How "Modesty" Teachings Hurt Men Too

Someone posted this article today on Facebook, from a famous Christian author and blogger:

If Only She Knew ~ Thoughts On Modesty

I read this against my better judgment and honestly, I'm sitting here furious. I have said for years that boys in conservative Christian homes are conditioned to struggle with "modesty" and everyday normal things regarding female bodies. That they are programmed to see non-erotic body parts as erotic. This article is the perfect example of that. This poor boy, and every boy like him have been set up by their parents for a lifetime of failure and shame. Then they have the audacity to blame all the women in the world for their terrible parenting. I'm just so angry at this type of spiritual abuse and bondage!

Here's how the article starts out:

"Avert your eyes, Son. His dad started saying it to him from the youngest age - when he was only a little boy. Might have been an alluring commercial while watching the ballgame. Or a billboard while driving down the highway. A pop-up on the computer screen. As parents, we had purposed to teach him purity from the beginning.  

Temptation can be found anywhere. Even in Target. Target? Yeah, I know. That's what I thought too. Until one day we popped in to pick up some flip-flops for the summer and I remarked how he kept bumping into things. What is your problem, Son?? "I'm just looking down, Mom," And with a nod, he indicated the ads placed strategically above us. Billboards for the lingerie department. Yikes. I'd not seen them. "

I've written about how modesty teachings enslave women, well this is the perfect example of how they enslave men too. The first few sentences infuriated and shocked me. They CREATED their son's struggles! They conditioned and brain-washed him to think there was something wrong with seeing females in clothing they didn't approve of. That looking at a woman is somehow shameful. They DID THAT TO THEIR SON and they are patting themselves on the back for it. They didn't teach him "purity", they taught him shame and objectification of women.  They taught him that natural attraction is something to feel guilty about and be avoided at all costs. They should be ashamed of themselves. They have set their son up for failure, and now he is going to be under such a heavy burden his entire life for things that are not wrong. He's going to struggle with "sins" that aren't sins but that he's been brainwashed to think are "impurity". The sight of normal American women all around him is going to send him into such a frenzy of natural emotion and arousal that he's not going to know how to function in the real world. This poor boy!!! I cannot imagine doing anything that unhealthy to my sons.

Oh, but it gets worse:

"It was a hot July day and we all packed up and headed out for fun and fellowship with a bunch of other believers. Picnic blankets, cold watermelon, and squirt guns. It was promising to be a great day. 

So I was surprised to see our oldest son hanging back from the festivities. He's an outgoing guy and usually one of the first out there mixing it up. Except not this time. He stayed close to our small spot and played with his little brothers instead. What is your problem, Son?? 

He hesitated for a moment. Then answered, "Mom, I don't know what to do. Dad's taught me to 'avert my eyes', but there doesn't seem anywhere I can turn here."

Nowhere he can safely look. Because women in swimsuits and summer clothes are everywhere and he's had it drilled into him from a tender young age that women in swimsuits are off-limits, tantalizing, and "impure". This poor boy cannot even go swimming or play outside because of his parent's brain-washing. HOW is this "purity"?! It isn't. It's heaping guilt and legalism on a child's head and causing untold confusion. This isn't healthy. This is so very toxic. He's just a little boy. Yet his innocence is being trampled into the ground.

My cousin Matt said this when he read this article:

"He [the boy in the story] wouldn't have a problem with it if his parents didn't make it a big deal. If they approached sexual attraction as a normal thing, and taught him how to control his actions, he wouldn't have to live in fear of seeing bare skin. Now, it seems like he is afraid to even go out in public, because of all the eye snares around him. Its almost as if he - or his mother, at least - expect girls to cover up for her son's sake, as if the world revolved around him. 

If he was in the real world, you know, the one that inhabits the spaces around his stifling mother and father, then he would find that real men really don't worry about bare skin. Those of us who control our desires know it is not wrong to look or enjoy the sight of a beautiful woman. We also don't expect them to serve us because we know they aren't the temptresses this mother is insinuating that they are. 

What he needs is for the walls of his little world to come crashing down. People like his parents think they are helping him walk in victory, but it isn't victory when you are afraid of the world around you. It isn't victory when you demonize something God created: beauty in a woman. It trivializes His creation. It makes it seem as if women are there to set you up for failure. 

