Maidens of Virtue: Chapter Two

The second chapter of "Maidens of Virtue: A Study of Feminine Loveliness for Mothers and Daughters" by Stacy McDonald is titled "Modern Day Maidens".  It is a brief five pages and can be paraphrased as "Life was so much better during the olden days when women and girls had life really easy.  I want to go back to that life."

My response can be summarized as "That time never existed - and you'd not like being during those times as much as you think you would.

I have a different feeling of regret in reading this book compared to previous CP/QF works by women.  Debi Pearl has a piquant ability to rip apart her neighbors - but her writing skills are marginal.  Sarah Mally had similarly weak writing skill - but lacked the life experience to make her writings interesting.  One of the Botkin Sisters seemed to have some severe written language deficiencies - but the other sister could occasionally put together an interesting argument.  Mrs. McDonald is different;  her writing style is surprisingly solid - as long as the reader avoids thinking about what she's written.

Antique books are much like old friends. Neither one may be as new or as strong as they once were, but as the years pass their pages soften, their character develops, and their uniqueness is made evident to a new generation. Mysteriously, they grow more precious and even more beautiful as they age.

One day I was browsing the shelves of an antique book store and found a real jewel - a forgotten leather - bound treasure. After blowing the dust off of its cover, I observed a tender scene of children playing in a pasture. Like a solitary white rose positioned carefully on the deep velvet lining of a bejeweled box, the charm of the simple painting was curiously enhanced by its gilded, ornate border.


The delightful painting included a young maiden seated upon a blanket, sewing. Her strawberry curls were tied gently behind her back, and her delicately embroidered gown cascaded about her. The look of serenity in her face made me yearn to sit beside her, to share her gentle company, to experience her peaceful afternoon.

Was this innocent vignette of beauty and tranquility a poignant memory belonging only to yesteryear? After all, where were the young lady's skin tight jeans? And why wasn't her belly showing? Didn't these frolicking little children in the pasture know that they could have been playing video games instead? Do gentle maidens exist today, or did they live only in the vivid imagination of old-fashioned authors? (pgs. 27-28)

The first three paragraphs of the quote above show her writing strengths.  She can create vivid, sweeping views of the world around her.  I can visualize the old books, the rose nestled in velvet and a lovely girl sitting in a pasture. But as always - the devil's in the details.  I don't have many old friends - but none of them have pages.  There's no mystery about why carefully cultivated friendships and well-constructed books survive over the years.  Books stored on shelves don't acquire enough dust that buyers need to blow the dust off the cover to see it.  I can admire the construction of the comparison between a rose in an ornate box to a simple paining in a gilded frame while feeling that the comparison fell flat.  A frame is supposed to compliment the painting within; a rose will be completely overpowered by a box worth a small fortune.

Likewise, her description of wanting to spend an afternoon with a peaceful young maiden reads well - but is a strange and bizarre idea.  Stacy McDonald is a married woman with a house filled with children.  That peaceful maiden isn't her peer or a mentor; she's a young girl with minimal life experience.  It's as off-putting as if I declared upon seeing a group of teenagers at the mall having fun "I really want to spend the afternoon with them!".    Imagine how strange it would be if I as a 36-year-old married woman with an infant proceeded to hang out with a group of strange teens at the mall for an evening.....

In response to the last paragraph of the quote, that innocent vignette is an artist's dream.  Those frolicking little kids faced brutal diseases, frequent nutritional deprivation, minimal education, and a strong likelihood of physical disability at a young age.  The young lady faced either marriage with the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth prior to modern medicine or the grinding poverty of being an unmarried daughter. Truthfully, our fears about inappropriate clothing and activities for children would seem overwrought to the parents of those happy children.

After Stacy McDonald's vignette of a vignette, she jumps into a discourse on the loss of the word "maiden" in modern society:

One thing you'll notice while reading old books is that young, unmarried women are referred to as virgins, daughters, maidens, and even damsels. At one time, a virgin merely meant a woman who had never been married. The fact that she was sexually pure was politely assumed. Today, the word virgin is often used by the world as a pejorative.(pg. 28)

I'm not sure what "old" books she's talking about.  I've read books that talk about daughters and maidens - but never virgins or damsels outside of people who are trying to sound "old-timey" without doing background research.

