Swim Suit Competitions

[AnneLine]

I have yet to have seen a male scholarship contest that required the gentlemen to walk down the aisle in speedos.    There are some equal opportunity options for making oneself appear smart or stupid, but the walking down the floor in bathing attire seems to be reserved for females.

 

Definitely a double standard at best....

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

I don't think it's modest

 

 

Sorry modest was possibly the wrong word, perhaps the word i was looking for was actually two words being 'somewhat more modest than some other things."

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

I'm not yet convinced that a beauty pageant is comparable to pornography. However, it is degrading to women as it calls to focus their looks. People say "Oh, they wear bikinis to show off the bikinis." Really? Than why do people rate the girl and not the bikini? If it was about the bikini the judges would say "Your bikini looks great, I love it's colors, it just looks per. fect." But that's not what they say, is it? They say "You look great in this bikini", "Your figure is shown well in this bikini", etc. They don't mention the bikini as the focus, they focus on your body and mention the bikini.

 

And really, bikinis and bras and panties are not any different except bikini tops have no wires. If girls flip out because I accidentally walked in on them in their bra and panties, they should flip out just as much because I saw them in a bikini. You can tell me any different if you want, but that's how guys see them. I've asked guys if they think there's any difference between them, and they all say they don't look any different in their eyes. And these are good, devout, chaste young Catholic men, mind you. I would personally flip out if I had daughters and they were wearing bikinis. I have the same respect for other girls that I would have for my daughters.

 

 

Hence why Brain Wave would be about showing off the swimsuit, but that includes showing off the body, there is no other way with swimsuits, though Brain Waves focus would be the swimwear.

 

Also i haven't stated my position yet as to whether it is pornographic or modest. I think it is neither. Definitely not pornographic in my mind, but also not supremely modest in a few senses but can be worked on. I hear stories about what women have to go through whom are professionals at this kind of stuff and it causes me sorrow.

Edited November 28, 2013 by Tab'le De'Bah-Rye

[SaintOfVirtue]

you may be sheltered, Saintof Virtue. Most strip clubs have a "no touch" policy and most strippers are not pole dancers.

Well, that's the first time I've been called sheltered for not knowing the exact perfect details of what goes on in a strip club.

The main difference I see between performance in a swimsuit competition and a performance in a strip club is that the strip club makes the sexual suggestion explicit in the behavioral space while the swimsuit competition mentalizes it. Which, as Slappo pointed out, is no true distinction from the Christian perspective - lust in the heart is truly adultery despite the fact that it is mentalized. It is really only a question of degree, e.g., a strip club performance usually involves removal of the bikini top, while the swim suit competition has them keep it on. Although in many clubs that is illegal and they wear small triangles which are not too different from a swimsuit. In both performances the audience is someone who is watching and judging the woman's exposed body.

I agree with you that lust in the heart is still lust, but disagree on the point that a swim suit competition is an objectively lustful event (mentally or otherwise). For the sake of the argument, I will concede that the audience in both circumstances, the strip club and swim suit competition, are 'judging' the women involved (where 'judging' means: to be critiquing the appearance of the women in question). However, one can 'judge' the appearance of a woman without being lustful, just to critique a person's appearance is not to 'mentalize' lust. The end to which the audience is 'judging' is what matters. The audience of the strip club is judging to the end of sexual appeal, while the audience of the swim suit competition is judging to the end of aesthetic beauty. The first case is an objectively lustful end while the latter is not.

Lastly, an exposed woman's body is not this lust inducing poison that you make it out to be. If it were we would have to repaint the Sistine Chapel and destroy many great classical works of art that cause the audience to judge the "woman's exposed body" and mentalize (is that even a word?) lust.  

 

I have yet to have seen a male scholarship contest that required the gentlemen to walk down the aisle in speedos.    There are some equal opportunity options for making oneself appear smart or stupid, but the walking down the floor in bathing attire seems to be reserved for females.
 
Definitely a double standard at best....

Obviously, you've never heard of the Mr. Universe competition.

That aside, the fashion market's largest consumer demographic is female. There is much less consumer demand for male fashion products so the absence of a male swim suit competition is more the fault of the economic principle of supply and demand than some moral double standard. There is no demand, ergo, no supply.

[PhuturePriest]

Well, that's the first time I've been called sheltered for not knowing the exact perfect details of what goes on in a strip club.


