Flashback To Eight Grade!

You’re sitting in the cafeteria, engaged in a heated discussion about boys with all your girlfriends [In case you didn't know, this example doesn't apply to MInTheGap or I - though we both were surrounded by all our girlfriends at lunch, right M? ;) ]. So there you were, concentrating on the girl to your left, when you hear your name! You look up – someone said your name! You’re positive! But no one is looking at you…so they weren’t trying to get your attention….Hmm…. they must have just said your name in conversation. Who was it you wonder…

Now, Back to  the Future…er…current day. 

Psychiatrists have noticed this weird phenomena  - not only the ability to pick your name out of a hundred conversations, but also key sounds, like a siren, or other words, such as “FIRE!” – as well. But they didn’t notice it in cafeterias, they noticed it at cocktail parties. So they named it “The Cocktail Party Effect” (very original, huh?).

So, you’re thinking now: “What is the significance of this weird Cocktail thingy?” Well, it proved to psychologists one cool thing: Our brains process more things then our conscious mind knows. See, when you were in the cafeteria, you were focused on your girlfriend’s conversation. That was the only thing your conscious mind knew at the time. But, your brain was processing all the information going on around you – all the conversations that were happening, filtering them for important information. You just didn’t know it was happening. 

So once your brain picked out your name from the mental sieve, it sent an alert to your conscious mind: “HEY! You’re name is being called!” You then felt the need to look around you for the name caller.

Pretty cool, huh? But what the heck does this have to do with modesty?

Well, the male mind works in a similar way – not with hearing, but with sight. A guy can pick out an immodestly dressed female from a long distance away, without even knowing it. It’s the Cocktail Effect, but with vision. Our mind isn’t processing or looking for immodesty (well, some minds aren’t…), but the unconscious sinful self is doing it all the time.

What’s really scary is that we’re good at it. Very good. If they made a new version of “Where’s Waldo?” and named it “Where’s Wendy?” (Or even “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? “), dressing her in an immodest outfit…well, lets just say that guys wouldn’t need to look in the back for the answer.

Now, when the mind does find something, it sends an alert to the consious mind: “Hot Girl at 10:00!!!”. Our eyes unconsciously  zip in that direction, and then God kicks in. He says “You really shouldn’t be doing that”. We persist: “But…but…” He persists, and because he has a sense of humor ( I know he does), he adds a pun: “No Butts”.

Then we have a moment of thinking. Should we keep our eyes away? Or should we follow God’s will? It sounds oh so easy, but I’m sure MInTheGap will agree with me when I say that its one of the hardest things to do.

Very, very, very hard.

And so the battle continues…never to end.

FL

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Post tags: cocktail party effect, psychologist, The Male Mind

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There’s a term in Psychology known as closure. It’s when we as humans take in incomplete images, and without conscious effort, our minds “fill in the blanks”. For instance, in the above image we see a dalmatian. In fact, the image is just a bunch of black blotches, but in the way they are arranged, they appear to form an image…at least in our heads. But what does this have to do with modesty and proms, the theme of the site and the theme of the month?

Guy’s minds use the concept of closure quite a bit. When women wear revealing clothing, or even when they wear modest clothes, our minds play the “Fill in the Gap” game without our conscious thought. Our minds try to fill in the gaps in the flesh that clothes hide. It’s yet another sad fact about how we work.

This “closure” is known about by the media. Many times in film, nude scenes are portrayed merely by head shots. For some reason, when we see no straps on the shoulders we automatically assume that the person is naked, even though nothing is visible that suggests that. This picture is an example:

There’s nothing to suggest that she is nude, but for some reason our mind conceives that she is, even though we can’t see her body.

Knowing this fact, however strange, creepy, or scary it sounds, can be very helpful when picking an outfit at the prom. If a guy sees entire bare shoulders, without straps, it’s easier to imagine what is below than if there is something to obstruct the vision at shoulder level.

The key is not to give what I call “ends” – a bare end of your body, however small.

