Pints With Aquinas - 112: Aquinas on modesty, makeup, and boob jobs, with Emily Sullivan

Episode Date: June 26, 2018

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name's Matt Fradd. How you doing? Good. I care. See, I care. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? On today's episode, we're joined around the bar table by my good friend, Emily Sullivan, to chat about modesty, makeup, and boob jobs. modesty, makeup and boob jobs. Aquinas does address the first two, we extrapolate to the third. So it's a very fun episode and I think you're going to love it. So get ready. Here we go. Welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. This is what I love about doing a podcast based all around Aquinas. You never run out of material. We've had episodes on getting drunk and why it's a sin and wet dreams and why they're not a sin

and how to make yourself feel good if you're sad and does God exist and can we speak meaningfully about God and are we predestined, right? Like all of these things are things that Thomas Aquinas addresses. Today, we're going to address modesty and makeup and, yes, boob jobs. Sorry if that's awkward. We're going to talk about that towards the end of the show. If you have kids around, we don't get specific other than those words, but I think it's an important thing to talk about. So this is what Pints with Aquinas is all about, right? It's bringing the angelic doctor out of the ivory tower of academia, giving him a pint and having him mix with you and me, the riffraff, all right?

So he can address us where we are. So those are the things we're going to address today. And this was a really terrific episode. Two things I want to let you know before we get into the show. Uh, two things I want to let you know before we get into the show. Okay. So as of today, I have Pints with Aquinas merch on sale, but they're on sale for 10 days only. We've got really great shirts and tank tops for both men and women. These are high quality shirts, actually. Um, they look really great. Um, they're black and they have a white image on them. We also have Pints with Aquinas coffee cups, which are different to our Pints with Aquinas beer steins, which are now only available for our $20 patrons. So they're different, but they're still good.

And we have Pints with Aquinas stickers. So all that stuff's on sale right now. So it'd be great if you wanted to get some swag. I think it's kind of cool to get a shirt that says, I'm a geek and I know how to party. I'm a Catholic geek, yes. It's kind of cool. You get to talk to people about Aquinas because they're like, who's that medieval guy'm a geek and I know how to party. I'm a Catholic geek, yes. It's kind of cool you get to talk to people about Aquinas

because they're like, who's that medieval guy with a beer? I've had people say to me, is that St. Francis? No, it's not bloody St. Francis. Sit down, let me tell you. It's great. So check that out. Pints with Aquinas, yeah, stuff. So I'll put a link in the show notes.

Click that, go over, buy a shirt, buy a cup, buy a sticker. Tank tops, right? Sun's out, guns out. That's what I've always said. Perfect time to be wearing it. All right, so that's the first thing. Again, 10 days only, so don't miss that. What else?

Okay, so second thing is because of my amazing supporters on Patreon, of my amazing supporters on Patreon, we now have launched our 182-part podcast, which is called Bible History. Now, this Bible History isn't my thoughts. It was actually a book written by Ignatius Schuster, who was a priest, and he gives an excellent synopsis of the story of the Bible. And the book contains 182 chapters, which that's why I'm turning into 182 episodes. Each episode's about three to seven minutes long. So they're very quick, very brief. So I'll be releasing them every Monday and Friday. And it's really excellent. It's very sophisticated sounding, very beautiful, very faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church. It uses the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, which is very beautiful. And so, I think this would be a really great podcast for you to

listen to. And not only for you, but if you have kids, honestly, I think I'm going to do this, although it'll be weird because my kids will be listening to my voice through the speakers. But hey, to play this to your kids as you go on car trips and stuff, because it's like a three-minute chapter, right? So, like the first one is the creation of the world. The second chapter is creation and fall of the angels. The third chapter is the creation of Adam and Eve. So, they listen for three minutes and then there's a bunch of questions, like about 10 questions per episode to help you remind yourself of what you've just heard, which I think would be a real

fun game for kids. In the episode that you'll hear, I say things like, what did the bad angels do? Then what happened in heaven? I leave a space for the kids to answer. I'm really excited about this. The book's in the public domain, which is why I'm able to do this. So yeah, go get it right now. It's free for everybody, not just patrons. It's called Bible History. So in your podcast app, just type Bible History, frad, and you can subscribe. Or I'll also throw up a link in the show notes. So be sure to check that out because I'm really excited about it. And again, a huge thank you to all of my patrons who supported me and have made this possible. You guys rock. Okay, third thing. Third thing. I know I said two things, but let's say one final thing. This is kind of a big

deal, so listen up, baby. Today, the 26th of June, I will be doing a live stream with my patrons. So, if you're a patron of Pints with Aquinas, go check out, you know, my Patreon page. I'll give you all the details there. We're going to meet tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and we're going to have a beer together. Just chat. You can ask me whatever you want. We can go back and forth. It'll be real fun. All right. So, again, that's tonight at 9 p.m. I'll be here with my Pints with Aquinas beer stein, drinking with y'all, and we can just chat about anything. It's going to be super fun. So I hope you can make it. Again, it's free for patrons, only available to patrons. And this is another reason why you should consider

being a patron so you can join cool stuff like this. So hope to see a bunch of you there. All right, here's the show. G'day, Emily. G'day, Matt. How are you doing? I am really well. I'm really great, yeah I've had a great day I am looking forward to this conversation I also love when I get to do interviews at night Because it means I get to drink bourbon Which my bride just brought me What a gal, camfraad

She is a babe of babes I love that woman so much, I can't even tell you I just went and bought like a nice New York sirloin steak for her like from this up the road, you know, it's like a butcher's. It's a real great butcher. That's my kind of love language. Books and steak. Books and steak. So I said just one, right? And it's just like one steak, one sirloin steak. It's like $14. All right, good. And so I just brought it home tonight just for her because, you know,

the rest of us, I like but whatever but yeah i i'm happy to say i did it well i watched like 10 youtube videos on how to do this perfectly beforehand and nice nice nuptial mystery i love it and then she brought me bourbon so it's a really good uh yeah fantastic i don't know but what are you drinking what am i drinking i'm drinking um a blood orange italian soda from trader joe's mixed with a heavy hand of vodka since my husband left me this morning for the next nine days. Whoa, why? Yeah. So he started his own drone company, which is pretty sweet. We both went to Thomas Aquinas College, and when they recruit you in admissions, they tell you about how with the liberal arts you can go on and do anything.

So my husband took that and ran with it and he's an entrepreneur he started a drone company and now he's uh yeah going on to florida your neck of the woods he's going down to georgia and then he's going down to florida and then he's probably going out to a silicon valley to raise some money from investors that's awesome where will he be in georgia yeah i think he'll be in atlanta oh my gosh would he have time to come hang out with me and Cam? He's probably very busy. I imagine he's pretty busy, but I'll shoot him a text. If there's bourbon on the table, he'll make fine time. I mean, the man's the man of priority. Well, one day the four of us are going to have to get together and drink and hang out and be

together because I haven't met your husband yet. I know. I haven't seen Cam in years since our time in Ireland together. So I would welcome that opportunity. Awesome. For sure. Well, I'm so happy to have you on the show. You've been on the show twice before. Once we spoke about Aquinas' hymns and then the other time sort of what Aristotle and

Aquinas had to say about friendship. Yeah, that's right. But today, I'm trying to think of a way to name this. Something like modesty uh makeup artist yeah modesty makeup and boob jobs okay I want to touch upon each of these and uh not that Aquinas addresses boob jobs obviously uh but I think the general principles are there uh so I want to talk about this because Aquinas has some things to say that are pretty striking from, you know, my point of view. And I'm sure a lot of people who read this feel very offended about what he had to say about modesty and especially as it pertains to women.

