107 thoughts on “Reader Submitted Photo: Marvelous Modesty”

  2. Ok so they put some black covering over two females. Whoever drew this lacks imagination. It looks stupid.

    1. At first glance, I see black marker on at least three characters (all female). It looks like they raised a neckline on one, possibly drew a skirt on another, and so covered a third it’s impossible to tell from this scan what she was wearing before. I’ll go look at the original now.

  3. Stan Lee weeping softly? Dialing his lawyer, more likely. OR, drawing an anti-fundy superhero.

  4. What I find odd is that they covered up the legs but didn’t do anything about the bosom. 😯

    1. Does anybody ever ask why it’s only women’s bodies that Fundies insist on covering?

      Do they think that straight women and gay men are incapable of lust?

      2. Exactly. And this is one of my biggest beefs about the IFB. Always harping on women’s dress while saying nothing about men. In this they are little different from muslims, the only difference is HOW MUCH they think should be covered. They do think straight women are incapable of lust. The only times we have sex is when our husbands insist on it. Otherwise we would rather not have it at all. I’ve even heard preaching to the effect that we are sinning by not “giving in” to our husband’s desires. What about our desires? The Bible tells BOTH husband and wife not to defraud each other, doesn’t this imply the woman has needs too? Why is everything all about the man and his needs? Of course this preaching comes from the male pastors who know nothing about women. I am often very sympathetic to their wives. But there have been times I wanted so badly to stand up and demand equal time! 👿

  5. I instantly noticed all three. In my Fundy elementary school we had a copy of Wacky Wednesday in which the protagonist’s butt was covered by a pair of magic marker boxers. In the shower.

  7. I live in Saudi Arabia & here the religious police censor things in exactly the same way. They do their magic with their markers on everything: CD covers, dust-jackets on books, packaging material on *anything*, …

    I believe that there is even a training college where they learn how to do it. I’m not sure that it can take very much training to learn how to put magic-marker long-sleeved t-shirts on pictures of pop stars, but there you have it.

    I am both surprised and disturbed to learn of such activity *outside* of KSA. Bloody hell!

    1. In 1981 the James Bond movie “For Your Eyes Only” came out. The movie poster had Bond standing under a pair of long female legs and a barely covered bottom. Our local newspaper drew a black skirt on her in all of the movie listings.

      1. It is shocking how closely some of the practices in Christian Fundamentalists resemble the practices of Muslim Fundamentalists. As much as they would decry the aim of Muslim Fundamentalists to impose Shariah Law in America, how much better would it be if Christian Fundamentalists controlled the House and Senate? We would certainly see a lot more censorship, legislated morality, and a lot less freedom of speech, press, and religion.

        These two quotations from C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” was a stark reminder of this similarity.

        “Leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question—how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.”

        Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (p. 112). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

        “Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second Cardinal virtue was christened ‘Temperance’, it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion.”

        Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (p. 78). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

        I’ll drink a glass of sherry to that.

        1. That is exactly my view on gay marriage. Whether or not I feel it’s wrong is irrelevant in how I will vote when that comes on the ballot in my state. Government has no right to tell someone who they can and can’t marry – it’s just not their business.

        2. I don’t want to marry a man (and my wife probably wouldn’t like it much if I did), but I don’t see how it harms me or anybody else if someone else is in a same-sex marriage.

          It’s kind of weird to say “I believe so strongly in marriage that I think no gay person should be allowed to marry.”

        3. “It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion.”

          No wonder many Fundies have rejected CS Lewis’s teaching and said he isn’t Christian – he like the odd drink (though there is no evidence he ever got drunk) and he also smoked the Devils Weed. Moreover once of his best friends was a Roman Catholic 😯

    2. Wherever you go, Fundamentalists are Fundamentalists. Their primary beliefs are in rules in particular and control in general. Theology is just window-dressing on their regimes of rules. Whether they say that Y*w*h, Jesus, the Quran, Siva, or Buddha is mandating the rules is a relatively unimportant detail.

  8. LOL. those must be those PCC fundies that allow they’re ladies to where pants while ice skating now. and why is the invisible woman’s lower shin still blue? that isn’t a knee length skirt on is it! 😯

  9. LOL. those must be those PCC fundies that allow they’re ladies to where pants while ice skating now. and why is the invisible woman’s lower shin still blue? that isn’t a knee length skirt on is it! 😯

    1. Not a shin. A boot. And if you can’t see the hem, it’s still a legging or tights as far as I’m concerned.

  10. Aaagh…I could have been first if I didn’t hit the snooze button….curses upon my laziness!!!

  11. The redaction in black is pretty obvious. And, yes, it seems to apply only to female characters.

    …and on another note, I think Redaction in Black would make a great band name.

