Here's a first for the fab females (I think? Perhaps not?).

The plea for modesty.

You've seen it other places before, you probably heard it for years from your parents, had it forced on you through church and the like, and chances are, if you're reading this, you're probably already pretty damn good at it. But I'm repeating it because...

Its important. Really important. Important enough that if there's ever a little girl that I'm blessed to father, it will be a huge, huge guiding principle instituted by her parents. Its important enough that I'm thinking about it before I've even met a girl to mother said daughter.

I just don't think girls get how important it is.

There's an absolutely excellent article that I've referrenced in a number of different circumstances from the New York Magazine, by Naomi Wolf, called The Porn Myth. From the article:

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

And so we're back to the skirts. It won't be news to the ladies when I tell them that we gents are visually stimuatled. Its how we're wired. Its how we are programmed to react. We're like stupid frickin computers, and as simple as it is to type, its truer than it can possibly sound. We see skin, we initiate the sex protocol. We can (and should) work to re-write our software, as it were, but at the end of the day we're still the same machine.

Gross, I know. You are rightly disgusted. And yet, this is the truth of the matter.

You now have a choice: you can remain angry and perturbed at the way we are, or you can accept the way God chose to make us. No, I'm not saying its God's fault when a guy goes to far in lustful thought, however I do think its true that he created men to be primarily visually stimualted for a reason. That said, I don't pretend that the choice of acceptance is an easy one for girls to make, but most important decisions never are.

Skirts show more leg than jeans. Short skirts show even more leg. That's all I really need to say about it. Should girls be able to wear a modest skirt and not have men lurch into debauched thoughts at the sight of their uncovered calf? Yes. Will that be the case 100% of the time? The Victorians didn't think so. Maybe they had something.

I remember back when Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was about to be released, there was some measure of debate in (at least) reformed circles as to whether such a film was in fact a violation of fairly clear Old Testament law that forbids the visual representation of God in any form. My younger brother made an interesting comment as we talked about whether watching such a movie would in fact be "sinful."

"I won't sin by not watching it," he said.

That's kind of how I like to think of things like modesty, or physical involvement in a relationship, for that matter. Its not a matter of how far you can push the envelope and still "stay safe." Approaching such issues with the wrong motivation will only set you up for failure. We need to change our motives to be more of "how far can we flee temptation?" (or in the case of modesty, "how far can we help others flee temptation?").

Do we men have a calling to bring our thoughts captive before God and maintain pure hearts? Yes. Can women by the simple act of what they choose to wear help men to do that? Yes.

Which is more honorable? I'm not entirely sure.