bikini, for which there is literally no justification whatsoever. Far from respecting the measure of modesty, it is the epitome of extreme and grave immodesty. Though it wrongly satisfies the legal requirement for not being naked (thankfully there are still laws in most places banning public nudity), it does not stand up to the requirements of reason. Let’s be clear: to wear a bikini is to be naked, for the simple reason that the very design leaves no option to the eye but to see the missing parts. A simple observation will prove my point. We all know by experience that whatever stands out visually will capture and hold our attention first. For example, if we have a group of ten people dressed in black and one in the middle dressed in red, it is the one in red who attracts most of the attention; the red one simply stands out. The first point of interest grabs our attention. Applying this to the bikini, when a woman’s naked body has only two tiny pieces of clothing which cover the intimate parts but carefully and intentionally reveal their shape, the eye of the beholder is, of necessity, drawn precisely to those intimate parts. Those tiny pieces of clothing are therefore not designed to clothe at all, but to reveal, by drawing all the attention to that area. This being the case, the viewer is seeing those areas as objects – this explains why the beholder tends to objectify the woman – rather than part of the whole person.44 It is therefore clear that the bikini is designed not to clothe but to undress. In other words, it does not qualify as clothing at all and seems to have been designed to intentionally arouse lust in men. As an aside, if the bikini were helpful for swimming, professional swimmers would wear them, but they don’t. On this topic, when you go shopping for clothes, remember this fundamental point: clothing is about concealing. If you find yourself asking how much you can get away with in terms of what you reveal, you are not really looking for clothing at all, but for nudity. Combine the natural reflexes and instincts which drive male perception with the woundedness of Original Sin and the subsequent triggering of concupiscence, and you are left with an obvious conclusion: extreme forms of immodesty, instead of clothing a person, actually unclothe them in the eyes of the beholder. Such a lack of modesty can only then be a cause of many mortal sins that could be prevented if the most basic requirements of modesty were respected. 84
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