  12. In my youth comics weren’t even allowed. Fortunately, my local public library subscribed to Spiderman and a few other of the steadfast Marvel comics.

    I guess I’m only surprised that since they colored in clothing, that they didn’t add an AV1611 under Wolverine’s arm.

    1. Yes, I don’t know why any fundy would even allow the poster at all, because anyone interested in the superheroes would get the comic books, and surely there’s no one with enough time to go through each page of a comic book and color in all the immodest females.

      The only comic I was allowed to read was Archie Comics and that wouldn’t have been allowed had my parents read them. (I did read Chick tracts in the Christian book store.)

      1. Do you remember there being two different kinds of Archie comics? They had the same characters and settings, but in the “regular” comics, Archie’s main occupation was dating both Betty and Veronica at the same time, while chasing other girls, and Jughead’s primary interest was food. In the “Christian” Archie comics, Archie was busy trying to convert people or make them be good, and Jughead and the girls sometimes helped him.

    2. Ideally it would be under Captain America’s arm (and what is that thing on the top of Cap’s shield, anyway?) but he’s not placed well for that in this particular drawing.

      1. I believe the “thing” at the top of Captain America’s shield is Wasp. Also, I thought about saying that Captain America would hold the AV1611, but since he is the all-American I figured it was a given that he only used the KJV. Wolverine is Canadian so there’s is some doubt as to which version he would use.

        1. Okay, I see Wasp now that I look at the original. I figured someone wanted to edit even a possible reflection in the shield. 😉 I’d thought about the Canadian angle too…some folks would argue Wolverine shouldn’t be there at all. And I wonder if they kept Thor on the team (being an actual pagan deity and all 😆 )

      2. I have this daydream in which the upcoming Avengers movie features Cap giving his honest opinion of socialism to some modern right-wing talking head. Remember, this is a formerly partially disabled man who lived through the Great Depression in a Brooklyn tenement, as a chronically ill child of an essentially single mom (widowed early) who died of a treatable disease.

        The next scene features every single right-wing talking head in the U.S. freaking out simultaneously.

        I also note (as some other fan pointed out for me) that Cap led the first racially integrated command since the War of 1812.

        1. Actually if you read the more recent issues of Captain America the writers use him to call out a lot of the stupidity on both sides. Your ‘dream’ would fit very well with the current direction of the comic.

          I’m sure the fundamentalists will have a field day with the Avengers: a black man (Nick Fury) in authority over a womanizing drunkard (Iron Man), a mutant abomination (Hulk), an actual pagan deity (Thor), and a loner art student turned hero by an unnatural scientific experiment (Captain America)! The producers might have won some of them back with the inclusion of Hank Pym (Ant Man–who has been known in the comics to smack his wife around some, which offsets his being a *gasp* scientist!)

        2. But doesn’t Dr. Pym, at least in some versions of the story, hit his wife because he’s unmedicated bipolar with severe manic and/or depressive episodes that lead to irrational rages? ISTR that in one version he realizes that he has to give up being Ant-Man because he has to stay on his meds, so changing his body mass is a really bad idea.

          He TAKES MEDICATION BECAUSE HIS BRAIN ISN’T WORKING RIGHT. 😯 He doesn’t try to pray it away and declare himself okay while he’s in a relatively pleasant manic state or jump headfirst into some extremely rigid fundamentalist system and declare himself cured! EEEEEVILLLLLL.

  13. Ha ha! I always totally forget about the idiotic censorship of anything related to the female body. I saw 2 of the 3, but didn’t see them right away, and the 3rd one was rather small to spot. How terrified must people be of women to do this kind of nonsense?

  14. The men were so focused on blotting out the horrors of the female body to avoid sinning that it never occurred to them that we ladies might get an illicit thrill out of the muscle-bound (cough, cartoon!!!) hotties. 🙄

    1. Exactly! The guy in yellow (sorry I’m not up on all the superheroes, I did recognize Spiderman) in his tight pants, well… ❗ But women are not expected to have a sex drive, therefore seeing men in tight clothing or muscles isn’t supposed to turn us on unless you’re a hussy. That way they can blame women both ways, for being “immodestly” dressed themselves and for lusting after men who may be immodestly dressed, since we’re not supposed to have a sex drive! 👿

      1. YES! But the way I heard it taught was that men are stimulated by sight and women by touch. In my own experience however, touch seems to work for men as well.

