Modesty I

The scriptures tell us that Adam and Eve were naked together in the Garden of Eden and were not ashamed. Why did they eventually cover themselves? They ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and their eyes were opened. At that point they discovered themselves as objects and they realized the possibility of their objectification. They also recognized a gap between what they saw and the ideal.


When the Lord discovered that they had covered themselves, He asked them "Who told thee that thou wast naked?" and not pausing for an answer asked them if they had partaken of the forbidden fruit. Implicitly (or perhaps explicitly?) he blames the serpent (Satan) for inciting this awareness. 

Why would knowing one was naked be evil?

It is interesting that the first effect of knowledge is the awareness of one's own body as object. What happens when we see our bodies as objects? Well we discover that we are animals. We hunger and we eat and have indigestion, we urinate and we defecate. There are foul odors that emanate from the body. We discover that the body can be a source of pleasure and, more frequently, pain. We discover the complementarity of pleasure and pain. The cycles of the body tend toward pain that is replaced with pleasure.

We next come to see our bodies as objects in comparison to other bodies. We also recognize that we are being objectified and compared. The acts of comparing and being compared lead us to pride and shame. We are so close to our bodies that we evaluate its features—elimination, excretion, etc.—as flaws and defects in comparison to the body of another that we only see part of the time or vaguely remember. We cover our body to hide its flaws while we seek to uncover the body of another to discover it and possess its image as an ideal of our own body, either as a substitute for or a complement to it.

Sometimes, in our conflict of shame and pride, we desire to test others' appraisals of our bodies. We carefully enhance some features while we disguise, hide or eliminate other features. Case in point, women, and increasingly men, remove any visible adult hair as they have come to see this as a defect. But in removing the "defect" they desire to expose as much of the "beautified" area as possible. We cover other parts as attractively as possible with lines and patterns that enhance our appeal. We mask the odors of the body with other attractive scents or sometimes we even enhance the natural odors that normally are discovered only with intimate proximity.

"Am I now desirable," we ask ourselves. "Have I removed my shame?" "Can I relieve my pain with the body of another?" "Am I worthy to use another for my satisfaction?" "Does the other make me look more appealing and desirable?"

The comparison also works the other way. When we discover the reality of another body we may learn its defects in ways that our proximity to our own does not reveal to us. This objectification leads us to over-evaluate our own bodies, ignoring that they are mostly the same as the one we loathe or disdain. We esteem ourselves as better. We distance ourselves from those who we loathe and disdain.

But it's never all shame or all pride. We are constantly placing ourselves in hierarchies and trying to pull ourselves up and push others down. I will be most improved by surrounding myself with my ideal. I will be debased  by associating with those that I am better than. This is self serving love. This is toadying service to our physical ideals and perceived betters. This is how men gain power in the world and we seek to follow it by aping it and dominating others.

But God calls us away from all of this. We are not to disdain or loathe the body, our own or others, but neither are we to flaunt it as an attraction or an ideal for others. We are not to be slaves to the idols of superficial beauty or even the "graven images" of idealized beauty. The unflawed body does not exist and the flawed body is not mortified for its perceived defects. We wash our bodies to remove earth stain but we do not grave on our bodies false images. We enjoy the licit pleasures of the body but we eschew gluttony and lust.

Our humble gratitude for the gift of our bodies and our restraint in appraising our bodies and the bodies of others turns self love into charity and godly love. We ignore the hierarchies of men that we use to accrue worldly power and we recognize that we are to serve those with infirmities and we are to aid in the carrying of burdens. We learn to recognize ourselves and others as subjects in relation to God and that we are servants.

What does this mean to us in our world? It means that we are neither to make ourselves an object to be admired nor loathed. We don't adopt the asceticism of the Indian Yogi who wears no clothing nor bathes and we do not make ourselves in the image of the world. We are neither horribly archaic in our fashions nor are we on the cutting edge. We don't infantilize ourselves nor do we sexualize ourselves. We don't decorate ourselves with piercings and tattoos but we bathe and comb our hair. We do not make ourselves objects to be admired for our own bodies sake nor do we debase our bodies.