Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast.  I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage and now your parenting.  And I am joined today by someone who made me a parent.  My daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.    

Rebecca: Yep.  Hello.

Sheila: And we have some important findings today about the modesty messages.     

Rebecca: Yes, we do.  And I know people are excited for this one.  

Sheila: Yes.  And when our book, The Great Sex Rescue based on our survey of 20,000 people, we found one message in particular that was really harmful to women.  The obligation sex message.  And I think if we can sum up the worst message that we found in our survey of 7,000 women for our brand new book, She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up, it would be the modesty messages.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  100%.  

Sheila: So our book launches April 18th.  Our launch team has launched.  Yes.  

Rebecca: Yes.  And it’s going to be so much fun.  I mean a lot of you listeners, I know, were a part of our launch team for Great Sex Rescue, and I know that it was just such a blast over there.  And I’m really excited for this one too.  

Sheila: Yes.  So we already have several hundred people.  We’re welcoming more.  So the Facebook group is up and running.  We had our first Facebook Live this week.  There is more coming.  We’ve got some preorder bonuses for you, if you preorder the book and join the team.  We’ve got some bonuses on how to talk to your school, church, Christian camp, Christian school about modesty.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sheila: Some information on deconstruction.  Who is deconstructing?  Why they’re deconstructing?  And how you can raise your daughter to have a faith where she won’t need to deconstruct?  At least not as much.  Deconstruction can always be a good thing.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing.  

Rebecca: Yes.  No.  But it’s not always a bad thing, but it is often a painful thing.  And so it’s best to just—if you have the option to give your daughter the kind of faith where she doesn’t have to go through intense soul searching, that’s just—I highly recommend that option rather than throwing her to the wolves and be like, “Yeah.  She’ll figure it out.”

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  So those are some really fun things if you preorder the book which you can do now.  We have the links in the podcast notes for this on where you can get it on Amazon.  Baker Books has it for 40% off and free shipping within the U.S.  Lots of other places you can get it and then just email us the receipt.  The email address is there.  And then you can be invited to the launch team too, and you can start reading the book now.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  So you’ll get immediate access to an eBook copy.

Sheila: Right.  So we want this podcast to share with you some behind the scenes stuff about our modesty chapter.  Some stuff that isn’t even in the book.

Rebecca: Yeah.  A lot of stuff that isn’t in the book.

Sheila: That’s right.  And just some of the thinking that we’ve done around this.  Let’s start with one of our findings.  We’re not going to share them all.  Okay.  Sorry.

Rebecca: Yes.  We’re not going to share—you do have to get the book if you want all the findings.  Yes.

Sheila: Yes.  But we do have one really powerful one to share with you.  So for this survey, because we really felt like modesty—when you ask people, “What is the main thing that hurt you in youth group,” what came up again and again and again was modesty.

Rebecca: Well, and also modesty just came up again and again and again in the resources that we were reviewing.  It’s everywhere.

Sheila: Right.  It’s everywhere.  And so we really wanted to get to the nitty gritty of it.  What is it about the modesty message that is bad?

Rebecca: So we actually measured four different aspects of the modesty message to create our modesty message findings.  We measured them from all the different reasons that girls are given for why they need to cover up, the gender differences that make it so that girls have to cover up and boys don’t, those kinds of constructs.  We measured each of them so that we could really understand not only is it just the modesty message or is it a specific part of the modesty message.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  So here is the finding that I found really, really astonishing.  So if you believe one of the modesty messages—

Rebecca: Yep.  Any of the four that we measured.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Your chance of experiencing vaginismus as an adult, as an adult woman, increases by anywhere between 23% and 52% depending on which message you believe.  

Rebecca: Which is a big amount.  That is huge.

Sheila: That is huge.  Okay.  That is huge.  So the modesty message is highly, highly tied to vaginismus.  So we’re trying to figure out—and, again, this is something we have been talking about and hammering home on this podcast for over two years now that women in the evangelical church experience sexual pain at more than twice the rate of the general population.  We found an incidence rate of 22.6%.  And in The Great Sex Rescue, we identified the obligation sex message as being highly responsible for that.  And in this survey, we found another piece of it which is the modesty message.  Highly, highly responsible for the vaginismus rates going up.

Rebecca: Yeah.  So here’s how those four teachings break down.  Okay?  So people who believed girls who dress immodestly are worse than those who don’t had a 23% higher chance of having vaginismus when they got married.

Sheila: Yeah.  And we didn’t define what worse meant.  That was up to the people taking the survey.   

Rebecca: Yeah.  Because that’s just what we heard everywhere.  You don’t want to be a bad person.  We had that everywhere, right?  People who believe that we have to protect boys by dressing modestly were 24% more likely to experience vaginismus.  Those who believe that boys have a visual nature that girls will never understand had a 45% higher rate of vaginismus.  And those who believe that boys couldn’t help but lust after girls who are dressed like they are trying to incite it had a 52% higher rate of vaginismus.  

Sheila: Now it’s interesting.  Those latter two that are especially bad are ones that are about boys.  Boys’ nature.  How boys have a visual nature that girls can’t understand and how a boy can’t help but lust.  So they’re focused on how boys react to girls.  They’re not focused on girls’ responsibility or whether or not girls are bad or good.  They’re focused on how men react to us.  And basically, it’s like when you feel like men are a threat to you bad things happen.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  And when you feel like—if something happens to you, it’s probably because it was your fault because you wore the wrong thing, right?  

Sheila: He can’t help it.

Rebecca: Yeah.  The worst one is that teaching that if girls dress like they’re trying to incite lust—and well, they can’t blame boys for lusting after them.  That’s ridiculous.  

Sheila: Now there’s a whole lot of other things that are highly associated with the modesty message.  A whole lot of outcome variables about sexual satisfaction later, marital satisfaction later, self esteem effects.  Really, really significant findings.  You’re going to have to read the book for those.  We’re not going to give you everything on this podcast.  But we do want to zero in on this modesty message and have a bit of a conversation that we haven’t had before because we have talked about modestly a lot on this podcast.  But we realized in planning this there’s so much we haven’t said.       

Rebecca: Well, there’s just so much.  I’m going to be honest.  This is an area where you just keep digging, and you just find more dirt.  You just—it’s just bad.  

Sheila: You said something really interesting to me about—

Rebecca: Yeah.  Well, because I’m the one who great up in this, right?  You didn’t grow up with this.  

Sheila: No.  I really didn’t.

Rebecca: I mean you grew up in the 80s when the modesty message wasn’t as common in the mainstream Christianity.

Sheila: Honestly, I never heard it.  I never, ever heard it.

Rebecca: And you were in a more mainstream Christian group.  We know whenever we say things like things are more common in the 90s and 2000s than they were in the 80s in studies, you’ll say, “Well, I heard it.”  Yes.  We know.  We know that it always existed.  That’s not the question.

