I sit here in my chair, at my computer, depressed. I’ve sinned against God. Yet again. I seem to be doing this on a regular basis, and I continually wonder what God sees in me. What have I done that makes God want me? Is it because I champion for female modesty, something that goes against every grain of a male’s hardwiring? I don’t know. Honestly. It confuses me, why He would want me. Foy. It’s bizarre as all get out, especially when I consider what I’ve done. It’s nothing “excessively atrocious” – I haven’t killed anyone, or anything like that. And many people my age have done much worse. But a sin is a sin, and I feel that this has hurt God. 

And I wonder why I’m writing about sin on a blog that’s about modesty. But we’re about more than modesty, right? Aren’t we? Like I said last week, isn’t modesty just a reflection of our love for Christ? If that’s true, keeping a modest heart is the same as keeping a pure heart – a heart cleansed from sin.

I feel like there is someone out there, someone who needs to hear this message as much as I do, even as I write it: I don’t know why, but God loves us. For some strange, unknown reason, He loves the filthy, vomit smelling rags that we truly are. Oh how He loves us – to degrees unimaginable. He loves us so much that he sent his kid to die for us. His son! Imagine sending your child to the slaughter just so that you could save a nest of cockroaches from getting exterminated. Now that’s a thought. 

He.

Loves.

Us. 

Think about that. Ponder It. Remember It.

Foy Lyndstrom

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Post tags: article, Foy, God, love, Male

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I’ve come to a sudden conclusion tonight: We seem to have the wrong focus on modesty. To use a biological metaphor - we seem be focusing more on the symptoms of modesty, and less on the source. We seem to have forgotten the real reason that we should be modest: that Christ be glorified through us. Everything we talk about here at Is This Modest -whether it be our mouths, our clothes, or our thoughts – It all boils down to how we reflect the image of Christ in our lives. Remember – we are not the light: We are the mirror, reflecting the Fire of God out into the dark; a city on a hill; a light when all others go out.

Foy Lyndström

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Post tags: article, city, fire, focus, Foy, Male, mirror, purpose

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I went to a very conservative Christian highschool, and each year we had an annual tradition (yes, that phrase is redundant; Sue me) – Beach day. At the end of each year, the entire school took a “field trip” to the beach, to do whatever we wanted. But, there was a dress code. We were told that we represented Christ, and we had to dress accordingly. This made perfect sense.

Every year, several days before the trip, we were all addressed on what bathing suits were acceptable. Males had virtually no restrictions – the only thing we couldn’t wear were Speedos. Regular swimming trunks were perfectly acceptable, and shirts were not required.

As for the girls, things were different. No stomach was allowed to be shown, so one-piece suits were recommended, but “tankini’s” – the variety that are technically two piece but do not show stomach (but you all knew that already, probably) – were also allowed. Because there were many students of many ages being spoken to, the word “cleavage” was not said, but it was an unspoken rule that there should be little to none.

Do I have anything against any of these rules? No – not at all. But I do find them unique. Why?

It all comes down to the fact that the majority of modesty is not objective, but subjective. What do I mean by this?

For review: My Mac’s dictionary defines ‘objective’ as “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing”. A great example of some objective thinking would be when an official decides if a homerun is a homerun: It’s not that debatable. Either it is or it isn’t. You can discuss it as much as you like, but it is what it is. There is no middle ground.

Something subjective, however, is “based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions”. For instance, the judging of figure skating is extremely subjective. One official may watch a routine, and determine it to be a 7.3, while another may see it as 8.6.

So what is subjective and objective in modesty?

Well, there are some very basic body parts that we all, as a society, have deemed inappropriate to show. I don’t need to spell them out for you, you already know them. This is the “objective” realm of modesty. But, there are some regions of the body that are open to discussion for many people. Some think it is OK for women to show their entire stomachs and entire backs. Others do not. This is very subjective.

My thinking brought four different thoughts together: Objective Modesty, Subjective Modesty , the World’s views of what is subjective and objective in modesty, and what my School’s thoughts were on modesty. They all came together, and formed one large question in my mind.

Please, before I ask the following question, understand this: I’m not disagreeing with what we see as basic modesty. I agree 100% with the decisions my school gave. I am purely asking the following question to inspire thought and discussion:

Why is it modest for guys to show off their entire bare chest, but not modest for women to do the same? Is it because women have more “assets” in that area? Or is it because of the male mind? Or both? Or is it something else?

Why?

