Modesty

i) On Facebook I read a comment thread about swimwear. Some Christians think beachgoers should revert to Victorian swimwear. That raises some tricky issues regarding modesty. 

ii) Hopefully it's possible to strike a balance in-between nude beaches and burkas. Some of the Christian commenters had a position that's very similar to Muslim sensibilities regarding modesty. But surely we need to do better than that.

iii) Questions of modesty raise the sorites paradox. Because modesty ranges along a continuum, it isn't possible to draw an absolute line. It's a matter of degree. And ethics in general confronts us with borderline cases. In situations like this, our intuitions are firmer at the extremes. 

Unless you take an absolutist position (e.g. burkas), the question of where to draw the line is a challenge for both sides, the stricter as well as the more permissive. Changes of degree in either direction. 

iv) Modesty is culturebound. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's completely arbitrary. Many cultures are morally decedent, so the fact that scruples regarding modesty are culturebound doesn't entail that there can't be any right or wrong. That's a special case of moral relativism based on cultural relativism. But Christians reject that inference.

v) Conversely, social mores regarding modesty are often arbitrary. For instance, National Geographic style nudity was acceptable at the same time Playboy was pornographic. Images of native nudity in the jungle was uncontroversial, while images of nude white women were pornographic. 

And there's the long history of the nude in western art. Is that pornographic? Probably an issue on which Christians disagree. The artistic nude ranges along the same continuum as pornography, but do they overlap? 

vi) Much of this is bound up with the notion of "lust". A problem is that many Christians simply plug their popular notion of lust into biblical prohibitions. But that's not exegesis. That's beginning with an extrabiblical definition, which a reader plugs into the text of Scripture. 

vii) Is there something wrong with a teenager boy on the beach who admires the body of a teenage girl on the beach, or vice versa? Or is that healthy and innocuous? 

viii) Feminist sociologists often frame the debate in terms of the "objectification" of female bodies or treating women as "sexual objects". 

I rarely if ever see the same criticism in reverse. Is it wrong for a female viewer to objectify a handsome man? Do men feel demeaned if women view them as "sexual objects"?

ix) If we mean sexual "objectification" in a reductionistic sense where that's the only thing we care about in the opposite sex, then that's wrong. But it's hard to see how sex appeal as one component of the overall male/female dynamic is intrinsically wrong. 

x) In addition, examples of sexual "objectification" typically fixate on particular body parts, but that's arbitrarily restrictive. For instance, some women have beautiful eyes (e.g. Maureen O'Hara, Elizabeth Taylor). If I admire their eyes, that's "objectification", but is it sinful or degrading to admire their eyes? 

For that matter, it's my impression that many women admired the eyes of Paul Newman. By the same token, here's a woman describing Omar Shariff: "And there, in the flesh, were those eyes: warm, dark, liquid". Are they guilty of degrading sexual objectification? 

Some women have gorgeous hair. Is it misogynistic to admire their hair? Some women have a beautiful complexion. Anything can be objectified. 

xi) Sexual objectification is usually cast in visual terms, but some men and women find voices sexy. Consider women who relish the sound of operatic tenors (e.g. Corelli, Carreras, Pavarotti). Or men who relish the sound of operatic sopranos (e.g. Sutherland, Caballé, Price, Ponselle, Milanov).  

I can't speak for women, but it's my impression that women find men with deep voices sexy. Isn't that "objectification"? Is so, is that sinful? 

xii) Fact is, humans like to "objectify" beautiful things, such as flowers, sunsets, seascapes, mountain ranges, &c. Sexual objectification is just a special case of that general phenomena. 

Aesthetically, we're selective. We take things out of context. We single out appealing elements. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. 

xiii) A common argument is that since fornication is wrong, kissing is wrong because they lie on the same continuum. That relocates the fight from premarital sex to danger zones that might lead to fornication. The need to avoid gratuitous temptation. There's a legitimate issue there, but that's a prudential judgment about behavior that's not intrinsically wrong, but risky, as a potential pathway to actual immorality.  

xiv) One reason for modesty is that immodesty is distracting. There are situations in which it's okay to be distracted by beauty (e.g. in a park, at the beach). But we need to avoid an oversexualized culture in which viewers are constantly bombarded with sensual stimuli. We need to be able to think about other things. We need to avoid a social climate where the human imagination is sexually obsessed. The media promotes a culture that's all about sex all the time.