We’ve all seen the posting on the door to our favorite McDonalds or the neighborhood gas station, but have we stopped to rationalize the need for the seemingly innocent placard? Health concerns and FDA requirements aside, there is another reason that most establishments display this certain message: as a male, I’ve always grown up being told it was inappropriate to be shirtless in the general public. According to socially accepted thinking, it is morally wrong for a person to walk around town without a shirt on.
But wait, what about when one goes to the beach or the pool? Is it also inappropriate to go shirtless in those places? Modern thinking in both Christian and mainstream cultures would say no. Do you see the paradox that is created? I am a firm believer in absolute truth, as is the modern day church. By that same thinking — that is, what is right or wrong in one situation is unilaterally right or wrong, respectively, regardless the situation — is it inappropriate for a man to appear shirtless in public regardless of location or activity? If it is wrong in one situation, such as walking the dog, then it is equally wrong in the other, such as a day at the beach or sunbathing at the neighborhood pool.
I realize that so far i have only addressed the male population, but i will turn my attention to the female population shortly. Please bear with me until then.
Take a walk through a beach town. For sake of argument, let’s use Virginia Beach, VA. All along the boardwalk there are a number of seaside restaurants and bars and other fine establishments. It is a common sight for male beachgoers wearing nothing but a pair of flip-flops and board-shorts or — heaven-forbid-for-the-sake-of-my-mental-sanity — a Speedo. What says the general public of this phenomenon? Nothing. Why? Because it is socially accepted in ALL circles of mainstream thought, both Christian and secular. If it is universally morally wrong for any male to appear in public without a shirt on, then is it not true that for a male to appear shirtless at the beach or at a dining facility at the beach, he would also be transgressing? According to popular thought — and again, this is according to both Christian and secular schools of thought — that action is not wrong as long as it is performed in certain places on the map.
I realize men have not been in the spotlight too often on account of immodesty, but as a man myself, I felt it more relevant so I began with the men — but now to tackle the larger issues of modesty and its situational ethics.
Now it’s the women’s turn.
Go to the beach or the pool and observe the women. Not sexually or in any way that would cause you to lust after them, but observe with unbiased and open eyes. Here’s what you will realize: women’s bathing suits are nothing more than socially accepted lingerie. Granted, they may be made of different materials and cut slightly different, but all in all they are the same. They cover the same amount of skin and they serve — in part — the same purpose. Growing up, all boys and girls are taught it is inappropriate to be in public in their underwear. That is a universally accepted ideal for the most part. If that is true, how then have we deceived ourselves in thinking that its acceptable for our women to appear at the pool or the beach in a bathing suit that is the same cut, style, color and everything else as their bras and panties? Where do we draw the line? Is it because silk cannot get wet and spandex can that we’ve created this disconnect? Or is it that somewhere along the line we’ve tricked ourselves into believing that one is wrong and one is right?
Speaking of spandex, what about sports-bras? Most people have no problem with women working out in spandex shorts and a tight and form fitting sports bra. What happens when the material of the short shorts becomes denim and the top becomes a cotton t-shirt? She is branded a “whore” and thrown out on the street corner — untouched and unloved on account of the scarlet letter tattooed on her forehead. The material of the clothing should not matter, but rather the amount of skin that is covered and the intentions behind it. If the spandex shorts and sports bra cover the same amount of skin as the tight jeans and t-shirt, then how dare we overlook the action on the one hand and judge with fire and brimstone on the other! If her intention is truly not to seduce but rather because she enjoys wearing tighter-fitting clothing, then who are we to pass judgment? It all comes back down to absolute truth vs. situational ethics.
Here’s the disconnect in our society: we’ve made these rules, often un-written ones, about decency and morality and right and wrong, yet we follow them only when its convenient for us to do so. We impose this spiritual truths, such as women should dress modestly (1 Timothy 2:9), yet we completely bypass these values when we like. Now either our conclusions about modesty and decency are wrong, or our culture needs to undergo a radical and dramatic change of heart.
I believe in absolute truth, and that absolute truth says right is right and wrong is wrong. We need to stop making that absolute truth an off-and-on when-we-feel-like-it absolute truth and make it stand up to its name.
And remember, shirt and shoes are required — but for some reason pants are not important.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 am
C. S. Lewis once wrote that if an alien landed on earth, and encountered a society where people paid money to sit around a table covered with a tablecloth, to have the tablecloth slowly lifted while all the attendees cheered loudly, and to find a slab of bacon beneath the tablecloth…that the alien would likely conclude that this particular society would have some kind of a problem with bacon.
While some of the warnings of “no shirt, no shoes, no service” type rules are likely connected to health and cleanliness standards (you probably don’t want your Egg McMuffin made by a person in a Speedo), for the most part this is really all about bacon, isn’t it?