Sheila: Yeah.  In IFB churches and super fundamentalist churches.

Rebecca: In Southern Baptist churches.  Yep.  But the thing is that there is a difference between something being—and something existing and something being mainstream, right?  And there is many different sociological studies and different reviews that have found that these kinds of beliefs, these purity culture beliefs that girls’ bodies needed to be policed, that sex became just the—in essence, the idol of Christianity, that really didn’t become mainstream until the purity culture movement in the 90s and the early 2000s.

Sheila: Yeah.  And we actually measured that because we can see how the beliefs changed for different generations.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And we found in our survey too that a ton of people who grew up in the same era as you did not believe any of this stuff, didn’t hear it, weren’t taught it.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  

Rebecca: And so I’m the one who really grew up in this.  Joanna and I both did.  And what I found growing up in the middle of the modesty message is that more than anything, for me personally, what it did was it demonized womanhood.  I remember being 14 years old and reading Brio magazine in my bed—the bedroom that we are actually sitting in right now in this room.  

Sheila: Yes.  As we are recording this.  And Brio magazine, of course, was the magazine for—

Rebecca: Focus on the Family for girls’ ages—I think they target it 12 to 16 and then Brio & Beyond was 16 to 18.  But Brio & Beyond had ended by the time that I was reading Brio.  So it’s for teen girls.  Pre teen and teen girls.  I remember reading Brio magazine, and I was reading an article by Dannah Gresh about modesty.  And one of the things they said was quick tip.  Make sure that you can pinch an inch of fabric on your jeans.  If it immediately springs back, it’s too tight, and you’re immodest, right?  And I’m looking there, and I was—I’m going to be honest.  I was a thin 14 year old.  I was not big.  

Sheila: No.  But you were curvy. 

Rebecca: But I was curvy.  I had thighs.  I’ve always been very pear shaped.  Okay?  And I’m looking at my jeans where I already struggle to find jeans that fit because my waist was so much smaller than my hip measurement.  And I’m sitting there, and I tried to pinch my jeans.  And I couldn’t do it without grabbing skin.  And I immediately thought I must be fat.  And I think that’s an experience a lot of girls had.  And we weren’t told it’s just that you are a girl who has curves, and some girls are going to have thicker thighs.  And some girls are going to have wider hips.  And that doesn’t make you immodest.  And the fact that you can’t find—I physically—because also remember, loose pants were not in style back then.  Today I could probably—I mean today I’m actually wearing jeans that I can—because that’s what’s in style today.  This is 2007, 2008, 2009.  Skinny jeans.  Low rise skinny jeans are all the rage, and you could not find loose pants.  I would have had to get my clothes professionally tailored to fit Dannah Gresh’s modesty rules because I—if I got pants that were an inch loose around my thighs, I would have had to wear suspenders to hold them up.  They would have been massive around my waist.  And I remember just sitting there as a 14 year old, and that was—and I was already going through all the normal body image issues that you have when you’re 14 and feeling uncomfortable in your skin and feeling like I’m suddenly so much bigger than I was and feeling all these weird things are happening.  And then that’s really when I started seeing myself as too big, as fat.  And if people saw pictures of me at 14, they would be shocked.  

Sheila: It’s actually making me tear up.

Rebecca: Yeah.  No.  I was convinced.  Yeah.  I don’t know how many other people had that experience.  I know a lot of people did because I know a lot of my friends and I have talked about it.  But Focus on the Family—that’s when I started to think that I was too big.  And I have—and I’m going to be honest.  I’ve never been able to be comfortable with my legs, and a lot of it comes back to that idea of but my legs are too big because I can’t be modest.  And Dannah Gresh is—the Brio magazine, Dannah Gresh—that’s what that did to me.  I really feel like for a long time that stole my ability to enjoy my femininity because what it did to me is my ideal—everyone knows—everyone who grew up in the aughts and the early 2010s—I mean for Pete’s sake.  Trigger warning quickly for anyone with eating disorder background.  But everyone knew all the quotes we were all talking about back then.  All the stuff that everyone was saying.  All the things.  Like nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.  Everyone had Pinterest boards of stick thin models, of fitness inspiration where there is no way that girl can squat anything, right?  But that’s our fitness inspiration.  We couldn’t call it skinny inspiration because then we’d have problems.  But this was so normal.  And then Brio comes along and tells us that if you can’t find clothes that hang off of you, you’re immodest.  And this is the thing is we were told that to have curves, to just not be straight up and down, means that something is wrong with us.  And then at the same time, they’re surprised why they had an eating disorder epidemic in evangelical circles.  We actually have to grapple with this.  And these are the kinds of things that I found growing up in the modesty message culture is that I wasn’t allowed to enjoy that my body was becoming a woman without feeling guilt, right?  I wasn’t allowed to enjoy the fact that hey, I have a really thin waist now and really big hips.  I look like a woman.  Now we can all be like, “Yeah.  I got that Pixar mom butt.”  Now we all joke about this stuff.  But this modesty culture told girls the same thing that the typical culture about—that was policing our bodies told us is that if you look like a woman in a way that has curves, if you look like any kind of woman other than the ones on catwalks, there is something wrong with you.

Sheila: See.  That’s so interesting because when I grew up I was allowed to be pretty.  I was—

Rebecca: Yeah.  So we were allowed to be pretty, but we were allowed to be pretty prepubescent girls.  We were allowed to look prepubescent.  Right?  We were allowed to look pretty.  We weren’t allowed to look womanly because womanly was sexy.  And sexy was sinful.  Right?  And that was the biggest mind trip for me was growing up as someone who has always been—I’ve always joked that I’m the short, stout, Scottish, washerwoman kind of thing.  I’ve always been kind of compact with wide shoulders, small waist, wide hips.  Right?  

Sheila: Yes.  You were meant to—

Rebecca: I was the wet nurse for everyone in the county.  Okay?

Sheila: Yes.  If you had lived 300 years ago, you would be the wet nurse.  Yes.

Rebecca: Exactly.  Right?  And I was raised in this Christian group where because I was not straight up and down despite being quite thin back then—despite being quite thin as a child, I still thought that my body wasn’t right because I looked more womanly.

Sheila: Yeah.  Now, of course, I never had those problems.  I was so happy when padded bras came in.  You did not get it from my side of the family.

Rebecca: No.  And we’re not saying that to look like a woman you have to be curvy/straight up and down.  But what we’re saying is the traditional—but you know what we’re talking about?  With the adjective womanly.  The curvaceous form.  Traditionally seen as the more sensual, curvy form, that was so demonized.