So I thought, gosh, I need to have a woman on the show. I will not touch this with a 10-foot pole. Smart man. Yeah. Yeah. There's no bigger turnoff than a man telling a woman what he thinks modesty is for the most part. We're just not a very receptive audience. This is a really good point.

How do you define modesty, or do you know how Aquinas defines it, or both? Yeah, so as far as I know, at least, it first shows up actually before he treats of the virtues, in the Secundae Secundae, it first shows up when he's talking about the fruits of the Holy Spirit. So remember, there's 12 fruits of the Holy Spirit. One of them is modesty. And he talks about, in Latin, the word is modestus when you're talking about it as an adjective. And it's the same word. It comes from the same word when we talk about moderate. It talks about keeping the right kind of measure. I think when you and I have talked about Aristotle before, when Aristotle gives his account of virtue that Aquinas will certainly use, he talks about how virtue is always in the mean, right?

You've talked about this in your show before. So there can be kind of an excess or deficiency, but virtue is always in the mean. So modesty has to do with really the mean, and it falls under the cardinal virtue of temperance. So temperance has to do with kind of more difficult things that appeal to our sensei appetites. So things like food and things like sex. He says modesty has to do with kind of lesser difficult things. And we'll get into this more as we talk about the particular article, right? I think today we're talking about in the Seconde Secondary Question 169, the first and second article. But it's really about honesty.

And even when the Catechism will talk about it, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it's about integrity. It's about honesty. Is there a big difference between humility and modesty? Can you say that modesty is essentially humility and outward appearance or no? Yeah, I think you could say that. He kind of, he'll bring it up later. He'll say that there's kind of three different ways of being excessive when it comes to talking about your outward appearance.

And for one of those three ways is when you're seeking kind of like seeking glory. Like I want people to notice that I have this great, you know, uh, Armani suit or this great Kate's bad bag or something like that. And he says the remedy for that is the virtue of humility. Um, but I think they're, they're definitely, um, related to one another. I think most often people, when they think about modesty, they think it goes with, with chastity and the catechism kind of sees that connection. But yeah, I think you're right to look at that.

I'm thinking of Lewis's line, that humility doesn't mean thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. And so when you're kind of not really thinking about yourself, you're just sort of dressing appropriately, not too excessive. And what's the opposite of excessive, I guess, if you just don't care about how you look. He talks about that. Yeah, he talks about that, right? Kind of like neglect. Yeah, neglect. You know.

I love this. Well, there's so much to say here. This is just brilliant. But this, again, I guess what you were saying about Aristotle's mean between the two extremes. So one is excess and one is neglect. And so I love this bit. Like he gives an example. First, through a man's neglect to give the requisite study or trouble to the use of outward apparel.

And then he says, wherefore the philosopher says it's a mark of effeminacy to let one's cloak trail on the ground to avoid the trouble of lifting it. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, yeah. And he'll kind of give that account, right? And I couldn't help but think of when Christ talks about, you know, don't be like, you know, the hypocrites when they fast, they don't wash their face and they don't comb their hair and they, you know, they look kind of grisly, but it's really what Aquinas sees there is like a kind of, it's a,

it's a kind of seeking glory and attention and ostentation because you look like such a mess, right? Like everyone knows in Lent that I'm fasting because I've, you know, haven't showered in two weeks. And he thinks that's a sin against modesty, right? A kind of neglect of one's appearance. And he quotes Augustine as saying that this can be even more dangerous because, to quote Augustine, it's a decoy under the guise of God's service. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. All right. And then, okay, so what else does he say here?

All right. So that's, I think that's pretty good. How do you think that maybe we've overemphasized modesty as it pertains to chastity, or maybe we've had to do that because of the culture in which we live. But when you hear chastity speakers, I guess that's usually who speaks about it today. Yeah, that's your game, Matt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. who speaks about it today. Yeah, that's your game, Matt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaks about like chastity and especially like in regards to women, which looks like we're not alone. Aquinas seems like he wants to do that to a degree as well. How do you think that we've maybe overemphasized

some bits that shouldn't be overemphasized or underemphasized some things? Yeah, I mean, I think what's first really, to answer the first part of your question, I think it's definitely the second. I think that it really does have to live answer the first part of your question, I think it's definitely the second. I think that it really does have to live with the cultural times, you know, post the sexual revolution that we live in. Like when Aquinas teaches traits of modesty, first and foremost, he's really not talking about women. Like the first article is really talking about, you know, observing kind of the custom of

the culture that you're in and the, you know, the law and what's kind of considered socially acceptable and not dressing too ornately and dressing in a way that fits your, you know, like your state in life. So, like, it would kind of be a sin against modesty if you're not really a, you know, a Navy admiral to be walking around as if you were and getting the kind of respect that's due, you know, a three-star admiral if you're not actually even in the Navy. So his first kind of considerations really don't pertain particularly to lust or chastity or anything like that. So it's not to the kind of the second article in the question. That's a really good point. Let's keep this in context. Yeah.

So not even Aquinas is making this all about women. He begins with, yeah. Like everyone is called to dress modestly. And again, it's all about kind of honesty. Um, so you're, you know, you're not dressing, it would kind of be obnoxious to, there's that great, um, Frank Sinatra song. That's why the lady is a tramp. I think Ella Fitzgerald did it too. Right. And it talks about, um, um, you know, she doesn't go to Harlem and ermines and pearls like that would be a modest. It would be obnoxious to show up in Harlem, you know, showing off how much money you make. Right. That's a really good I like that analogy. That's that's if you said to

someone what is immodest, I don't think too many people would say, well, it would be like going to a poor area, but showing off your wealth. But that's a good thing to keep in mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I do think, I do think oftentimes when people hear the word modesty, they immediately think of some kind of dress code. They've probably, um, especially if they're kind of in, um, uh, conservative Christian communities, whether it's, you know, Catholic, Orthodox Catholics or, or otherwise they immediately think about where you draw a hemline. And I think first and foremost, you really do want to bring it back to kind of that question of honesty. And so even then in question 169, when Thomas actually brings it up as it pertains to women, he readily admits like it is totally legitimate for a woman to seek

to please her husband. So it is not, you know, modesty has to do with like words and deeds. So it's not immodest for a married woman to want to dress attractively for her husband and to want to, you know, invite him, you know, again, appropriately. Yeah, to be found beautiful, to be found desirous. Yeah, yeah. In accord with the virtue of chastity, right? Chastity looks different for different states of life, right?

And so it's not immodest for a woman to dance for her husband in the bedroom, right? Right, yeah. That's all good. That's part of like the joy of married life. Right. But what's, what's not okay. Right. Is that he says the problems with women who are intending to provoke lust, this is, this is where we can get into the realm of mortal sin. So if you wake up in the morning and say, how can I make it really difficult for every married man on my commute to stay faithful in their thoughts to their wife? That's a pretty serious sin, right?

Yeah. Before we move on to the second article, because there's a lot to say there, I just want to go back real quick because I think this line is brilliant. Just modesty overall. He says, and this is so – what do you say? I really felt accused by this in a good sense. He says, no one seeks costly apparel as exceeds his estate, save for vainglory. So it's one thing, you know, if you are wealthy and are expected to dress a certain way with the people around you, but when you're seeking costly apparel, why are you doing that? It's maybe it's a vainglory. I'm trying to think of an example of my own life.

