The school day at my private Christian high school began with Chapel. One morning, as usual, my classmate Caroline was in attendance. She was tall and slender, her pretty face accented by her blond hair. She stood out on that morning. Unlike the other girls in their long skirts, Caroline presented herself in a short plaid skirt with black stockings. Her breasts were outlined by her tight black sweater.

Caroline had taken my thoughts captive.

“When your eyes bounce toward a woman, they must bounce away immediately. . .”

But my eyes kept bouncing back to Caroline’s breasts.

Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control .

1 Timothy 2:9

I recall that for girls in the purity culture, a frequently heard refrain was “Modest Is Hottest!” “Modest dress was seen as an expression of, and way of preserving, purity of thought and mind,” Sarah McCammon writes in The Exvangelicals. They were admonished to avoid provocative fashions unbecoming of a young believer. “A modest girl covers her breasts and chooses not to wear the short skirt that might cause boys to lust,” says one Lutheran website. Joshua Harris wrote to young women in I Kissed Dating Goodbye, “Your job is to keep your brothers from being led astray….You can help by refusing to wear clothing designed to attract attention to your body.”

The message I imbued was twofold:

1. The female body is a source of temptation.
2. A girl’s virtue is commensurate with the length of her skirt.

One of the first girls to express an interest in me was Nicole. Like the other girls at my Christian high school, she dressed modestly. Unlike the girls at the public high school, there was no hint of cleavage, a bare midriff, or tight jeans. But there was no hiding Nicole’s bosom.

Nicole was stacked.

I was too shy to reciprocate her interest, but the sight of her chest certainly induced lust. As much as I tried to resist, the interplay between Nicole’s chaste exterior and the treasures which lay beneath formed an erotic template. Temptation came in the form of what was not seen. (During my fling with the Deaconess, one of the big turn-ons was knowing that under her demure skirt was a pair of sexy panties from Victoria’s Secret.)