THOSE who say Jessica Rey, the swimsuit retailer and former television actress (discussed here and here), is a champion of female modesty should get a load of this photo of Rey and her worshipful, devirilized husband. Here Rey takes part in the faddish, narcissistic eroticizing of the womb which first began with celebrities but is now more widespread as photographers capture pregnant women in various navel-gazing poses, a trend that could only take place in a culture that sentimentalizes and trivializes motherhood. No woman who appears like this is an authority on modesty. [Many readers below disagree.]

Don’t miss Kidist P. Asrat’s post on Rey at Reclaiming Beauty.

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JEWEL A. writes:

It just wears me out trying to keep the modern, revisionist’s narrative out of my mind. I have to purge myself linguistically several times a day!

Just before I read your brilliant letter to Jill Pasternak, I read this article, “The Devirilization of the Liturgy in the Novus Ordo Mass” by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla at Rorate Cæli.

Devirilization. A new word I plan to use often.

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ON SATURDAY, I listened to an interesting radio program about the first woman principal player of an American orchestra. The  program will be aired again this Friday and can be heard on the Internet at that time. Today, I sent this letter to Jill Pasternak, of WRTI-Radio.

Dear Ms. Pasternak,

I have often admired your radio voice, interviewing style and erudition. Thank you for all you do to educate, delight and inform.

I would like to take exception, however, to views you expressed in your fascinating interview of Mary Sue Welsh about her new book, One Woman in a Hundred, on the life of Edna Phillips, a harpist who joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1930 and was the first female principal player of a major orchestra.

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ALL POLITICAL factions in Britain, left and right, consider Paul Weston, the founder of the Liberty GB Party, to be racist. In this video, posted at Gates of Vienna, Weston, whom readers of VFR may remember as a commenter, agrees that he is racist. “Why am I a racist? It’s very simple. I wish to preserve the culture of my country. I wish to preserve the people of my country and in doing so that makes me a designated racist in today’s society.”

He continues, “In order to be termed a racist 30 or 40 years ago you had to actively dislike foreign people. Now I don’t dislike foreign people. What I do like, what I love is my country, my people and I see that under a terrible threat at this moment.”

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KARL D. writes:

A divorced mother of two, who was a stuntwoman and wing walker, died along with the pilot when their stunt went wrong, killing them both in a ball of fire. She leaves behind two teenaged sons. When any parent dies it is extremely tragic for the children. If my father had died because he was a stunt pilot, it would have been tragic and I would have even questioned his choice of career given that he had a family. But in the end I would have seen his dying as a man doing something dangerous yet masculine. And I would respect that. However, if my mother had died in this way, I would have seen it as a completely foolish waste. I know. That makes me a total sexist, doesn’t it?

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A READER writes:

I’m not married, but if I ever have children, I am NOT letting them watch Disney Channel. Disney was so much cleaner when I was young 17 years ago. I’m sad at how far gone it is. Here’s news about a Disney show that will feature a “married” lesbian couple.

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KIDIST P. ASRAT writes:

I read your post on Jessica Rey, the former television actress and current swimsuit retailer, and I didn’t buy her “modesty” angle. I think she just found a niche which would include her diluted Catholic beliefs, her pretensions at being a designer, and a way to make money.

A business, however small, takes up a lot of time. She has an infant and is according to some sites expecting another baby. So how is she a dutiful wife, mother to infants and a homemaker when she’s got her own full-fledged career going? This is no home-based business working out of a kitchen. Plus, what is she giving us? Nothing that Sears, or even Walmart, can’t give us. Except her items are four times as expensive.

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HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

If you are pro-life, as I am, you may want to have a sick-bag ready before you read this New York Times op-ed.  Taking a brief break from its hell-bent advocacy of the Schumer-Rubio Gang of Eight’s illegal-alien amnesty (might the bailout of the Times by Carlos Slim Helú, Mexico’s – and currently the world’s – richest man, have something to do with that?), the Times offers us a sweetly soothing velvet version of pro-abortion propaganda, as a mother who decided to abort – at 23 weeks – a son with serious medical problems tells us this:

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BETTY SMITH is a very Plain-Jane kind of name and in many ways the woman I knew who bore that name was perfect for it. She was a person of obvious simplicity. She radiated simplicity. But if simplicity can be complex, Betty Smith’s simplicity was complex.

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY was once a bastion of civility and high learning. Now, its gothic buildings tower over vast fields of mental debris.

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LIFE NEWS reports:

From the stage at the recent Women Deliver conference, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea revealed that her much-admired maternal grandmother was the child of unwed teenage parents who “did not have access to services that are so crucial that Planned Parenthood helps provide.”

Chelsea’s grandmother was born of an unintended pregnancy. And new research shows that her family is not alone in treasuring a person who – if Planned Parenthood had been successful – would not have been born.

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  A FRENCH court has sentenced a non-violent protester against homosexual "marriage" to jail for four months. Galliawatch has the story, which you probably won't read about anywhere else.

THE witty swimsuit retailer Jessica Rey does a nice job of describing the history of the bikini and explaining why immodesty is degrading, not liberating. Rey’s swimsuits are attractive though I wouldn’t call them modest, except by today’s aggressively revealing standards.

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Feminists often say that the business world is pitted against them. Rubbish. As this graphic from a human resources outfit illustrates, corporations in general are happy to accommodate the working mother.

The underlying assumption in this graphic and the study it cites is that motherhood is not necessary or important. Replace the words “stay-at-home mom” and “motherhood” with “soldier” and “service in the military” and you can easily see what I mean. The trapped feelings of a soldier are not decisive in whether he performs his duties and defends his country. The feelings of a mother are decisive because maternal care is considered inessential.

It is not surprising that some women newly at home report feeling trapped, as if an office cubicle and long commute are not confining. That’s perfectly understandable given they are ill-prepared and have learned since early childhood that motherhood is a lesser occupation and that it is weak and risky to depend on a man. As for the “resentment” they reportedly feel toward “spouse and/or baby,” human resources departments would not cheerfully report such ugly feelings with regard to men and their family responsibilities. That’s because they do not have to persuade men to work. They do have to persuade women, and it’s good for the bottom line when they do.

The modern corporation, like the Communist state, is more than happy to collectivize motherhood. The assumptions of this human resources graphic are similar to the beliefs of Soviet bureaucrats. If it was true, however, that women by nature felt trapped and resentful when caring for their children and homes, the human race would have ceased to exist a long time ago.

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  DANIEL S. writes: In a recent appearance in Northern Ireland Obama made a statement which could be interpreted as a call for an end to Catholic and other private religious schools in Northern Ireland: “If towns remain divided,” said the U.S. President, “if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation.” So in other words, Catholics and Protestants should cease being those things, as religious beliefs are divisive, and presumably submit to some sort of secular, unitary state. Obama is clearly a man who despises the Catholic Church, and yet leading American Catholic bishops still treat him with deference and act as if Obama is a man who acts in good faith.

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