Modest is Hottest: A Latter-day Oxymoron

A friend of the blog since before she was born, today's contributor Madelyn is Brooke’s baby sister. Madelyn is in her last year of high school and spends most of her time participating in choirs and drama. As a current participant in the Young Women’s program, she’d like to add her voice and experience to the ongoing conversation on modesty and how we address it.

In my fourth grade class, we read a book about Lou Gehrig, who was described as being a modest man. My teacher asked the class if any of us knew what modesty was. My little hand shot up and I said proudly something along the lines of, “It’s when you dress to cover up your body properly!” which was followed by uproarious laughter from my classmates, and even a little chuckle from the teacher. I had grown up hearing all about physical modesty at church but I didn’t have the slightest idea of what the real definition of modesty was.

A Discussion on the New LDS Temple Movie

This summer Latter-day Saints are abuzz about the must-see event of the season, a film that some have described as "life changing" and "a treasured experience": the Temple Endowment. Yes, the acclaimed production that began as a one man show in an Illinois upper room, later adapted into into several wildly popular feature-length productions run daily in hundreds of LDS temples, has become the latest blockbuster to be rebooted for a contemporary audience. Today Brett and I decided to share our thoughts about it and what it means for us and the church. Obviously, given the secretive and for many highly sacred nature of the temple we've agreed to avoid spoilers. So let's dive right in: Brett, the Temple movie has been out for a couple of week nows. What are your overall impressions of it?

Brett: Normally, I'm pretty wary of reboots.  Sure, you get the occasional one that improves upon the original (I speak of course of Dredd), but more often than not you get a lackluster, computer-effects-heavy attempt at making something everyone's seen seem "new" again (see: the CGI-laden 2005 reboot of Pride and Prejudice).  However, I'm pleased to announce that that was not the case with this new production!

One day historians will note that we were the first to discuss the temple and Dredd in the same post.