The same goes with footware. Wearing a full bodied shoe prevents the male mind from moving upwards from bare feet. Movies occasionally use bare feet around scattered clothes to create the illusion of nudity, as suggested by this photo:

The key to remember is to “close up your ends” – try not to show too much of a bare shoulder, and not too much of a completely bare foot (feet).

F.L.

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Post tags: bare feet, prom, straps, The Male Mind

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After a man marries a woman, he no longer struggles with immodesty.  He delights in his wife, and can see all he needs to at any time.  She fulfils his every desire and need, and he needs no other.

I wish, very hard, to say this was true, but it is not, and this is something that we must realize and take into account—especially with all that’s going on in our culture today.

Living Together, Shacking Up, Living In Sin—You get the idea

Part of the problem with today’s culture is that marriage has been extremely devalued—to the point where women are compared to cars that you should test drive and make sure you get the latest model—or one with the least amount of miles on her.

With that has come the whole concept of comparison.  What I mean by that is that whereas in years gone by a man and a woman would only ever have one sexual partner their entire life, now they have multiples—and that’s seen as ok.

This directly relates to modesty, because now every woman is an object, something new and different to find out.

The Wedding

As far as modesty goes, what a strange time a wedding is.  It’s that time where every rule is turned on its head.  The woman intentionally goes out to find something to wear that will entice her husband sexually.  They see each other without clothing—and that’s as far as this family friendly blog writer will go.

They can’t get enough of each other during that week, and for a long time thereafter.

But he’s now seen “everything”—so is he cured?  Probably not.

After The Wedding and Into the Marriage

I will say that it’s not the same after being married as before, and I think there’s a good reason.  I believe that there is a physical reaction to seeing a pretty face/body—it’s a hit, or like a drug, where it feels good.

And because you’re not together all the time, a guy can look toward another girl and see something and feel something.

That’s made ten times worse by marketing and advertisements.  Men are now bombarded with images of girls using facial expressions that indicate a favorable reaction, whereas if they were to meet in person the girl would not give them the time of day.

Bodies are airbrushed to the point that the girl in the picture looks nothing like a real girl—and that just makes his comparisons worse.

If he needed to be careful not to look before marriage, he needs to be careful to only look at her after.  Ladies, here’s where you can help—you were all concerned about what he’d see on your wedding night (you may have tanned, gotten your hair done and lost weight), what is he seeing now?  Yes, be modest outside the house, but inside, draw him in like only you can.

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clothing, marriage, purity, Relationships, The Male Mind, wedding

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As boys and girls become teens and then young ladies and men, there are subtle changes in the way they react to each other.  The physical attraction is still there, and the pressure is still very real, but the relationships that a person goes through and their life experiences can help discipline them or cause them to get on a crash course to certain doom.

Well, perhaps that’s a little melodramatic, but I think you’ll understand what I’m saying in a minute.

A Healthy Desire

God made men and women to desire companionship—and that companionship is on many levels, one of them being physical.

The physical desire is strong in men—and it starts with sight and works its way throughout his being.  He needs female companionship to complete him in all sorts of ways.  He craves it—and that’s part of what feeds his curiosity and his longings to the point of lust.

The desire is healthy, and it’s supposed to reach it’s fulfillment in marriage, but it’s often easy for it to degenerate into lust.

We Weren’t Wired to Wait

Seriously, I know it’s a topic for another time, but the more I read, ponder, and look at marriage historically, the more I’m under the impression that men and women were never meant to wait until their twenties or thirties to marry.  I mean, Adam and Eve were married when they were two days old!

The problem is that there is a lot of pent up sexual desire and no morally acceptable outlet but marriage.  So, the young man struggles with the war going on inside him: wanting, desiring, feels like needing, to have a woman to love—emotionally and physically.

They say that girls can be guilted into sexual relations—I believe that guys can be manipulated as well by the same tactic.  It all depends on who has more discipline in this area.

