Last week Jill Domschot wrote a post that touched on something I keep meaning to write about.
There is a movement (and yes, it’s no accident that I’m using words like “duty” and “movement” in this context. We may yet even get to “steaming pile”) among certain folks that teaches… I am not sure how to put this…
Essentially the teaching, at its basis is not a bad one. The idea is that a Christian woman owes it to her husband to keep herself up. The core of this teaching is really just one of mutual
You do the best you can. Even if it looks like this.
As usual, we’ve got those who would corrupt the truth now running rampant and causing a whole lot of pain. Why do we always feel it necessary to twist the good news of Grace into a weapon that cuts others down? There’s no need for that, and it’s Satan in the desert, using scripture to taint, to corrupt.
There are those who teach that a woman who lets herself go is responsible for her husband’s eventual infidelities. After all, why shouldn’t he hunger for sex with the pretty manager of the marketing department if you’ve put on fifty pounds after the birth of your children? Why shouldn’t he yearn for carnal knowledge of a woman who can afford regular trips to the salon, if you guys are watching your budget and you don’t colour your own hair?
When I was a girl in Christian school we had a lecture in a girls’-only Bible class about how we should dress. It was our responsibility, it seemed, to keep the boys from thoughts of lust.* In fairness, I don’t know if the boys had a class of their own in self-control. Nevertheless the idea that I am responsible for someone else’s choice to sin seems a little bit…well, it’s the equivalent of “you got raped because you were asking for it.” It doesn’t hold the transgressor accountable at all, and it misjudges men. It makes men out to be some sort of slavering dogs not in control of their own actions.
The nuances of a marital relationship are manifold. Mutual respect in any relationship is key, and no more so than in a marriage. Part of sacrificial love, however, is to love the other person in spite of flaws or “flaws”. That’s how God loves us, and if a Christian marriage is to be a reflection of how Christ loved the church, it’s your job as a husband to love your wife in whatever form she takes.
—-
*I as a large-breasted girl had my own special lecture about not stretching back over my chair. It seems the constant backache I had from hauling around D-cups was to be put up with silently. Stretching drew too much attention to my “assets”.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Among those who push this, gets to define what “lets herself go” looks like? Where are the lines between “I don’t accept current proscribed notions of female beauty,” and “I let myself go?” – and who gets to draw them. I don’t think there’s any objectively true version of what this looks like, without even touching on issues of physical and mental abilities and illnesses. Blech.
I have so many contentious opinions on this subject that I don’t know where to start! To digress a little, I got caught up a while back in the topic of “is it appropriate for a female missionary to go about in the field wearing a bikini?” My answer was, sure, if her goal is to catch a mate and not preach the gospel or save the orphans, which then was misconstrued as me saying that a woman is responsible for a man’s actions or sinful thoughts in regards to the bikini-clad female. I then dropped the argument out of sheer annoyance and decided I should write a satirical article enlisting female missionaries to try out for a bikini calendar in order to raise money for orphans in South America. It would be called “Bikinis for Jesus”. God very gently told me not to write that article.
The upshot of what that debate and many others taught me was that American Christianity, in many ways, is trapped in perpetual adolescance.
I would have written the article. Does that mean I’m rebellious?
Only if God told you not to . . . !
Your footnote made me think lustful thoughts.
Did the people who taught you this, somehow, simultaneously find the islamic burka a repulsive oppression?
Heh. You know, honestly, that never came up. I’d say probably not, though.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
I gotta say, that question occurred to me, too.
And look at what an exquisite double bind this system of thought puts women in: if a woman isn’t attractive to men (or doing her damndest to become attractive to men), she’s to blame, but if she’s attractive to men, she’s to blame. Gotcha!
So very true.
Very honestly written!
Would just like to tell you, the same follows across religions.
>It was our responsibility, it seemed, to keep the boys from thoughts of lust.
Sorta tangential but I’m reminded of a facebook screed I saw from someone ranting about the Jenna Talackova / Miss Universe thing, and how horrible it was that the country was sinking further into sin and yada yada yada.
I wish that before I unfriended the idiot I’d apologized for how we sinners were bespoiling the Christian virtue of a vanity contest where the winner is the one who inspires the most lust in men’s hearts.
[…] greatly enjoyed Katherine Coble’s recent post, The Duty of Beauty, wherein she expounds the oft, ill-stated, idea that wives contribute to their husband’s […]
” It was our responsibility, it seemed, to keep the boys from thoughts of lust.*”
Ive heard that comment in church too from our pastors wife and its been addressed to the young teen girls regarding clothing styles. Its a challenging thought to ponder, because Ive never conveyed that message as a lecture about women who dress skanky being the fault of another persons sin……Ive always took it as women are suppose to dress modestly.
Call me old fashioned but Im sick and tired of seeing breasts in my face 24/7 and not even being able to go to chruch without seeing a girls everything hanging out for my husband and kids to see.
I’m a big fan of modesty.
But not for the reasons I was taught. I don’t think we should be modest because sexiness makes guys sin.
I think we should be modest because that shows a sense of self-respect. It communicates that we value ourselves as beings beyond the sexual. It communicates that we understand how to achieve beauty without titillation.
It shows a respect for God who created us by not devaluing that creation.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
Oh I totally agree! It should be taught with gentleness and in a way that never blames a piece of clothing or a choice in dress as condemnation or a right to be victimized, could I take a gander and guess that you went to a school with very fundamentalist ideals?
Heh…it was an interdenominational school that had a mix of fundamentalists, charismatics and some quasi-fundamentalists. It changed over the years, but until I graduated girls could only wear dresses and skirts. No pants. If you were in 6-12 grade you had to wear hose or tights. No knee socks and no bare legs.
The woman who gave us the lecture about temptation was one of the more fundamentalist people there.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
[…] to, not just with two cents, but with five. His post was in response to Katherine Coble’s post which was in response to Jill Domschot’s post which contained this: Demanding that a woman […]
[…] a lot of the other people in my universe WERE into that sort of thing. As I mentioned here before I sat through many a class and lesson about how I was to not lead the boys astray with my heaving […]
Ok, so I guess my question is, what are the MALES supposed to be ‘responsible’ for regarding avoiding inappropriate actions??? Seems the idea that us women are supposed to be responsible for somehow controlling men’s behavior–and even for keeping our husbands ‘interested’–is a completely one-sided issue.
So, how about we all read the Bible and see what God’s Word says everyone’s supposed to do, instead of listening to flawed man!
[…] more, the (Link): stay-sexy-or-else message ultimately admits that marriage may be a conditional […]