A Modest-y Proposal

A Modest-y Proposal

“Put some clothes on, dammit.”  That’s what I wanted to say. But I did not.  It has happened more than once in my interface with those I have come to think of as unthinking Millenials.  I will admit that I, as a mid-lifer, do not understand this deep-seated psychological need the 30 something’s have for showing their bare skin to all 284 of their closest friends on Facebook.  The other thing that I don’t understand is their absolute lack of humility when someone who actually knows them personally and loves them reaches out and says:  Maybe this isn’t the best idea.  Maybe you need to remember that there are Other Eyes on Facebook that are seeing this besides your husband, or your mother, or your very best friend since childhood.  (And, admittedly, all of the latter are obliged by their role to say, “You look mahh-velous darling” even if you, well, even if you just DON”T.) 

 

Look, my favorite sister-in-law (in fact, my ONLY sister-in-law) did not post baby pictures of my nephews online until they were old enough to run from creepy people.  Because, in this world of technology connected with internet, camera, and anonymity, people can troll into your life and cause you harm.  It’s like the Lifetime movie (yeah, I occasionally watch those so I can remember what it is to feel horrified) where the teenage girl is coaxed by her boyfriend to undress on camera and it goes viral on the internet.  We forget that this ruins lives.  Trust me when I tell you that there is NO JOB I could apply for that would hire me if my bare bum was exposed on Facebook.

I don’t detest my body and I don’t detest anyone else’s.  I just think we have gone a bit off the rails – okay, A LOT off the rails – when it comes to this low-level exhibitionism we keep putting online.  If I lost two dress sizes, you don’t need to see my bare belly to figure that out.  Nor are you on the need-to-know basis if I GIVE A DAMN about ME losing two dress sizes.  It’s not that I’m a private person living behind walls.  It IS that I am a dignified person living IN a BODY that is glorious and not for common consumption.  The day I lose two dress sizes is the day I go out and buy a dress worthy of that figure.  And I won’t be shopping with Janet Jackson and the “oops” Wardrobe-Failure-Queens either.

Pope John Paul II the Great said once:  “The problem with pornography is not that it shows too much; it is that it shows too little.”  Ponder that.  What he was saying is that there is more to the human person than the wrapping that it comes in.  Our souls, our integrity, our dignity, our spirit cannot be captured on film media.  And all of that is what is truly amazing about each and every human being.  Exhibitionism flaunts only a partial product and ramps it up like it is The Only Product. 

This is one area that the Millenials forget when they are caterwauling for “diversity and inclusion and respect for other cultures.”  Here’s how:  we forget that even some of our typical North American summer-wear is absolutely scandalous to people from Middle Eastern countries.  I remember telling a co-worker once that I felt that because we work in a multi-cultural environment where, to some men, the showing of the bare upper arms was considered pornographic, that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to refrain from wearing sleeveless sundresses in the open hallway out of respect.  So … when you are sitting in your private office, rock on… but when you walk down the hallway, put on a little sport jacket or bolero.  It’s a win-win because you get to look a little more classy and professional; it doesn’t offend people from other more modest cultures; AND none of us have to see that hideous vaccination scar on your upper arm…. Unless of course you’ve had it tattooed recently as a small pond with birds flying around it.

In the most recent escapade, a COMPLETE STRANGER sent me a one liner on Messenger and asked what kind of person I was that I could be so hurtful to someone and be mean to “Katie.”  HUH?  I wondered to myself, now who is THIS person?! So I texted “Katie” and asked her who this person was and what she was talking about.  Katie said the person is a Life Coach and she is referencing “Kerry.”  She further went on to say that my comments to Kerry had been anti-feminist and body-shaming.  (Why didn’t I hear this from Kerry, instead of a total stranger?)  If this wasn’t such a serious charge against my character, I probably would have rolled on the floor laughing.  If I had the physique of a super-model, I might be in a place just by my mere existence, to body-shame someone by just walking into a room.  However, I do not.  I could not.  I would not.  I don’t have a mean bone in my body.  I find it exhausting to get angry at people who really need someone to tell them off.  It just isn’t my way. 