Sheila: Yeah.  We have so many stories from girls who were told at 11, 12, 13, “Now you need to watch what you’re wearing because of adult men looking at them.”  I mean it’s just been awful.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  And something else that I realized when I was growing up and coming out of this, right?  Is when I hit around 19 I was in university.  And I was like, “I’m like a full grown adult woman.”  And I had this moment where I realized I’m not a kid.  I’m actually a woman.  I was thinking about getting married.  I was figuring out where I might want to do a PhD some day.  Then I realized that doing a PhD would suck my soul.  And so I didn’t.  I was thinking about big, grown up things.  And I was like, “I’m a legit woman.” And then I realized I’m allowed to feel sexy.  And I said, “But I don’t want to feel sexy.”  And I realized that in my mind feeling like a woman immediately made me feel like I’m a temptress. 

Sheila: Right.

Rebecca: I’m sexual and promiscuous.  And I’m like, “Well, that’s not really it.”  And I realize that because of this modesty culture I didn’t have a category for not being a child.  I didn’t have a safe category for dressing like someone who wasn’t a child.  Because to dress in a way that made you look like an adult woman, I either had to dress like I was a mom of five teenage kids, right?  Running them back and forth to soccer practice which, frankly, I dress like now which I love.  But as a young 19, 20 year old in university, I wanted to dress like a cute, professional, young woman, and I had no way to do that without thinking of myself as sexual because there was no category for just being a woman.  You were either a teenager or you were a mom.  Right?

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  But anything else wasn’t allowed.

Rebecca: But anything else wasn’t allowed because men might find it attractive.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And so let’s just turn to that for a minute because those were the messages that we were given so much.  And what we were also told over and over and over again is that you need to watch what you wear because guys are going to look at you.  Men are going to look at you.    

Rebecca: Yep.  And I know that’s what a lot of parents are scared of.  Right?  

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  You don’t want men checking out your daughter for sure.  But I did raise two very good looking daughters.  And often when we were out in the public, I would see someone looking at you or your sister or whatever.  But honestly, so what?  I guess that’s what I—I realized later on.  If you didn’t notice and if they weren’t leering, is that really such a big deal?

Rebecca: I know.  Because we were taught growing up, so much of it was avoiding that.  Right?  Make sure boys don’t look.

Sheila: Yeah.  Make sure that you don’t incite any boy to look at you or any man to look at you.    

Rebecca: I know.  We were told warnings about how if you wear something that you think is cute for your date remember that everyone there, even the grown men, are going to be looking at you and are going to be thinking about your body.  And I guess the question that I have is like if that is the case, first of all—which it is not the case.  The majority of men are not pedophiles despite what books would have made us thought.  But if a 13-year-old girl was truly walking around and having every single person looking at her in a sexual way, don’t you think that if that affected her she would want to make it stop?  

Sheila: Yeah.     

Rebecca: We were so warned about this.  And when I look at this, I—when you take a step back and you think, “Why were they shoving this down our throats?”  If this was such a bad thing, you don’t have to tell 14 year olds not to touch hot stoves.  It’s not fun.  You don’t have to tell 14 year olds to not do things that hurt them.  And also kids are able to adjust their behavior to get what they want.  But we were told to be afraid of things that we weren’t even experiencing.

Sheila: Right.  

Rebecca: And so we could never know if we were modest enough.  

Sheila: Well, it’s like when the Sunday School teacher said to the 11 year old, “You need to watch what you wear now because the adult men are going to be looking at your chest,” right?  Why?  Why are we putting that on the 11 year old?  If the adult men are looking at her chest, that’s not on her.  And also if she doesn’t realize it—  

Rebecca: How is she harmed?    

Sheila: How is she harmed?

Rebecca: Again, that’s the thing.  Is we’re taking the—I think it was one of our patrons.  Was it one of our patrons who said all that responsibility they take off of men’s shoulders has to go somewhere?

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  

Rebecca: I think it was one of our patrons who said that.  It was amazing.  We were talking about this kind of thing.  And that’s exactly what this comes down to is that men in these churches were experiencing unbridled sexual sin issues.  They’re experiencing lust.  And so what’s the response?  We teach girls not to get in their way.  We don’t just tell girls, “You’re allowed to be a woman.  You’re allowed to grow up into a woman.  And you’re allowed to do that safely and comfortably.  And anyone who tries to make that uncomfortable or unsafe for you can get out because that’s wrong.”  We don’t say that.  What we say instead is, “Make sure that you understand that if you show even an inch too much of your leg then every single guy’s thoughts are going to get pretty raw.”  That’s ridiculous especially when—when I look at myself and the kinds of girls—my friends who were all reading Brio magazine with me, none of us were trying to dress inappropriately.  None of us had a desire to do so.  We were already dressing pretty modestly.  We were already dressing pretty appropriately.  And that’s who Brio was talking to.  That’s what a lot of these places were talking to.  And it makes no sense.

Sheila: Okay.  So I want to talk to the parents, who are listening right now.  Okay.  One of your fears might be, “But I don’t want men looking at my daughter like that.”  So if she dresses in something which—and please remember.  We are not talking about—we are talking about dressing in culturally appropriately clothing.  Okay.  We’re not talking about dressing in extreme clothing.  We’re not talking about dressing in a way that only—  

Rebecca: We’re talking that if your daughter was at the mall with five of her friends they’d all kind of look the same.

Sheila: Yes.  We’re talking about stuff that is culturally appropriate for her age group and where you live.  Okay.  So she’s walking in the mall with a bunch of her friends.  And maybe she’s even the prettiest.  And maybe as she walks by, a bunch of guys check her out.  But she’s talking to her friends, and she doesn’t notice.  So my honest question is why is that so bad?  Has that harmed her in any way, shape, or form?  What are parents scared of?  Because let’s say that they did leer at her.  Let’s say a bunch of guys leered at her openly.  Okay.  Then she’s going to learn, first of all, that I probably need to hang out in a different place.  Okay.

Rebecca: Yep.  This isn’t a safe place.

Sheila: This isn’t a safe place for me.  She may learn how to walk with more confidence so that she can stare down the guys that are looking at her that way.  But she can learn how to adjust because this is a scary culture, and I know parents are scared.  And I know that we have to help our daughters cope with this.  But your daughter can never, ever, ever stop every man from looking at her no matter what she wears.

Rebecca: No.  You really can’t.

Sheila: And that cannot be the goal.  The goal cannot be to make sure that my daughter never gets checked out by men in public.

Rebecca: Exactly.  Because I mean I’ve had a guy—I’ve had a guy when I was walking my dog go by on his bike hit my butt, and I was wearing a literal parka going past my butt, just regular jeans, and winter boots.  Was I supposed to not wear jeans?  Should I have been wearing a denim skirt?  Right?  At some point, we have to recognize that some guys are just going to be creeps, and it’s not your daughter’s responsibility.  And although it’s scary to have our kids be old enough to be in an area where they are independent, they are by themselves in this world where there are really creepy, predatory people, that’s terrifying.  We also have to recognize that realistically the majority of people—the vast majority of people who are going to look at your daughter, check her out in public, that’s going to be where it ends.  It’s very, very strange if it goes past that.