        1. Yep, touch works just fine for most of us.
          Not that I’m putting down sight. It’s good, too.

        5. With women it’s touch and sound, such as a man’s voice saying sweet things. But I think a lot of us notice what looks good, such as a man’s eyes, his hair, how he fills out his clothing, etc. Just like a man may prefer blondes or brunettes, so do we have our preferences. I like a hairy chest on a man and if he wears his shirt open and I can see this, well… As for muscles, how are we gonna be able to tell when they always have on the fundy monkey suit, shirt tie and suitcoat? 😕

      2. Oh, Macushla, you don’t go far enough. They can also blame us for not being “wifely” enough in the bedroom so that our husbands stray! Just remember this simple rule, honey, and you’ll do fine: you can’t win. You can’t even break even.

        1. You got that right. After 26 years in the IFB, I’ve heard it all. If a woman lets herself go and gains weight, her husband may cheat on her because she didn’t keep herself attractive for him. Never mind that maybe he gains a bit of weight. She may be tired at night after taking care of the house and kids all day (and perhaps holding down a job of her own) but she’s supposed to be ready for her “wifely duty” in the bedroom as well. I wonder if it ever occurs to husbands that if they’d be a little more helpful around the house rather than leaving everything to their wives, the wife might not be so tired come bedtime?? 😈

      3. I guess we don’t have to worry about getting turned on by muscles like the ones on the arm of the guy in the picture, I have never seen the likes of such anywhere near an IFB church or activity! Let’s just say they look very touchable! 😛

      4. Wolverine. Trust me, you’re not the only one who, ahem, doesn’t have a problem with his tight pants.

    1. That’s what I was thinking. A poster with the original image hung in my high school (or at least it did a couple of years ago), and I didn’t remember anything all that offensive on it. Tight clothing, yes, but aside from Emma Frost, it wasn’t really all that bad.

      Now what would these people do with some of DC’s characters?! I suspect there aren’t enough Sharpies in the world for fundies to come to terms with Powergirl, Starfire, and Wonder Woman!

  16. I have to admit, my nephew got a tattoo on his arm of some girls who weren’t quite naked, but might as well have been. When he was sleeping I “Dressed” them with a Sharpie marker. He still loves me though.

    2. That is funny!
      I’ve seen a lot of tatts I’d like to edit with a Sharpie, and not necessarily because they showed nudity.

  17. Regarding the tight pants, Fundy preachers seem to think they are okay. The visiting preacher who made the fuss about paying attention during the sermon to the point of married people not touching has that tight of pants. (My wife pointed it out. Never heard another word he said. 😯 )

    As for the abs, wishful thinking, oh yeah. 🙄

    1. I have abs like that. But I keep them discreetly hidden under a bunch of blubber to keep my sisters in Christ from stumbling. I’m just really thoughtful that way.

      5. That’s exactly where I keep mine hidden!! Great minds think alike… 😛

      7. I gave up my job as a Chippendale because is isn’t right that ladies should be lusting after me. Now I have cunninly disguised myself as Gollum. Seems to work.

  18. This reminds me of a book in the Fundy U library with a picture of Michelangelo’s David on the cover. Only Fundy U’s David had black magic marker pants on. I can’t remember the name of the book, but I remember seeing it out all the time because it was required reading for Gen Psych, I think.

    The Fundy U library also put a black magic marker shirt on the picture of the US Women’s World Cup winner (the girl who pulled off her shirt after she scored the winning goal and revealed her sports bra) on the cover of Newsweek. I used to pull that one out of the stacks and put it on display all the time 😈

    1. Irritates the snot out of me when I see or hear of David being censored. I don’t know about you, but statues do not turn me on sexually. But I love art, hence I get irritated. 🙁

      1. Some of these people would get hot over Whistler’s Mother. And that couple in American Gothic–are they really married? Because they’re standing too close together otherwise. :mrgreen:

        3. The models were the painter Grant Wood’s sister, Nan, and his dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby. The two models were not related to each other in real life. Wood is said to have thought of the pair in his painting as a father and daughter, but they have often been seen as a husband and wife in popular interpretations of “American Gothic” (the title refers to the Gothic-style window on the farmhouse and also to the somewhat Gothic (in the medieval art sense) composition of the painting.

    2. A student at Christian school brought in a homeschool book to show us one way to handle the “problem” of Michelangelo’s David: it had tighty whiteys photoshopped on him.

      1. An artist friend of mine did a satirical “Contemporary Christ” crucifixion scene in which Jesus on the cross is “decently dressed” in a shirt, pants, shoes, etc., and has a healthy tan and a big smile.

