Modesty

As you all know, I have been completing a Bible Study on sex and sexuality. For the past two weeks, I've been studying passages in Scripture (predominantly Proverbs) about "the strange woman." These passages are written as warnings to men, to stay away from women who use their sexuality, particularly risque dress, to entice them. And because the Bible study I am doing is geared to women, what we've really been talking about it modesty (i.e., Are you the strange woman?).

First, you should know that I immediately get salty when I even smell a hint in the air that women are going to get blamed for male sin. If a man is lusting in his heart, it is his issue. I want to say something like, I don't care if she is parading around in the nude, his thoughts and decisions are his responsibility. So you can imagine, two weeks devoted to telling me (or women generally) that they should dress modestly because otherwise we are going to tempt men into sin is going to have me prickly. And I am prickly about it. Women are not responsible for male sin. If a man lusts, it's his deal.

But I also want to say something else that is true. I recently had a very vulnerable conversation with two very close friends about some of my "stuff." And part of my "stuff" is the deep, entrenched longing to be the object of desire. I have a few recurrent dreams, one of which is directly related to this topic. Specifically, I have this dream where I am being chased by a man, sometimes many men. This is not a threatening dream, I am running and hiding but all the while enjoying because I want to be chased. It's  one of those dreams when you wake up and you wish you could fall back asleep, because I feel so desirable. And in the conversation I had, I admitted that what I really want (deep down) is to be so beautiful, so captivating that every man in the room wants me - married, single, my husband or somebody-else's it doesn't matter. And I think that desire is really sick, it is the desire to be the strange woman.

And you may be thinking to yourself, what is so wrong with that desire?? What harm does it cause if you don't actually act on it??

Well, I want you to ask yourself something - have you ever known a woman like that? A woman that you know is conjuring up desire in every man around? Have you ever watched that desire manifest in an actuality? I have. I have intimately known at least three women - two of whom I called very close (even best) friends at points in my life - whom had a large degree of success at attaining what I desire. And this is my lived experience of that truth:

(1) They were not trustworthy women - their longing to be desired over-road everything else. You could not trust them with any man you loved (brother, boyfriend, father, husband, potential love interest), given the right set of circumstances no one was off limits. And I don't mean that they necessarily slept with all of them - they just used their sexuality to get something from them, most often a sense of self-esteem from being desired by them. As you can imagine this dramatically decreased their ability to have close friendships - it eventually ended most of ours.

(2) They were predatory - seducing men was not an accident. They dressed, talked, and walked in a way specifically aimed at seduction. They were not innocent. This is not the story of some innocently beautiful woman, who accidentally makes those around her swoon just by her mere presence (p.s. I have yet to meet one of these women outside of fiction). They were using their eyes, lips, and words as deliberately as a frat boy might use alcohol to get what they wanted.

(3) Getting involved with them was never a good idea. I mean honestly, no man I ever knew that got involved with one of these women ever left better off then when he started. They often broke off relationships with or cheated on other women in their lives. Many became quite attached and experienced great pain when she would move on or cheat on him. Honestly, the best case scenario was for the worst type of man - the one that was capitalizing on her vulnerability and knew she was "easy." But even they left with a awful stereotype of women confirmed.

(4) Finally, they were not happy - even though this huge desire was being fulfilled mostly they felt empty, incomplete and unlovable. Most often the fuel driving the longing train was a deep seated felling of unworthiness, that they needed to mediate as quickly and often as possible with a warm body's "proof" that they were worthy of something.

So when Proverbs says something like "Hey men - stay the heck away from women like that, they are only gonna kill you."  I see that as just good advice. Sorta like saying to women, "Hey ladies, don't go to frat party alone those boys are often up to no good" is just good advice.

I also think it tells me, "Hey Paula, is this who you really want to be? Do you really think that being desirable is what you really want? Take a careful look at the price tag for both you and those around you - because it is not cheap."