Having been raised on the West Coast, it appears that the closer you get to the edges of this country, the closer you get to the edges of our standards of dress and conduct. Flip-flops and cargo pants may be found with some regularity near Virginia Beach or Santa Monica, but I would bet you would find less of that in Omaha.
Regardless, we have a problem with bacon, don’t we? Do you really think that Hooters is in the business of selling chicken wings? The more we understand what is under our own tablecloth, the better we can understand ourselves, our society, and our rules.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I totally loved this article!!! How true our society’s rules, opinioms, beliefs, etc… change when our feelings, thoughts, & ideas change. In other words, they change when we want them to change or when we want them to agree with what we want them to be! Awesome article!!! Great job!!!
February 24th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Any rule that is context-based to me is just a case of situation ethics. It’s right if it’s a bathing suit on the beach, but wrong if it’s underwear. What I found interesting is that I’ve just finished reading a number of comments on a couple of blogs dealing with the smoking issue; with many stating that cigarettes are wrong, but pipes and cigars are okay. I wish I’d had this parallel swimsuit/underwear analogy at the ready, because it’s a very similar issue.
But it’s hard to call some things ‘wrong’ when societal rules permit them. It’s part of the separation between something that is legal but wrong; or something that’s sinful but not illegal. No wonder we’re told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I think that your first argument for men was stretching to grasp its point. First i dont think anyone, save the fringe people who are considered radical, considers a man with no shirt morally and ethically wrong, they might consider it bad taste, poor fashion sense, or lack of consideration for others, but i highly doubt it would be classified as wrong by the majority of the population, christian and otherwise. Men not wearing shirts is nothing new. Its not like womens’ bathing suits which have progressively been made of less and less material. Mens swimming attire has remained largely unchanged for many many decades. That being said im not sure that the male argument has any validity here. Im not saying what you stated overall is wrong im just saying i think that was not the best way to state it.
Concerning womens bathing suits they have gotten skimpier as the years have worn on. I think it would be more beneficial to look at something more serious, like the slide from pro life to pro abortion many americans have gone through, the abuse of Roe VS. Wade, than the decline in decency in american swim wear. If you want to talk about the decline in acceptable moral standards then we should talk about it! Not use metaphors about swim suits. Talk about gay rights groups, abortion, fetal stem cells, violence, language, nudity and drug use in the american media. Those are issues that have a much more lasting effect on the person of today and effect us more than when we are at the beach or pool.
I think that people tend to over look putting on a relatively skimpy bathing suit because it is accepted by everyone. The church never made any noise about swim suits because the change was so gradual it was hardly noticeable until you think about where swim suit fashion began and where it has ended up now. The function of a swim suit as opposed to undergarments has something to do with how they are looked at in public. Underwear is meant not to been seen, which is why it is taboo when it is seen. Bathing suits are meant to be seen which is why even though they are similar to underwear its fine to be seen in them. Underwear is also, generally, but not always, meant to me much “sexier” than a bathing suit. Now i am not saying there arent bathing suits out there meant to make your eyes pop out of your head, but i think on average the normal bathing suit is less “sexy” and more function than underwear. Which is why there is a taboo on seeing underwear and not bathing suits, which cover the same area.
On the topic of situational ethics even christians have to deal with situational ethics, killing is wrong right? murder is wrong, but God commanded Joshua to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people, murdering them all. War. That is situational ethics. If a mothers life is in danger and an abortion will save her life but kill the baby what do you do? I call these fuzzy ethics because the line is fuzzy on what is right and what is wrong, and there are situations where there is no right and wrong, there is simply what happens. You still need to use the discernment of the Lord in these situations but the issue of situational ethics is not simply a black and white, cut and dry issue there are many facets to each situation that make it difficult to decide. While absolute truth is something i believe in, so is a gray area. God gave us His word and we need to use it as best we can in every aspect of our lives. However sometimes it simply is not clear and we need to do what we “feel” is right and that can change based on your personal history and experiences in life.
So to sum up, kind of, if you want a change the first place you have to start is yourself. If you want the moral decline in american swim wear reversed, starting wearing a shirt at the beach, pool and anywhere else someone might catch a glimpse of your bare chest. Stop going to movies with swearing and bare chested men at the beach and pool. One reason people dont make these changes is because they find them too hard to deal with. I think the key in anything, including religion is moderation. Dont wear a g string bathing suit, wear a tasteful, cute non-revealing two or one piece. You dont need to go to the extremes to live in accordance with Gods will, you can be set apart from the world and not be seen as freaks, we can be vibrant witness in our character and actions and still be in the secular world. Moderation.
