Technology

The Bible stopped being a real guide for American Christians the moment they landed on our coast

I read once that it had more to do with not seeing wealthy women's nipples. For example wealthy women would hire a wet nurse to breast feed their babies. It was a way to show off wealth and social standing. So the hired help in the form of a wet nurse could show her breasts, but her wealthy employer would not because its beneath her.

So not showing breasts, even for the purpose of breast feeding became affiliated with wealth and power, whereas the inverse was true, showing breasts meant you could not afford to keep them covered.

And that's not even including the influence of brothels and prostitution.

Let that cook for however many hundreds of years, mix in religion and you get whatever the fuck we have now.

It was an interesting theory and seemed to make sense to me. I'll have to try to find the article later. I read it maybe 10 years ago so it might take some looking.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:

The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject. Teaching modesty to children and adolescents means awakening in them respect for the human person." (C.C.C. # 2524)

People here are not serious, they repeat slogans and polemics very superficially. The nipple taboo is found across pre-Christian and non-Abrahamic societies, probably because of breasts' association with fertility. I.e

When did bare breasts become taboo in Western civilization?

Probably around 3,000 years ago. Women are displayed with exposed breasts in Minoan artwork from 1500 B.C. Some historians believe that these ancient women went topless only during religious rituals—bare-breasted, buxom goddesses have been worshipped since the dawn of civilization—but some of the artworks depict everyday activities, suggesting that bare breasts may have been commonplace. Just across the Mediterranean, ancient Egyptian women sported elaborate dresses that could either cover the breasts or leave them exposed, depending on the whim of the designer. Over the next few centuries, however, breasts become strictly private parts. Ancient Athenian women were wearing flowing, multilayered robes that concealed the shape of the bosom by the middle of the first millennium B.C. Spartan attire was more risqué, exposing the female thigh, but breasts were always covered.