Well now I'm really confused. To be clear, I didn't mean to give the impression I dress immodestly outside the home. I am very careful to be covered now. I think I do a pretty good job.
Frumpy is good.
Actually, the proper reparation for any sin, is the practice of the opposite. So for any and all times one has sinned through vanity, one should at least practice an equal amount of time in its great opposite.
We should not be praising, admiring, or loving people for their exterior superficial beauty. Not as adults, and not as raising our children to appreciate being praised for it and praising it.
I know it is wrong to be vain, but to purposely try to be frumpy? How on earth would I attract a suitor by spending time purposely making myself ugly? There has to be some middle ground. Are you saying that to make up for vanity I should start shaving my head, stop moisturizing my skin, dress in a potato sack and put on weight? How does someone
become frumpy?
I can pretty much forget about getting married if I can't go for a little bit of cuteness to soften the blow of my non-virgin status. By taking care of my appearance, I can still show that I am fairly young. Isn't that a quality I should want to play up while I still can? The window for "young fertile wife" isn't very big.
I really thought that I had read scripture that would indicate that aesthetic appeal can be appreciated.
Think of this scenario: A good Catholic man sees two unwed mothers in church...something that is automatically a turn off to him. If there was any chance of him to maybe give one of those women a second look, would it be the one with a bright smile who looks cute/young/vibrant/fit/put together, or the one who looks "frumpy" as you put it?
On the contrary as Christians we should be avoiding it, and praising, admiring, or loving modesty.
Yes, I agree with praising modesty. I didn't think modest was synonymous with frumpy. I think the way I dress is very modest when I am out of my home...I certainly don't look frumpy though.
In both husband and wife. It's far better to be an plain or ugly looking person rather than a person who is 'attractive'. It will cause far more virtue and far less sin of a superficial attraction or desire for simply the material thing.
A husband will have a far easier time not being tempted to lust, with a wife who is not too attractive and so who has to be all the more careful. A wife the same. And so the two can love each other for their virtues and spiritual goods. . .
I am really confused now. If I were married, why would my husband lust after me? I would be his wife, and therefore available to him for intimacy.
My thinking is that a wife should not let herself go in marriage. She should keep herself looking nice so that her husband's eyes stay fixed on her. I would be afraid that a wife who doesn't care about her appearance and tries to be "ugly" might make her husband tempted to look elsewhere. Do we turn away from looking at a beautiful setting sun, or do we admire it?
Shouldn't a wife want to keep her husband happy? She is supposed to keep his home looking beautiful...why not herself? Wouldn't it be good for a marriage if a man can come home to a lovely home, a lovely dinner, and a lovely, smiling, put together wife?
It wouldn't be okay for a man to have to come home to a disheveled home all the time. So why would anyone want to come home to a disheveled wife? Isn't physical attraction what leads to the marital act? Doesn't it help make a woman more fruitful if her husband is attracted to her? Isn't that how nature works? I didn't think men were "readied" by ugliness.
Outside the home, she may no longer have a reason to attract a man, but he can help protect her from the eyes of other men by allowing her to be a homemaker, so she isn't out and about unnecessarily. I don't think she should let her whole self go just because she might have to go to the grocery store sometimes. If I tried to dress "frumpy" it would probably draw
more attention to myself.
Because you ought to consider your body only as a living temple where God wishes to be adored in spirit and in truth and as a living tabernacle that Jesus Christ has chosen as his dwelling place, you must, considering these noble privileges that you enjoy, show much respect for your body. These considerations ought to make you resolve not to touch your body or even to look at it without an indispensable necessity. . .'
Again, I don't understand why modesty has to be equated with ugly. A woman can be perfectly covered and still look lovely. Why does the temple of the body have to be unappealing in order to be sacred? Why is it disrespectful to the body to look
nice?
The Lord made all sorts of beautiful things. Flowers are beautiful. A star filled night sky is beautiful. A mountain landscape is beautiful. A coral reef filled with brightly colored tropical fish is beautiful. The Lord did not design a world that is frumpy or plain at all. If frumpy was the ideal, why is the world so beautiful?