BY PIX11 REPORT,

It’s legal to go topless in New York City, but some women have been stretching the law to make some cash right in the middle of Times Square—and that has some folks worried it could push tourist dollars out of town. “I’ve been here many times during the last week, and before, trying to deal with this situation,” says Jan Brewer Manhattan Borough President. The topless performers of Times Square, wearing only body paint, are getting a lot of attention—and now elected leaders are considering putting the women and costume characters in a special zoned area along 7th Avenue. “How many ladies are out? Right now it’s 22 girls in Times Square,” says Ivan Fernandez a body artist. Fernandez says they are there five days a week. The women work only on tips, and, according to other characters, they’re making a killing — cutting in on everyone’s take. Some of the tourists aren’t shelling out their cash to mingle with the semi-nude women. “I just rather not have my son you know,” says a tourist regarding seeing the women. This tourist was not alone in her thought. Some worry a now family-friendly Times Square could revert to it’s sleazy rep of old…

Dignity and Virtue Are Always Attractive

By Patti Armstrong

If being beautiful on the inside is more important than on the outside, then why do Americans spend $62 billion a year on cosmetics?

For the serious follower of the Bible, desiring physical beauty can present a rub between heaven and earth. Vanity and pride are opposed to holiness, so does that demand we downplay our appearance?

Three women who are passionate about their faith shared their thoughts on how beauty and holiness work together.

“There’s no need to feel as if we must choose between interior and exterior beauty,” stated Crystalina Evert, wife to Jason, mother of six, speaker, author and founder of Women Made New Ministries, which helps women to discover their true inner beauty and value.

“We desire to be beautiful, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that,” she said. However, Evert warned that the devil can use that desire to tempt us to either idolize our bodies or despise them by fearing we aren’t good enough. “When we place our desire for external beauty above the quest to beautify our souls, we’re losing sight of the meaning of lasting beauty,” Evert said.

The key, according to her, is to overcome insecurity and find a healthy balance. Evert referred to Fulton Sheen’s quote: “The beauty on the outside never gets into the soul. But the beauty of the soul reflects itself on the face.” She said that, ultimately, true beauty comes in doing the will of God and glorifying him in our daily lives.

In her own life, she credited Eucharistic adoration with transforming her insecurity into assurance of God’s love for her. “As a result, I found my value and worth through the eyes of God and not the eyes of the world.”

As a speaker for young people, Sarah Swafford said she understands that some people equate holiness with dowdiness — and through her work she hopes to end that mistaken notion. Swafford, the mother of four young children ages 9 and under, founder of Emotional Virtue Ministries and author of Emotional Virtue: A Guide to Drama-Free Relationships, said: “I dress professionally and stylishly and wear heels when I go to speak in order to be heard by this generation.” Her message is: “Being beautiful slices a million different ways, but being virtuous is simply irresistible.” The reason, according to her, is that modesty in dress and behavior makes a person approachable.

Modesty defies a culture that promotes using physical assets for personal gain, Swafford said. “There is something deeply mystifying about modesty,” she said. “Guys tell me it’s easy to approach girls who are modest.”

She said faith, virtue and confidence will win every time: “As a daughter of God, instead of thinking what my body can do for me, I should want to use my body in a way that honors God; it is the window to my soul.”

Coming to faith changed how Brenda Sharman, the former director of Pure Fashion and mother of three boys, viewed her work as a professional model and speaker. Her husband, who was also a model at the time they were dating, “was kindhearted and had a joy and peace about him,” Sharman said of his faith upbringing and principles. When she became pregnant with their first son, her search for God began. “Okay, if you are out there,” she prayed, “help me to know you and serve you.” She was soon drawn to the Church and was baptized in 1999.

After Sharman’s conversion, she continued to model, but her perspective changed. “God nudged my heart to greater modesty,” she explained. She stopped doing fashion shows and modeling lingerie.

“Go ahead and be pretty,” Sharman said, “but you don’t need to show cleavage or use your body parts to sell your story. Use your mind and your heart to tell your story.” A thought that she keeps in mind is that beauty is fleeting (so says Proverbs 31:30), so it is not where we should put our worth.

One woman she knows reminds her of this truth: “She’s beautiful from her soul.” You cannot have holiness without humility, she stated, and the beauty of holiness is what attracts people: “There’s nothing more attractive than holiness.”