  19. I have a bookmark that says “Censorship, the Assassination of an idea.” It’s black with a picture of a shattering light bulb. Wonder if some fundies would think that bookmark a sin?

  20. The Norton Edition of [i]Paradise Lost[/i] used at my Fundy U had Lucas Cranach’s [i]Adam and Eve[/i] on the cover. Of course, Adam and Eve were magically clothed in black sharpie on all the copies. My dear friend took fingernail polish remover and cleaned her cover to show the beautiful Renaissance painting. A few days later in class, the girl sitting by her looked at my friend’s uncensored book, back at her own censored cover, and said, “I like mine better.” 🙄

    1. I saw some of Lucas Cranach’s paintings in Europe. They are truly wonderful. If you get a chance to see the originals, don’t miss them.

    1. I’ve often felt guilty when for putting titles in quotation marks when italics aren’t available.

        1. I’m a Language teacher. It’s part of my DNA to try to use the right punctuation and to be miffed when the coding doesn’t allow it. 😛

        2. Renée, I’m an English major and have worked as a professional communicator almost my whole adult life. I get it. 😀 I just think that if you experience *guilt* when you’re unable to “do it right,” you just might be a former fundy. 🙂

        3. Gotcha. I don’t feel guilty, I just feel moderately frustrated and slightly disgruntled at the blow to my grammarian reputation. 😛

  22. My five-year-old has this same poster (unredacted). Oddly enough, he doesn’t seem particularly disturbed or excited by anything on it. Now, if he had this blacked-out version, I’d be bombarded with questions about why stuff is blacked out…

    1. Your posts highlights why such a censored fundy U environment is sexually charged…In a dysfunctional way, but still sexually charged.

  23. That girl in the yellow that they changed her whole outfit to black – is it because the original suit was too form fitting, or is it because the yellow made her look nude? ❓ 🙄

  25. Did they just put poor Sue Richards in a skirt? It certainly looks like it, from the way they colored over her legs!

    Good grief. I know most superheroines don’t have the most practical of outfits, but at least most of them don’t wear skirts. I’d rather fight crime in a metal bikini than in a skirt!

    1. I hope you won’t mind if I say I’d rather see you fighting crime in a metal bikini than a skirt, too.

  26. There were at least 2 other places where the Sharpie came out on this poster, but not as noticeable.

    Yes, if I were that concerned about modesty, I would also put a loin cloth on Wolverine 😯

      1. what I mean is the picture only represents part of the poster…..the most obviously censored part

  27. so, when i saw this picture it triggered a memory. i went to hyles-anderson college (sad, but true) and was on work scholarship. one of my jobs, and i’m not exaggerating one teensy bit here was to go through books with a sharpie and color in any immodest clothing, nudity, cleavage or bad words before they could be put on the shelf. who knows, maybe this is even MY handiwork…lol 🙂 such sad, demented times.

    1. So you were one of the ones that had the job of actually looking for bad words and immodesty! Funny that they want to protect people for those things so much they actually have people specifically looking for the very things they’re trying to protect people from! Yeah, that makes sense. :mrgreen:

    2. melissa, I had that job at HAC too!!! I remember sitting in the bookstore feeling guilty as I defaced perfectly good brand new books that people were NOT going to get a discount on when they bought them… I HATED that!!!

  28. It’s a good this isn’t DC: the censors wouldn’t know what to do with Black Canary.

    Also, I tried GISing the infamous Wolverine boner cover, and instead found the cover for the Left Behind movie. WHAT THE-!?

    1. Not to mention Starfire. I think she’d make the censors’ eyes roll right out of their heads… and I’m not even talking about the new version of her, I’m talking about the same old Starfire we’ve always had.

  29. I’m still trying to figure out why Sue Storm’s completely covered crotch will lead to wanton acts of carnality but Wolverine’s package is fit for public viewing.

    1. Because we womenfolk are not turned on so easily (although we have the magic power of turning all men around us into mindless rutting beasts by exposing some body part or other or sitting the wrong way). Also, fine Magic Marker-using men are NOT GAY NEVER NEVER NO WAY UH-UH.

      1. Oh no, we mustn’t have that. Such a thing could cause our pious men to lose control of themselves, resulting in much fornication and chaos.

        It is a good thing we have fundy churches to protect fine men from such evil.

        :mrgreen:

  31. This reminds me of my brothers Dukes of Hazzard lunch box. My mom used a sharpie and colored modest clothing on Daisy

Comments are closed.