Thanks to that quote, I realized that I've never wondered about if a person was a virgin or not before.  I politely assume that a person's previous sexual experiences (or lack thereof) is none of my business.

On a semi-related note, people have been having sex prior to marriage as long as humans have had marriages.  Even the Puritan culture so adored by CP/QF adherents managed to produce lots of unwed mothers and babies born to married couples who had been married less than 9 months.

I've never run into the word "virgin" being used as a pejorative; perhaps I run with the wrong crowd....

With no sense of irony, Mrs. McDonald introduces a definition from the 1828 Webster's Dictionary a few pages later that shows that marital status and virginity had already severed:

The Webster's 1828 Dictionary defines the word maiden as "a young unmarried woman; a virgin; fresh; new; unused." It goes on to describe a maiden as one who speaks and acts "demurely or modestly." I don't believe that the extinction of the term is accidental, but instead it exposes a disturbing loss of virtue and dignity in modern womanhood. (pg. 29)

]I think Mrs. McDonald is approaching one reason the word "maiden" disappeared in a roundabout way.  Her definition of maiden is now "a young, unmarried woman who is sexually inexperienced and behaves demurely and modestly".  That word has so many interlocked attributes that the word "maiden" becomes clunky to use.  And - as I've mentioned before - I prefer not to think at all about other people's sexual experiences so if a word implies a concrete sexuality I'm going to avoid it.

In our modern culture, girls tend to be referred to in a variety of ways. Someone may occasionally ask, "How many daughters do you have?" but you will never hear anyone ask, "how many virgins do you have?" or "how many maidens are in your family?" Is it that our contemporary dictionaries don't have room for these outdated terms or is it that our culture embraces gender neutrality and spurns titles that signify innocence or purity? (pg. 28)

*blinks*

In what context would it be acceptable to ask how many virgins are in a family?  Do you really want to know the answer to that question?

Asking how many maidens are in the family - assuming the family is not at a Renaissance Fair - just makes a mess of answering the standard question of "Do you have kids?  How many?"   How well would the answer of "Well, I have one maiden, one unmarried not-a-maiden, a married daughter, a virginal son and a non-virginal son" go down?  That's far more information than I want to know about people - and I think it's creepy that Mrs. McDonald is that interested in other people's kids' sex lives.

My dictionary has the words "daughter", "maiden", and "virgin" in it.  I engage in hyperbole myself from time to time - but stating that those words are missing from the dictionary is sloppy.

As Christians, most of us understand that scripture teaches unmarried young women (and men) to stay sexually pure until they are married. In addition, their outward behavior should be consistent with what's in their hearts. (pg. 29)

I pulled this quote for two reasons.  First, the use of parentheses around men visually demonstrates CP/QF's obsession with female sexual purity with male sexual purity as a belated add-on.  Second, Scripture teaches that marriage is required for lawful sexual intercourse for all adults - not just young adults.  That's a common mistake in CP/QF writings due to the relative infrequency of early widowhood in Western society.

The remainder of the chapter yammers on about how immodestly everyone dresses and how there is nowhere anyone is safe from sexualization.  This next anecdote made me laugh so hard that it took me a few tries to read it into my transcription program.

Our world today assaults men of all ages. Everywhere they look they see indecently dressed women... on billboards, in pictures in department stores, in magazines in grocery store checkout lanes, even walking down the street.

In a way, our daughters have not been spared.

I recently picked up a bottle of hairspray at our local grocery store for my daughter. When she decided to use it the following Saturday, what she found on the back of the bottle shocked her, and she came downstairs to show me. This is what it said:

"WHAT YOU WEAR BEGINS WITH YOUR HAIR. (TM) What's on your body... Skin tight jeans. What's in your hair... Shpritz Forte Glam Rock finishing spray for big, sexy, rock'n roll hair."

