Color Me an 'Occasion of Sin'

A few days ago facebook was inundated with a weird internet meme. Many of us checked our facebook to find many of our female friends having updated their status with things such as:

• White
• Black
• Red
• Pink with lace
• Blue with yellow stripes
• None :) hehe
• "Butterscotch"

This of course was followed by several other people updating with: "What are the colors for?" "Why are people 'painting' their statuses?" And so, an internet meme was born. Where it came from, it is hard to tell, but regardless it was alive and like most things began to evolve and even devolve in the matter of hours.

Now before I continue I will explain the meme in case some of you do not know what I am talking about. The other day on facebook women started getting private messages telling them to simply post a color as their status update. The color should be that of their bra. (Some have told me they received one that was the color of their shirt - this adds weight to my point later on that these things are more style over substance.) They were told to do a self exam to check for breast cancer and that this would be a "code word" to tell other women that they had done so, and they too should do the same.

Of course, most people spent most of their time wondering what the heck the colors meant and were talking more about the meme than the purpose. Once it was known what the colors MEANT, the conversations usually devolved and centered around how "hot" a certain color sounded, and other comments which turned this gimmick into something sexual. Or was it sexual from the start?

Before I proceed, a disclaimer of sorts. I do not "BLAME" or "JUDGE" any woman that did this for the right reason. I don't think it was a good idea in the end, but because of the instant nature a lot of people who otherwise would have refrained from such a thing did so out of emotion or novelty, and I question if it really was as harmless as many originally thought? So this is not an indictment of the people who participated (my wife being one) in this, but it is and indictment of the gimmick itself. I say this because I understand how emotionally sensitive the breast cancer battle is. I know that every little bit of awareness helps, but "ends justifying the means" philosophy is never proper. [A more personal disclaimer: I don't want to seem holier than thou here. I probably would had participated if I was a girl, because I would have seen it as HARMLESS. That is my point exactly, is it really harmless.]

So my argument is this: our culture is so overly sexualized that we accept the display, actions, and discussion of things that we as a society and culture do not actually endorse or approve of solely because we have become so anesthetized to sexual innuendoes, discussion, and images. In such, when things like this internet meme, "sexting" on cell phones, and facebook/livejournal/twitter have some occurrence that is sexual we often act with "playful" disregard of how sexual and inappropriate it really is.

The point of this meme was to bring awareness to breast cancer and self exams, but instead it only brought awareness to the color of women's underwear. The same thing could easily have been accomplished through other means, without the sexualization of it. But, because we are so numb to sexual things it didn't phase most people exactly what they were doing.

One of the things that some may have not realized is that they were giving some men an "occasion of sin." Here is a summary from New Advent regarding that:

Occasions of Sin are external circumstances--whether of things or persons--which either because of their special nature or because of the frailty common to humanity or peculiar to some individual, incite or entice one to sin.

It is important to remember that there is a wide difference between the cause and the occasion of sin. The cause of sin in the last analysis is the perverse human will and is intrinsic to the human composite. The occasion is something extrinsic and, given the freedom of the will, cannot, properly speaking, stand in causal relation to the act or vicious habit which we call sin. There can be no doubt that in general the same obligation which binds us to refrain from sin requires us to shun its occasion. Qui tenetur ad finem, tenetur ad media (he who is bound to reach a certain end is bound to employ the means to attain it).

Now this isn't to say that every man that read the statuses of those who participated sinned. It also isn't to say that men aren't inundated with much worse on a daily basis. The point is that our culture is so free with such information, that many reading this probably disagree with me and think it was "no big deal," "for a good cause," "that I need to get over it, relax, and quit being holier than thou." Men in our culture are bombarded with so much sexualiztion of such simple things, we don't need more to combat. Sure men need to be strong, but they also need help from the women of this world. Men are visual creatures. I  once heard a study that compared how men's brains work in comparison of women. The study explained that, "when men see a woman dressed 'sexually' their brains reactions in a similar way that it would if you were to deprive them of food for a day or two, and then place before them their favorite meal." You can image the urge and impulse this creates. Women on the other hand have a much more docile reaction. Their brains react, "in the way that a person who had just eaten and sees a magazine add with food in it." Quite a contrast don't you think? This type of reaction seems vitally important for procreation and human interaction in terms of mating, it doesn't seem like the reaction that we should invoke when promoting woman's health issues though.

If men react this way visually? One could assume that by being visual something that triggers a visual thought could easily provoke or induce "impure thoughts." It may seem silly to women that such a little thing could trigger this, but considering the scientific explanation above is it really that far of a stretch?

We have little girls, our daughters, texting boys with semi-nude and nude pictures. We have teens "sexting" each other with "naughty" texts because "at least they aren't doing anything for real." We have numbed our culture to so many sexual things that humility, chastity, properness in dress and speech, and other etiquette that once was common place has now become an archaic practice of the past. Women used to cover themselves in the presence of the Holy Eucharist, in chapels, and during prayer. In our culture today, if someone wears a chapel veil and they aren't at a Mass in the Extraordinary Form people suspect they are some ultra-radical traditionalist. So the question becomes do we really want to accept and encourage this downward spiral?

Aren't we meant for better? Doesn't God want better? Women posted this silly little meme, but how many of our Catholic sisters posted something similar regarding breast feeding and its link to the reduction of breast cancer? How about how abortion, which may be paid for by the new health care plan is linked to breast cancer, how many women posted something regarding that? My point is not to condemn anyone, it is to plead for us to think about our actions and demand more from each other. We deserve more for our men, for our women and for our children. Sex is a wonderful think and LITERALLY gives birth to the CULTURE OF LIFE! Yet, just like anything good, a perversion of sex and a degradation of sex become sin. Satan wants nothing more than to turn LOVE and SEX into his works. The more that it becomes common place and "no big deal" the more that he can use it against us. When LOVE and SEX stop being SACRED, it no longer carries with it the meaning God intended.

Links for Breast Cancer:

http://www.breastcancer.org/

Mayo Clinic - Self Breast Exam

Susan G. Komen - 3 Day Walk

Also:

One of my favorite blogs: TrueManhood.com posted on this as well and had a much more concise post than I did. I noticed he posted about it, but refrained from reading until I finished my post. Check it out here: http://www.truemanhood.com/imagining-bras-a-facebook-stunt