Discipline

That’s right, self discipline is the key.  The guy exercises it by not being alone with a girl, by making sure to keep his eyes away from things he might be tempted to lust after, and by watching his viewing habits.  He needs to keep his mind focused on other things, or he will find a way to feed that desire and his curiosity.

The godly/modest woman helps him here by not making it easy for him to stumble when looking at her.  It helps him focus on who she is instead of what she is.

Logic would say that all women are equipped pretty much the same as far as having certain body parts.  Except this isn’t logical—men see differences, they compare, and they contrast.

The Gradual Increase of Lust

Lust has a way of growing, it gets fed by an action that requires more.  As a guy sees a part of a girl, it no longer satisfies him—no longer feeds his curiosity or his craving to see that any more.  He must see more.

A guy can lust looking through a J.C. Penny magazine.  He can fill his mind with sex by reading books around the house.

But the modest girl isn’t giving him anything to look at.  She’s not feeding his desire to see more—whereas he might see more with someone else.

So, discipline is key—the guy at this age is looking for a life-long mate, and yet has to be restrained.  Take this with you in your relationships.  If you better understand what he’s thinking and going through you’ll better be able to anticipate where he might have difficulty.

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Kids and Teens, marriage, purity, Relationships, Sexual intercourse, Sexuality, The Male Mind

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I bet that surprised some of you.

Physical changes occur in both boys and girls—I believe girls start to change first—and it is about this time that boys will start to recognize that girls are different and they will react differently to that realization.

It’s also at this time that a boy will start to notice the physical characteristics of girls in general.

As we’ve seen, up until now there hasn’t been that much a boy will notice about a girl—as far as differences, but now he’s starting to see (and focus) on different areas of her body and he’s starting to think about them as more of a companion than competition or a playmate.

His Two Reactions

There are two typical reactions to this change in perception.

The Player/Romancer

This boy realizes that there are differences, and he starts to try to form relationships with the opposite sex.  It is these guys that are the ones that you want your girl to stay away from, for both sexes are trying to figure out the change, and this “young man” has basically one thing on his mind.

The Withdrawer

This was me.  I withdrew—even going so far as to tell people “I don’t like girls.”  I didn’t date a girl until my Senior year of high school—though I was close friends with more than a few.

Both of these reactions are an attempt to deal with feelings and thoughts that he’s now having that he’s never had before.

Inside His Mind

The mind of a pre-teen and teenage boy is a weird place indeed.  Along with trying to figure out why there are zits on your face and how to manage different classes in school, your body is going through changes you don’t fully comprehend, and things that never really stuck in your mind are hard not to think about.

Before this stage, a girl was pretty or cute, but you didn’t really care.  You may have even thought you’d marry someone, but that was probably based on how fun they were to be with.  During this phase of development, though, most guys start to notice the distinctly feminine features.

Women are starting to develop, and the boys notice.  In fact, if I had to try to bring back memories of this kind from my past, I remember seeing that girls were developing breasts and that their legs attracted me in short skirts.

I knew when girls were dressing for attention, and there was plenty of talk around school when a specific girl had more the morals of an alley-cat than a lady.

Ignorance Can Be a Pain

Innocence can be a great thing.  It’s a whole lot easier to refuse something that you’ve never done—you don’t know what you’re missing.  However, ignorance also can feed curiosity.

If I had to use one word to describe boys at this stage, it’d be curious.

• That girl that they grew up with now has a pair of breasts.
• She makes my heart patter as she walks by.
• She attracts me in the clothes she wears.
• I wonder what she looks like in her underwear.
• I wonder what she looks like in less.

Regardless of whether they’ve seen their mom breastfeed or their sister—he still wonders.  And this feeds his desire to find out more.

So, his mind wanders, and so do his eyes.  They glance through the button-down shirt to see if they can catch a glimpse—and even a bra may turn them on.

Even if they know it’s wrong, they look at a girl’s body and wonder—and this is where modesty comes into play.

