I have a friend who I consider one of the most modest people in the world and in the summer she wears tank-tops and short shorts and no one she is around at the institute building or at church seem to notice. She just gets hot in the summer.

I allowed myself to spend my teen years tediously wrapping myself with all kinds of fabric, in my early twenties doused myself with several sweaty layers of down east clothing, and I still remain the most obscene active mormon I’m sure most people have met. My clothes aren’t really helping my state of mind, to be perfectly honest. I must not be wearing enough clothes yet.

What an interesting dichotomy we have created for ourselves. We are admonished to overcome the natural man by concealing the challenge.

When people agrees the Word of Wisdom is out dated and is archaic does not know the meaning and purpose of the scripture. But hey!When someone states in this group that Jesus Christ has moral fallacies and the Law of Conscreation is a failed program , anything is fair game to go after.

Sexier than a one-piece and less pinging out than a bikini, the cut-away swimwear is a great choice, giving one more reporting around the stomach but allowed for a larger tanning region than a one piece. Great for affording one more tanning choices that a one piece, particularly with the open bikini-style back up, but the only trouble is some very unusual tanning lines around the middle!

If this is my one and only mark left on the bloggernacle, then it is well with me.

Being overweight, to the extent it is cropping up, is probably a greater sin than not covering up, or covering up, in that it affects the “temple”.

What is sin, if not a moral failing?

As to culture, I think I am on safe ground in stating that there is a concern by health experts over the road America is going with over eating, especially in children. Hard to generalize about culture, although there seems to be little of a problem in Asian cultures, for example, and associated heart disease and the like are also less prevalent. The huge emphasis on healthy living in America is no doubt overdone, but it will eventually improve our culture if people choose to lead healthier lives. The food industry has played a negative role for many years in getting us to eat more and in peppering their foods with sugar, fat and grease, as the specific items that sell their products. There has already been feedback in this as people demand healthier foods.

We all make choices and whether to lead a healthy, active life is one of them. Not a moral issue, but it should concern us all as a people who are striving to do good.

Glad that you agree – it is pretty boring isn’t it? Yes, ta ta

(a) The cultural context in which you’re addressing your comments is this: thinness is held up as the ultimate redemption. Being thin is holier than Jesus. So in general, fat people are very aware that they’re apparent “abject failures,” moral, physical, and social, and frequently guilt and shame are driving compulsive overeating. Therefore, berating fat people for eating too much is roughly the equivalent of berating suicidal people for being too selfish. In both cases there’s some truth to it and in both cases it’s probably just exacerbating the problem.

As a culture, I think we probably feel waaaaaaaaaaaay more guilt over weight than over a number of other behaviors that are considerably more problematic. It’s time to rein this nonsense in.

(b) It’s simply impolite to lambast other people for their failings while holding yourself up as a model. This is true even when you genuinely are a shining example.

As a sidenote, I would add that there’s a bit of class prejudice operating here as well. Wealth and beauty are closely linked. In most cultures throughout history, fatness has been a hallmark of beauty because it signals that someone has material abundance and leisure time. In our culture of superabundance, the reverse is true–thinness signals wealth since it often indicates people have the time and resources to invest “heavily” (ha ha) in their physical appearance.

And now I’m getting bored of this conversation. Ta ta.

Finally, refraining from swearing is a matter of modesty. We shouldn’t promiscuously flash people with our swear words because that cheapens them. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an appropriate time and place for sharing our swear words with a special someone.