What's wrong is not the world around him, but the world in which he lives. Open your eyes, son, look up. Nothing says you have to look at the lingerie ad, but you won't go to hell for lingering a second longer on it. Look at it and move on. It is part of the world around you. Your urges are part of your world. Your desires are part of your world. They aren't your whole world, as your mother seems to emphasize." 

In essence, these parents are crippling their son. There's no way around that. And this mother is encouraging other mothers to cripple their son and to see all women as objects of temptation.  Not to mention using emotionalism and spiritual-sounding language to urge all women to cater to her dysfunction. This is a glaring example of spiritual and psychological abuse.

I'm not going to post the rest. It's an appeal to emotion that ends up blaming all the women in the world for this boy's and every good boy's "struggles"; blaming women for toxic, spiritually abusive parenting they have inflicted on their son. You can read it but be warned, it's painful.

This is a real, serious problem, but I've never seen it outlined so perfectly as this post does. Making normal, non-erotic body parts erotic does a grave disservice to boys and men. And this is a wide-spread problem among conservative Christians and homeschoolers.

Here's what my friend Katie had to say in a conversation we were having on this topic:

"I believe the ultra conservative teaching many of us grew up under modesty-wise, has hurt men as well as women. Men who grow up so sheltered that they find a cap sleeve enticing and whose moms cover their eyes if a woman with cleavage walks past, never learn how to deal with normal American dress. It is no wonder they experience such trouble at a beach or a pool. Regardless of how you personally believe God would have you to dress, you have no right to control the rest of culture. Your husbands, brothers, sons, etc. will be exposed to cleavage, shorts, bikini's, mini skirts, etc. We do boys no favors when we raise them so strictly that such normal clothing is hyper erotic to them. Instead of sheltering them we end up hyper sexualizing them. I feel sorry for guys raised that way that struggle thru normal daily life like going to the grocery store.

I hope our generation will do better than our parents at teaching our children (boys and girls alike) how to view the opposite sex. Lust is not a sin that only effects men. Women can struggle with it as well. Part of the problem is that we call sin things that are not sin thereby heaping guilt on men and women for simple biological hormonal reactions.

It is not sin to find a person attractive. It is not even sin to feel turned on by them as they walk past you. That is just a basic function of biology and hormones. It is a sin, to dwell there and savor the moment, to go back to it time and again, or continue to fantasize about that other person (ie undressing them in your mind or worse). We need to teach our children the difference between a hormonal reaction that is biological, and choosing to expand or camp in that reaction and indulge in lust. We need to practice personal responsibility in our handling of situations that are struggles for us personally, and we need to teach our children personal responsibility for their own reactions to others around them. Men and women alike need to dress in ways that do not violate their conscience, but they also need to realize that they can never control anyone but themselves and master their own thought lives."

Fear, shame, guilt, rules, "temptation is everywhere"....a little boy whose innocence was taken by the very people supposed to protect him. And all in the name of "purity". My heart is breaking. I may be a woman, and I experienced these lies from a woman's perspective, but I saw what they did to the men in my life. To the boys programmed with shame. I continue to see the effects of such teachings as the boys I grew up with are now men. Men who have sexual addictions; teenage boys from homeschooling families that ended up as pedophiles; men who have sexual hang-ups in their marriages; conservative Christian men who ended up rapists; good men who struggle with normal life because they still can't see a woman in a pair of jeans and not think about the voices that told them this was "immodest" and "a temptation". An entire generation of men who were raised with shame and fear, like this little boy, have grown up and their stories are enough to keep the tears flowing and the hearts breaking. I have two little boys of my own. And I cannot imagine raising them to fear the world, women, and themselves as the parents of  the boy in this story are doing. I hope they see what they are doing to their son before it is too late to undo it.


(Warning: I would suggest that if the above sickens or triggers you, don't read the comments on the post I linked. Some of them are worse by far than anything in the post and completely disgusting.)

In Which I Weigh In on The "Modesty" Debate

Is it just me, or did the modesty debates start early this summer? So much angst and judgment and shame and backlash and finger-pointing and freaking out going on, splattered across blogs and Facebook, each one trying to out-do the other, each one with it's own rebuttal from either side of the debate. So now it's my turn. :D Except, I don't care too much to argue point-by-point about the issues. Maybe some other time. I'd rather just sit and have a chat with my fellow sisters.
Can we do that?
I have some things on my mind and I'd like to talk to you about them.

