Modesty is not the Enemy of Beauty

How Modesty Guards and Glorifies Feminine Beauty

Christian women are caught these days between two lies: that beauty is everything, or that beauty is nothing. Both are false. The first lie belongs to the world, which treats feminine beauty as a commodity. The second belongs to the church, which too often treats it as a threat.

The truth is that women are the more beautiful sex, which is by God’s design. This fact is a source of great power and great temptation. Naturally, men are drawn to feminine beauty. An attractive woman has power because she will be desirable to men. And when feminine beauty is paired with modesty, it becomes glorious. This is the way God made the world.

Modesty, then, doesn’t exist to suppress beauty but to sanctify it. Scripture teaches women to be modest not because beauty is bad, but because beauty can be distorted. Modesty adorns feminine beauty with holy discretion.

Modesty can practically communicate that a woman respects her body and her sexuality is not cheap. Her body belongs to her and to the man she selects, her husband, the man she commits her life to, because he is worthy of her love and has likewise committed himself to her.

My aim in this essay is to help Christian women recover this truth: modesty is not the enemy of beauty. Women should pursue physical beauty, refined and enhanced by godly modesty.

The Modern Challenge of Modesty

In our day, however, modesty presents a significant challenge. In Proverbs 7:10, the forbidden woman, “dressed as a prostitute,” seduces the foolish man. We aren’t given a detailed description of what she’s wearing, but we don’t need one. We already know what she looks like. Prostitutes wear clothing that draws attention to the parts of her body that men like to look at. They are selling a product and their clothing puts it on display.

Modern fashion designers produce limited options for modest women. That’s because the industry is driven by two primary forces: sex and money. They design clothes to be sexy because sex sells. But a less obvious reason is that it’s cheaper to make tighter, more revealing clothes because it uses less fabric.

This puts Christian women who desire modesty in a difficult position. There’s just not a strong market for clothing that is both modest, reasonably priced, and beautiful. A Christian girl who goes shopping for school clothes won’t have very many affordable options that fits her body and makes her feel beautiful. She may want to dress modestly, but many of the options available to her feel “plain” when she tries them on. Fashion trends will always steer away from modesty, making modest clothing feel out of date.

There’s another factor at work. Modesty beauty is an art form, and many Christian women simply haven’t learned from other women how to do it well. Perhaps its because mothers don’t teach their daughters how to beautify themselves, and maybe that’s because these mothers never learned it themselves. There’s a generation of younger Christian girls who grew up without an attentive mother, so they learn fashion and beauty tips from TikTok and Instagram.

Some girls did grow up with attentive, conservative mothers, who only taught their girls the modest part but not the beauty part. So these girls absorbed a subtle message that modesty means looking plain. For these women, they simply don’t know how to translate the biblical call to modesty into wardrobe, hair, and makeup combinations that are both modest and beautiful. They might even give up trying, thinking it’s not worth the time and effort to learn. Perhaps they even think looking plain is more godly because it’s more modest. Perhaps this can even become a spiritualized excuse for not putting much effort into their appearance.

Every virtue can get twisted and distorted, and the virtue of modesty is no different. Since modesty commands are directed at the sexual desirability of women, some women may end up pathologizing their sexuality, thinking their sexual desirability itself is the problem. This is especially common with girls who have been sexually abused.

If a boy gives attention to a girl who thinks this way, she may act disinterested, or even recoil in disgust. She doesn’t want to respond with feminine grace and an invitation to pursue because she’s uncomfortable being noticed in that way. Expressing her femininity might attract male attention and that feels threatening. She doesn’t like being seen as a sexual being at all, so she wears baggy clothes that obscures her body, feeling ashamed of her femininity and curves.

Different Kinds of Modesty

Not all modesty is the same. There’s a conservative Bible college I’m familiar with that requires women to dress modestly, but it seems their commitment to modesty has come at the expense of beauty. They don’t wear makeup. They pull their hair into a pony tail. And they typically wear T-shirts with long denim skirts and sneakers. They’ve confused modesty with plainness.

Preachers don’t do women any favors when they speak as though outer beauty is irrelevant. I once heard a sermon where the preacher, speaking about attractiveness in dating relationships, said “godliness is sexy!” I do not deny that godliness should be a woman’s highest pursuit, and godliness certainly makes a woman more attractive, but his comment assumes too much. He spoke as though outer beauty is an irrelevant factor at best, or a worldly distraction at worst.

All three are dressed modestly but not all are dressed beautifully

I suspect he was trying to encourage women who don’t feel they’re very attractive with a hopeful message. But this kind of message plays into our modern, gnostic tendency to retreat into metaphysics, as though physical beauty is a worldly concern. I know men who try to force themselves to be attracted to women on the basis of godliness alone, apart from any consideration of physical attraction.

This is foolish. It’s not fair to him or her. Cultivating physical beauty need not be considered worldly. Just because inner beauty is a woman’s highest pursuit doesn’t mean she is free to disregard the importance of outer beauty. Besides, what woman would want to be with a man who doesn’t find her physically attractive?

God designed us to respond to both inner and outer loveliness. It is good for women to beautify themselves, and it is good for men to desire their beauty. Christians need not regard physical beauty as spiritually suspect. Rather, scripture teaches the rightly ordered priority of inner beauty that lasts over outer beauty that fades. Thus, it’s important for Christian women to learn how to beautify themselves practically and in appropriate ways, especially when they’re young and single.

Helping Women Pursue Modest Beauty

Many years ago, I had a friend who went to beauty school, who explained that the shape of a woman’s face could determine which hairstyle made her most attractive. She also said a woman’s makeup choices should suit her hair color, eye color, and skin tone. And so it went with color combinations in her wardrobe, accessories, etc.

That blew my mind. I’d never thought of that. But she was more attuned to the practical reality of beauty than most people. Some women have an effortless, natural beauty, but most women need to learn to work with what they’ve got. My friend knew how to help a woman accentuate her most attractive features while hiding her less attractive features. What works for one woman won’t work for another. Beauty is highly individualized and it takes skill and practice for each woman to master what works best for her.

Women should help each other in this regard. In an age where fewer women were raised by godly mothers who could teach them both beauty and modesty, the church can step in to help in a Titus 2 kind of way. Older women can teach younger women what combinations of hair, makeup, and clothing can highlight the beauty of each woman. This will make her feel more confident, which only adds to a woman’s overall attractiveness.

If a woman doesn’t have the skills to make herself beautiful, she may stop trying altogether, congratulating herself for her godliness and modesty. But it is neither godly nor modest for a woman to neglect her beauty. She’s actually suppressing something God gave her as a gift. The world is starved for beauty these days, and Christians have a worldview that affirms the goodness and glory of feminine beauty that God made to adorn the world.

So my message to Christian women is simply this: modesty is not the enemy of beauty. Modesty doesn’t mean looking plain. True beauty is refined by modesty and glorified by godly character. You may not have learned these skills from your mother, but there may be spiritual mothers in your church that would love to talk with you about how you can make yourself most beautiful.

Additionally, think of beauty and modesty as partners. While beauty attracts attention, modesty directs it rightly. A woman of modest beauty covers what needs to be covered and reveals what is appropriate to reveal. She is not a hidden woman. She presents herself as a whole woman who is confident, radiant, and elegant.

Thus, modesty isn’t about obscuring beauty but about revealing it rightly. When modesty and beauty walk hand in hand, the result is a distinctly Christian femininity—graceful, dignified, and glorious. This is the sort of rare and unmistakable beauty that honors God and captivates men without corrupting them.