Like I remember I was going to give a talk in a university once and I tend not to dress up for these things. So I probably should. And so for that reason, I went and I bought, you know, something of a suit and it was pretty costly compared to what I'm used to buying. And so there was certainly some vainglory in there, I think. I wanted to be taken seriously. But I think also it was appropriate that I should look like someone who ought to be taken seriously since I was in a position of authority. Yeah, absolutely. But it's a really good point, though.

I mean, if you're looking around the store and you think, well, I want to get this suit or these type of sunglasses or this sort of whatever, the reason you're doing it is so that people notice it. Like if everyone else in the world was blind except you, uh, you know, you wouldn't be that interested in getting the most expensive jacket or pants or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, for Aquinas and you've talked about this before, like in the moral life and the ethical life, intention really matters a lot. It can be what changes a moral sin to a venial sin. And so, you know, kind of doing some self-examination, like, well, what is my intention here? So the college that I went to, actually, as a matter of fact, Thomas Aquinas

College, had a dress code. and you couldn't wear certain kind of informal things to mass, to liturgies on Sunday or adoration, things like that. And the reason given was because of the dignity of worship. And the classroom was the same way. So you couldn't, like, roll out of bed in pajamas and attend class. You were the way that you dress. And he, he, Thomas uses this. Um, I think it's in question one 68, the question prior to what we're on tonight, but he says modesty has to do with an outward sign of an inward disposition. So when I attend church and I'm wearing my Sunday best, um, I have to kind of do some self-examination. Am I doing it so that I can make the person in the pew next to me jealous, or am I doing it because I seek to convey and help edify others and awaken? We're human beings.

We know things through our senses. When I show up in an event and everyone's in a suit and tie and a dress, it signals to me that what we're doing has great dignity. I have a responsibility as part of a community when I give a lecture or when I attend mass, that my outward appearance is going to signify something. And so it would be immodest almost to not dress, like you were saying that, to not dress proportionally or moderately to the company I'm in or the kind of event I'm attending. Like I wouldn't wear cut-off jeans to meet the president, so what would it say if I'd wear cut-off jeans to meet the King of Kings, right? Yeah, good point.

I think for me growing up in Australia, that was never really emphasized. I think that has part to do with the culture or maybe just because there was a lack of awareness of the greatness of worship. And so I remember feeling really threatened when I came to Net Ministries in Canada. And every Sunday, everyone kind of did their best to look well. And I just kind of didn't really have a lot of great stuff to wear. I remember feeling, yeah, kind of stupid, kind of like, gosh, I don't know how to do this right. I don't know why I'm throwing that out there. That's me on the couch. There's no real point there. That was just, yeah. I don't know why I'm throwing that out there.

That's me on the couch. There's no real point there. That was just, yeah. All right. But the intention of your fellow netters wasn't like to make Matt feel insignificant or insufficient. Right. You know, because then they'd be in sin for seeking glory or, you know. But I think it's such a good point. And I think it's so great that Thomas Aquinas College instilled that in y'all, especially for those who didn't already have it instilled in them and so for us we try to do that but you

know what this is like i mean i got four kids it's uh just having shoes that fit is a is an achievement or that match map that match that match i went to sunday mass with a one and a half year old with two different shoes actually last sunday yeah it's a heroic feat yeah that can be a scary thing because you're trying to go to mass you want your kids to look well um but gosh anyway all right look let's let's move on to women um and i want to first state this and then let you share before aquinas has a bunch of stuff that a lot of people will take offense to and maybe there's elements in here that people ought to take offense to. It's not like Aquinas was infallible.

And being a Thomist doesn't mean everything Thomas Aquinas thought and taught we have to agree with. It's Christ and reality we have to agree with. The Aquinas seem to be in unison with reality a lot more than most of us. Anyway, so in the second article, he's actually responding to the question whether the adornment of women is devoid of mortal sin. And so before we get into the things that we might find offensive, it's important to realize that the whole point of this article, or one of the points, the main point, is that no, it's not. He's saying no, women can be adorned in a beautiful way and this doesn't constitute mortal sin so in the um said contra he says if it were true that the adornment of women uh always resulted in mortal sin then the makers of these means of of adornments would be sinning mortally

so it's almost like brown gucci yeah so it's almost like... Bobby Brown, Gucci. Yeah. So it's almost like saying, well, pornography is something that's intrinsically evil and to consume that is to commit mortal sin. So in that sense, yeah, so those who produce it and sell it are committing sin too in a different sense or in a similar sense. And so I like that.

So that's the first thing he's going to get across. So Aquinas is saying that a woman can adorn herself without committing mortal sin. Okay, go. Now the hard bit. Yeah, I mean, so it's interesting to look at the objections that he provides, right? So the first is, we're probably familiar with some of these things before, right? So St. Paul's letter to Timothy, he cites here 1 Peter 3, 3, where St. Paul talks about how women shouldn't be

plaiting their hair, which I take to be braiding or bedecked with gold or, you know, trinkets, things like this. And he cites like this is the contrary to the precept of the divine law. So the first is kind of an argument from authority. Scripture says you shouldn't do it, so you shouldn't do it, right? The second objection, which is one that I've kind of, when I've had kind of philosophical conversations with friends of mine about wearing makeup, I think this is kind of the most interesting one, at least for me, where he's bringing in Cyprian, and the argument is that it's inherently dishonest. It's inherently dishonest to make yourself look in a way that God actually didn't create you to create. And it's

actually, um, some kind of an assault on what God created or intended. Um, so he has this very kind of intense quote from Cyprian where he says that, you know, you want to just read it or yeah. Yeah. Um, I hold that, that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he said, did you want to read it? Go ahead. Oh, I don't. Yeah, sure. I hold that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you want to read it? Go ahead. Oh, I don't. Yeah, sure. I hold that not only virgins and widows, but also wives and all women, without exception,

without exception, should be admonished that no wise should they deface God's work and fabric, the clay that he has fashioned with the aid of yellow pigments, black powders or rouge, or by applying any dye that alters the natural features. And afterwards, he adds, they lay hands on God when they strive to reform what he has formed. This is an assault on the divine handiwork, a distortion of the truth. divine handiwork, a distortion of the truth. Thou shalt not be able to see God having no longer the eyes that God made, but those the devil has unmade. With him shalt thou burn on whose account thou art bedecked.

Yeah. That's no words there, Cyprian. I mean, St. Augustine. Holy smokes. I want to know what makeup looked like back in the day. Okay. First of all, now Aquinas might agree with that. I'm not sure not sure we haven't gotten to that yet but it's important to point out first of all that's that's an objection that aquinas is going to respond to i suspect he's going to be more favorable

of that than you and i would be but what what i wonder what makeup so when like aquinas and and augustine and others talk about painting their face how does that what does that look like like what did it look like back in the second, third, fourth century to put on makeup? Yeah. You know, I have no idea. I was having that same kind of question, question reading over this, like is, was it really that outrageous or was it more? And again, he takes this up in the, in the previous article in one, um, in 169, this kind of question of that modesty has to do with being, um, what obedient to is kind of a strong word, but, um, conscientious of the customs and law

at the time. So is it the kind of thing where, well, culturally the only women who were yellow pigment, black powder and rouge were hookers. Yeah, exactly. So then that's something, you know, if there's a kind of cultural thing there where it was's something, you know, if there's a kind of cultural thing there where it was just understood, you know, like, I guess, and I've been told maybe this is wrong that, um, women in France don't shave their legs unless they're hookers. Then if you're, you know, an American woman, you could be perceived as being a modest. If you shave your legs as most American women do, because it has a kind of cultural connotation that you're a, you're a prostitute, right? That's interesting. Yeah. So in the first article, when he's dealing with modesty in

general, this is just for those listening, one of the ways he says we can be immodest, he says a lack of moderation occurs, and here's the first way, in comparison with the customs of these among whom one lives. So if you kind of live out of harmony with the whole and so that's an interesting point i hadn't thought of that so maybe it was the case that the only people who were hmm i don't know yeah wearing rouge were there are yeah yeah gosh we're really we're really trying to pull aquinas out of this, aren't we? I know. Because really, let's say it was obnoxious, like the painting of one's face. Then surely that was less of a lie as it is today,

whereas today it almost looks... Makeup has come such a long way that it really does... Sometimes you can't even tell that someone's wearing makeup. So in a sense, it's more deceptive. Yeah. Okay, first of all, just give me a yes or no. Is it a sin to wear... Okay.

