty is pretty simple.

As we did more QRs from the Baltimore Sun, knowing that it was a newspaper and some of the images were being taken offline concerned MInTheGap– while at the same time one of the contributors to the Flickr Feed suggested that all people who gave permission for their photos to be in the feed would allow for reuse.

The feed was generated either by requests made from MInTheGap– who would look around groups like "red clothes," "senior photos," "wedding photos," and the like and invite photos that were on the border or just over, but nothing risque– and those that were in the group submitting photos.

So, MInTheGap decided to use some of the Flickr Photos for QRs, as he felt better with the legality of it.

Then there were questions about what was ending up in the feed– everything that was complained about was promptly removed.

And there were people giving bloggers grief for being writers on the site or linked to the site.  There were bloggers who removed links to the site, and wrote e-mails talking to MInTheGap condemning him for causing men to stumble, causing people to have to ask their siblings to leave the room, etc.

We started working toward a redesign of the site, and after the designer dragged on the deal for a couple of months, it turned out that her father lectured MInTheGap on the propriety of the site.

Our mission has always been to minister to those on the edge.  We ask the question about modesty, and yet speak about it in the articles.

And so we wrestle.

We want to encourage modesty.  We want to encouarge every reader to be modest.  And at the same time we know that there are some that don't know.

We know that core to QRs is a judgemental attitude– one that we've tried to address (keep it about the outfit, not the person)– but that attitude is also on display when it comes to our mission and what we show.

We believe that we are part of modesty, and yet we don't like being separated from the very people we want to push people toward.  We want to send people to modesty shops and modesty blogs.  We want them to grow there, and almost be a gateway.

It is not our desire to cause anyone to stumble– hence we believe that we haven't displayed anything that wouldn't be seen at a local mall, even better than that.

But the problem is multifold.

We've already started the discussion, and there's more that can be said, but let's start there and see where this topic goes.

Thanks– I've written a post today that states some of the changes we're making– and adding your help (and a few others) will help us present things better.