Sheila: So let’s get on to this fear thing too.  What is it that we’re scared of?  Are we scared that she’s going to get assaulted?  Okay.  So who is most likely to get assaulted?  It is not based on what you wear.  

Rebecca: No.  It’s actually not.  It’s really interesting. 

Sheila: It’s really more based on your comportment.

Rebecca: Energy.  It’s energy.  

Sheila: Your energy.  Yeah.  So the girl who is super submissive, who is super deferential, and who looks scared—  

Rebecca: Is more likely to be targeted.

Sheila: Yeah.  Than someone who might be wearing way more immodest clothing but has that you don’t mess with me energy.

Rebecca: Don’t even try.  Yeah.  And I’m going to be honest.  That was very much what I tried to do when I was at university as I was walking around at night time.  It’s like you don’t look scared.  You look like yeah.  Try it, bud.  Right?  And I think this is what we have to think about is not these gut reactions of, “But I don’t want people to look at her.”  People are going to look at her.  Doesn’t matter what she’s wearing.  Have you seen the what were you wearing exhibits, right?  It does not matter what she is wearing.  People are going to look at her.  Does that mean that we walk around naked?  No.  Right?  We do.  We walk around what’s culturally appropriate in the area.  But if you’re wearing something that’s culturally appropriate even if it’s more immodest than what previous generations would have worn, even if you’re just—you just don’t get current style as the parent, if it’s culturally appropriate, if she blends in with the crowd of peers, frankly, it’s not on her.  It’s not on her what other people do.  But the reason that we focus so much on this is because evangelicalism has taught girls and women that it is our job to make sure men don’t sin.  Right?  We hear this in the gate keeping message we measured in The Great Sex Rescue where you have to be the brakes because he’s the gas.  That idea.  We measured this in the ideas that women should have sex with their husbands to keep them from watching porn.  We see this in a lot of the messages we asked—

Sheila: Well, basically, women are sin management tools.   

Rebecca: Women are sin management.  I’ve been saying for awhile now that evangelicalism has just men into sin eaters for men, right?  So that’s what we’re supposed to do.  We’re supposed to take it all upon ourselves so that they can stay holy.  Right?  And so what does that turn into?  That turns into make sure you’re someone he doesn’t even want to look at because even if he looks he’ll start to be tempted to sin.  And it’s just disgusting.  And the weirdest thing, though, is how they measured this.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And I want to jump in too.  If you’re still feeling uncomfortable because I know a lot of parents listening are feeling uncomfortable, the really cool thing is in She Deserves Better, in our new book that is launching in April, at the end of each chapter, we have exercises that you can work through with your teenage daughter.  And we have ways to talk about how to choose clothing that is appropriate, that—and look at clothing from a biblical perspective, which is focusing on not flaunting wealth and on thinking of others and on respecting others and respecting yourself.  So we can have those conversations, but we can have them without pairing it with you—  

Rebecca: With lust.

Sheila: – are responsible for someone not sinning.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.  And can I just say the girls who, when I was growing up I thought of as immodest, the clothing wasn’t the problem.  Right?  The clothing wasn’t the problem.  They were also wearing sweat pants and sweatshirts lots of the time.  They were also wearing the same clothes that I did a lot of the time.  It’s just sometimes they wore immodest clothing.  But when you look at their backgrounds and things that were going on, fixing the clothing wouldn’t have fixed anything because the reason that they were wearing things that were genuinely shocking—and they were trying to shock.  They were trying to shock people with their clothing.  Was because they just had these deep core needs that they were trying to get met.  And so just telling them, “Well, you’re a bad person because you’re not covering up,” that doesn’t fix a core need.  That doesn’t fix the problem.  It just causes shame and guilt that’s not going to change anything, but let’s all of us feel like, “Oh, well, at least, I’m not that person.”  It’s literally that parable that Jesus talks about where it’s like, “When you pray, don’t be—don’t say, ‘Thank goodness I’m not like this tax collector,’ but instead just do it in private.”  It’s literally deal with your stuff.  Okay? Don’t make outward shows of it.  Just remember what actually matters.

Sheila: Yeah.  And so parents, if you see some of your kids’ friends and they are dressing on the extreme—like I’m not saying they’re just showing more cleavage than you would like because that might be culturally appropriate.  They might just simply have a big chest.  Okay.  I’m talking about—       

Rebecca: You also might just have different preferences.  There’s a difference with that.  

Sheila: Yeah.  But I’m talking about people who for their cultural—what’s culturally appropriate—they’re on the extreme.  And you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, “But, Sheila, some girls are dressing trying to get guys to look at them.”  And you’re right.  There are some girls.  It’s a minority.

Rebecca: I also tried to dress to get guys to look at me.  I just didn’t do it in those ways.  

Sheila: But—yeah.  But it’s a minority who are honestly trying to do that.  But if they are on that end, they don’t need modesty messages.  They need someone to come alongside them and figure out what those core needs are.  And so we’re doing this all backwards.

Rebecca: We are.

Sheila: Can I also explain—now can we jump to something else?  Which is how this modesty message got spread in totally backwards and wrong ways.

Rebecca: Oh, it’s horrible.  This is just bad.  Yeah.

Sheila: It is horrifying.  So tell—want to tell a story.  After we published Great Sex Rescue, we did talk about how some of the things shared in the book For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn were quite problematic.

Rebecca: Oh yeah.

Sheila: And we talked about some of the ways that she talked about men’s propensity towards lust.  And she took issue with us.  And she wrote a statement about how that wasn’t what she actually said.

Rebecca: Despite the fact that we had talked to hundreds of women at this point who were all like, “Oh yeah.  No.  It was For Women Only that I learned this.”  So funny.

Sheila: Exactly.  So yeah.    

Rebecca: So funny.  

Sheila: When we asked women where did you learn—where did you learn—

Rebecca: Where did you learn that all men lust?  Oh, For Women Only.  Okay.  Okay.    

Sheila: Yeah.  The majority of them said For Women Only. 

Rebecca: Yeah.  All men struggle with lust.  For Women Only.

Sheila: So Shaunti told us, but she doesn’t say that all men struggle with lust.  What she says is this, and she quoted something which is almost word for word from For Young Women Only.  So I’m going to read this.  What she said was this, “Even decent guys who are happily going with a girl are instinctively pulled to what to visually take in, linger on, and fantasize about all the details of an attractive girl’s body.  These images can be just as enticing whether they are live or remembered.”  

Rebecca: Yeah.  That’s so much better.

Sheila: She says this isn’t talking about the (inaudible).  So what we did is one of our modesty messages that we measured, we used her words.