As far as being anti-feminist, that is a complicated issue.  Feminism means so many things to so many people and some of them are conflicting ideals.  I just think, like the writer Matthew Kelly, that everyone should, with God’s help, try to be their very best self.  Gender wars have never served any good purpose.  Because we are human, we should never let the dialogue get reduced to simplicities:  men vs. women; this race vs. that race; etc.  We are all one race:  the human race.  Maintaining unity and peace and balance requires hard work and much dialogue – not name-calling.  The other thing that was more hurtful, though, was for someone who was always the recipient of my kindness to presume that I would be anything other than kind to them.  That was hurtful to me and baffling.  

But this is the new Millennial technique:  They throw out labels to draw the lines.  They forget their personal history with a person and presume everyone who doesn’t agree with their ideas is an immediate enemy.  They are, frankly, not mature enough to realize that we can disagree with each other’s politics, preferences, lifestyles, etc., and voice those disagreements respectfully without becoming enemies.  Remember I mention the Talking Heads on TV in other articles I wrote?  This is the fruit of their labors.

Talking Heads presume they know what the guest on the talk show is going to say and respond to an imaginary dialogue instead of giving the other person the courtesy of a hearing.  It is so counter-productive to good conversation as well as healthy human relationships in general.  But now here we have a whole generation that interfaces with everyone like this.  It is painful to deal with this.  The other thing is these particular Millenials are immediate in declaring that THEY are the ones with hurt feelings.  This is narcissism at its finest.

Am I anti-millenial?  No.  If you have lost 20 pounds, will I celebrate your hard work?  Yes (with a peanut butter cup sundae in hand hoisted as a toast to your success).  Do I want to sign up with your life coach?  HAIL, NO.  And when I ask you to think twice before you put really personal photos up on Facebook, for your own safety, it is not because I don’t like how you LOOK.  It’s really that I LIKE how you LOOK ALIVE and NON-ABDUCTED by creepy people. I don’t dis-respect your personal choice as an adult to post what you want (although the rules of FB might have restrictions).  I am reminding you that there are Other Eyes out there.  I close this airing of my thoughts with a horrible, true story.

I know a young woman who in her early 20’s was conned into “making a movie” with someone.  Yes.  THAT kind of movie.  She was told it would be shipped over-seas.  Shortly before her conscience kicked in for any other reason, she was aware that when she went out to the mall, strange men would look at her in a way that made her feel creeped-out.  She went to a local outlet that sold “those kind” of movies and found her movie right there on the shelf.  She went out and dyed her hair and tried to change her appearance in order to get her privacy back.  I don’t know if she ever felt at home in her own city after that. 

There is an adage that says: “You reap what you sow.”  Why would we expect it to be otherwise?

Rediscovering the Beautiful American

Rediscovering the Beautiful American

Picture if you will a beautiful cabin in the Carpathian mountains of Poland.  It is surrounded by rolling hills and tiny yellow flowers blowing in the gentle breeze.  Sheep graze nearby like fluffy tufts of cotton on the green quilt-like landscape.  A happy dog lopes through the fields.  Perhaps he is the inspiration for the Polish song about why he is so happy: because he is not married. 

Inside the cabin is a late-in-life man who thought to himself he would have the best of both worlds:  he married a woman his own age, as well as a much younger woman.  Every evening his late-in-life wife would pat the top of his head before she began the ritual of plucking out all the darker hairs she could find.  She didn’t think it proper for him to be anything other than salt-and-pepper tresses like herself.  In desperate contrast, the younger wife would meet him in the sitting room in the morning and remove all of the grey hairs she could find.  She didn’t think it proper for him to be anything other than youthful as herself.  The end result is:  in short order, the man became completely bald and neither wife was pleased.  He was left to live out the opposite of the adage:  “Happy wife, happy life.”

