Stuff I've learned watching movies and television.

Stuff I've learned watching movies and television:

1. If you have a natural gift for detective work, be careful. You and your associates will regularly stumble upon dead bodies, and your circle of friends and acquaintances will be rife with murder suspects, witnesses, and victims.

2. If a door is locked, you can easily break it down by heaving your shoulder against it. It will give way. (This works best if you're a man.)

3. Even writers, struggling artists, and bartenders can afford spacious, tastefully decorated loft apartments.

4. If you're in a relationship, lying is the primary method for heading off potential conflict with your significant other. No matter how elaborate the lie becomes and how many of your friends have to cover for you, it is preferable to engaging in direct communication with your partner.

5. If you're not in a relationship, keep in mind that you're most likely to fall in love with whomever you most dislike when you first meet him/her, provided that s/he is ravishingly good looking.

6. Hiring a fake fiance (or spouse, or boyfriend/girlfriend) is a perfectly normal thing to do, with very desirable results. In such situations, you are almost guaranteed to (actually) fall in love with the person pretending to be your romantic partner.

7. For a courtship leading to a committed relationship, three or four days is a reasonable length of time. Don't be afraid to declare your love and/or propose marriage after just a few days, especially if you and your true love have already been through a serious deception or misunderstanding that has devastated the relationship.  

Bonus tip: An airport is a good place to make a romantic entreaty. Try to time it so that you arrive just before the person you love gets on the flight that will separate you forever. If you're a few minutes too late for that, go ahead and get on the plane. You can declare yourself there, and the other passengers will enjoy the inevitable passionate kiss that results.

8. If you're about to give birth, your labor and delivery will involve a lot of screaming but will only take about ten minutes at the most. Don't worry. If the baby arrives before the midwife or doctor, friends or bystanders will do a fine job of helping out.

9. If you're a female, forget being shy or reserved. These days, spunky, strong, and adventurous is the way to go. "Quirky" is trendy too, as long as you have an impeccable sense of style and are drop dead gorgeous.

But the lesson that I have learned most thoroughly is this one:

10a. Women: If you want to have a serious, romantic relationship and be the star of your own life, you must be endowed with stunning physical beauty. Deviate from the highest standards of modern beauty and you are, at best, the comic relief or the supportive friend.

10b. Men: If you're witty and confident, you may be of any age, body shape, or face type and still find the love of your life — who will of course be a young, thin, beautiful woman.

No, that sentence about getting the man we dress for is not okay.

This post is a response to one blogger's response to some of the responses to this article by Elder Tad R. Callister, found on p. 45 of the March 2014 Ensign.

Here, I am responding to the blog post referenced above:

Usually I applaud efforts to calm the firestorm after a controversial statement by a political or religious leader. I don't approve of vilifying our leaders - or anyone - over stray remarks, and I welcome interpretations of such statements that keep in mind the benefit of the doubt.

So I appreciate much of what you have written. In particular, I share your concern that overblown "rape culture" accusations distract us from the real rape culture problems in our society.

But I cannot let your defense of the following sentence stand:

        In the end, most women will get the type of man they dress for.

Because it's not true. It's embarrassing, it's offensive, and I'm too troubled by it to make a clever joke showing how ridiculous it is. (If anyone's interested in that sort of witty comment, you can find plenty of them here.)


For the moment, let's set aside the question of whether it's appropriate for a male ecclesiastical leader to counsel women about how to "dress for" men. Let's also set aside the question of whether a woman's clothing really is a reliable predictor of the type of man she "gets." Let's go straight to the implicit victim shaming, the angle that I find most offensive.

I think that I can see what Elder Callister was trying to get at here, and I believe that there is some merit in the concept. He wants to encourage women to dress modestly so that they will attract attention from the good guys, not the shallow, objectifying type.

But, at best, the claim that most women get the type of man they dress for is naively optimistic. At worst, it's a slap in the face to the legions of women who do not end up happily married to a righteous priesthood holder. And that's about half of the Mormon women I know.

Did the women who have been sexually assaulted get the type of man they dressed for? Did the women whose husbands abused or abandoned them get the men they dressed for? Do the accomplished, intelligent single women who have never had the chance to marry fail to dress right? What about the women who date men who manipulate them and mistreat them? None of these circumstances is exceptional. Put together, these groups probably comprise roughly a third to a half of the women in my ward. 

Please don't defend this statement by pointing to the word "most." Even if, hypothetically, his strategy for finding the right guy works more than 50% of the time - technically most of the time - the women for which it fails are too numerous to write off as tragic exceptions. And for the women who do find happiness, it suggests that the relationship is a reward for dressing correctly.

And, yes, we can argue about the best way to interpret the statement. Maybe get the man or dress for or most women mean something different to Elder Callister than they do to me. Certainly, he didn't intend to hurt or demean. But the sentence is vague, and that's part of the problem. It leaves far too much room for interpretations that have no proper place in our teachings about modesty and sexuality. 

Surely, Elder Callister could have dug a little deeper and found a productive way to say what he meant. The sentence that he came up with does not meet what should be basic standards of thoughtfulness and helpfulness. It lowers the level of discourse, and I'm disappointed that it found its way into an official publication of the Church.

Leaders who make careless remarks like this need thoughtful, measured push-back from the church members who sustain them. As I see it, that's one way that the body of the church, lay members and general authorities alike, will learn to reject the harmful words that we can't afford to harbor.