The Bathing Suit
June 27, 2017
FEMINISTS claim that women are more fulfilled and happy when they are free to wear almost nothing.
Virtually the whole world has accepted their premises. Go to any beach, and you will be hard-pressed to find any woman covered up to the extent that these women — such ridiculous figures, huh? — were in 1906.
Are women better off? Are they better off now that the battle over the bikini has long passed and no one will think twice if you show up in a few threads?
Obviously, some say they are better off. But this is a lie — not a conscious lie necessarily, but a definite falsehood. Women are much worse off. They are less powerful. They are less happy. They are less fulfilled. (And they are less numerous. One of the ironies of “sexual freedom” is that procreative activity and oceans of lust produce fewer people. What philosophy can possibly be pro-woman when it is against their very existence, embattled against those not yet born?)
Who shall find a valiant woman? Far and
from the uttermost coasts
is the price of her .. She hath made
for herself clothing of tapestry:
fine linen, and purple is her covering …
Strength and beauty are her clothing, and
she shall laugh in the latter day …
Proverbs 31:10
These “ridiculous” figures on the beach were headed for a happier existence — both in this world and the next — than those in bikinis and thongs today. For one, they were much more likely to achieve what most women most want: the love of a man and a happy home, the foundation of which is the mysterious and ineradicable differences between the sexes. They were much less likely to face the tremendous existential crises women face today, which are placed under the heading of “depression” or other psychological diagnoses which do not begin to describe the depth of internal conflict feminism begets.
One of the common symptoms of insanity or dementia in an individual is a loss of modesty. The insane person does not care if he is covered up. We live in an insane society.
Immodesty undermines femininity. A woman’s greatest influence and dignity are not based in her body but in her personality and soul. When flesh is exposed, that’s what people see. The flesh, not the person. (Immodest dress is especially unkind to the woman who does not have an ideal body.)
Immodesty is a form of aggression.
This is because men are — by nature — highly sensitive to visual stimuli, much more than women, and cannot, except by emasculating themselves at some deep level, eradicate their responses to the female form. (And why would women want them to?) Most women are not conscious of this reality in an age where they are directed by powerful forces to dress in a certain way and to believe that the sexes are exactly the same (while at the same time hypocritically dressing as if they are not), but immodesty in women is a power trip over men in the same way physical aggression by men can be a power trip over women.
The male bully often dominates with his fist. The female bully dominates with her sexual power. That power is visual.
Immodesty in women induces men to sin — in their thoughts or actions (unless they have been thoroughly emasculated). All sin is a form of slavery, and thus when immodesty is not aggression, it is at the very least thoughtlessness and inconsideration. It is selfish and unloving to men (I realize that many men would prefer that kind of selfishness), and to those women who do not possess the same sexual power either because of age or lesser beauty. Women (and it was women primarily who enforced standards of modesty) once acted as a sort of trade union — to protect the higher interests of all women. Now they regularly display this inconsideration toward each other.
For much of history, in many cultures, the world was wiser than it is today and would be scandalized by the scene on an American beach or at a swim club today.
The Greeks and Romans had separate bathing houses for swimming for men and women. Can one accuse those of such advanced civilizations as these of barbaric attitudes? [See correction below.] Colleen Hammond writes in her book Dressing with Dignity:
Separate bathing houses for men and women continued in one form or another through the centuries. By the 1400’s, mixed swimming occurred in some establishments, and these places were known for their promiscuity. Mixed bathing houses were considered hotbeds of vice, as only women with loose morals would swim in mixed company. Actually, the word “stew” originally meant bath house but came to be another name for a brothel.
Over the centuries, respectable bath houses continued to be separate. Before the mid-18th century, mixed swimming was condemned by Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims as an occasion for vice. From the latter half of the 1800’s, women who went bathing — usually outdoors — wore an elaborate bathing outfit which included sleeves, a skirt, and loose pantaloons to below the knee. The fabric used was basically the same heavy fabric used in other clothing — so today we would hardly consider such an outfit a “real” bathing suit. [Dressing with Dignity, Tan Books, p. 45)
Interestingly, the bathing suit for women changed — and coed swimming became popular — just around the time when women were being used for more menial roles in the workplace, in factories and offices.
The bikini, named after the island where the atomic bomb was tested, was introduced in 1946, when many women were tired from their work in wartime factories and offices. The more sexually “free” women became, the more they were economically exploited, as if Satan said, “Here, I will give you this apple — this power unleashed. And in return you will have drudgery for the rest of your days.”
The Victorian swimming outfits such as those above (I’m not saying they are the only way to go or the best way) might seem relatively uncomfortable, but one of the paradoxes of semi-nudity is that it really isn’t all that comfortable. In fact, it can be uncomfortable. A woman has to keep whatever little she is wearing from falling off or exposing the tiny zones that do, even today, cause embarrassment.
She is often conscious of what she is exposing. She is less free when bound in this prison of flesh. The spirit roams farther than the body.
Don’t take for granted what you see on a beach today. It will not last.
Civilization demands clothes. Slavery demands nudity. Read More »