If your clothing does not attract a boy to your body, he will be looking at who you are.  To this day, I think that one of the most “attractive” outfits I saw on a girl in high school—that I thought was pretty—was a colored turtleneck with a button-down shirt overtop.  Modest, and yet cute.

I can also tell you about a few other memorable outfits that are memorable for the wrong reasons.  The question is, how do you want to be seen and remembered?

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clothing, High school, Kids and Teens, purity, The Male Mind

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At some stage of development—there’s no hard and fast rule—girls and boys begin to realize that there are, indeed, differences between them.  Boys want to play athletic activities and video games.  Girls play house and with dolls.  Battle lines are drawn, and at summer camps everywhere one sex starts to tease or mock the other about which one is better.

At this stage of the game, I believe that both sexes are finding that they actually might have some feelings for one another—something beyond the norm—and not know how to cope with these feelings, they decide to attempt to establish superiority.

Boys Rule, Girls Drool

It’s at this stage that the person you believed you understood totally because all that was different was hair length has evolved into someone you could never possibly understand.  She went from being your best friend to being someone that wants to play house with you—more.  She wants to kiss you, you notice that she’s softer than you are, and that she’s not always interested in the things you are.

You also notice that she wants to control you—already. :)

It’s at this stage that I don’t believe there’s a big problem with modesty in that these boys really don’t know enough about marital relations to look at girls as an object of lust—and yet at the same time they have emotions and mixed desires that they don’t fully know how to process.

This is also a time where you have to watch out for those children that “know more” than others—because they will love to express their knowledge of things that will ruin your child’s innocence, and really confuse them.

The other thing that can happen here is for children to want to “play doctor”, which may entail dropping of drawers to pretend to do an exam.  To me, this is something that should be avoided.

But for the most part, a boy is getting feelings at this stage, but is not—usually—looking at a girl much differently than at the previous stage:

• She’s different.
• She may be “pretty.”
• He may or may not believe he will marry his friend.
• He may avoid girls or say that he hates them if they express emotion at him.

Maintaining purity here means in keeping innocent.  It’s also advisable to encourage boys and girls at this age to not be so harsh to each other and realize what they have to contribute to one another—instead of fueling the fires of animosity toward one another.

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Kids and Teens, purity, Summer camp, The Male Mind

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In order to try to better help better understand what goes on in the mind of a guy, I believe it will be instructive to look into what happens at the different stages of growth—because at these different stages different thoughts, feelings and impulses are in effect.  I believe that if you could unlock these things, then you’d better understand what your up against, and better understand what you have to do to remain pure and modest.

Everyone’s a He

It was hard.  My oldest son used the pronoun “he” for every person that he saw or referenced.  Sure, it wasn’t that difficult to get him to say that his mom was a she (if he wasn’t referring to her directly as “mom”), but how do you explain to someone that small that there are two different sexes with two different physical attributes and how to use the many different clues to determine whether the person to whom he was referring was a girl or a boy?

So we stuck to the most obvious: Girls have long hair.

Now, this has lead to some embarrassing moments—like the time that I was in Home Depot and the guy that was helping me find something had long hair and my sons told me that we should ask “her” to help us find something else.  There are women with short hair, also, but few with men’s hairstyles, so that hasn’t caused as much trouble.

The reason I bring this up, however, is that part of being of a certain sex is looking like that sex.  For men, that means having a male hair cut, dressing in slacks, carrying oneself in a masculine manner, and hopefully knowing his way around some basic power tools.

For ladies, that means looking like a lady—in your hair length, the style of clothing you wear, etc.  I’d encourage all women that are pursuing modesty to be a woman that won’t confuse my boys as to what you are.

We’re Different, But That’s No Big Deal

The other place that young boys run into the opposite sex is when they have a sister.  Now, some have speculated that—for the most part—there is never any physical desire between brother and sister.  That may be true in most cases, but this has an interesting connection to something we’re going to say later on.