Rebecca: We used her literal exact words because she kept on saying, “Well, you say that I taught this, but I didn’t teach this.”  So we’re like, “Well, you know what?  We actually need some accountability here.  Let’s actually test.  Were we wrong?  Did the way that you measured this actually help women?”  So we used her exact words.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  Not as long.  But that men—that boys have this visual nature.

Rebecca: Boys have a visual nature that girls will never understand.

Sheila: To take in.  And that was one of the most harmful modesty iterations.

Rebecca: Yeah.  It was.  Yeah.

Sheila: It was.  So yes.  But we did use her words at her request in a way.  And we did find that.  But then we went back and we looked at how she phrased the modesty message and how she asked about it in her book, For Young Women Only.  And this book—it’s an old one now.  It was published at the height of purity culture.  

Rebecca: This is what—everything that I was reading and Brio was because Shaunti wrote—yeah.  There was stuff in there all the time.

Sheila: But these messages are still heavily promoted in churches.   

Rebecca: They are. 

Sheila: They’re still there.  You’re still going to see it every time anyone talks about dress codes.  You’re still going to hear this.

Rebecca: Part of the reason that we’re talking about these books that are older too is twofold—and we talk about this in She Deserves Better—first of all, the tricky thing for us a lot of the times what your daughter is hearing is not from books in the same way.  It’s from another 17 year old on Instagram.  And quite frankly, we want to do this professionally.  We understand it’s really difficult to get called to accountability for the things that you’ve said.  And we want to make sure that we’re always doing this ethically and that we’re doing in this in a way that is aboveboard which means we only talk about our peers.  We are not going to talk about some 18-year-old college student with 1.2 million followers who is just sharing about her faith and doesn’t purport to be a teacher.  Right?

Sheila: Right.  So what we wanted to do is we wanted to look at the stuff that was written in books to help people recognize the problem so they can see it.

Rebecca: And to also understand the culture—the historical—just the foundation of this stuff.  Your Instagram influencers learned this stuff because their Sunday School teachers read things like For Young Women Only.  Their Sunday School teachers maybe grew up on Brio as well.  And so that’s why we are talking about these books even if they are not that popular anymore.  It’s because we just—we did not want to go over the cute, little 16 year olds who are not trying to be spiritual influences.  They just happen to have influence because they’re popular.  

Sheila: Right.  So let’s go in now and look at what Shaunti wrote.  So she’s explaining in her book, Keeper of the Photo Files—or in the chapter, Keeper of the Photo Files—    

Rebecca: Icky.

Sheila: – what guys are visual means.  And she says, “Three areas of this guys are visual thing surfaced that many of us really don’t get.  One, a girl dressed in any outfit that calls attention to a good figure is an eye magnet.”  And she goes on to talk about that.  “Any eye magnet is incredibly difficult to avoid.  And even if a guy forces himself not to look, he is very much aware of her presence.”  So somehow being aware of her presence is a bad thing.

Rebecca: But also being an eye magnet means the guy has to force himself not to look at you which, of course, by the way is very subjective.

Sheila: Yeah.  “Two, even when no eye magnet is present, every guy has a bunch of stored images of other great bodies that can pop into his thoughts without warning.  And three, when a guy sees or recalls a girl who is dressed to call attention to her figure, he is strongly tempted to picture her naked or even naked with him.”

Rebecca: And, again, we’re not saying—Shaunti doesn’t talk about extreme clothing.  We’re saying just drawing attention to your figure.  That can just mean—I mean, for Pete’s sake, it can mean what I’m wearing now.  I am wearing a form fitting top that then cinches at the waist.  It’s regular clothes.      

Sheila: Then she goes on to—in this chapter, to talk to girls about what guys said.  And I want to just read you a couple of the responses to her survey and the open ended question that she thought—

Rebecca: That she thought teen girls needed to know.

Sheila: She thought teen girls needed to know this.  So a guy writes, “When I know there’s a hot babe sitting near me in class, a part of my mind will constantly be aware of her.”  Now my question is, why is it important that girls listen to a guy who would girl just a hot babe?  

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.

Sheila: Instead of a pretty girl or an attractive girl or someone I’m attracted to.  That is objectifying language.  

Rebecca: But also why are we being afraid that a guy might notice that you’re near him.  Why is this idea—this is the whole thing.  I grew up in this.  I grew up in thinking that if someone notices you you’ve done something wrong versus just you’re allowed to exist.

Sheila: Yeah.  And then here’s another one.  She quotes a guy saying, “I am always looking.  I’m just wired that way.  It has nothing to do with the way I feel about my girlfriend.”

Rebecca: And so then if you’re a girl who is dating a guy who is constantly looking at other girls, comparing you to them, struggles with not leering, “Oh, well, he’s just wired that way.  He really does love me.  He’s a good guy.”  No.  He’s not.

Sheila: And then what does she say directly after that?  And this is her commentary.  “Any girl dressed in a way that emphasizes a good figure becomes an eye magnet.”

Rebecca: Also that is so subtle, but let’s talk about the emphasizes a good figure because this also is a problem.  Because then there’s this idea that if guy—you’re not supposed to have guys be attracted to you.  But if guys aren’t struggling to lust after you, it must mean that you don’t have a good figure.  It must mean that you’re not as attractive.  It must mean there’s something wrong with you.  So you’re supposed to be attractive enough that guys sin over you.  But if you’re not that attractive, then there is something wrong with you.  But you’re also not supposed to have guys sin over you.  So you’re supposed to have the kind of figure that can make guys sin.  But then you’re supposed to never let anyone know that you have it.   

Sheila: Right.  Yeah.  You’ve got it.  It’s perfect.

Rebecca: Again, erasing just our bodies.

Sheila: Do we see how problematic this is?  Because she’s quoting guys that are saying things that are terrible, and she’s thinking that girls need to understand boys as opposed to saying, “No.  Boys need to start learning how to respect women.”  

Rebecca: It’s like boys are—teen boys are total horn dogs, who need to just be given a couple years to calm down.  Okay. 

Sheila: Yeah.  But also girls, you are allowed to expect the boys in your life will treat you with respect.  And in the book, she didn’t just give the guys’ opinions.  She also reveals the questions that she asked them which are really highly problematic.  

Rebecca: I’m going to be honest.  I don’t know why—I’m glad that she was very honest about this.  But it doesn’t look good.  You’ll see.  

Sheila: Okay.  Would you like to read it, or should I read it?  

Rebecca: You can read it.

Sheila: Okay.  So here is the question that she asked.  So remember.  These are teenage boys.  Okay?  “Now imagine that the same hot girl,”—and this is a follow up question to a previous one about a hot girl, who is in your class.  Okay?  “So now imagine that the same hot girl goes to the front of the class to give a report.  She is all business but is wearing clothes that accentuate her figure.  If you’re not careful, would there be a possibility that you would picture her naked either now or later?”  