Patti Armstrong writes from North Dakota.

Image: Pierre Puvin de Chavannes (1824-1898), L’Espérance

By Secret Keeper Girl

One of the top five factors that place a teen girl most at risk of an early sexual experience is appearing older than she actually is. How does she look older? By showing off those curves and wearing too much make up. It’s all a matter of modesty. Modesty matters, but teaching without legalism is critical. You want to direct your daughters heart in making good choices, not control her. Here’s one of my Truth or Bare fashion tests.

Raise your hands up in the air as if you’re praising the Lord. This is my Raise and Praise test. Now look down. If you see any belly, you poke yourself and you just failed my Truth or Bare fashion test. There’s always an easy solution for infractions like this if you get creative. Just buy a simple tank top. Put it on under that shirt, tuck it in, and you’ll get a nice modest look and it also helps with lower-cut neck lines. Modesty matters, and so does the heart with which it is taught.Does Modesty Really Matter & Improve Safety, If Others are

Original TheRebelution.com’s  article from 2007

For more articles on the Modesty Survey: http://therebelution.com/?s=modest#.Vn8P2-jzPcO

Taking Heat for The Modesty Survey

TheRebelution.com’s Modesty Survey: RevisitedWhen we agreed to facilitate a co-ed discussion on the subject of modesty, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Hundreds of high school and college age girls submitted questions and over 1,600 guys responded. What was originally intended to be a low-key discussion on Forum became a widely-publicized event — receiving over 500,000 hits in just the first twelve hours of its launch.

Taking Heat for the Modesty Survey
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, but there has also been criticism. The Modesty Survey has made appearances on many prominent feminist blogs and hundreds of their readers have taken the time to visit our website and express their indignation at what they see as sexually-repressed, fundie teens. Andrew Sullivan called the survey “a pale shadow of the kind of strictures in most Islamic countries,” and expletive-laced emails have not been uncommon.

Many people are concerned that the survey focused on female modesty and not male modesty also. For this the survey is accused of being hateful towards women and displaying excessive, biased patriotism towards the male gender. This is, of course, not true. The survey was requested by women, and we have repeatedly expressed our openness to conducting a follow-up survey for guys.

Why We Can’t Do This Every Day
To be perfectly honest, we feel like we just had a baby and are being criticized for having a boy, not a girl, being told we should have had twins, and being asked how soon we’re going to have another (and by golly it had better be a girl this time)!

Just like people don’t have babies every few months (or every nine months), we don’t have time to invest in multiple surveys in a single year. It was an enormous and time-consuming project, just like writing a book. If God wills, we’ll be releasing the results of another survey on St. Valentine’s Day 2008. If we don’t, it won’t be because we didn’t want to, it will because God has something else for us to do.

In the Meantime, Some Clarifications
Alex and I are so glad we facilitated The Modesty Survey. It was (and still is) a great idea that we hope will continue to be a blessing for years to come. For those who actually look at the survey, examine the results, browse the Open Questions, and read our two-part series, The Responsibility of Modesty, the Survey can only come across as a humble plea, not an edict or list of rules.

However, whenever you address a controversial subject like modesty you should expect misinterpretation and offense. For that reason we have prepared a short list of clarifications that address some of the primary objections to the survey:

OBJECTION #1: Men scrutinizing every detail of female dress.
RESPONSE: The survey questions were submitted by Christian teenage and college age women. The guys did not decide to scrutinize every little detail of female dress and design a survey about them. In fact, if guys had written the survey questions you can be sure it would have been much, much shorter. As it was, we cut the 148-question survey down from over 360 submitted questions. It should also be noted that we (and 99% of the guys) had no idea what gauchos, sheer sleeves, or empire waists were before this survey. The items and terms were appropriately photo-illustrated or defined throughout the survey to avoid confusion.

OBJECTION #2: Alex and Brett Harris telling women how to dress.
RESPONSE: Alex and I merely facilitated this conversation. I didn’t even take the survey. We had no control over the results. Our two-part series, The Responsibility of Modesty, and this three-part series, The Modesty Survey Revisited reflect our personal view on the topic. We strongly promote and appreciate modesty, but we do not presume to define it specifically for everyone. There is liberty in Christ for different convictions. The Modesty Survey is not a Rebelution dress code.