Foy Lyndström

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article, Foy, male mind, modesty, objective, subjective, Swimsuit

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Many males have spent hours on end, attempting to figure out how the female mind works. Since 98% of this blog’s readers are female, it seems kind of pointless to discuss something you all know quite well.

However, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding regarding the male mind. I’ll be upfront – I don’t really know it much myself, even though I’m a guy. Each day I learn something more about who I am, and how my mind works.

I’ll also be frank about something else: I’m going to be a bit blunt in this post, and I apologize for that if it is somewhat offensive to any of you. I could dance around with euphemisms, but they seem to usually get in the way.

I highly recommend that before you read this post, you read my previous post on this issue,  (the infamous “Gollum” post), if you have not read it already. It can be found here.

When it comes to modesty and the male mind, things get really weird. Our minds, in a way, are like robots. We are programmed. If you boiled it all down, it would read like this:

The basic, sinful desire of most every male is to see unclothed females.

It’s extremely embarrassing, it’s ugly, it’s sinful, and it’s the truth. We can try to deny it forever, but this lustful, sinful desire is hard-coded in our sinful beings.

Our beliefs about modesty are based on this concept, and in turn creates a second, equally ugly and sinful, but truthful, statement:

The easier it is for a male to mentally undress a female the more immodestly dressed she is.

This is not necessarily based on the amount of skin we can see at the moment. An example:

Two women are standing beside each other. One is dressed for extreme winter weather: humungous parka on, bulging out around her, a large windscreen is up on her face, and it is obvious that she has many layers around her legs as well. The second woman has her hands lifted in the air, draping merely a sheet over her entire body.

Which of these women is dressed immodestly? Neither is revealing skin at all, and yet the choice is obvious. Not only is a sole sheet closer to nudity than the parka, but it also suggests a physical encounter.

So yes, we’re a sinful bunch. Our minds are crap. But we’re not going down without a fight. As I mentioned in my Gollum post, we’re constantly engaged in warfare with the enemy. Every moment of every day is a constant fight to resist the temptations thrown at us by the world. Even as I type this, I’m tempted to look. It creates such frustration, for we yearn to please our Lord, and reject the sin around us, and yet the pleasure overwhelms us, and swarms through every part of our body.

Being a Christian single guy is like being a diabetic kid in a candy store whose head is covered by a blindfold. You can’t see the candy, you can’t touch the candy, and you can’t eat the candy. Yet you hear other kids oohing and ahhing, tasting the candy and enjoying every bit of it. Even if you know you can’t eat it, you still want to look at it, to see what all the fuss is about. And once you catch a glimpse of it, you want to keep on looking, and goodness gracious, you want to eat a whole bunch of it. You fight against your parents with everything you’ve got, trying to get that blindfold off for just a glimpse. Yet your parents keep it on there, knowing that it is for the best.

It’s a frustrating war we fight.

It’s an ugly war we fight.

And it’s the sad truth.

Foy Lyndström

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Post tags: article, Foy, The Male Mind

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Imagine: You are no longer a person of modesty. Your mind has been transported into the mind of an immodest female (ala Charles Wallace in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, for all those fellow book nerds out there). The following scenario occurs, a scenario in which an excuse is used to ignore modesty, a scenario that might have happened before….

*dream  fade, complete with the stereotypical dream sound effect*

You wake up in the morning. You’re sweating like a pig. You wonder at first whether you have the flu. But once you get up and look at the thermometer, you realize that it’s not just you: it’s 105 degrees outside! Quickly, you run to the air conditioner. You try to turn it on, but it doesn’t work! You suddenly feel tired. You decide to take a nice, icy cold shower. As you stand under the refreshing water, you remember that no one else is at home today….you have the house to yourself…. With the heat… and with no air conditioner?!?! You consider: Do I need to wear anything at all? I mean, no one’s home. Then you remember: I have ERRANDS TO RUN! Gah! Now you have to go meet with people in this hot, hot weather. Be modest at a time like this? It’s too hot out! I can’t go naked in public, so I’ll go for the bare minimum: Short shorts, bikini top. That’s ok, isn’t it? I mean, it’s wicked hot out, who could blame me?

*GASP*

You’re awake! It was just a dream. And its Hot out too! As you go to turn on your AC, it doesn’t work either. So you hop in the shower. As the icy water flows over you, you wonder what to wear. You remember your dream clearly, and what you wore then. But that’s crazy talk! Bikini top in public? FAHGETAHBOUTIT!