Rebecca: Yeah.  Would there be a possibility?  Is there a chance?  In the infinite millions of universes that may exist according to all these physics theories.

Sheila: Now this question is terrible.  But let’s say that she had—that the answers that you could have chosen from were highly likely, somewhat likely, a little likely—   

Rebecca: Very unlikely.  Unlikely, very unlikely, absolutely no.  Yeah.

Sheila: She could have done that.  But guess what?

Rebecca: No.  Once again—and I don’t understand why Shaunti always wants to make such creative response sets.

Sheila: Yeah.  Because that’s not the proper way to do surveys.

Rebecca: It’s so bad.

Sheila: Here are the possibilities that teenage boys hearing this could choose from.  So remember the question is if you’re not careful, would there be a possibility that you would picture her naked either now or later?  “Yes.  Almost definitely.  And even this survey question risks raising images in my mind.”       

Rebecca: Oh my gosh.

Sheila: 39%.

Rebecca: It’s like I’m sorry.  One second.  Your response set should not sound like a sexy tweet or like a sexy text.  Oh, and even this message risks raising images in my mind.  It shouldn’t sound like you’re trying to sext the person taking the quiz.  

Sheila: And remember.  This is an adult woman writing a survey question for teenage boys.

Rebecca: For teenagers.

Sheila: And she’s asking you is this survey question getting you hot.

Rebecca: What we’re saying is accidentally she is engaging in that behavior by breaking down boys—the barriers and boundaries that we naturally have.  And we’re like, “I’m not going to tell some 40-year-old woman when I’m 15 years old what I think is hot versus not.  I’m not going to talk about who I think about naked.”  But then they break down those boundaries so that you start joking about it.  And this is so problematic for so many reasons.

Sheila: In so many ways.  Okay.  So 39% chose that option that almost definitely and this survey question risks raising images.  46% chose yes, possibly.  Why is one answer so long and creepy and then the next one is just possibly?  Honestly.  And the last one is no.  That would never occur to me.

Rebecca: So here’s the thing though is you’re asking people not—think about—look at all the different modifiers that are here.  Ready?  So we already know it’s a hot girl.  So we already know this is someone who he is attracted to.  She’s all business but is wearing clothes that accentuate her figure.  Right now.  Immediately.  We’re looking at this from a more pornographic standpoint.  I mean think about an erotica book about the pirates, the corset busting pirate—this is the kind of language that we’re using.  Right?  So we’re using erotic, pornographic language.  If you are not careful—modifier one—would there be a possibility—modifier two—that you would picture her naked either now or later—modification three?  And so that’s three modifiers.  That’s not did you picture her naked.  That’s not would you picture her naked.  Is there a possibility that you would picture her naked either now or later if you’re not careful?  There are three modifiers.  Anyone who is trying to be honest on a survey is going to say, “I mean yeah.  Possibly.”  Anyone is going to say either, “Yeah.  I probably would then,” or, “Yeah.  Possibly.”  15% said no.  That would never occur to me.  Congratulations.  We found 15% of guys who either weren’t sexually—who hadn’t reached sexual maturity yet or who were not straight.

Sheila: Right.  Right.    

Rebecca: There is no—this is not a good survey question.  If you were going to measure whether or not guys actually picture women naked when they’re presenting— here is how I would do it.  Okay?  You’d have four groups.  Well, no.  You’d have five groups.  You’d have one group where you were listening—okay.  I’m thinking about it.  Six groups.  Six groups.  Okay.  You have—I’m doing this—

Sheila: No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.  There are five.  No.  There are four.

Rebecca: Okay.  So I’m doing this on the fly, guys.  Okay.  So I have six groups.  Split in three based on whether or not it’s a male or a female.  Okay.  So first of all, on the male side, you’d have a dude giving a presentation who is incredibly attractive dude in a very tight fitting, button down white shirt, and really well tailored, fits him well pants.  Okay.  So really good looking.  Definitely accentuates his body.  Attractive dude.  Next group same dude in oversize baggy clothes that do nothing for his body.  Okay.  Third, male voice only.  Okay.  For the other group, we’d have women.  Same things.  You have an incredibly attractive woman in a very business appropriate but very attractive outfit.  Maybe a pencil skirt, some nylons, form fitting shirt, high heels, that kind of thing.  Second group, you’d have a woman in incredibly oversized clothing, doesn’t show her figure at all.  And then the third, woman, voice only.  So your groups would be told, “Your job is to take notes and summarize the presentation.”  We’re looking for short term memory recall.  That’s what we’re measuring.  Okay.  So that’s what they all think is happening.  The same way that when you’re in class you’re trying to measure whether or not you remember the presentation.  You’re trying to focus on presentation, right?  At the end, the response then asks, “Did you picture her naked?  Or did you picture him naked?”  And by the way, men and women take both—take all six groups.

Sheila: Right. 

Rebecca: Right.  And that’s how you’d figure out—because you wouldn’t be priming people.  You’d be saying, “Oh, well, yeah.  Okay.  So people in the person with the attractive one pictured them naked more often, but it was still only a rate of 9% or something.  Or even the voice only got a lot of people going.” You figure out other stuff there, right?  Versus saying, “Okay, guys.  Are you ready?  Picture a hot girl who is all business but is wearing clothes that accentuate her figure.”  Oh, that tight, little, hiney is showing.  That’s what we’re talking about here.  This is so different.  First of all, it’s so inappropriate.

Sheila: It’s inappropriate to phrase questions to teen boys like this.  This is not proper survey.  This is not proper research.  

Rebecca: When people talk about leading questions and priming, this is what priming—this is a prime example of priming.

Sheila: And so it was from this that she concluded that all guys are going to—

Rebecca: Picture you naked.  

Sheila: – picture you naked.

Rebecca: Yeah.  So what she did was she got guys aroused.  She had them think about arousing things.  Think about hot girls.  Think about hot girls which means boobs and butt.  Okay.  We also know from other studies that when we reduce people to body parts like a great figure instead of saying an attractive woman—okay?  A great figure.  We know that it’s more likely people will think of sex.  We’ve talked about those studies in previous podcasts and posts versus if you think of the whole person you’re less likely to think of sex.  Right?  So you’re already priming boys to think of sex first.  And then you’re asking them, is there a possibility if you’re not careful maybe now or later—you’re doing three modifiers.  There’s no way that guys are going to answer no very often.

Sheila: But this became the main way that we talked about modesty during purity culture.  Shaunti wasn’t the one who necessarily started it.  She was certainly in the midst of it writing for Brio and writing this book.  She was not the only one who did it.  And she’s not the only one who still does it.  But you can just see how this assumption is that boys are like this, and so girls need to adjust because this is just what boys are like.  As opposed to is this okay?  Can we call boys to more?  And to be fair, she does, in her book, talk about the difference between temptation and sin and how guys shouldn’t get a green light.  But you see how she has described things.