I know you're going to say... You're going to take it there already? You're going to say something about intention and it's going to get really complicated. But do you wear makeup? I do. Gosh, man. Augustine says women who dye their hair should dye it red

so that they cannot be reminded of the fires of hell to which they are destined how's that he does not say that he does when we read that at tse i'm pretty sure it's in city of god there's always a whole slew of women every year who dye their hair red for that so he he said say that again i'm not quoting it verbatim but he basically says that women who are intent on dying their hair should dye it red so that they can remind so it will be a reminder for themselves and others uh of the fires of hell and do you do you agree with that like is it wrong to dye one's hair well are we gonna get into that quick are we gonna well okay okay yeah let's let's let's let's

massage people let's because i want them to listen to the whole episode. All right, all right. We'll get there at the end, but I'm going to drop that on you later on. Okay, so, yeah, painting. All right. All right, so, okay. Now, here's the thing. So if it's okay for – now, okay. One of the things he says is – where he says it's essentially a lie, right?

Counterfeiting one's beauty. Yeah. is where he says it's essentially a lie right counterfeiting one's beauty yeah but then he says um and this is where is this in reply to objection two it is one thing to counterfeit a beauty one has not and another to hide a disfigurement arising from some cause such as sickness or the like now at this point wishing to save aquinas from sounding like a complete pig, which isn't what I necessarily think, but I think what a lot of people might think, like, you know, is, well, maybe age. Maybe age is a disfigurement. Yeah, I was thinking pimples. You know, when I use a little concealer to cover up a pimple, that's legit, right? Yeah, but that is legit, though, I think.

I think so. That's a disfigurement. But I don't think – I think if you said to Aquinas, do you mean age, he would say no because, again, his whole point is that makeup is deceptive because you should show the truth about yourself. Right. And the truth about yourself is you're a certain age. Yeah. So what do you think about that? Do you think that saying, well, age is like a deformity, disfigurement, and therefore makeup in that sense is okay? Or would you not take that approach?

Yeah, I mean, I think that – okay, so I do think the intention thing matters a whole lot there. I think that we do live in a culture that prizes women who look a certain way, And there can be a lot of cultural pressure on women to fit into that model. So if you're a 60 year old woman, you know, you should look the way 60 year old actresses do get all kinds of Botox and can look like they're 28, you know? Um, and so I think a lot of times you do have to do some kind of self-examination. Well, what is my intention here is my intention to look like I'm 28. So I can go out to a bar, even though I'm old enough to be a grandmother, or, um, is my intention to compliment the beauty that God has, has given me? I think there's something beautiful about a woman, you know, getting older and, you know, her laugh lines

so that she's laughed. And if you're, you know, a lot of times, um, when I I'm sure Cameron can identify with this, right. Especially when you have a new baby, um, you're not getting a lot of sleep. Um, and so there can be a real, uh, temptation to try to cover up or mask every, um, you know, baggy eyes that reveals that I haven't slept well because I'm nursing a newborn. Um, but at the same time, sometimes I really have to pause and be like, well, wait, what's my intention here? Like the reality is, is there's something beautiful about the fact that a woman is foregoing certain, um, you know, certain necessities or priorities that she would have for herself out of love. Yeah. Um, for another, um, I think you see this a lot with women who've had C-sections, right?

Where they, um, they want to have a dermatologist kind of get rid of these scars. And I think good women who are involved in obstetrics or midwifery will be like, no, those are your battle scars. Like you went through a lot to bring this baby into the world and you should be proud of that and don't be seduced into you know um you know getting plastic surgery because our culture says that a woman should have 1.2 children and her body should not reveal at all that she's given birth or has baby weight left or you know has scars from a c-section etc um and so i think sometimes you have to kind of like push the brakes and say well what is what is my intention here? Am I trying to conform to some kind of materialistic ideal of what every woman should look like? Or is it legitimate, right? Is this a legitimate way to dress up for a fancy occasion that bespeaks the dignity of the event I'm attending the same way I should, I wouldn't show up and cut off jeans. I'm going to put a little mascara on, not in a way that's so, um, like I've never gotten fake eyelashes, for example, like not in a way that's so, um, again, because modesty is all about this moderation. So I think that I'm answering

your question. I told you I wasn't going to answer to the end, but I think that ultimately there has to be a question of, am I so radically altering my body that those who know and love me wouldn't recognize me? Am I, or am I complimenting and kind of highlighting, um, in a way that's true to who I am and true to reality, what God gave me. So I think that most, you know, women who have a healthy sense of body image will say that they use makeup to draw attention to the beautiful features that God gave them. Um, and to maybe downplay things that they might be more, um, self-conscious about. So yeah,

if I have a pimple, I go ahead and cover it up with concealer, but honestly, I don't, and this is a personal preference, but I don't, I don't wear makeup every day. I'll usually put it on for, you know, more professional occasions or, um, a date out with my husband. And it signals to him that I've made myself beautiful for him, you know, that's good for our marriage. Um, and I think he also, we haven't quite gotten to the reply yet, but he takes into account like women who are trying to please their husband, or even if they're, they're wishful of marriage, like they're seeking a husband. I think it's not wrong for a woman who's dating or who's engaged

or who's hoping to go to a theology of the body talk that Matt Fradd's giving and hoping she's going to run into Mr. Right and Mr. Holy, that she's made her hair look pretty, you know? What about us? Okay, gosh, I'm so tempted to cross the line. I will definitely cross the line before this episode is over, but, um,

okay. So the other thing I think we should keep in mind is like, some people are going to hear this, probably not the listener of this listeners of this show, but if this was like, you know, public knowledge, you know,

Twitter made it the story of the day or something. People would say he was a patriarchal bastard or something. Yeah. Um, But as Christians, we shouldn't be too quick to dismiss Aquinas. I mean, it's also possible that our culture has gotten to such a point that things that we take like as being normal, maybe they're not. And maybe, maybe being a Christian means taking some radical positions. Like one of those radical positions is like, I don't let my children play on the internet or with technology. Like, why would I do that? That seems stupid to me. And I definitely judge parents who do. So, uh, I'm kind of being a little funny there, but I little bit, I am, I was at a sushi restaurant the other night with my wife and this family across from us, you know, kids like 12 years old. And the mom was, they were all

just on the phone the whole time. And I'm like, I bet that phone's not locked down. So that son's either looking at porn now or will be soon. Are you stupid? Like what is wrong with you? And, but if I was to say like, I don't let my kids use technology, that would seem absurd to her. Uh, even though I think I'm right. And I think, you know, in an analogous sense, like maybe we shouldn't be too quick to dismiss Aquinas here. Like maybe there's something here. even though it's yeah so it sounds like from what you've said it sounds like you're saying um yeah we have to kind of be i don't know if you'd say keeping conformity with the custom but at least not going beyond that to provoke lust or undo attention to oneself like that would be immodest yeah yeah but yeah you seem you seem to be saying like you're okay with makeup like makeup's okay yeah i think i am to a degree i

think though if i think though if you're the kind of person kind of going back to that first article if you're the kind of person who's like a slave to it and you're so attached to it like if if you travel and you make a bed got lost and you won't go out without it like that's a sign of an inordinate affection there right like and we can have inordinate affections about all kinds of things like i'm a nut about my books and if you if i lend you my book like tell us a story about how your kid grabbed your sumer and put that glue stuff on it. Oh, my gosh. Glitter mat. It's like if you weren't my own offspring, I would. Did they just grab the Sumer off the shelf instead of putting pink glue on it? I had it.

