Dear Immodestly Dressed,

You’ve been there. You know how it feels.

To experience a situation that you hate, and you want so desperately to have the power to change it, but you don’t. Sometimes a situation can seem so chaotic and impossible and you can hurt so much because of it. And you wish so badly you could change it, but you just can’t. Maybe you don’t know how. Maybe you try, and nothing seems to work. Maybe it’s just something so great that you can’t do it alone.

But you’ve been there.

So have I.

How can I express myself right now? I feel so frustrated with how women and young girls are dressing. And the best way I can think of to express the seriousness of it is by writing a letter. This is a letter girls who dress immodestly. It is not directed at any one person, but to all young girls who are in the wrong on this issue. You know who you are.


Dear Immodestly Dressed,

There are a few things that I would like to say to you regarding how you dress. Not only how you dress, but also how you act. And your attitude. And your self-worth. And respecting yourself.

I know why you do it. You’ve seen other girls leave little to the imagination. And you’ve seen the attention they get. You’ve seen that good-looking guy you have a crush on eyeing her. Because he is interested in what she is showing. And that girl who shows her cleavage and wears shorts that cover little more than her panties? She is the one that gets all of the compliments on how “gorgeous” she is. She is the one all of the guys pay attention to. She is the one who gets glamorous treatment. So you think, “maybe if I dress that way, I will get attention. Maybe I will be pretty, too.”

Or maybe you’re not a young girl at school. Maybe you’re older, and you’re dressing this way. Maybe you think you need to because when you go out with your husband, he spends more time looking at half-dressed women than he does looking at you, his own wife. And maybe you feel like you have to dress this way to try and keep your husband’s eyes on you. Maybe you think, “if I dress this way, I’ll be pretty enough for my husband. He won’t look at other women anymore.”

And that’s what we all want, isn’t it? To be pretty.

Immodestly Dressed, I want to take this time to try and express to you how many problems you are causing when you dress this way. First, you should know that there are some really nice boys out there who are struggling a lot. These boys want to be pure. They want their thoughts to be pure. But you need to understand that when you don’t cover your body, boys struggle to do that. It makes the whole process nearly impossible when you are half-naked in front of them.

Immodestly Dressed, I want you to think about this for a moment. Someday, you will be married. And you will have a husband whom you want to have eyes for you, and you alone. But girls who aren’t modest are causing your husband to struggle with his thoughts. Wouldn’t that hurt you? Think about it this way. When you dress immodestly, there are a lot of husbands who see you. There are a lot of husbands who want to be faithful to their wives in action and in thought. And you are the girl who is causing this husband to struggle. You are the girl who is causing this man to hurt his wife deeply. You are the girl that has the potential to destroy this marriage without even knowing you’re doing it. And you are the girl that Satan is using to ruin lives.

This is a serious problem, not just with the secular world, but in the Christian realm as well. There are Christian men who can’t even serve on the Lord ’s Table for fear of having to fight this war as they see women sitting in pews. The church should be the one place where men of God can go and find peace and rest. It shouldn’t be one of the worst places for them to go when struggling with such a battle.

But it’s not just an issue about how you dress. It’s about your attitude. And your body language. The way you act around boys can make his life Hell as well. Even if you’re dressed modestly, there are things you can do and say that make these boys struggle. You need to be cautious about these things as well.

Immodestly Dressed, you need to know that you are beautiful the way you are, without revealing your body to everyone around you. You need to know that when you dress that way, you are not attracting the boys you really need to be with anyway. You need to know that the one you really need to look good for is God. And when you dress this way, you look hideous to Him.

You also need to know that just because you are going swimming doesn’t mean that God’s standards no longer apply. So wearing bikinis that cover less than your underwear is never okay. And just because you are in a pageant, participating in a wedding, or going to prom doesn’t mean the rules no longer apply. We are to be modest in everything we do in our lives. The only exception to dressing modestly is when you are married, and that is in the bedroom with your husband ONLY.

Walking around half-naked is nothing short of selling yourself for free. When boys and/or men see you leaving little to the imagination, they begin to visually consume you in their minds. Don’t be that cheap. Have some respect for yourself. Because you are worth more than that. Don’t be a free prostitute. When you dress this way, that’s what you reduce yourself to.

So please. Stop letting Satan use you as an instrument to destroy souls, lives, marriages, and more. Not just for me, but for yourself, and more importantly, for God. You are worth so much more than that.

Hannah Burleson