Are Your Standards Fences or Guardrails? by John Bytheway

Author:John Bytheway [Bytheway, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Standards, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Youth
ISBN: 1609081412
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2003-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

BUT I WANT TO BE ATTRACTIVE!

Of course you should dress to be attractive, but attractive doesn't mean provocative. You don't want to look like someone with loose morals or like someone who worships her own body. You want others to value you for you, not for how you look. The world speaks in superficial terms about people. Hollywood is interested in "the look" or "the image," and that's about it. I have a friend who was a former Miss Utah (she's now a mom with four kids). She told me that she made many friends while competing in the Miss America pageant, and she knows a lot of young women who later appeared on the front cover of fashion magazines. Guess where they are now?

They're gone. Why? Because they got older. Hollywood and fashion magazines used them for a while and then threw them aside. Why? Because they were nothing but marketing tools for cosmetics. When they got older, they became obsolete. Because the world values a "look" and an "image" and doesn't care a bit about what you are on the inside. In the same way, if you're only concerned about your look, some boys may want to take you to a dance but only as a trophy on their arm. They might care very little about you.

Remember that a modest and classy look is also attractive— especially to those who value modesty and class. The Book of Mormon records a rare occasion when the Nephites were prosperous and righteous at the same time, and it comments on their clothes in these words: "And they did not wear costly apparel, yet they were neat and comely" (Alma 1:27). I looked up "comely" in the dictionary, and do you know what it means? Attractive. So when you dress, you have to ask yourself a question: Whom am I trying to attract? What type of person would be attracted to me if I dress like this? Those who value modesty or those who don't? And if they don't value modesty, how would they feel about my other standards?

There's another thing you must remember about the impact of dressing immodestly. Suppose there's a guy out there who you really admire and respect. Suppose he's doing his best to be a good person and is on track for graduating from high school and serving a mission. And suppose someone comes along who is dressed immodestly. What will he do? He'll probably turn away. Why? Because he's trying to control his thoughts, and the way some girls dress makes thought control difficult. So instead of being attractive, the young woman who dresses immodesty is actually repulsive. Joy Saunders Lundberg told this story about her nephew:

When one of my returned-missionary nephews was visiting me one day, I asked him about a girl he had been dating. He said, "Oh, we're not dating any more." Though they hadn't dated long, I had the impression he had been quite interested in her. She had seemed to be a good LDS girl.

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