Okay. So speaking honestly here since we're talking about honesty, I had left it on the table, which was stupid of me, I will grant you, for about – you know how this works with kids. 0.23 seconds, right? I went into the kitchen to grab something for another one who was hungry, and I came back, and sure enough, like glitter glue was, yeah, right in the middle of the Tertia parse.

Thanks so much, three-year-old. Oh, in the middle, so it stuck the pages together. Well, she hadn't actually closed the book yet. Now, look, one day when people are praying to St. Emily of Sullivan and are going through your books with white gloves, this will be a beautiful thing. This will be a beautiful thing. It'll be a sign for the holiness of marriage and the intellectual life of wives. Okay, what do we do?

Okay, so look, here's an objection. So why the heck is he just talking about men when it comes to sexual stuff? Like, can't women be just as attracted by men? Now, I kind of want you to sexual stuff. Like, can't women be, like, just as attracted by men? Now, I kind of want you to say no. I kind of want you to say no. There's an obvious distinction, and it's completely ridiculous to think that women can be just as, like, sexually turned on in an immediate way as men are of women. But I don't know what you're going to say. Well, see, I mean, again, I want to defer to you because this is your bread and butter, right?

This is your stomping ground. I think up until this generation, high-speed internet and tube sites in particular hit the web in about 2006. Incidentally, it's around that time that we saw an increase in things like erectile dysfunction and sexual dysfunction. So this is when people are binging on porn and so the point of all this is to say when i speak on campuses i don't i i meet women who do not resonate with that old line that men are attractive through the eyes and women are through the ears they don't resonate with it and i've been tempted to kind of flip to the other side and say well therefore look women just as visual as men and is there i mean okay so you just wrote this huge book on this but is there neuroscience that kind of um gives an account of like women's brains changing i mean because my my impression was

always like playboy was a huge success and playgirl was like the biggest flop yeah like but i think when women see men in speedos most women i know at least when we see men in speedos on the beach we're like dear god like just yeah just imagining right now if i was like if i if i knocked on my wife's door i'm like i've got a surprise for you she's like oh oh god oh no no please right and so what's interesting um is that when i speak to women just anecdotally about what they get from porn, they all like unanimously, I'm sure there are other reasons, but this is what they tell me, that they identify with the female performer

and wish to be desired like she is desired. See, but even that, even that I think is indicative of, they're in it for the story. Like when Edith Stein or John Paul II, we'll talk about this idea of the feminine genius, right? The idea is that women are much more oriented to what's personal. And so if you want to get a woman, it seems to me at least, interested. Like women—and again, there may be a huge, because of the things you're citing, a huge difference now generationally.

But for the most part, women didn't want to look at nude pictures of men i think i and i think that's still they want to read romance novels they want it to success is something like 50 shades of gray like they want the story they're not in it for the visual nude picture so even that that story that you're talking about anecdotally that women are like i imagine myself in the story they're not in it because they want a close-up of a guy's package. I think they're in it for the story. That was brilliant. No, I think you're spot on. And I often say to people who say to me, no, this is ridiculous. Women are just as visual as men. I'm like, how many men that you know went out and bought Fifty Shades of Stupid? And you might say, well, it was written for women. Okay, well, how many men do you know are writing successful

novels in a similar genre? Well, none. Okay none okay well there's obviously something here and i think to just deny biology straight out because we're all supposed to be sexless widgets is not a good way to go so neuroscience doesn't seem to back it up like men and women's brains are different really yes our retinas are different and yeah whole makeup is different i my friend trent horn you familiar with trent he works at kathagans super great guy um he he was saying to his wife laura if i've got this story wrong trent will have to forgive me something the effect of you know when when uh when a waiter walks through a restaurant with a plate of beautiful chocolate cake and all the women immediately look at it, he's like, that's exactly what men experience when a good-looking woman walks past them. So I don't want to throw out biology.

I think I agree, and from my experience and from those human beings that I've met, when a woman can dress in such a way that can elicit a sort of lustful response in a way that a man usually can't. Do you agree with that or not? Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. And again, I think sometimes – so this is something that drives me crazy. When women are like, I should be able to wear whatever i damn well please i'm quoting someone there so i usually don't use that kind of language um but i should be able to wear whatever i want and if a guy has an issue with it that's his problem like no wait a minute like i am my brother's keeper i

have a responsibility to my brothers in christ to help them get to heaven like if i'm a woman yes who wants to be taken seriously for my intellect for my sense of human for my insight i don't want guys being distracted because my um you know my dress is like eight inches down the front and my cleavage is getting in the way of them realizing the brilliance of the astute to mystic point I'm making as a matter of like integrity. I don't want, like it's, it's, it's my, it's in my own best interest to dress modestly, but it's also as a matter of charity. Like I want men to be respectful and considerate. And I don't want to be an obstacle to a man who's married to him. I mean, I work with Dominicans. Like when I go to the Dominican

house of studies for work, I want to make sure that the way I'm dressing, this speaks my love for them and respect for their vocation. Amen. And analogously, suppose a man were to say to you after many of your women friends have complained to you that say, John is a flirt. And then John responded by saying, look, I should be able to say whatever I want to say. It's not my fault that they get attached to me when I tell them how beautiful they look and say all these sorts of things to them. It's like, well, you know, actually, like you should we should take biology into consideration and not doing that is an unshareable thing to do. So I think that's I think that's a good analogy that even if women wouldn't grant your point, I think many women and I think they should. But I think that they should understand my point.

Because I think anyone would be like, no, that's ridiculous. You know what you're doing, and you shouldn't do that. Yes. Yeah. I think that's a great analogy. So the college that I went to is just so wonderful, but it's kind of an anomaly, right? So chastity really is. People are, for the most part, striving for chastity.

So, um, chastity really is good. People are for the most part striving for chastity. But my husband and I, before we were dating, had this running joke about emotional at TSA, emotional friends with benefits. It's kind of like friends with benefits in the real world, except there's no like sexual action going on. It's just that they, they want from each other the same kind of emotional commitment. That's really only appropriate to a dating relationship without the commitment. I totally did that throughout my teenage years. I had like a few friends that were girls it was

just it was awful it was totally like that i didn't know how to be friends with men unless i was like drinking so i would just get intimate with these girls and yeah i think it's the same kind of i think that's a perfect analogy matt and because it is i think that men and women are are different in some real way it's not to say not equal in dignity but we're compliment there's a complementarity going on but the same way that a woman can um mislead a man the way she's dressing a man can mislead a woman about his intentions based on the way he treats her you know and and as a matter of charity we owe it to one another to be honest with each other um yeah yeah i, I think that's a great analogy, Matt. Let's talk about plastic surgery and boob jobs.