OBJECTION #3: Strange men telling women how to dress.
RESPONSE: The way we explain it to our readers is that the results are accurate of what the respondents think, but are not necessarily true of what God desires for men and women in their interaction with one another. It is a resource—a glimpse into the minds of a group of 1,600 men—not a list of rules. There are inaccuracies (on both extremes), but there are also many balanced and reasonable answers. If it is viewed as a resource, not a dress code, you have the freedom to keep the good and disregard the bad.

OBJECTION #4: Placing all the blame on women.
RESPONSE: If you read the responses to the question, “As a guy, what is your responsibility in this area? What is your role in guarding your eyes and mind (as opposed to the women’s role of dressing modestly)?” you will find that 99% of the respondents identify themselves as primarily/entirely responsible for their own lust. And if you read our series, The Responsibility of Modesty, you will see that blaming women is the exact opposite of what the survey is all about.

The Modesty Survey Revisited
As we’ve watched the blogosphere erupt (both positively and negatively) over The Modesty Survey, we’ve recognized the need to clarify the nature and purpose of the project. This three-part series is our attempt at doing that. Over the next few days we will be posting short commentary from our older brother, Joshua Harris, best-selling author of Sex Isn’t The Problem, Lust Is, as well as from Fred Stoeker, best-selling author of Every Man’s Battle and Every Young Man’s Battle.

These men are not 100% enthusiastic about The Modesty Survey — no one should be — rather they bring balanced counsel which warns against the survey’s dangers without discarding the benefits. We hope they will serve you.

Dannah Gresh is a best-selling author of several faith-based books on the subject such as What Are You Waiting For, Get Lost, and And The Bride Wore White. She has long been at the forefront of a movement to encourage healthy sexual choices and is often called upon to use social science and medical research to defend a conservative position on relationships and gender in news media like USA Today, CNN.com, FoxNews.com, Chicago Tribune and Women’s Wear Daily. As a resident of the hometown of Penn State, Gresh coaches college students seeking to define their sexual and relationship theology. She was honored to deliver a TED Talk entitled “The Walk of Fame vs The Walk of Shame.” Learn more about her at dannahgresh.com.

By Wendy Shalit

It is by now almost impossible for anyone to deny some acquaintance with the phrase “girls gone wild.” It is the unavoidable title of a video series in which — one must rely here, in part, on the candor of male friends — college girls drink too much, bare their breasts and go all kinds of wild for the cameras, usually during an artless attempt at vacation fun.

What possesses young women to act this way? It’s a good question. Here we are, decades after the feminist revolution, and yet crude self-display — of a kind that makes the daring of the 1960s seem quaint — is considered something that a “normal” college girl might eagerly choose to do for a stranger with a camera and a release form. What is going on? “We continually malign the good girl as ‘repressed,'” notes Wendy Shalit, “while the bad girl is (wrongly) perceived as intrinsically expressing her individuality and somehow proving her sexuality.”

And indeed the bad-girl image — revealing clothes, a willingness to engage in casual sex, a glorification of the inner “bitch” — is strangely popular these days. It is the kind of daring post-feminist pose — presented as liberated and free of gender stereotyping — that shows up in music videos, racy advertisements, gossip columns and celebrity profiles. (Think of Lindsay Lohan on even a good day.) It is not hard to find versions of the bad-girl image in the hallways of the average American high school.

Luckily, Ms. Shalit argues, a rebellion is under way. In “Girls Gone Mild,” she claims that more and more young women today, put off by our hypersexualized culture, are reverting to an earlier idea of femininity. They wear modest clothing and even act with unbrazen kindness. They don’t mind abstinence programs at school, and they prefer a version of feminism based on self-respect rather than sex-performance parity. They also take matters into their own hands when craven adults neglect to object to the objectionable.

Tenth-grader Jordan Aube modeled ‘age appropriate’ clothing at the 2007 Pure Fashion Show in Atlanta in April. The event drew 1,500 people.
Tenth-grader Jordan Aube modeled ‘age appropriate’ clothing at the 2007 Pure Fashion Show in Atlanta in April. The event drew 1,500 people.
Take 11-year-old Ella Gunderson. In 2004, she wrote a letter to Nordstrom, the department-store chain, complaining that its denim jeans were too revealing. “As it happened . . . the Gundersons were helping to put on a local ‘Pure Fashion’ show featuring modest clothing,” Ms. Shalit writes. Ella’s letter — along with Nordstrom’s apologetic reply — was included in the show’s press kit. National media attention soon followed; Nordstrom, apparently shamed, eventually started marketing “Modern and Modest” clothes for girls. And Pure Fashion, a loose confederation of like-minded young women, has since grown from a church-basement phenomenon to force that stores study to see what girls consider hip-yet-modest.