This Polish folktale bears with it the message of the importance of compromise.  We can be surrounded by every blessing and every beauty and yet if our inner world is nit-picky and turmoil-ridden there can never be peace.  Can I read this story to the Senators and Congressmen of our country?

Someone at one point crafted the idea of the “Ugly American.”  I don’t know where it came from or who thought that idea was worth culturing, but it has been bad for our national self-esteem.  It is as if we keep looking at ourselves in the political mirror and saying:  we are ugly; we are ill-behaved, we are bad.  Anyone who lived through the 1970’s was exposed to all the self-help and proselytization of the “feel good” culture.  We would never, as individuals, allow our kids to look into the mirror at home and say, “I’m ugly.  I’m fat.  I’m selfish.”  We would cart them right off to a psychiatrist or counselor to straighten what was called “stinkin’ thinkin’.”  And yet as a nation we have allowed people who perhaps are THEMSELVES the ugly stereotype of selfish, boorish, and badgering to tell us that we are no good. 

I never hear of the Canadians bashing their own national identity.  I never hear of the Mexicans bashing their own national identity.  And the Brits of the U.K. have managed, despite their intrigue and marital catastrophes to shine up their own veneer as if they all are 100% classy.  They have projected an image of The Royals that they intend to culture.

In the States, we lived through 8 years of a President who did pseudo self-effacing of America as a nation and it hurt us.  We have tolerated two terms of a Governor in New York State who actually stammered out, “America was never that great.” 

Really?  I think that even though my experience is limited, my vision is not:  I SEE GREATNESS.  I have friends that have left the comfort and safety of their homes to travel with church groups to Third World countries and build houses and feed the poor.  I and countless others write checks to support the work of missionaries and organizations at home and overseas who try to raise the spiritual AND physical living standards of people who suffer greatly.  Our economic success, for the greater part of this Nation, isn’t just about personal prosperity:  it is about corporate prosperity – we get more, we give more.  We do spend more.  That is the fact.  But as the Good Book says:  “It is wrong to muzzle the ox that trods the grain to feed you.”

When I go to a baseball game and they play the national anthem, I have to choke back tears.  They are the same sort of tears I shed when I see veterans coming back from war-torn lands when they have tried to stabilize and bring peace to an area.  It is a good thing that I do not have teenagers or I would be a perpetual source of “embarrassment” to them as I also cry at parades. 

I see through the joy of the marching bands and Irish dancers to know that Freedom is not free. 

Someone had to pay for it, and others have to remain vigilant, lest we have it stolen from us.  Leisure comes to us as the fruit of a militant and productive society.  Countries led by tyrants of every stripe do not have leisure or self-determination on their minds for their peoples.  I am grateful for every day that I can pursue my dreams, and the hobbies that bring me joy.  Sometimes I even cross the border to a neighboring land to see how the others live.  But every time when I return, I have to fight the urge to kiss the ground as I return to a land where I have freedom and responsibility and identity.

Whomever the Ugly American was that was a stereotype of boorish self-centeredness, I do not know.  And frankly I don’t know anyone like this (and admittedly I know A LOT of people).  There are people I do not like as persons for whatever reason.  But very few of them are the completely obnoxious Ugly American stereotype that someone dreamed up to beat us over the head with.  Perhaps it is time to look at ourselves in the National Mirror and say:  we are imperfect, but we strive to be a good, generous nation.  We argue amongst ourselves, so that our decisions can be made in a way that advances us along a good path.  We are diverse and perhaps not always fair; but we do have the ability to come together and serve others side-by-side when the chips are down.  We have the ability to check our negative opinions at the door and collaborate for the greater good.   We long to be unified and resilient.  We long to radiate the purity reflected on the face of our Statue of Liberty in the New York City Harbor.

Maybe the fact that we want all these things says we are already, in some way, beautiful and great.

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