February 27th, 2009 at 4:24 am
I completely disagree with what Brian said about the male side of the argument. I think the point IS that people don’t consider it “morally and ethically wrong”, at least they don’t say that it is; yet, they still draw lines of when and where it is appropriate by their standards for men to be shirtless. Why is this necessary if not on the grounds of it being wrong? I’m not saying it is morally wrong, but people seem to draw lines of acceptability as if it is and then, just claiming that it’s not “situationally appropriate”. Why is it not?! What is the stigma about a shirtless man in a restaraunt or a church that doesn’t exist on the beach or when he is jogging? I think that the argument stands and the fact that it “isn’t anything new” doesn’t negate the question that is being asked here. Just because it seems that women’s clothing has gotten more revealing to the public through the years and men’s has stayed the same doesn’t mean that it was right to begin with and has continued to be right. I had this issue this past summer when I worked at a Christian summer camp. It is a non-denominational coed camp, set out to teach Christian core principles, but obviously not every camper was a believer. We were working with middle schoolers and some of them were just there for the blob. As girl counselors, we were continually encouraged and sometimes I felt, even hounded, to watch our dress. We wanted to guard the minds of the boy campers and our brothers who were counseling beside us. We also, were charged to be sticklers on short length, shoulder width, tightness, suggestive tee shirt lingo, etc. with all of our girls. I was glad to know that others around me were concerned about guarding the boys’ minds, but then sometimes it seemed so strange. If one of my girls would somehow get out to activity classes without my knowledge in say a pair of shorts that were an inch too short, then I would be required to leave what I was doing, take her back and help her to find something else to change into. However, the strange part was that when I think back to most of the conversations I had with the girls in my cabin about what they were struggling with, it wasn’t wanting to dress sexually provocative. Most of the time, they had just dressed like that since they were young, their moms helped them buy their clothes and had never even mentioned to them the idea of “modesty” or “being above reproach” around guys. What I heard more often than not was young girls crooning and very clearly lusting after boy campers and especially guys counselors. It made me sick to hear them talk about their peers and these men of God, my friends, as if they were a poster boy in a magazine for them to look at and fantasize about. I know this was a struggle for every other girl camper I talked with. We were trying so hard to focus our girls and keep them thinking on the right things and guarding the boys from looking at them wrongly, but it seemed like the guys weren’t considering the minds of lusting young girls at all! The guy s were always shirtless at the pool, where most of the lusting took place, but they also would frequently take off their shirts when playing a heated game of basketball or football. Can you seriously not understand why watching sweaty, muscular men engage in athletic sports is a problem for adolescent girls? There was also times when guys would wear tight-fitting shirts or short shorts as a part of skits, all for the sake of humor. If a girl had worn that, would it have been funny? I’m not saying that modesty for guys and girls looks exactly the same. Obviously, our bodies are different and what we wear cannot always be modeled under a general set of rules, but I will say that in my life so far I see a huge push from different communities, secular and Christian, for girls to be overly cautious about what they wear, whether to not be called a “whore” or to guard a man’s mind and I see no similar warning or charge being placed on men. That is not the way it should be, in my opinion. And any man that tries to give me the argument of “Well, men are just wired differently..they are VISUALLY charged” has very clearly never had a woman in their life been honest about the VISUAL lust that women struggle with, daily.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:30 am
So is it ok for guys who arent “attractive” to go shirt less at the beach/pool/athletic event?
March 15th, 2009 at 9:50 am
I would like to start off by introducing myself, my name is Jamie and I’m a guy. Not a skinny one but still a guy.
I enjoyed your article, it does bring up some interesting points. But I believe the key is that there is a right place and a right time for things.
Typically a swim area it is okay to be revealing in a non sexual way, afterall, it’s just bathing and splashing in water and having a good time. Not that it matters, but I wear speedos to the pool and wear briefs as underwear. Why? It’s simply more comfortable.
I don’t think there is anything sexual about the swimwear ladies wear at a pool, but the lingerie is sexual because it’s done at home, and you understand what normally follows wearing of a sexy outfit like that.
Like with guys and their shirts off, there is a time and a place. Walking around town? I don’t think that is appropriate. Are you working hard at a hot job site or on your own property, no problem.
I think we focus on what people wear way too much. It doesn’t matter really. But at the same time, use some discretion. There is a time and a place for everything. Cheers!
jamie at radioactiverussian dot com
March 24th, 2009 at 9:18 am
The sticky point comes when we try to translate absolute truth in to “rules”. Too often the rule becomes the focus and not the greater truth. We must continually fight the battle of christian liberty vs. christian license. There is absolute truth, but there are no absolute rules.
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:11 am
Wow, great discussion. I applaud Peter for voicing this complex and challenging perspective. What it comes down to (in evaluating the article) is what Matt said about Christian liberty v. Christian license, to the pure all things are pure. I believe he summed it up wonderfully.