I read these articles on "modesty" and I hear many women's stories and something in my heart just breaks. For all of us. Because the one thing I'm seeing as a common thread, no matter if you're conservative or not, Christian or not, is the holding onto of burdens that are not ours to bear. And the pain and the shame and the projection of pain onto other women because of it.

Here are some of the things I've heard come from the mouths of my sisters:

"Cover those boobs!"
"I don't want you wearing that around my sons or husband."
"That much skin showing is disgusting and I don't want to see it."
"You obviously don't care much about the men in your life."
"I dress this way so that I can help men not to stumble."
"Wearing bikinis mean that you are selfish and don't care that men are looking at you."
"Well, she deserved it dressing like a hussy."
"I beg you as one sister to another, cover up your body! Do the men in your life a favor."
"But think about the MEN!"

I have a friend that wore a very long, appropriate, conservative dress to church, and one woman came over in a huff and told her to "cover up" because she had a tiny bit of cleavage showing. The woman made a huge deal about it and was really pushy about it. Another friend was told by her mom that she can't come visit anymore because her dad and brothers need to be "protected" from her immodesty. Another woman I was chatting with said that having lots of cleavage/boobage showing was "disgusting" and another said she didn't want her husband or sons around immodest women. One girl I know was told to put a different shirt on by her mother "for your dad's sake". (Her dad had never said anything about her clothing.) This woman told a heart-breaking story of being shamed by other women because of her body. Many girls I know tell how their mom was the one that made them wear ugly, shapeless clothes when they were teens, while their dad didn't care and often fought with the mom over her standards. I remember one time when I was about 14, walking across the parking lot at ShopCo, and my mom stopped me and started yelling about how my breasts were bouncing when I walked and what if some guy saw me and was "defrauded". (I was wearing a polo shirt that was 3 sizes too big, and a floor-length skirt. But C-cups on a 14-yr-old are hard to hide.)

Overwhelmingly, it is women making these sort of comments to other women. And while our first reaction is usually one of anger or bristling that someone is trying to control other people or that women are being blamed for men's thought problems, I have an entirely different reaction.

All I see in the above comments and stories and the dozens more I didn't write here is Insecurity. Pain. Betrayal. Wounds. Grasping at control. Broken hearts due to infidelity. Women picking up burdens that do not belong to them and trying to force every other woman to do the same.

When I hear something like the comments above, my first thought is this: "How did the men in your life hurt you so badly that you feel the only way to keep from being hurt again is to control their environment? How have you been betrayed by the men in your life who promised to love, honor, protect and cherish you? What caused you so much pain that you can only project that pain onto other women? Why are you carrying the guilt for your man's unfaithfulness and why are you trying to place that responsibility on your sisters? What were you taught about men and sexuality that you would react in such a way toward other women?"

Maybe it was a wife ignored for a porn addiction, or left for a younger, bustier woman. Maybe a daughter who was shown inappropriate attention from a father, and a mother who blamed her for it. Maybe a woman who has had many men reject her to run after other women and many promises broken. Maybe a girl who was used by men her whole life then blamed for their sin. Or maybe it's just a woman who was raised by one of these broken women and brainwashed to believe that all men are sex-crazed monsters that can't keep it in their pants and women must control their urges for them. Whichever it is, whichever one you, my sister, may be, I have just one thing to ask of you:

Let it go. 

Let the sins and the choices and the awful, terrible things that the men in your life have done drop off your shoulders. You were not responsible for their actions. This was not your fault. They hurt you, they betrayed you, they caused so much pain, and that pain is your own, but you cannot own their failures. Their sins are theirs to own and carry. By believing that you and your fellow women are to blame for the misdeeds of these men, you have become enslaved to sins that are not your own. And you are now trying to enslave other women, to make them carry the guilt for something you, and they, didn't do. You try to control the environment of every man in your life, even the good men, because you believe this is the only way you can keep from being hurt again. And the cycle of abuse and sin and pain just keeps turning, perpetuated by the victims while the perps get off scott-free. Because the reality is, by projecting the sins of a few evil men onto your fellow sisters, you are allowing those men to walk. 

