Managing Risk

By fifteen, I had learned that modesty wasn’t about my relationship with God. It was about managing everyone else’s.

“Young ladies must dress modestly.” Mr. Whiley’s glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose; he gazed over them. He didn’t repeat this warning to the boys. I pressed my legs tighter together, tucked my dress under my thighs. I’d almost worn my jean skirt that morning. Thank God I’d chosen the longer dress.

“Girls, I encourage you to dress in a way that helps your Christian brothers maintain pure thoughts.”

The girls looked at their laps, the boys stared at the floor. I felt my cheeks flush. He didn’t go so far as to list what we should or shouldn’t wear, but I felt certain my jean skirt would be out. It wasn’t a mini skirt; I didn’t have one of those, though they were all the rage.

I lifted my eyes to peek around the circle of teens. The boys blended together in button-down shirts and slacks. The girls wore long skirts or dresses and little if any makeup. Except for one, Mandy Harlow.

She was a baton twirler in the Majorette corps. Petite, blond, her face fresh out of Teen Magazine, she was the envy of every girl and the desire of every boy. She carried herself like someone who’d never been taught to apologize for taking up space. She turned her nose up at Mr. Whiley’s lectures.

Legs crossed, one foot swinging lazily, she chewed the tip of a polished nail.

“What about the boys?” she retorted. My face grew even hotter. Oh no, she was going to push Mr. Whiley into an even longer sermon.

“What about the boys, Miss Harlow?” Mr. Whiley turned on his heel and locked eyes with Mandy. She pulled her finger out of her mouth.

“What exactly are they supposed to do?”

Mr. Whiley sighed and thrust his worn leather Bible toward Mandy. “Read 1 Corinthians 6:18 aloud, please.”

Mandy clicked her tongue. She opened the Bible to the chapter and verse and read.

“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” She slammed the book shut, handed it back to him. Mr. Whiley cocked his head to the side.

“They are to flee temptation so as not to sin against their own body.” That sounded fair enough until I realized whose job it was to remove the temptation.

He took back his Bible and turned his back on her. Conversation over. There was no use trying to push him any further. Still, I admired Mandy’s pluck. She was fearlessly defiant. Something I was not.

A year later, pregnant at sixteen, Mandy Harlow stood before the entire congregation—not just our teen Sunday school circle—and confessed her transgression. I saw it as proof that Mr. Whiley had been right. I was certain she’d brought it on herself. That’s what we’d all been taught. Her skirts. Her makeup. The way she twirled her baton. Boys couldn’t help themselves, but girls should.

Just as I’d been taught that smoking led to doing drugs, I was now certain dressing too provocatively led to having sex and getting pregnant. Those fears settled deep inside me. They followed me every time I got dressed.

From that Sunday on, I no longer saw getting dressed as simply choosing clothes. I looked at getting dressed as managing risk. Every skirt, every neckline, every inch of exposed skin became a calculation. Someone else’s thoughts—or even actions—could become my responsibility. No one had asked the boys to change how they looked at us. We were the ones expected to change.