Virtue
touted as an alternative lifestyle
By Mary Worthington
Special to the CS&T
For many people, secular colleges don’t seem particularly nurturing
places for virtues such as modesty. But in early April, Swarthmore College
invited an outspoken advocate for sexual modesty to speak — and
she drew an audience of more than 300.
Wendy Shalit, an orthodox Jewish woman who is an outspoken social critic
on culture, sexual mores and relationships, told the crowd: “The
pressure to conform is enormous.”
“Young men and women feel they have to be bad to please others —
even young women are subject to abuse, but don’t know it because
they are used to being used,” she added.
Shalit began her campaign for modesty as a college freshman, when the
residents in her dormitory wanted to make its bathrooms co-ed.
Her opposition to the plan drew criticism from her peers, but also hidden
allies. And Shalit said those covert allies made her realize that although
modesty has become taboo, it is something women actually desire even if
they are afraid to say so.
So, at the age of 23, Shalit wrote her first book, “A Return to
Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.” In it, she described the
type of cultural “reprogramming” she says women face.
Shalit told the crowd at Swarthmore about a girl who wrote to a popular
women’s magazine expressing a desire for marriage. The magazine
advised her to reconsider marriage because “it is just too much
trouble to take care of men.”
She said today’s culture influences young people into thinking that
if they are not sexually active, they are simply not mature.
Teen Web sites and magazines emphasize the need for “disconnecting
love from sex,” Shalit said. She added that teens are told they
are “only ready if [they] don’t care enough not to be upset….’
When you don’t care about anyone, then suddenly you’re mature….
“But caring and emotions are actually very important,” she
said.
Shalit said there is an emotional reality to sex that is built into our
bodies and experienced through the release of hormones during sexual activity:
“We need to use this knowledge, and bond with the right person rather
than pretend emotions don’t matter.”
She challenged her audience to expand social tolerance “to accept
modesty as an acceptable lifestyle.”
Shalit said there is a counter-revolution going on — a revolution
that she is encouraging by challenging students to speak out.
There is, she added, “something worse than fear of being made fun
of”— and that is “living an inauthentic life.”
Commenting on Shalit’s talk, Chris Keefe, the theology teacher at
Archbishop Ryan High School, observed: “From a Catholic perspective,
it is reassuring to hear someone without the same religious beliefs witness
to the same ideals.”
He added, “It helps me to understand that we can get [this message]
across to anyone. It’s not just a Catholic belief. The truth is
universal.”
Mary Worthington is the high school outreach coordinator for Generation
Life, a non-profit organization of young adults advocating chastity and
pro-life choices to their peers.