I know the crushing weight of seeing every other woman out there as a threat. I KNOW. I bore that weight for a long time. It took a lot of healing and the love of a good man and the complete re-programming of everything I'd been taught to make me let go of that burden. It took a few good men to show me that most men are decent and good and that good men NEVER blame women for their own thoughts and actions. But it finally happened. I finally said "I will not carry the sins of ungodly men. I am only responsible for my own." And you know what happened? Suddenly I didn't hate other women. I didn't feel threatened by the woman talking to my husband whose boobs were bigger than mine. I didn't feel threatened by the women on the beach in bikinis. I didn't feel the need to control the women around me to protect myself from pain. I stopped resenting and controlling my fellow sisters, and was finally able to love and enjoy them instead. I was free. And I had freed my sisters.

Because they, and I, were not the guilty parties. Do you hear me? We are not the guilty ones. We are not threats to each other. A man's actions are his own and no matter how much we try to control his surroundings and therefore his mind, we just can't. A good man will still be good and an evil man will still be evil, no matter what women do or wear or try to make other women wear.

Women, sisters, I beg you to think about these things. I know what I wrote could dig up an awful lot of unbearable pain and for that I'm so sorry. But I believe it had to be said. Don't let the men that treated you badly be the cause of a life lived in fear and resentment toward other women. Free yourself, free them. And hold accountable the ones to whom the fault for your wounds really belong.

Abuse Survivor Needs Our Help

A friend shared this story of her friend's sister and asked it to get passed around. From the link:

And then she spilled a story about her family’s downward spiral into isolation, fear, and control (increasing after she left and got married as a reaction against how “bad” she turned out), about how her sister “Jennifer” was demeaned by daily screaming from her mom, Bible-based lectures from her dad on why her interest in being vegan and an animal rights activist were rebellious and wrong. Despite many requests to be allowed to make herself vegan food, she was never given permission to even make herself a salad. She wasn’t allowed to touch fruit or vegetables unless given permission, which sometimes meant that food would rot in the fridge even though she wanted to eat it. Jennifer’s parents also threatened her pets, telling her that if she did not eat meat for dinner, she would wake up the next morning to find one of them gone. 

The final crushing moment came last weekend, after her high school graduation, when she wasn’t singing in church (out of self-consciousness) and so, in a fit of anger, her parents removed all of her access to the outside world, taking away the power cord to her computer and her cell phone charger. She managed to get a few calls out, begging for help, with the battery power left on her phone. 

She called her sister, and asked her to come get her out.
Her sister called me. “What should I do?” 

But we knew there was really only one option, and so she and her husband put in 28 hours of driving in three days and went to rescue Jennifer. They got her out after a confrontation with her parents that required police backup, and cost Jennifer her three pets, her graduation gift iPad, her computer, her art supplies, her summer clothes, and her life savings of nearly $3,000.

Please go here to find out how to help this girl. She has had to leave behind everything to get free from abuse:  http://wineandmarble.com/quiverfullchristian-patriarchy-rescue-jennifers-story/

Thank you!

About the Romeike Family and What No One Seems to Have Said Yet.

By now, I'm pretty sure the Romeike family is on the mind of every homeschooling family and most conservative Christians. Their trial to find out if they will be deported or granted citizenship is on Tuesday.

Libby Anne has posted a guest post that helped explain the legalities, and someone from HSLDA has offered a rebuttal. I'm not a lawyer and I don't pretend to understand everything that's happening. I know something smells fishy and I feel sorry for this family. But I'm not here to comment on the debate. Because something else is bothering me a whole lot more than this whole legal mess.

In Germany, it is illegal to homeschool. Refusal to put your child in a private or public school can cause parents to be fined, be thrown in prison, and/or have their children taken from them. The Romeike's pulled their kids out of school in 2006, 2 years before seeking refuge in America. They were threatened by fines and legal action and could have lost their children if they had not fled.

Did you catch that? They could've lost their children. They still could if sent back and they refuse to obey the law. It's happened before.

So these parents were willing to lose their children and their family for their religious beliefs. Not because their children were threatened by harm. But because of their religious convictions to homeschool and their belief it is their right.

And that is what makes me more angry than anything else in this entire situation.