Rebecca: Well, that’s the thing.  She gives the caveats.  But her teaching directly contradicts it.  And we see this so often in churches.  We’ll say, “Now, girls, there is nothing—boys—it’s their responsibility to make sure they don’t lust.  But,”—and then there’s a big but that then directly goes against that which is, “But remember that the way you dress impacts him, and he doesn’t have a choice because it’s how God made him.”  Well, what is it?  Is it his responsibility or not?  Right?  Which one?

Sheila: Exactly.  And here is an example.  A listener sent me this just this week.  So this is a modesty handout talk that was given in her church to the young people.  I won’t say what city she is from.  But she just sent me this.  It’s an eight-page handout, goes into all this modesty stuff.  And it almost sounds word for word like what Shaunti wrote, but listen to this bit.  “So modesty is basically a personal opinion and choice?  Yes.  It most definitely is.  However, like I mentioned before, you do have to be aware of how you dress affects others.  If you are always dressing in a way that flaunts your body and makes people pay attention to you or lust after you, then you are probably not dressing in a modest way.”  

Rebecca: Yeah.  Once again makes people lust after you.  Makes people pay attention to you.

Sheila: Pay attention to you.     

Rebecca: So once again simply having a woman’s body that people find attractive is a sin. 

Sheila: And that is the message that was given over and over again is that your woman’s body is a problem.  You need to cover it up to make sure that people don’t notice it because they will be tempted to take it in.  They will be tempted to linger on it.  They will be tempted to draw the picture of what’s missing, et cetera, et cetera.  And that is what our teen girls and our women were told.  But here’s where I want to end it is that this message was not only given to teen girls and adult women.  So let me start this story.  When you were—I’m going to say 12 or 13.

Rebecca: I think I was 12.  I remember this.  I think I was 12.

Sheila: Yeah.  And Katie was 10 or 11.  

Rebecca: She was 10.  

Sheila: I decided that I wanted to be more proactive about doing devotions and spiritual stuff as a family.  And so I went up to the Christian bookstore, and I was looking for mother daughter devotionals.  And I found—there was this big display of these fun blue books with pictures of cute little girls and flowers and moms on the cover.  And it was Secret Keeper Girl by Dannah Gresh.  And I thought, “Oh, this is great.  It’s this wonderful curriculum.”  So I bought it.  Didn’t really read a lot.  I should have.  In retrospect, I really should have read more what the back cover said because it was almost entirely about your beauty and figuring out modesty and how God wants us to look.  It was just really, really kind of odd.  But nevertheless, I brought it home, and I prepared to do—there’s eight dates in it that you do with your daughter.  And it has now been rebranded.  It’s no longer Secret Keeper Girl.  They now call it Eight Great Dates for Moms and Daughters.  But it’s—    

Rebecca: It’s the same thing.

Sheila: – very similar.  They’ve changed it a little bit but not much because we have both copies.  And the first one there was—it told mom to prepare a tea party for your daughters.  Okay.  And you were supposed to get some props.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Sheila: And one of them was you were supposed to have a china teacup.  And luckily, I have 50 china tea cups that my grandmother gave me. 

Rebecca: Yeah.  They’re family heirlooms.

Sheila: So that was exciting.  I thought, “Oh, this is great.  This is a great thing to do with my kids because we can use the family heirloom.”  So I got the china teacup.  And then you were supposed to get a ceramic mug, and then you were supposed to get a Styrofoam cup.  Okay?  And you were supposed to talk to your kids about how we can present ourselves either as a china teacup or a ceramic mug or something which is disposable.  

Rebecca: No.  Trashable.  The word is trashable.

Sheila: The word is trashable.  Right.  And so are you presenting yourself as something which is precious?  And this is all about—it really revolves around how you clothe yourself and what clothing you’re wearing.  And it goes on to look at what the different things mean.  And then we’re supposed to ask our daughters, “Can you think of friends who are treating themselves like Styrofoam cups?”  

Rebecca: Yeah.  The quote is this.  “Do you ever see girls presenting themselves as trashable in any of these ways?  The ways that we dress, talk, act, or the places we’re willing to go.”  

Sheila: So literally, one of the first questions that I was supposed to ask my girls is which of your friends is the trashiest.

Rebecca: Yes.  Rank your friends in terms of least trashy to most trashy.  

Sheila: It was after I read that question that we got rid of this book, and we never did anything else.  Because at the time, there were several friends in your friend group sort of in the margins who had come from some difficult family situations who did wear crop tops and listen to Spice Girls and things like that.  

Rebecca: Which back then would have been—that would have been the trashable.  That would have gotten you a one way train to trash city.

Sheila: And I did not want you thinking that way about them because they were precious girls who needed love and who were important.  And so we did get rid of the Secret Keeper manual.  But as we were preparing to write She Deserves Better, we got it back out.  And we wanted to take a look at some of the messages that it gave because this wasn’t just a curriculum.  This was a huge event all across North America.  Secret Keeper Girl events.  It was really the premiere thing that moms and daughters did.

Rebecca: Yeah.  They had modesty fashion shows and stuff.

Sheila: Yes.  Yes.  And why don’t you read some—what it said to girls?  This is under Truth or Bare Fashion Tests.  

Rebecca: Here we are.  Mm-hmm.  So these were tests that the girls can do to make sure that their clothes are modest.  Are you ready?

Sheila: And Secret Keeper Girl, again, is directed towards 8 to 12-year-old girls.     

Rebecca: Is age 8 to 12.  Ready?  “Test.  Raise and praise.  Target question.  Am I showing too much belly?  Action.  Stand straight up and pretend you are going for it in worship and extend your arms in the air to God.  Is this exposing a lot of belly?  Bellies are very intoxicating, and we need to save that for our husband.”  So—

Sheila: Wait.  I think you need to read that again.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Okay.  “Stand straight up and pretend you are going for it in worship and extend your arms in the air to God.  Is this exposing a lot of belly?  Bellies are very intoxicating, and we need to save that for our husband.”  So your 8-year-old daughter’s belly is very intoxicating.

Sheila: And later on, she talks about what that means.  Now we just want to read to you what she meant by intoxicating because she explains this later on in her script that she gives to moms.  

Rebecca: Earlier on.  

Sheila: She explains this earlier on in a script that she gives to moms of conversations that moms can have with their daughters.

Rebecca: Okay.  So here is what the script is.  Okay?  So for moms and daughters.  “Mom: Do you remember what Dannah said our beauty has the power to do to a man?”   Remember, again, 8 to 12 year olds.  Okay.  “Daughter: Some will remember the word intoxicate, and others may need help.  Mom says, ‘That’s right.  Is a person in control when he is intoxicated?’  Daughter: Some will understand what this means, and some will need help.  Explain that it means to be out of control.  If they’ve ever been anesthetized for surgery or dental work, you may use that to give them an idea of how a person might feel out of control or you can refer to the story on the audio about drunkenness.  Be sure to remind them that they are responsible to make good choices.  But in these situations, it’s simply harder to do so.”  Again, though, being anesthetized, that’s—

Sheila: Out of control.