I agree with you that lust in the heart is still lust, but disagree on the point that a swim suit competition is an objectively lustful event (mentally or otherwise). For the sake of the argument, I will concede that the audience in both circumstances, the strip club and swim suit competition, are 'judging' the women involved (where 'judging' means: to be critiquing the appearance of the women in question). However, one can 'judge' the appearance of a woman without being lustful, just to critique a person's appearance is not to 'mentalize' lust. The end to which the audience is 'judging' is what matters. The audience of the strip club is judging to the end of sexual appeal, while the audience of the swim suit competition is judging to the end of aesthetic beauty. The first case is an objectively lustful end while the latter is not.

Lastly, an exposed woman's body is not this lust inducing poison that you make it out to be. If it were we would have to repaint the Sistine Chapel and destroy many great classical works of art that cause the audience to judge the "woman's exposed body" and mentalize (is that even a word?) lust. 

 

In modern society, "aesthetic beauty" is the same thing as "hot and sexy".

[AnneLine]

Valid point, St. of V... I'd forgotten Mr. U.   but I still think that there is bit of a double standard, don't you?

Edited November 30, 2013 by AnneLine

[SaintOfVirtue]

In modern society, "aesthetic beauty" is the same thing as "hot and sexy".

Nope.

 

Valid point, St. of V... I'd forgotten Mr. U.   but I still think that there is bit of a double standard, don't you?

I'm not sure I follow you.  Could you elaborate on what the double standard is?

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

I think some of you watch to much t.v. and actually believe that is the world. I hate most media in general. The Media iz gunna be set on fire like what happened to sodom and gommorah. But it will be a new beggining, new fresh growth will sprout from the ashes, hopefully.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Tab'le De'Bah-Rye

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

We musn't worship the body sure but it is part of who we are, don't hate the body. Jesus was and is Man and God too, believe it. It's hard to explain but we are not to hate the flesh as such, although we are to hate sin. Not everything is a sin though. Though perhaps mr universe is because of steroids. Jesus doesn't hate our bodies, he created them, nore should you.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Tab'le De'Bah-Rye

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

 I hated my body once because i was on a medication that put on excessive weight. I have lost a little but not much but am loving my body again, through Jesus christ because he loves my body too, not because other people do or don't. Something like that anyway.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Tab'le De'Bah-Rye

[PhuturePriest]

Nope.

Not since Aristotle has such an insightful and eloquent response been said.

[SaintOfVirtue]

[StMichael]

Being judged while barely dressed, barely covered, would have been a scandal 70 years ago.

 

While partial nudity is widely accepted, it serves no other purpose but to incite reactions from lust to pride.

 

So, yes, pornographic.

 

Pornographic or modest ?

 

Jesus is Lord.

 

[arfink]

Being judged while barely dressed, barely covered, would have been a scandal 70 years ago.

 

While partial nudity is widely accepted, it serves no other purpose but to incite reactions from lust to pride.

 

So, yes, pornographic.

 

So would a Japanese man winning a marathon in the 1950s. It caused huge scandal. I think perhaps you have the wrong argument picked out.

[SaintOfVirtue]

While partial nudity is widely accepted, it serves no other purpose but to incite reactions from lust to pride.

Grab a paint brush and help me censore this atrocity :|

 

Honestly, if anyone can produce a church document or magisterial teaching that states all partial/full nudity or all eposure of such-and-such an amount of skin constitutes a lustful, prideful, immodest, or otherwise objectively immoral action, I'd gladly read it and change my opinions accordingly.  My own research has been unfruitful in finding such a document, which leads me to believe that none exists.

 

 

Most of this discussion seems to be centered around the question of what is modest and what is immodest.  However, it should be centered around the question of what is chaste and what is unchaste.  C. S. Lewis made this distinction, far more eloquently than I am capable of, in his book Mere Christianity:

 

WE MUST NOW CONSIDER Christian morality as regards sex, what Christians call the virtue of chastity. The Christian rule of chastity must not be confused with the social rule of “modesty” (in one sense of that word); i.e. propriety, or decency. The social rule of propriety lays down how much of the human body should be displayed and what subjects can be referred to, and in what words, according to the customs of a given social circle. Thus, while the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rule of propriety changes. A girl in the Pacific islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might both be equally “modest,” proper, or decent, according to the standards of their own societies: and both, for all we could tell by their dress, might be equally chaste (or equally unchaste). Some of the language which chaste women used in Shakespeare’s time would have been used in the nineteenth century only by a woman completely abandoned. When people break the rule of propriety current in their own time and place, if they do so in order to excite lust in themselves or others, then they are offending against chastity. But if they break it through ignorance or carelessness they are guilty only of bad manners.

 

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