They were willing to risk their children being taken from them, willing to have their entire family torn apart forever and passed around to who knows who, for their belief that homeschooling is their right. They were willing to stand on their perceived "rights" and risk terrible emotional damage to their children. They were willing to put their children on the alter of their religion and rights and sacrifice them. And then what would've happened? Their kids would've been put in school anyways! Only then, those kids would eventually have to face the fact that their parents' religion was more important to them then their own children.

They and the HSLDA and others I've seen writing their opinions on the matter say it is God's plan for parents to homeschool. Is it then God's plan that they lose their children? Is it's God's plan that someone else raise their kids while they sit in prison and congratulate themselves for standing for "what was right"?

Am I the only one that sees the messed up priorities here?!

Since when is sheltering your kids from evolution and sex education worth losing them entirely? 

I'm no lawyer, but I am a mother. And I'll be damned if any of my religious beliefs or political rights are worth the lives and well-being of my children, worth fighting for more than my children. I hope the Romeike's can realize that before it's too late for them.

And if they don't....well....maybe those kids are better off with parents who care more about them than about their religion.

And don't come on here and tell me how heartless I am for saying that. I hurt for this family, the parents AND the children. I am mad at the way they've become pawns to the HSLDA. I am concerned about what will happen if they get sent back. But I am not afraid to stand up and say "wake up, and get your priorities straight". I hope it all works out for the best for them. But most importantly, I hope they realize what they have, their family, is worth protecting, even more than their own rights and religion.

On Being Church Misfits

Rejection

I say that word and so many emotions come flooding in that I don't know what to say next.
You see, I am a church misfit. I'm one of those people that is ever wandering, trying to find a home, a community of Christ-followers that actually follow Christ when it comes to treating fellow believers with grace and their own imperfect humanity with humility.

Grace.

There's so much talk of grace these days. Grace for sinners, for unbelievers, for the hurting and the weak. But there's not much grace going around for fellow believers. No grace for those who have beliefs that are considered unorthodox. No grace for those desire to worship in their churches but dare to question their beliefs. No grace for misfits.

I'm told there are churches out there that are accepting of differences. I wonder if the people that say such things know what it's like to have differences that are outside the realm of acceptable diversity in Evangelical Land. Because it's been my experience that "acceptance" only goes so far.

Try walking into one of these "accepting" Evangelical churches and saying the word "Egalitarian". Or "Preterist". Or "Theistic evolution". Or *GASP* "Marriage equality". Just try it and see how far "acceptance" really goes.

I think you'll find that acceptance only covers sinners, not saints. Grace only tolerates the unbelievers until they become believers, then a whole new standard is placed on their shoulders. A standard called "Correct Doctrine", defined, of course, by those who think they've got it right.

Conformity or rejection. That was the choice we were offered at our last church. We chose rejection because no matter how painful that is, it's not nearly as soul-crushing as pretending to be something you're not, as stifling your beliefs, your very personhood, just to be accepted. Not as life-killing as acquienscence to a system that goes against everything you believe in.

So we joined the band of church misfits, pilgrims in the kingdom but on the outskirts. Told we are not christian enough for the Christians. We love but are not really loved in return. We are looked at with suspicion and a little fear by those in the pews. We are called names like "unsubmissive", "insubordinate", "liberal", and "backslidden". Our desire for fellowship with other believers is constantly turned away once they find out who we really are. The whispers are hard to ignore:
"They're the ones that don't believe in Young Earth Creationism!"
"They actually think gay people should have rights!"
"They don't agree with the institutionalized church!"
"I heard they refused to submit to the pastor of X Church."
"They think women can actually teach men!!!"
"They ask questions that should never be asked! I've even heard them say they've *gasp* questioned whether God even exists!"

And the pilgrims are turned away, told there is no room in the church for them.

Rejection.

How many times can a heart give everything only to be told it isn't good enough? People say we should just keep looking, that there are churches out there that will accept us. But how many times must we suffer rejection before we find that? I'm only human. I can only hurt so much. I can only take the broken pieces of my heart that have been flung out the church door, gather them up, and put them slowly back together so many times.

There is no grace for the misfits. For the dissenters. The non-conformists. The outsiders. The questioners. The seekers.