I liked what Melissa said. I think there is very much a double-standard among believers when we talk about guarding ourselves from lust…we act like it is only a male problem, when it’s not. I am one who is big on encouraging women to dress modestly, but I realize I have to practice it too. I live 15 minutes from the beach (Jersey Shore) and am down there all the time in the summer. I usually always were a shirt..particularly if I’m at the beach with female friends, I consciously cover up. Now of course i take it off when I go into the water, but I don’t sit on the beach or walk the boardwalk topless. Even if it’s accepted and guys all around me are bare, my convictions cause me to cover up. Yes topless men and women in string bikinis is the norm in our society, but for me, I can’t be the norm…I have to be different, live by my convictions.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I likewise appreciate the opinions that have been expressed for better understanding of others.
I prefer to wear “speedo” type swimming suits over trunk style swimming suits for the following reasons:
1. for the support
2. faster drying and therefore I do not get as cold (I have very low body fat)
3. less drag of water and air while swimming
4. less chaffing or rubbing
My wife believes this style is immodest. She asked me to put on a trunk style swimming suit while I looked at her in her swimming suit and could clearly see the outline of her breasts and nipples and somewhat her vulva.
I feel our North American culture has an unfair double standard in that it is acceptable to see the outline or bulge of the woman’s body (breasts and sometimes even the vulva) in a one piece or a two piece swimming suit but most people in North America are not okay seeing the outline or bulge of a man’s body.
Do we have an aversion to the male form? Why can a woman wear a form fitting swimming suit right next to her skin but not a man?
I asked my wife what is the difference between most women’s style swimming suits that are next to their skin and genitalia and men’s “speedo” style swim briefs? She agreed there was no difference then she told me she now intends to wear a more modest swimming suit — one with layers.
I believe in practical modesty; I believe a form fitting (speedo type) swimming suit should be acceptable attire for swimming and getting in and out of the water. I encourage men and women to compare wearing a form fitting swimming suit to a trunk style swimming suit while swimming and getting in and out of the water.
August 21st, 2009 at 6:21 am
I’ll try to make these descriptions a polite as possible, so read between the lines if you’re old enough. I equally take issue with skimpy and tight fitting swim wear for both men and women. While women tend to have soft curves and bodies that lend themselves easily to tight fitting fabrics, those fabrics shouldn’t be so tight and thin that “what’s under” can easily be outlined and identified. This is even more true with men, especially if the water “isn’t cold enough”.
While it may be technically true that those “body parts” aren’t exposed out in the open, they are also not far from it. This tightness leaves little to the imagination. What was that scripture about a person being considered guilty of a sin just for thinking about it? I confess that in modern society I get hit with things so fast that I have problems with it even before I’ve realized something’s happened. I’m not saying to abandon society and become a hermit, but we do need to understand the world around us.
I can’t remember anything in the Bible about endorsing public body part exposure, so I tend to start my moral base on those issues.
Personally I prefer dark colored trunks with my tight underwear on underneath to help prevent “outlining” when I get out of the water (not all guys may need this technique). It does take longer to dry, I am skinny and easily chilled, but it isn’t something a good towel can’t quickly handle.
@Melissa: “Can you seriously not understand why watching sweaty, muscular men engage in athletic sports is a problem for adolescent girls?”
We often forget that women have certain desires, too. They may not be as strong or often as men, but they are still there.
When men catch women watching them in this type of situation, they will often start “peacocking”, exacerbating the issue.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Maybe what’s troubling is the premise that ethics aren’t situational. Whoever (and in particuarl, when did God ever) say that right and wrong are absolute.
Jesus presumably believed in keeping the Sabbath holy, and yet he defended his disciples when they harvested grain on the Sabbath. God issued commands against murder, and his prophets spoke against sacrificing children, and yet He led Abraham to the point of laying his son on an altar. God commanded fidelity in marriage but commanded the prophet to marry a prostitute. The Israelites were challenged to slaughter the pagans, and yet Jesus chastised Peter for raising a sword in the Garden. Paul was a greek to the Greek and then turned around and was a jew to the Jews.
I go naked in the shower (not a pretty sight), but you sure don’t want me walking into McDonald’s that way. If naked is always wrong then how am I gonna shower? Is it OK if I’m at home alone? In the men’s locker room? Does it matter if a gay man might be in the locker room?
Maybe we need to give up all our little rules come back to the true guiding principles that Jesus pointed the young ruler toward: Love God, Love Others. If my Speedo is offensive or (yeah right) results in your lust, then maybe I should opt for the board shorts. But if I make you uncomfortable because I insist on wearing a shirt in your swimming pool because my rights and wrongs are absolute, am I acting out of love. Or just legalism.
So now what do I wear?