Modesty Cops

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Y'all might think we Salt Lakers are weird, but we ain't got NOTHING on our slightly-to-the-south neighbor Provo and its BYU Bubble.* Sure, here in SLC we do get Disapproving Mormons who will frown at your immodest tank top, and a lot of them do insist that the onus is on the woman to keep men from thinking Impure Thoughts,** but the concern troll notes aren't quite such a big deal.

I shouldn't have read the comments, though. Highlights include:

-The original author of the post going "Dude, I wrote this like FIVE MONTHS AGO, what is even happening"
-A lot of helpful comments along the lines of "But my dear that is a VERY IMMODEST SHIRT do you want the boys to THINK ILL OF YOU?" when it's like an ordinary T-shirt.***
-Creeps, creeping on her
-My absolute favorite in terms of wrongness, in which a lady sanctimoniously declares that "my innocent 10-year-old son told me that the layers shirt I was lounging around the house in was making him uncomfortable; did I bite his head off about being a pervert or shame him into leaving the room? No; I changed my shirt because I love him and I didn’t want him to be uncomfortable" like that makes her really nice and considerate when all I can think is, How the HELL did this 10-year-old boy become an obsessive prude? and suddenly the whole anecdote gets really creepy.

God, I live in a weird neighborhood. At least I'm just on the outskirts.


*A lot of great artists and authors go/went to Brigham Young University, and while a lot of them are cool, somehow I can always tell just by the art and writing whether it's a BYU person. There's some intangible flavor there that's tough to explain to outsiders.

**Were I a dude, I would frankly be insulted by the constant implication that I was completely incapable of restraining myself around women I found attractive. The argument that they are helpless victims of women's wiles has always baffled me for that reason.

***Not that even smaller shirts would be worthy of notes like that, but it does go to show how hypersensitive people can get about things like this.

Comments

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I was also a little uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of "innocent 10-year-old son" and the implication that this kid's getting that kind of uncomfortable about the shirt his mom is wearing. Whaaaat?

[marag.livejournal.com]

The BYU kids would get along *great* with the Orthodox Jewish yeshiva bochers. Seriously, I think you could transfer this post directly to Brooklyn and just take out LDS and I wouldn't have realized the difference.

Ugh. It's this kind of crap that makes it hard for me to tell how much I need to police my own daughter's clothing. On the one hand, holy shit, I don't want to be these people! On the other hand, I really don't think that preteen girls need to be walking around in skirts so short that we can see their underwear.

[redbird]

Of course she didn't bit his head off: she and his father have probably spent years teaching him to tell women that they are dressed and behaving inappropriately, and she's gotten exactly what she was looking for.

That she can't see a space between "let my son tell me to change my clothes" and "bite his head off for being a pervert" is indicative, here. Where's "honey, it's just a shirt. Go back to your homework"?

[badgermirlacca.livejournal.com]

So much focus on the poster, and on the guy. So little on the woman who decided to be the Purity Police.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

*shudders*

There is so very much wrong with the relationship between the 10 year old and his mother I don't even know where to start.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Ugh. This stuff 8|. I run into this a lot where I live, yay Bible Belt. Lots of super conservatives here, lots of homeschoolers, and the super conservative homeschoolers have a love affair with education materials from BYU, so there's a large BYU influence in this area. Drives me up the effing wall. I'm so glad I'm not constantly immersed in that culture any more. Guh.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

There was a video I saw recently that reminds me of your **. The poster put a raw steak on the floor between her two dogs, and you can hear her say "no." One dog doesn't even look at the steak after that. One dog looks regretfully once or twice, but still doesn't touch the steak.
If I were a guy, I would be annoyed that people thought I were less capable of self-control than a dog.