Ten years ago, I published my first book. Like lots of my peers, my work draws from personal experience and uses elements of memoir. After all, I became a author within the heyday of confessional blogging when Glennon Doyle and Jen Hatmaker were writing from their kitchen tables in regards to the struggles of domestic life and womanhood. The first blog I ever read described the pain of childbirth in all its gory detail.
But that openness is nothing in comparison with the type of self-exposure that today’s platforms demand.
As blogs gave approach to social media, content became each more staged and, paradoxically, more intimate. Instead of writing from the kitchen table, influencers go live from their kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms. Nothing is off-limits. Audiences are invited to ride the dramatic arc of private relationship, sexual experience, and non secular doubt. Together, we rejoice milestones within the lives of youngsters we don’t even know.
In publishing, the pressure to reveal one’s personal life is rooted within the writer’s have to drive sales through online presence and platform—what has been deemed the “personal brand.” Writer Jen Pollock Michel, whose profession mirrors mine, recently confessed that she’s considering stepping back, not from writing but from book publishing, because “there are fewer and fewer ways to publicize a book that don’t look self-promotional.”
All of this makes for a deeply immodest publishing culture—one through which self-exposure is deemed a virtue.
To name authorial self-promotion as an issue of modesty may strike you as misplaced. It’s gimmicky, to make certain, perhaps even cringe as the youngsters say, but immodest? Part of the rationale I believe of it by way of modesty is because gaining a following on this noisy, crowded space requires catching readers’ attention. And one sure approach to try this is by exposing yourself.
This frame of reference can be difficult because we frequently misunderstand modesty, especially in spaces shaped by purity culture. At best, it’s a type of humble self-deprecation (which social media could use more of); at worst, it’s a approach to shame women’s bodies. But after we define modesty in these terms, we miss the ways through which it could help us implement and hold healthy online boundaries. After all, modesty isn’t a matter of what is hidden but from whom something is hidden.
In this manner, modesty is deeply related to intimacy, which Christian ethicist and Duke Divinity professor Luke Bretherton suggests is the fundamental constructing block of human community. In A Primer in Christian Ethics, he presents intimacy as the flexibility to return near one another in vulnerability and trust. While intimacy includes sex, it’s greater than this. It is the means by which we open ourselves to the opportunity of bonding with others and pursue the mutual dependence needed to flourishing.
But this also makes intimacy dangerous—because in the identical way that intimacy allows us to bond, it also opens us to exploitation. When we expose ourselves, we trust that others is not going to benefit from us and can honor the sacredness of what we share. When others let down their guard and unveil themselves to us, we must not abuse their trust. We must hold faith with one another.
Ideally, unspoken norms and communal covenants protect such vulnerability, but the perfect just isn’t reality. Unspoken norms are not any longer even norms. Covenants are left unenforced while communities turn a blind eye to abuse. East of Eden, we must evaluate who’s trustworthy and who just isn’t. We must learn with whom we are able to develop into vulnerable. To whom can we turn the soft undersides of our bellies? Who will honor our sacredness?
The relationship between intimacy, vulnerability, and trust lies at the guts of modesty and is why it’s so needed to online engagement. Modesty—whether physical, emotional, or spiritual—recognizes the inherent risk of nakedness in a world set on desecration and covers us just as God covered the person and woman within the garden (Gen. 3:21). We still have the selection to unveil ourselves, but unveiling relies, partly, on context and relationship.
This principle explains why the sexual passion of Song of Songs is modest and in addition why the book is written in poetry—why it’s veiled. The vulnerability of the lovers is sacred due to its defenselessness, due to its freedom. As such, it should be honored and guarded by the community around it. This includes shielding it from voyeurs.
Alternatively, some places and relationships preclude intimacy—not because unveiling oneself is inherently flawed but since the space or people can’t be trusted to honor us. They will either abuse or disdain the sacredness of our disclosure. Some spaces, like social media, are inherently precarious. The anxiety and uncertainty we feel in them just isn’t in regards to the considered opening ourselves a lot as our instinctual understanding that we’re deeply unsafe after we do.
Modesty can be why readers won’t ever get every detail of my life or process—why I refuse to reveal certain parts of myself online or in writing. One of the earliest reviews of my first book suggested that I wasn’t telling the reader the whole lot. The critique amounted to this: The insights in my writing suggested a certain quantity of life experience and even suffering. So, the reviewer wondered, where had those insights come from? What was I not sharing?
Everything. And nothing.
In much the identical way that I clothe my body, I also clothe my words. The shape of my heart continues to be discernible, but at the same time as readers can trace its contours, I won’t expose its flesh. And just as I cover physical wounds to stop infection, I won’t expose the injuries of my soul until they’re healed.
I make no apology for this. Some things are too sacred for public consumption, regardless of what number of books they sell. Our pain, grief, and even joy should be set apart and made holy because they’re so vulnerable. Sometimes, too, we decide to veil essentially the most beautiful parts of ourselves to preserve them for less than those that can perceive their value.
My life has modified quite a bit in ten years. I’m now not running after little ones. I don’t blog anymore. I still live in the identical place, however the individuals who live there with me have modified. I don’t garden as much, and my home is quieter than it’s ever been. I’m a part of a neighborhood church but not in leadership. I’ve returned to high school. I probably have to update my bio.
Some of those changes I’ve shared with readers, and others—especially those that involved loss and grief—I’ve kept to myself, selecting to honor their sacredness. When needed, I’ve stepped away from social media for prolonged seasons of cocooning while parts of me recreate in private.
I’ve often wondered what we owe one another on this limitless age. Without the boundaries of space, time, and embodied relationship, how do I do know whom I belong to? How do I do know whom I can trust? At times, I’ve unveiled myself in innocence only to have my openheartedness met by a knife. But as an alternative of protecting myself by hardening my heart, I’m selecting modesty. I’m selecting to actively shield the soft parts of myself in order that they will remain tender, in order that I can remain myself.
Constantly exposing ourselves online desensitizes us, making it difficult to honor the sacredness of our lives. Modesty may run counter to prevailing wisdom, but I feel it really works for the nice of my soul. In the words of Mark 8:36–38, I find myself asking, What will a lady give in exchange for her soul?If she gained the entire world and sold out all her books and won every award and made the New York Times, what would it not profit her?
Our stories and souls are far too sacred to sell to the very best bidder. They hold wisdom, yes, but in addition they hold people and realities too holy to be named in common places. Insofar as we are able to share what we’ve learned with the world, we must, but the whole lot else is just details—details that, once revealed, is not going to change the lifetime of the reader but whose telling would definitely change mine.
Hannah Anderson is the writer of Made for More, All That’s Good, and Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul.
