A Return to Modesty

Colleen Hammond, the author of Dressing with Dignity, tells girls that their choices could transform our nation.
Despite the devastating influence of today's culture, some are trying to teach girls they don’t have to dress immodestly in order to be true women.
“It’s fine to follow some of the fashions just as long as we realize that you don’t want anything too tight, nothing too clingy, nothing too sheer and just make sure that ‘from the shoulder to the knees, nobody touches, nobody sees,’” author Colleen Hammond told Family News in Focus.
She said girls need to understand that their choices can influence others.
“We’ve learned from history that as the morality of women declines, the culture follows with it,” Hammond said.
Pure Fashion attempts to help girls with modest choices and has hosted 13 modest fashion shows around the country this year.
“We’re not necessarily afraid of the body. God created the body, and it is good and it is holy, and it is sacred,” said Brenda Sharman, national director of Pure Fashion. “It’s just that we want to have a reverence and a respect for the human body.”

HT Citizen Link

This kind of talk is music to the ears of mothers, who, like myself have a beautiful teenage girl who is bursting on the social scene, dying to express her taste and decorate the lovely form God has given her. Instead of keeping her under wraps in a shapeless jumper, where she is unattractive, and feels resentful that her beauty is somehow rejected, she can dress like the girls in the Pure Fashion show above, feminine, hip, and MODEST! This is the Theology of the Body in practice, being respectful of the gift of our bodies, treating them with dignity, while not tempting our neighbor's sons into sin. For my three daughter's sake, I pray for movements like this. They seems to be catching on.

Last week, Laura Ingraham had a discussion with Wendy Shalit, who spoke about her new book, Girls Gone Mild, a take-off on those exploitative videos of poor girls with no self-esteem."It's about how people misunderstand the 'good girl,'" she said in an early July interview here. She believes society often ostracizes these girls or views them as "people pleasing." Instead, she said they are actually "rebels" in choosing to go against teachers and parents to live a chaste lifestyle.
Shalit wants to provide an opportunity through her book for these young women to share their stories and become role models for other young women.

HT Catholic News Service

ABC News and Newsweek are taking notice. Let's fan this flame!

Last night, at the opening prayer meeting/Holy Hour healing service for Youth 2000, I was spending some time with Fr. Terry of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. He remembers my three girls from Divine Mercy Sunday, when he complimented Gabbi's care taking of her little sister, Christina. This time, he put his arm around her and told her how pretty she is, and how, when young men come to her and tell her this, not to be deceived, as often their motives are impure. To be careful and protect her beauty. His eyes welled up with tears, as he contemplated her pristine innocence, as he recalled, in his heart the tragic stories of other lovely young ladies, whom he has ministered to, whose childhood ended in tragedy in the mean streets of New York. Instead of idolizing these girls in rap videos, we should pray for them. Pray for a return to modesty, for a transformation of our culture. In 1917, Our Lady of Fatima told the visionaries that there were many fashions that offend our Lord. In 1917! Can you imagine how the dress of today's men and women offend Him?!