What's Pants for the Goose....

You know, it would be really nice if people behaved with common decency. It would be nice if ordinary modesty came back. It would be really nice if Christians advocating modesty weren't so often huge and officious twits.

For example, let us click on over to the humbly named Nobis Quoque Peccatoribus and observe the blogger's discussion of "The Problem of Pants". (Thanks, Speculative Catholic.) It seems that it is vital to the world to point out that the cut of pants into legs creates a sort of arrow pointing upward at the female private package.

And yet, on the principle of the splinter and the GREAT HONKIN' OAKEN BEAM, it doesn't occur to this pure-minded blogger that the cut of pants inevitably points still more directly at the male package. Which is external, and outlined for all to see, by the cut of pants. I mean any pants, guys, not just tight ones.

It always astonishes me that men don't think about these things. For some reason, the burden of modesty always is supposed to rest upon the women, while men are apparently considering themselves sexless creatures lured to wrong by women flaunting all they own. I hate to break it to these men, but what's sauce for the goose is definitely sauce for the gander, and always was. Sorry your mommy never filled you in.

Pants were counted immodest in Jesus' time -- something worn only by wild horse-riding barbarians. Legionnaires' leather skirts were counted immodest by the Jews, who wore full-length robes. The necessity to ride horses and the utility of the clothing brought pants back again and again, but what a pain to sew until modern times! So pants kept going right back where they came from, until the last few centuries.

But even when pants came to stay, men who were not fashion-forward guarded their modesty. History is full of elaborately modest male underwear. Jackets and coats were long and covered the rear and front of pants from view. Until the last few decades, no decent man would sit around the house even in his undershirt; and going out into the front yard required undershirt, shirt, jacket, and snappy hat as well as pants. Somehow, I don't see a lot of traditional men taking care to hide their musculature or cover their bare arms; but that was the way it used to be.

In the end, a good deal of modesty is in the eye of the beholder as well as the wearer. And if the beholder of female pants is a gentleman, he will politely fail to look at the exact same areas that ladies fail to see on men. It's called chivalry. It's called a social contract. It's called risking a punch or slap if you look at my pants in any less respectful way.

And if you non-hypocritical male advocates of modesty go to kilts, be sure to wear a sporran and learn how to sit right. It'll help protect you from the world being able to see up your skirts as far as I was able to see up NQP's argument.