When the lady who worked at the customer service counter asked us a reason for returning the bottle of spray, we simply showed her the back of the bottle and said we didn't want "big, sexy, rock'n roll hair." Given the way she looked at us, I'm sure she wondered why we thought we were in any danger! (pg. 30)

My husband was listening as I read this into the program.  He stated that no men he knows feel tempted by billboards, ads in department stores or grocery store magazines.  CP/QF morality enforcers have created an issue where none exists.

I worked in customer service for ten years - although never at the returns desk.  I am certain that Mrs. McDonald's counter-cultural action of returning Shpritz Forte Glam Rock Finishing Spray for moral reasons provided great amusement for overworked staffers for several days.  Much of that amusement could have been avoided if she had stated that she didn't approve of the advertising of the company rather than implying that a hair spray automatically shapes hair into 80's glam rock hair styles.  Communication is an art worth studying.

Alas, in terms of sending a message about advertising content, her action was a complete failure.  If the spray was unopened, the store likely returned it to the shelf and recouped the lost sale.  Even if the spray was opened and needed to be discarded, stores assume there's a certain amount of lost profit from damaged merchandise called "shrink".  Stores won't change their buying patterns unless the sales of an item drop or the amount of shrink to compared to sales becomes unsustainable.

But - on behalf of all overworked cashiers who need a laugh - I do thank her for the story of when a lady returned hair spray because it would make her hair too big and sexy.

Each chapter ends with a series of "discussion" questions for mothers and daughters to discuss.  Truthfully, the questions are more about brainwashing the daughters' to think like tiny little judgment machines about evil outsiders.  Here are some choice examples:

Have you ever seen a girl in public dressed in boyish clothes or who carried herself in a masculine way? Which of the following thoughts came to mind?

•  Oops! Is that a boy or a girl? 
•  What a lovely young lady! I wonder if she is a Christian. 

When you see a girl who is dressed immodestly, which of the following thoughts come to mind?

• What a lovely young lady! I wonder if she is a Christian. 
•  How sad, she must not have any respect for herself. 

 What about when you see a modest young woman dressed in nice, clean, feminine attire? Although it certainly doesn't mean that she's a Christian, as long as her behavior matches her attire might you suspect that she is? Why? Discuss with your mother the importance of communicating Christ to others with your appearance. (pg. 30-31)

This will surprise no one - but I've never worried about if a stranger I saw on the street was a Christian or not.  If I was concerned about if a stranger was Christian or not, I would not use their clothing as a determining factor.  On the other hand, the fact that a person assumes that external characteristics show if someone is Christian or not is a good sign that that person is following a very shallow and self-centric form of Christianity. 

I do enjoy darkly the fact that even a woman who is the exemplar of white, middle-class, conservative - but not dowdy - fashion is only probably a Christian  while a less-feminine woman is clearly not Christian.

How can you be sure that people automatically know you are a girl when they see you from a distance (without revealing or accentuating your private feminine parts)? (pg. 30)

Um.....wow.  So, which bits are my private feminine bits?  I'm assuming boobs and butt are supposed to be covered - but what about my hips?  Also, that question made me think more about women's anatomy in a sexualized way than anything I've seen in a grocery store.

I'm betting the correct answer is something about long hair and a skirt that is long, flowing and A-line. 

I do find the question funny because Stacy McDonald and her husband moved from Texas to somewhere in the Midwest for his ministry.   One advantage of winter in the Midwest is that everyone looks identical with heavy coats, gloves and hats.  Sure, you could dress entirely in pink or light purple, but that's about the only way someone is going to pick out if that blob of clothes walking towards them is a woman or man.

Have people whom you have never met ever asked you if you were a Christian simply from observing your appearance and behavior? Discuss with your mother how this might happen? (sic) (pg. 30)

This is my favorite question ever.  It sets girls up to expect that some random stranger will walk up to them and ask them about their salvation status at any point.  I live in Western Michigan which is highly conservative and filled with Calvinistic churches - and I've never heard of this happening. 

More amusingly, how is someone you've never ever met supposed to ask you a question?  If they've asked you a question, you've met them. 

Maidens of Virtue.  Two chapters down.  Way too many more to go :-)