Rebecca: Out of control.  “Mom says, ‘Well, when a man views a woman’s body whether it’s her curves or some of her skin, he is intoxicated.’”  And then it goes on for a long time to explain what intoxication means, and the autonomous nervous system, which, again, is like there is no choice.  It just happens to him.

Sheila: Yes.  

Rebecca: And then the mom says, “Who created our bodies to have that power?  That intoxicating power.  The daughter says, ‘God.’  Mom: ‘Who created men’s bodies to respond to that power by being intoxicated?’  Daughter says, ‘God.’  Mom says, ‘So the response is God’s plan.  But did you notice that the verse Dannah shared with us said rejoice in the wife of your youth.  How many wives?’  Daughter: ‘One.’  Mom: ‘So the man is only supposed to be intoxicated by one woman.  So how many men do you think God wants you to be intoxicating to?’  Daughter: ‘One.’”  Eight year olds are being taught that they should only be intoxicating to one man.

Sheila: Because their bellies make men get out of control.  

Rebecca: Yep.  Exactly.  

Sheila: This is what was taught to our millennial generation.

Rebecca: Well, and not only that, think about how many predators convinced young girls to do things with them sexually because, “Well, I’m the one you’re going to marry.”  This kind of mentality is grooming girls to believe that your body’s job is to intoxicate men.  There is no room to simply be a woman.  There is no room—  

Sheila: Or be an 8-year-old girl.

Rebecca: Oh yeah.  Before we even get there, there is no room to simply exist as a female without being used by a man.  Girls are not allowed to grow up simply being children.  They are immediately intoxicating when they’re 8, 9, 10 years old.  And instead of growing up and then being allowed to enjoy the fact that you have a sensual woman’s body and understand that doesn’t mean that you’re sexually promiscuous.  That doesn’t mean you’re automatically a sex object.  What Dannah is telling these young girls is that men are intoxicated by your body because of what you have done to them by choosing to have your body around them and not covering up.  And covering up, by the way, doesn’t just mean wearing clothes.  It means literally having them not able to see your curves.  That’s the point.  So you are not allowed to be an 8 year old, who wears a two-piece bathing suit running around the splash pad with her friends because 8 year olds go to splash pads still.  You’re not allowed to be a 9 year old, who is just running around and her skirt flies up because she’s 9.  You’re not allowed to be a 10, 11, 12 year old, who just is still awkwardly figuring out what fits her, and she has a shirt that’s a little bit too small because she had a growth spurt because now she’s intoxicating because a little bit of her belly showed.  Right?  And then you’re definitely not allowed to be a 16 year old, who is just enjoying finally feeling grown up and a woman and wearing clothes that accentuate her figure because that is intoxicating to men.

Sheila: Yeah.  And they were 8.

Rebecca: They were 8.

Sheila: They were 8.  And they were told this.  So many of you listening, I know you were told this that you’re intoxicating.  And that if a man is out of control—literally out of control around you that it’s a problem with your body.  And my God, I’m sorry.    

Rebecca: It’s pedophilia.  It’s pedophilia.  It is genuinely pedophilia.  There is no other word for being sexually attracted to an 8 year old than pedophilia.

Sheila: And why is it that our teaching to girls has more in common with the pedophilia associations than it does with the Bible?     

Rebecca: I mean, for Pete’s sake, where else are you going to see your belly is very intoxicating told to an 8 year old.

Sheila: Yeah.  To grown men.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  From grown men.  From grown men.  Yeah.  

Sheila: Your belly is intoxicating to grown men.  Please.  And this is what we did.  This is what the church did.  And church, hear us on this.  Your daughter deserves better than this.  Even though Secret Keeper Girl isn’t sold in the same way anymore.  Even though For Young Women Only isn’t for sale in the same way anymore.  That hand out that was sent to me this week says exactly the same thing.  

Rebecca: And in the 2021 version, Eight Great Dates, girls are still taught about how the way that we dress invites men to finish the story of our bodies.  We are still telling 8 year olds that it is normal for grown men to look at their bodies as sexual.  Even today.  We may have changed some of the wording so it sounds a little prettier and little less pedophilic, but the pedophilia is still there.  And I know that that’s a harsh word.  

Sheila: No.  But it is.

Rebecca: But that is what it is.  It is pedophilia.  And we have stolen girls’ childhood by making them grow up too soon.  But then we don’t even allow them to enjoy growing up.  It’s like once a girl becomes sexually attractive to one pedophile in the congregation she is no longer allowed to just have a body.  She is a threat.

Sheila: Yeah.  And we see this in the long term consequences of these messages on women that this is one of the biggest reasons that we, in the evangelical church, have a higher rate of sexual pain because we’ve been taught that our bodies are threatening.  And so why in the world would any woman want to embrace her body?

Rebecca: Exactly.

Sheila: Because sex and everything with it is a threat.

Rebecca: Well, and also when we know that vaginismus is more likely to happen when women are unaroused and they have sex for the first time.  And then you’re married, and you’re like, “Well, he can’t help himself.  I’m lucky he’s even controlled himself this far.  I have to do it now.  It’s not fair.”  How are women supposed to be able to be told, “You’re allowed to wait.  If you don’t want to have sex on your wedding night, wait until your honeymoon.  That’s fine.”  When they’ve been told from age 8, my body is intoxicating.  And I am his now.  

Sheila: Yeah.  It’s awful.  And please, readers, please hear me on this.  We’re so passionate about this.  The chapter on modesty—it will—if it doesn’t bring you to tears, I don’t know what will.  But she deserves better than this.  You deserved better than this.    

Rebecca: And you deserve better than this now.

Sheila: Yeah.  And I was talking to someone today who said she’s reading She Deserves Better as a way to reparent herself because of the messages that she grew up with.  We cannot let the next generation grow up with this.  We need to set women free.  And so please, pick up She Deserves Better.  You can join the launch team.  We’ve got all the links on where you can order it and how you can send in your receipt so that you can join us.  We’re having a ton of fun over on Facebook.  A ton of great Facebook Lives and webinars coming.  And you get that hand out that you can give to people to show, “Hey, this is actually a healthy way to talk about modesty and not all this crap,” okay?  Because women aren’t sin management tools.  There is nothing wrong with having a woman’s body and 8-year-old bellies are not intoxicating.  And I’m amazing that in 2023 we still have to say this.  So thank you for joining us on the Bare Marriage podcast.  And we will see you again next week where we turn to what we learned about consent.  Bye-bye.  

Rebecca: Bye.