While it may be foreign to you, this mindset is out there, and out there in force. Just visit the mall on a hot day, or drive by the nearest teen hangout. When the heat comes, the easiest thing for many people is just to whip of a layer… or two. Sooner or later, there aren’t any layers left, or at least very few. Some people (the majority of readers here) don’t want to be at the bare minimum – you want to be fully clothed, but also don’t want to suffer from heat exhaustion.

As a person who wants to be modest, how do you stay cool while looking appropriate? Light clothing is the key, both in weight and in color. It’s tricky though – you need to get rid of all the excess weight with thin cloth and light color tones, but you don’t want them to be too thin, resulting in see-through clothing. Cargo shorts work well, knee level, maybe a little bit higher. Just thick enough to repel eyes, but airy enough to allow the exchange of air through your short’s legs. Plain T-shirts work well for tops, but I am mostly at a loss to shirt choices due to my being a male.

So how do you get advice about your summer clothing choices from actual females? Well, that’s easy: just go over to the “Well, It’s hot out!” thread in our BRAND NEW FORUM, and ask away! I’m sure that the lovely lady writers here would be more than glad to offer assistance.

Foy Lyndström

Join the forum discussion on this post

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Post tags: Foy, heat, hot, modesty, weather

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We here at Is This Modest are constantly trying to mold our content to best address the wants and needs of our readers. That means YOU! But in order to do that, we need to know more about you. Not the elaborate details of your life, just some simple things. Like if you’re a guy or a girl: If we discover that our readers are predominately female, we can then focus all of our attention on female related posts.

We are currently experimenting on a plug-in that will allow you to submit information to us completely anonymously, allowing only us to see watever you submit. The form appears at the bottom of the page – please give it a try. OR you can try something different. I’m going to put three simple questions at the end of this post, and all you have to do is answer them in a comment. We don’t even need to know your name or username – if you want, just insert some random letters or numbers for a name, and make up a fake E-mail. And if you don’t feel comfortable answering any of the questions at all, thats fine too. But I highly recommend that you do: the more information we get, the better we can serve you.

Without any further ado, here are the very simple questions:

1. Are you male or female?

2. How old are you? (Feel free to give an age range if you want (’15-20′, ’30-40′, etc)

3. What is your relationship status? (Single, Married, engaged, etc)

See? That isn’t bad! All you have to do is send a quick comment. Answer as many or as few of them as you like.

Here is the form. This is our first try with it. And it works!

cforms contact form by delicious:days

We all give you our thanks for the help!

Foy Lyndström

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Post tags: age, Foy, gender, poll, relationship staus

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———

Are their any tasks these days that one can do without being bombarded by immodesty?

Foy Lyndström

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Post tags: article, Foy, groceries, immodesty, Male, Shopping

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I on the other hand, was (and still am) quite unique. I grew up in a very conservative family and school environment, and even in my senior year of high school, was still “discovering” some of these connotations. Example: In English class, we got off on a tangent, and began discussing Quazzimoto’s romantic life (don’t ask). Now, when one discusses a hunchback, I always assumed that a correct synonym for a “hunch” – the item which makes a hunchback a hunchback – would be a “hump” [Peter Sellers innocently thought so in the Pink Panther movies, which I saw when I was young]. I then said something to the effect of: “someone would have to love humps to love him”. The class then began to wet their pants in laughter as I sat in utter confusion; it was my parents who told me later that “hump” had a sexual connotation.

A second occurrence of this (which makes the post relevant to the blog) occurred within the last year. For the longest time, I had heard people call TV the “boob tube”. I had always assumed that the phrase referred to the lazy individuals (me) who sit and watch TV. But now, as I examine modern TV, I finally understand the real meaning behind the phrase.

Modern TV is inundated with immodesty. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize this. Just watch an average night of television on any of the major stations, and you will find plenty. You don’t even have to watch the shows, just watch their previews or review their plots (Desperate Housewives, Lipstick Jungle, Weeds, etc). Shall I even mention “Dancing With the Stars”?

Every fall and spring, when TV stations start new shows by airing “pilots” – the first episode of an entirely new show that introduces the characters and the basic plot – you can be sure to find junk. The producers will try anything to get viewers, and this usually includes half-naked women. What makes it even more rediculous is that the situations in which these women are present is usually quite forced. Out of curiosity, I watched the first episode of “Knight Rider”, so I could see what all the hype was about ( a talking car? Had semi-potential.) Within the first 5 minutes, when the car became an inferno of flames on the outside, I knew the show was odd.  But when the characters inside the car, in an attempt to survive the two minute drive back to home base where the car could be extinguished, stripped to their underwear so as to keep cool, I knew that this show was going to be bad. And when two scenes past, and the male character walked in on a topless girl, I realized the show was going to be worse than I first thought.