The Church is freaking out these days. Decrying the fact they are losing their youth, losing an entire generation. Their numbers are dwindling and they keep trying to come up with better ways to hang onto their members, to be "relevant", to be attractive. But they are overlooking the only way that that will ever happen: grace for the misfits. Tolerance for those who don't fit in their little boxes. Humility in admitting they don't have all the answers and are only human too. Courage to let go of their fear that if they quit trying to control God, He will become something uncontrollable and that that will be a bad thing. Daring to embrace the questions they cannot answer, the doubt they cannot push away with cliches, and the paradigm shift that will take everything they thought they knew and turn it upside down.

We are unacceptable because we threaten the little world they have created for themselves. We threaten the boxes they've made and labeled "God" and "Christianity" and "Doctrine". Our very existence is baffling and unnerving and the questions we ask threaten to upheave everything they believe in. We've jumped out of the boxes are refusing to get back in. So we are rejected and labeled "Not Really Christians", and turned out of the churches, and the places that are supposed to be havens of peace and rest and encouragement become nothing more than men's kingdoms of complacency and safety for those who can't bear the ugliness and harshness and uncontrollability of the real world.

We aren't going anywhere. We are doing our best to bring the Kingdom of God to earth in tangible ways. We are out here in the dark places, loving people, feeding the poor, shedding light and peace, hurting and healing, searching, hoping someday to find others like us so we can stop being so very alone. We will still be here to open our doors to the ones that bravely come to find us when their questions get them booted out of the churches. Even if they were the ones to boot us. Because that's what grace does. That's what misfits do. We are free to love  unconditionally in ways that the church folk aren't. And when the "church" in America finally realizes it's built on sand and comes crashing down, we will be the ones to pick up the pieces left strewn by an institution that tears down, and by grace and faith will put them back together. As we have been doing all along.

A Little Help for a Friend

One of my favorite people is trying to get scholarships to finally fulfill her dream of going to college. Sharon is an ex-ATIer and you can read her words on the link.

It will only take you 2 seconds and you don't have to offer any personal info. Just click on the "vote" button. Let's help get this beautiful woman to college!

VOTE AND READ HER STORY HERE

Thank you so much!

A Quickie on "Defrauding"

It was a popular teaching by Bill Gothard that clothes on women could "defraud" their brothers. He used a verse in 1 Thess. 4 to prove this:

"3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: 4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; 5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: 6 That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified." (A better interpretation of verse 6 says: "and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.")

He took this verse to mean that all women should be careful how they dress so as not to "defraud" their brothers in Christ with their clothing, which he defined as causing them to stumble or lust. Besides the obvious stretching of the context and content of this verse, there are a few problems with this definition of "defraud."

de·fraud 

verb (used with object)

to deprive of a right, money, or property by fraud

Some synonyms of "defraud" are: "bamboozle, beguile, burn, chouse, circumvent, clip, con,  deceive, delude, do number on, dupe, embezzle, fleece, foil, hoax, jive, outwit, pilfer, pull fast one, rip off, rob, shaft, sucker into, swindle, take to the cleaner's, take, trick, victimize"

In order to say that a woman's clothing can "defraud" a man, you would have to prove that
1. A woman's body is the right or property of another person
2. A woman is wrongfully offering her body to any man who gazes on her
3. A woman is lying by offering her body to another without intent to follow through with the deal
4. A woman is taking something from any man who looks at her, just by the piece of clothing she is wearing.
5. A woman is responsible for a man being deprived his rights any time he thinks something immoral about her

I really hope I wouldn't have to detail why all of the above is wrong, but in case I do, here goes:

I am not anyone's property or right. No one owns me except myself. I am not offering anything by the clothes I wear. If you think I am offering you something by my clothing, I am not responsible for your wrong thoughts. I cannot steal anything from you by the clothes I wear, especially not something that is owed to you, since I owe you nothing. I cannot control the thoughts of everyone who sees me, as I do not expect everyone else to control my own thoughts. I am not responsible for your thoughts or actions, as you are not responsible for mine. You are not a victim of my clothing if you desire me sexually. I have not bamboozled you out of your property by wearing a short skirt. I cannot dupe, hoax, trick, or rob you of anything by the jeans I wear. It doesn't even make logical sense.

Quite simply put, one cannot "defraud" anyone else by one's clothing. Or, as another wise person once said "I do not think that word means what you think it means".