So now plastic surgery isn't the right word, though, because I think plastic surgery, people can think if you had a particular, say you were burnt or something and you needed plastic surgery, too. That's obviously different, like getting your lips done or getting a boob job. Cosmetic surgery, is that what it's called? Yeah, I think that's an important distinction. Um, I want you, I want you, I want you to make an argument for why, if you think this is true, getting a boob, getting a boob job is wrong. Okay. So I think that it's important to remember that Thomas is an Aristotelian on this and the Catholic churches for the, you know,

across the board, right? We believe that we're body and soul, um, intimately united. And we think that our body has such a dignity that eventually, right. With the resurrection of the body, I'm going to have it back again. That's, this is a very radical idea. Um, after Descartes, right. I'm sure you talked about this, right. With this idea of Cartesian dualism, the idea is that who I really am is my mind or my consciousness. And my body is kind of just a tool and I can use it, you know, however I want. Um, but that has real ramifications in, in all different kinds of spheres of our life, but most obviously in the, um, in the sexual sphere, like basically, um, I can predict like nine times out of a hundred where you stand on questions of abortion contraception gay marriage premarital

sex cohabitation by simply asking you this one question is who you are your body and soul intimately united or is who you are really your mind your consciousness and your body is a tool that you can use because that principle that philosophy of the human person will radically dictate where you stand on all of those issues so the church is with aristotle on this we're body and soul intimately you know our bodies are this is the beauty of john paul's theology the body right our bodies also are made in the image and likeness of God. They have this incredible dignity. And my body, the same way we talk about body language, my body conveys things about my

soul. When I'm frustrated, my face expresses that to my children. When I'm bored, my face will express that, right? When I shake your hand, I'm saying something through my actions. When I make love to my husband, I'm saying what I said in my wedding vows with my body. So if you think that your body and soul are really united, then I'm going to have real – and you may have talked about this too. In my mind at least, the way that you refute Cartesian dualism very quickly is you take it to rape and adultery. When somebody is raped, nobody says, well, shucks, no big deal.

He just violated my body. Do you know what is super, super, super horrifying? I don't mean to cut you off. But some official in England just – she's pushing for people to have lesser sentences who rape. And she, and she used this very insulting line. She said, it's essentially just bad sex. And that's all it is. Yeah. Like it's like women aren't usually that hurt by it. They're not like, and that goes right back to what you were saying that it's like, this woman clearly thinks of herself as a mind in a machine. Yes. Yes. He like broke into my car without my permission, right?

Of course not. Nobody who's the victim of rape or sexual abuse speaks that way. They say this, he violated my person. This was a radical, radical assault on my personhood. And it's the same with adultery, right? The wife doesn't say, yeah, youles lent uh his his hammer down the street to melger without talking to me about it first i'm really upset nobody who hears about a man cheating on his wife says well no big deal it's just like he lent her the saw from his tool shed

everyone recognizes no this is a profound violation of marriage because sex says something about your body suddenly that no one's a Cartesian dualist when you bring up rape and adultery. Everyone is with Aristotle and Aquinas in the Catholic Church. We're a hylomorphic composite, and sex has meaning, right? I love the line from J. Budziszewski in his small book, The Meaning of Sex. He says, if I am not my body and you aren't yours, then it would follow that when i kiss my daughter good night i'm not actually kissing my daughter good night i'm merely manipulating the husk that is not me and pressing it against the husk that is not her and that's stupid like we all recognize that

stupid right like like speech follows thought and if someone slaps you you don't say why did you slap my body? Yeah. Yes. Yes. All right. So we're body and soul. So what's that got to do with boob jobs? Okay. I'm getting there. I'm getting there.

I promise. Okay. So what that means is that what I do to my body has tremendous import and eternal consequences because I'm going to get this body back at some point. And this starts to touch on all kinds of issues, especially with the transgender issues, the idea of putting children on hormone inhibitors so that they don't naturally go through puberty as girls, the idea of having a sex change. The Catholic Church is not good with any of that because you're mutilating your body. What you're doing is you're harming the integrity, the biological integrity of the

human body. So mutilation, right, it's just kind of simply defined as like a violent assault on the body. So if you need to be, so it's one thing, I think we made this distinction before, it's one thing if you have breast cancer, right, and your breasts are removed, and then there's reconstructive plastic surgery done, that I think is morally legitimate. And I think really good Catholic ethicists agree with me on that, or more like I'm agreeing with them. But because what you're doing is it's restorative, right? If a man is in a, um, a burning house and he has these terrible third degree burns and there has to be skin. I understand Mel Gibson went through something like this where he was like basically jumped

by a gang and they had really intense, you know, cosmetic surgery to rebuild his face. Children born with cleft lips, you know, and things like that. That's all restorative. It's to, you know, babies, if they're born with a tail, we'd go ahead and remove that. That's all restorative. It's to, you know, babies, if they're born with a tail, we go ahead and remove that. Um, because we're returning to what, you know, what clearly is, is healthy. Um, and, and what we can rationally see is, um, the end of the human body. I think that when you start, um, doing what I would call invasive procedures to radically alter, not in a restorative way, but to radically alter your body. I mean, it's hard to not see that. It's hard to see that that's not mutilation and it's not motivated by a kind of pride. Like I'm a woman, quite frankly, who is

only moderately endowed if I'm nursing, but I think there'd be something really radically dysfunctional or disordered, um, to, to want to have a surgeon for no, there's nothing wrong with my body. I'm a perfectly healthy individual, but to have, to go under general anesthetics, to check myself into a hospital, to have someone with a knife, like cut me open and put in all kinds of foreign objects into my body um that just seems inherently i mean um disordered um and again it's hard for me to see that it isn't again with the kindness it always comes back to intention part of the ethical schema is what is your intention it's hard for me to see when you get a boob job that it's not about vanity um so what about um like a hair pit like you're getting

plugs no i guess plugs don't happen anymore but like it seems like with all this advertising people can actually like regrow their hair i don't know if that's true yeah so um would you say well that's sort of the same thing like it's a restorative thing like this is disfigurement like aquinas would talk about and so in that sense it's okay? Or would you put that on the same level? Because, again, someone might say, well, I would like to get a, quote-unquote, boob job, which is a crass way of putting it, but they would say not in order to have bigger breasts than I did before, but because, hey, I've had a few kids, and I want them to look like they did when I was 20 again.

But the same argument is said of the person who's trying to regrow his, uh, his widow's peak. Like my, I have like, so, um, what do you, what would you say to that person? Yeah. I mean, I think that when you think about, well, what's considered restorative, you have to think about, well, what's appropriate to the season of life you're in. Like, it's not appropriate for, it's not typical for a 55-year-old woman to have the kind of, I don't know, perky chest she might have had. Gosh, we're getting crass tonight, Matt. Yeah, perky chest was the best way, though,

you could have put it. The perky chest that she had as a buxom 18-year-old, you know? Like, that's just part and parcel of being 55. It's part and parcel of being 55.'s part and parcel of being 55 i'm trying to use the strongest analogy what about a 30 year old i'm trying to i'm trying to make the strongest case it is for now my wife and i i agree with her and um like for me if without looking at anything that thomas said i just thought well look it's it seems both vain and wasteful but then i

but then i thought there's all sorts of things we do to our face like we shave it or we comb it or we do all sorts of things that require money and that we do because it they it looks good and we we we feel better about ourselves when we look good um my wife brought up a great point she just she's wonderful she's like it's just so sad that's how she put it with like genuine pity not in a condescending way but just like especially for a mother who has children what is that teaching one's children about what's important you know yes yeah yeah like i i guess i could get a boob job in theory but i don't know how i'd pay for catholic education for my kids that you know what i mean it's like what are your priorities like well suppose you have uh you have a lot of money suppose you have a lot of money, though. You have a lot of money. Yeah.