My point is, when you are a young boy, the fact that you and a girl have different parts is no big deal.  The fact that you both have legs, arms, knees, and a smile means that you’re a person that I can play with and have a good time with.  There’s no sexual tension, and though you may play mom and dad—and may even kiss just like they see mom and dad do—there’s nothing here (normally) that’s causing lust.

Oh to be that innocent the whole way through life!

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: long hair, purity, The Male Mind

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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

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article, Foy, The Male Mind

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I’m sure all you girls will admit that you’ve thought that at least once. Maybe twice. Ok, maybe you think that all the time. You constantly hear them say “We’re trying to be pure! Honestly!” and yet there they go again, staring where they shouldn’t. What’s with them anyway? How can they really be trying to be pure, yet at the same time gawk at my (read: your – I’m not gay) body?

This question digs right down into the weird wirings of the guys mind. Of course, I won’t discuss at all the minds of the female species, otherwise, I’d be shot. But I can talk about how we think, because I think that will help out you girls (I say ‘you girls’ because I am guessing that the majority of readers are female).

I’m sure you’ve all heard the basics about our thoughts a thousand times, the whole “we’re one-track wired” spiel, right? That ground is already covered, so I’m not going there. But what about those Christian guys, the ones who say every day that they are trying their hardest to keep their minds pure, and yet they keep doing things that are unquestionable un-pure. How does this work?

As a Christian guy myself, I too have tried to stay pure. God has helped me throughout the last several months, and I have been improving; and yet, I am still male, a condition that plagues half of earth’s inhabitants. For the longest time, I tried to find a metaphor or an example that might provide girls with an idea as to how our ‘hoping-to-be-pure-yet-failing-miserably’ mind’s work. And then, a couple months ago, it hit me.

Thankfully, I stayed conscious. Usually, when things hit you in the head, you black out; I didn’t (Har Har – I know your laughing). By now, you’re asking yourself for the hundredth time: “Why is there a picture of Gollum on the front? What does he have to do with modesty? Don’t tell me you’re critiquing his modesty?” No, I’m not doing that. But I am using him as an example.

As many of you know, Gollum is a character created by J. R. R. Tolkien, a Christian author who had strong ties with C. S. Lewis. Gollum lives in Middle Earth, the fictional world of the Lord of the Rings books and movies. He is a unique character in the sense that he’s…well…schizophrenic. After possessing the Ring of Power for so long, he was driven insane – his mind being split into two halves. One half, “Smeagol”, is the pure human/hobbit half of his personality – what he was before the Ring affected (effected?) his life. This half of his consciousness wants to serve his Master wholeheartedly, without any deceit whatsoever.

The other half of his mind “Gollum”, serves only himself. He wants the Ring, and wants it bad. No action is out of the question, as long as he gets the Ring. These two halves fight each other desperately throughout the books and movies, each wanting to get the upper hand.

So what does he have to do with male purity? Well, Christian guys (or any guy who want to stay pure) are like Gollum and Smeagol. One half of of us wants to serve God wholeheartedly – wants to obey his every command and stay pure. The other half wants nothing to do with God. All they want to do is “see everything there is to see”, and act upon it.

Throughout every moment of a guy’s life, these two halves are at each other’s throats. The fight occurs moment by moment. Throughout every hour and every minute, skirmishes are won and lost. The half that serves God prays desperately for help and forgiveness, and yet, so often it feels as though we are alone in the battle. Yet we know that God will rescue us if we persevere.

The apostle Paul speaks of this struggle with sin in Romans 7:

^“15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. ²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²²For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.”

This is the battle that guys face every moment. It seems that no matter how hard we try to keep our eyes to ourselves, they wander where they shouldn’t. Many Christian guys (me) have gotten extremely depressed by this – it can seem like an incurable disease. Thankfully, Paul concludes the chapter with hope:

²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So the next time you see a guy who claims to be attaining purity, but is failing, think twice. There’s a chance that he actually is trying his hardest. Give him a slight break, ok? He might be schizophrenic. : )

Foy Lyndström

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2008. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Inner, Paul, purity, Romans, The Male Mind, workings

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