In a similar spirit, a group of Pittsburgh girls, in 2005, boycotted their local Abercrombie & Fitch as a way of protesting the T-shirts on sale there, like the one with this charming message emblazoned on the chest: “Who Needs Brains When You Have These?” The group called a press conference, announced their purpose, began getting attention and eventually induced Abercrombie to pull its coarsest designs.

Tellingly, the National Organization for Women invited the Pittsburgh girls to one of their conferences, to honor them for “taking action,” but the girls themselves were put off by what they saw there. As one of them put it: “I support equality and would never like to be controlled by a man, but the NOW conference was more like a brainwashing feminist summit than anything else. They had this artistic performance that was so much about sex and how much all men suck; it made me feel sick.”

Ms. Shalit has little patience for the thinking of the older generation of mainstream feminists. They are, she says, “so committed to the idea of casual sex as liberation that they can’t appreciate or even quite understand these younger feminists.” To them, modesty is a step back, even a betrayal of the liberationist spirit. “They don’t understand,” Ms. Shalit says, “that pursuing crudeness is the problem, not the solution.”

Ms. Shalit is in a good position to speak on such matters. As an undergraduate at Williams College, she caused an uproar by objecting to the school’s coed bathrooms. In 1999, she wrote “A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.” Based on the response to that book, she later launched the online community Modestly Yours and began hearing from girls everywhere.

In “Girls Gone Mild,” Ms. Shalit samples from her online exchanges. There is a certain poignancy to what she hears. “I am twenty-nine,” one girl writes, “and I still resent that stupid teen ‘narrative’ that claims it’s natural (and typical) to have sex and mess with drugs and alcohol, among other things, when you’re a teen. WHATEVER! Why is it so bad to be good? When did doing the right thing become wrong? And when did getting drunk and doing drugs become a benchmark of the supposed awesomeness of our teen years? I just do not think that one has to do a little dirt in order to have a meaningful and authentic teenage experience. I’m not saying I never messed up, but, according to friends, I was still a Goody Two-shoes.”

Inevitably, Ms. Shalit offers glimpses of the eroticized culture that she deplores — from a celebration of “empowering” nakedness in Marie Claire magazine to “The Hookup Handbook,” from sex-packed teen novels to the Web site of the American Library Association, which links to the site “Sex, Etc.,” where high-schoolers can learn about anal sex. (“Some people find it very pleasurable,” the site advises. “Some people don’t.”) It is such casual permissiveness that pushes so many of the people Ms. Shalit interviews to find another way of conducting their lives. One group of students at St. Louis University is so sick of seeing “The Vagina Monologues” that they mount a protesting counter-event, one that tries to present, in their own words, “the true mystery and beauty of the whole female person.”

What does this all add up to? One would like to believe that such protests — together with growing doubts about the sexualized culture and growing networks of support for more traditional ways — are a groundswell of good. But it is hard to say. By Ms. Shalit’s own account, we are surrounded by excess that is justified by an ethos of “empowerment.” And many of the figures in her book are admirable precisely because they have the pluck to counter a nearly overwhelming majority force.

“Girls Gone Mild” loses some of its own force when it moves from reportorial survey to advice and advocacy. At the end of every chapter are “how to” boxes, obviously aimed at young readers, on such subjects as taking back your college dorm room when your roommate, planning a tryst, wants to send you into exile. Another — “Confronting Your Baby Boomer Parent” — tells you how to explain yourself to parents who think that you’re “weird for being a virgin.” A box called “A Recipe for Pleasing With Integrity” asks: “Is there a way for a young woman to impress others, without having to be mean or compromise her value system?” Why, yes: Bake an apple pie!

One would certainly like to see a return to time-honored ideas of goodness — and homemade desserts. But something is needed beyond such self-help advice and spirited cheerleading. If the young are indeed crying out for a change, “Girls Gone Mild” documents their first wave of counter-rebellion, and good for Ms. Shalit for pulling together so many examples. But that’s a big “if.”

Ms. Catton is cultural editor of the New York Sun.