Suppose you do, I mean. Yeah, even then, it's like there's children starving in Africa. You don't have a better place to... But there are other things we would say are okay to do with your body that require money, like constant haircuts. You could say, well, just cut your own hair, for goodness sake. That'll save money. Yeah, but it's not mutilation just cut your own hair for goodness sake. That'll save money. Yeah, but it's not mutilation.

I think I would go back to that. Mutilation. Now, the way I understand mutilation is that it thwarts like the primary act or one of the primary acts or the function of a member or something like that. That's healthy. That's healthy so i mean that's healthy so circumcision isn't mutilation because it doesn't it doesn't sort of thwart the end of the penis you know it does it does of the woman uh one of the ends and so for that reason we call that mutilation but if i were

to like get a get a get my what do you say my not my tubes chipped vasectomy see i'm such a catholic i don't even know what it's called okay like. Like if I was going to vasectomy, that does kind of destroy the end. Yeah, no, and I agree, but there's the distinction. One kind of destroys the end,

but like when you get a boob job, like that, how is that mutilation? You're just, you're just kind of bringing them back to the way they were, aren't you? Well, you're okay.

So part of, I think at least as I understand, part of the definition of mutilation is that you're violently assaulting a healthy member. So if your breasts are healthy, and again, like we're taking out the occasion where the woman's had breast cancer, she's had her breasts removed, and it's kind of a reconstructive surgery thing. But if your breasts are healthy, then why are you chopping at them? Now, the same thing can be said about circumcision. In circumcision, you're violently assaulting a healthy member, aren't you? So should we say the same thing about circumcision?

Yeah. So there's, I mean, there's some Catholic bioethicists who think it is mutilation, who think it falls into that category. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember going to a really, if I don't know if you're familiar, I'm at with the, um, the national Catholic bioethics center. Um, it's here in Philadelphia. I'm in Philadelphia for people who don't know. Um, but it's really fun. Father Ted

Holchick. Is he the one of the guys? Yeah. Yeah. He's at the NCBC. It's fantastic. And, and all of your listeners should know this. It was incredibly helpful to my husband and I, we had an ectopic pregnancy between our first and second daughter but they have like a hotline and so many if you're a Catholic and you take your if you're a thinking Christian who thinks bioethics is important they have a hotline that is 24 hours

and you can call up you know if your mother's dying and you're not sure what constitutes extraordinary means you can call them up and say we're in this kind of ethical dilemma. What do we do? Yeah, that's interesting. I am actually very open to the argument that circumcision is finally assaulting a healthy member. Yeah, a healthy functioning member.

I'm sorry. Neither of – well, I won't get into that because I don't want to go at my kids online. Anyway, sorry, really quick though. Where I was going with this was – Sure. So I remember being at a great talk by John Haas, who's the head of the NCBC, and he was talking about Catholic hospitals. It was a lecture on Catholic hospitals and Catholic identity. And he basically said, look, Catholic hospitals aren't asking for that much.

We want to make sure that the – this was in the midst of the HHS mandate stuff, right? He said it's very simple. When you come to a Catholic hospital, we don't want to to kill you we don't want to kill your unborn baby uh we don't want to treat a healthy working system like it's diseased i.e contraception like a woman's fertility is a disease that has to be medicated away and we don't want to mutilate your body like if god gave you a penis we don't want to chop it off um it just seems like that's such basic principles about bodily integrity and what we mean by health, right? We're not going to put you on artificial hormones when your body is working exactly the way God made it to work intricately.

What about a, you might have had more points there, I just cut you off. No, no, that's okay. What about a breast reduction then? Because I've met, I knew of a woman who had very large breasts and she had back aches and so for that reason got a breast reduction yeah i think that's that seems more prudent or in accord with moderation to me um if you because you're violently assaulting a healthy member but that healthy member is causing you physical pain that's becoming you becoming difficult to live with or something. Yeah, right. I'm trying to think of an analogy.

I mean I think that we can think of other – Yeah. Like people who are very tall sometimes, sometimes it puts like a strain on their bones and there are things that I think that can be done um because of that because it's too um yeah i mean i think in in the so right when aristotle talks about nature it's always or for the most part and we can usually just common sense recognize like what's an um what's an anomaly right a siamese twins are an anomaly a child being born with the tails an anomaly a woman whose breasts are so big that she literally is having excruciating back pain because of the weight of these breasts i think all of us realize

like no that's that's kind of an anomaly and the human structure spine isn't equipped to deal with that kind of structure and there's something that can be done to alleviate this woman's pain i think that's i think that's proportionate i think that's reasonable um good it doesn't seem like it's motivated by vanity yeah yeah i i completely agree um good okay so food jobs not cool makeup kind of cool fake eyelashes intention with the right intention and in moderation right if i'm someone who's spent again like if i'm someone where what do you think of the idea that um makeup mimics sexual arousal and even though when women kind of put on rouge and lipstick they're not doing it for that reason but this idea that that that is what they're doing whether they know it or not yeah i mean i think that there's i think again you probably know way more about this than i do i I do not at all. I heard Jordan Peterson talk about it and he was slammed

and I just thought I'd bring it up. There you go. If we can be as controversial as Jordan Peterson, I mean, your podcast is going to be through the roof. Let's make sure that happens, right? I mean, so it's not an idea that I'm particularly familiar with. It doesn't seem illogical, right? It seems like, right like Aristotle's account of human nature is that we're rational animals. And so we have something in common with the rest of mammals in creation. species attractiveness, whether it's a bird's plumage or how a female smells at certain parts of the month, is ordered towards copulation so that you have survival of the species and that there's more little lion cubs and more peacocks, right? So it's not completely shocking that human beings would also, whether it'sly or um as you've uh you know

just brought it up kind of maybe they maybe they do know it um it's not it's not shocking that we would find that men would find women attractive who look like they're fertile essentially yeah yeah which is what i i just have this like pessimistic way of thinking of it like that's essentially what makeup's trying to do especially as as you're getting older. It's like, I need to look fertile again because fertile means beautiful. I just offended all of my 40 year old listeners. Yeah. But I think it's, I think in the culture that we live in, it's good to be reminded of that, right? That first, even on some kind of, you know, natural instinct level, fertile women are attractive. Here we are, we're putting

tons of women are putting themselves on the pill which, you know, there's all these great studies about how women really authentically smell different to men like the level of their pheromones and stuff when they're on the pill, right?