But this isn’t limited to the cheesy shows (as Knight Rider turned out to be). This type of material was present in the first episode of Heroes, the first episode of Fringe, the first BattleStar Gallactica, to name only a few – all incidents in which immodesty was forced.

I’m tired of this. So tired. I love to watch TV, and I’m tired of being forced to shut the TV off because of it. Will producers stop this? I doubt it. It gets them money. Why shouldn’t they stop?

Right?

*sigh*

Foy Lyndström

(Brownie Points to anyone who can ID where the picture is from)

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article, Foy, immodest, Knight Rider, television, tv

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A simple walk through Wal-mart will easily tell you why. Women’s undergarments are displayed prominently next to every major pathway. Even if that is not enough, large posters are placed near these displays, with models showing just exactly how these clothes look on an extremely thin figure.

Even when one isn’t in the women’s department, semi-clothed women are visible on numerous product labels, from shower related products to swimming pool accessories to even some cold medicines.

Just yesterday I went into a “Dicks Sporting Goods” store, looking for some new “slush shoes”. Since the store sells sports products (say that five times fast), the stereotypical “jogging woman in sports bra or tight, sweaty t-shirt” was present everywhere, making *boot shopping* a temptation infested ordeal.

Borders Bookstore, which I adore visiting (I love books, and I love browsing bookstores) has become one big land mine. Scantily clad women are seen on romantic paperbacks, and other books show even more than that. Browsing the magazine rack for Star Wars Insider (yes, I’m a nerd) is now impossible due to the celebrity gossip genre of magazine, which prominently displays grossly immodest clothing. Even Best Buy, my other favorite store, is now scary to walk through. Movie and CD covers are becoming increasingly immodest.

Why do these stores display such prominent immodesty? The only explanation I can see is a simple one: sex sells. Advertisers realize that if they display a sexually appealing image within their advertisement, people will buy it. Its a sad thing to see and understand, but its true in today’s society. Those of us who are trying to stay pure are falling like pheasants to a hunter within these stores – forever sentenced to walk through them staring at the floor.

I guess this really isn’t an instructional post, just an observational gripe. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Foy Lyndström

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 23 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article, Foy, immodest, Male, store

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Ok. So maybe I’m old fashioned. But I always believed that belts were used to hold up your pants. Right?

No one wants their pants falling down. 

Well, most people don’t want that to happen. Our world has changed – so much so that style is sought after more than functionality. People became more concerned with looking good than actually having quality clothes. This even affected the humble belt. Guy belts soon had big belt buckles; girl belts became “bedazzled”, first with sparkles, and now with shiny studs. And know what? Belts  aren’t even being used on pants anymore. Instead, they’re being placed on shirts and dresses. They become, in effect, useless. But they’re SHINY! And bright. And full of Bling. So they are used. A lot. Even when they are actually used on pants, the pants themselves are quite low, making one wonder: “If you have a belt, why not use it properly, eh?” 

As I look at these belts, and think “Is this Modest?”, I have to say no. The entire concept of modesty revolves around wearing clothes that do not attract attention to one’s “assets” – both north and south. All a shiny belt does is scream: “Look at my waist!” Once an eye goes there, lets just say that things, including the eye, go downhill. By wearing a dull colored belt, one can have functionality and yet keep themselves modest.

Foy Lyndström

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2008. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article, belt, Foy, Male, modesty

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That’s what my teacher used to say to us in fifth grade. On Wednesdays, all the guys had to wear button down shirts with ties. As one could guess, we all loved it to death. At the end of every recess, our ties became *misplaced* and our shirts always *mysteriously* became untucked. Our teacher would remind us, in her  not-so-happy voice, as we walked in: “Tuck in your tails, you look like a slob”. It turns out that tucking in your shirt not only can make you look un-sloblike, but it can also help you be modest.

A shirt tuck is one of the easiest things you can do to stay modest. It takes less than thirty seconds to do, and does not require you to change your wardrobe. You no longer need to feel awkward as you stretch, bend over, or run to catch the elevator. For the guys who are attempting to stay pure, it helps a ton. A flash of flesh out of the corner of the eye can be an extreme temptation, especially with the knowledge that the glimmer originated in the nether regions; this removes the temptation. We can’t see what isn’t there. It also gives off an aura of neatness, responsibility, and good grooming. 

Foy Lyndström

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2008. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Foy, neatness, shirt, tuck

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