So women are not, there have been some really wild studies that have suggested that when, um, men and women start dating when she's on the pill and then if she gets off of it, they can suddenly find themselves no longer attracted to each other. Um, yeah, there's, I'll send you a, I'll send you this particular article. It was in scientific America. I mean, legit, right. It was in scientific America. It was a study, I think out of the Netherlands that basically said, you know, it was posing the question, like, is the high rate of divorce, does it have something to do with the fact that we date and mate while women are on these really altering hormones? And then when they get off of it, it's like a whole different person to some extent, at least on the level of instinct. But maybe it's just good to remind, remind the

culture we live in, like, no, fertile women are attractive. We're, we're meant to be attracted to one another because we can bring new life into the world. And isn't that wondrous and incredible and amazing. And, um, that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Hey, wrapping up what advice, let's just close with this. What advice would you have to women who have listened to this episode and find themselves very defensive and very kind of cynical? And again, we're not saying they have to agree with everything Thomas says, right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, most of it. No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah. So what would you say to that woman listening? Yeah. I think that, what to say? I think we live in a culture that loves to tell women all the time what they should be like. And so it can be, it can sound like, oh, good, here's just one other man who's going to tell me what I should be like. But actually, I think that Aquinas' account, for the most part, is actually very freeing. Because I think that we live in a culture

that tells women you always have to look like you're 25 right that you can't leave the house without makeup that your brush should look the way you did when you're 25 and you shouldn't have any wrinkles and you shouldn't have any baby weight left over from your pregnancies um i like that look at this is a liberating thing i think it's something actually very liberating to realize like well i want my outward signs the way i conduct myself again modesty isn't just about like women wearing the right kind of clothes that cover their needs or something silly like that like it's a dress code it's mostly about my behavior it's about how i comport myself and that that goes for men and

women. So one of the things he'll talk about, right, is that we shouldn't, this is in the catechism especially, that the way we behave has a kind of respect for the dignity of the human person. So the kind of jokes I make with my husband, I don't make with other men, right? There's an appropriateness to kind of vulnerability or intimate things that we can joke about or converse about that I would never, it would be a modest to talk about this with anyone else, even on, you know, Cam's awesome among the lilies, intimate details of marital intimacy, like I would, right, that would be a modest, it would be inappropriate, right? So, I want want my I think every woman at the heart of it.

Right. Wants to be loved for who she truly is. If she's worried that her boyfriend, once they get married, you know, the Tuesday after the honeymoon, she comes to the breakfast table without her face made up that he'll leave her. the honeymoon, she comes to the breakfast table without her face made up that he'll leave her. That's a terrible way to go through life, right? Or that she can't be loved by her husband as a, you know, 58-year-old woman who's about to have her first grandchild because she doesn't look the way she looked when they were dating. Like, that would all be really sad, right? So, modesty, again, is about my outward experience, my outward disposition, my outward behavior, my outward dress, my outward comportment, matching in honesty and integrity and reality, the truth of my soul. And, and so I think, again, it's really liberating to be able to step back and be like, okay, well, what is my intention here, when I wear this dress dress or when I, you know, go to Sephora

and spend $200 on makeup? Like maybe this is an opportunity to examine, have I put my merit, my, you know, sense of dignity or my worthiness of love and how I look and maybe Aquinas, you know, is an occasion to ask those kind of tough questions. I have friends who have given up wearing makeup for Lent, and some friends who really love wearing makeup, right? But they've said it's often very freeing, it's very liberating to realize, like, oh, I'm still appreciated and enjoyed, and men will still talk to me at a bar even even if I didn't put on, spend 20 minutes

on my makeup before I, um, went out, you know? Yeah. That's really great advice. And I love how you put that into a positive way. Yeah. It's like, this can free you to be honest with yourself and with other people and that can only be a beautiful thing. So yeah. I got to close with this. This is something I've said in the past, which has got a lot of people offended, but I think it's a pretty good thing. I said it in relation to Halloween. I basically said women, like if, if you were going out as a prostitute tonight, you know what I mean?

Like if that's who you were dressing up as, right? Or put it differently. How differently would you have to dress if you wanted people to think you were a prostitute? And if the answer is not very, then go and change. Yeah. That's change. Yeah. That's great.

Yeah. Because I do think a lot of what Aquinas is talking about with the makeup and stuff, as I was kind of reading over it a little bit as you were talking there, he seems to be, in certain places, it sounds like he is talking about prostitutes of the day and those sorts of things. But I think that is an interesting way to put it, right? Yeah. way to put it right like because it's like a lot of people like especially with the influence of pornography i think a lot of women are trying to look like the next amateur to put it crassly you know which is just a super sad way to live yeah and because you know then people miss out on the opportunity to really know and love you i think matt i think i got this line from you that quote about how it's not that pornography reveals too much it's that reveals too little like roger

scruton will say you know no one looks at porn and thinks, oh, I wonder if she prefers Marlowe to Chostakovich, right? Right, yeah. There's this total, there's no invitation to know you as a person, to know your interests, your talents, your curiosities, you know, your life experiences. I'm in it for one thing, and it's mostly just to get off. and it's mostly just to get off. And so I think that question of Aquinas in the article of, is my intention to provoke lust or is my intention to invite a man to get to know my whole person and enjoy the way that I reflect the image and likeness of God, not just in how I look, but in my, you know, you know, like you think of something like Botticelli, right? The birth of Venus. It's this invitation to, you know, it's objectively, there's a lot of nudity in that painting, right? But there's

nothing, it's very clear. Yeah, it's very clear that Botticelli has not painted in such a way to arouse lust. He's painted in such a way that invites you to contemplation of the beauty of a woman's body. That's radically different. So a woman can, I think, dress in a way that invites a man to appreciate and contemplate her beauty, you know? I don't think it means if you have a well-endowed chest, you know, always wearing over-baggy sweaters so as to never, like even when the Blessed Mother appears, it seems like a Fatima in Lourdes, she has a rope around her waist, and that would accentuate the fact that you have hips, right? She's a woman who was born a child. So there's nothing wrong with, again, I think it's a real difference in intention. Am I inviting someone to lust after my body,

or am I inviting someone to contemplate the goodness that God created there? I love seeing women who are pregnant in swimsuits that reveal their bellies. I'm all about just think it's so beautiful to, when you see a pregnant woman, you know, in the old days, women would dress in such a way when they were expecting that you wouldn't know that the woman had been inseminated. Right. What a scandal. But I think it's so beautiful. I love seeing pregnant women and being able to tell them like, Hey, congratulations. Like you're growing a life. It's awesome. You know? Um, that's awesome. Yeah um that's awesome yeah that's great i've learned a lot from this episode actually i'm not just saying that to round out the episode nicely i really have so i appreciate your wisdom yeah it was thank you so much are you finished with your

bourbon i am done with my bourbon are you done with your vodka blood orange drink i am i am ready to call it a night thank you so much for this this is great fun matt yeah it's been a pleasure i hope that you'll survive the next eight or so days without your husband thanks yeah offer some memorabilia for that as we always say 100 survival rate as long as you come back and they're all alive and they've been mostly fed we're good all right that does it for this week thank you so much for tuning into pines with aquinas um hey i forgot to mention this at the start of the show but but I'll mention it now. If you're a Patreon, if you're a patron, you get free shipping on this cool Pines with Aquinas merch. So be sure to go check that out in Patreon.

I gave you the secret link so you can get free shipping, by the way. What else? What else? What else? What else? Please review us on iTunes if you would, if you like the show. And yes, that's pretty much all I got. Oh, let me tell you about the next couple of weeks, what you should expect, because I've got some cool episodes coming up. That's me rooting around in my drawer here, because I've got something I want to tell you. So I'm interviewing this like PhD from Cornell University who studies space exploration. Like it's pretty impressive. That'll be coming up soon. And we're going to talk about

alien life and what Aquinas had to say about aliens on other planets. He didn't say much about that, but he did talk about Christ being able to reincarnate himself. And so what that might mean if there are extraterrestrial life. That'll be a real fun episode. I'm also going to be interviewing a Dominican priest about was there an original Adam and Eve? Fascinating, brilliant discussion, which I barely kept up just trying to go back and forth with this guy. And I've also interviewed another person about the hiddenness of God and whether or not that's a good argument against God's existence. So a lot of great stuff coming up. And so I can't wait to share it with you.

Have a great week. Bye. Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? And I would give my whole life To carry you, to carry you. And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you.