While I was in the line at the grocery store recently, I happened to glance over at the magazine rack when I noticed the recent copy of Cosmopolitan Magazine.  The model on the cover looked young, and in fact, she did not look old enough to be on the cover.  It was Dakota Fanning, who is only 17 years of age, and the headings around the cover provided the usual standard of sex advice.

I was disgusted by this display.   I turned around only to see a little girl pick up a copy of the magazine only to run back to her mother and say how pretty the model was.  The mother of the girl also looked disgusted by the magazine and told the little girl to put back the magazine.

Fox News has focused on this recently, and they were shocked by this recent image as well.  In fact, Rachelle Friberg, a media expert who was interviewed by Fox, said:

Cosmopolitan is going overboard by putting an underage girl on its cover surrounded by such article titles. It is one thing to educate young women about sex and their bodies, but putting a young, underage girl on the cover of a magazine that had long been known to push the limits is sending the wrong message.

Cosmopolitan, of course, defended its decision to have Fanning as the magazine’s cover model.  Of course, their decision generated controversy, and there is no doubt that teenagers, who are fans of Fanning are lining up to buy the issue and being exposed to Cosmopolitan’s agenda of promoting immodest behaviors and promiscuity.

Today, I was glad to read that a former model is calling out Cosmopolitan for its practices and is calling for the magazine to be marketed as an adult-only publication, which would require the magazine to be sold in packaging that would not show the cover.  Nicole Weider is leading this effort and has a petition urging the FTC to help protect our youth from vulgarity.  The petition has almost 21,000 signatures, and there is no doubt that will garner more signatures from those who agree the magazine has gone too far.

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Exposing one’s undergarments traditionally has been viewed as poor form, at best, and more often than not, just plain immodest.

While it’s true there is no accounting for taste (polyester leisure suits for men and gigantic shoulder pads for women are among happily-jettisoned fashions), subjecting one’s fellows to the sight of one’s underpants is, quite literally, too much.  Thus, the town of Albany, Georgia has instituted a ban on “anyone from wearing pants or skirts more than three inches below the top of the hips, exposing the skin or undergarments. First-time offenders face a $25 fine. On further offenses, the fine can rise to $200.”

As a conservative, I dislike the idea of government taking upon itself the right to measure pant length or hip exposure.  Yet such intrusions are inevitable if people lack the common sense – and common decency – to dress with at least some semblance of normality and decorum.  People only stand for so much before they call for legal fences to protect them against bad neighbors.

That should serve as a broader warning for a society enmeshed in narcissism, immorality, and the general abandonment of truth.  Moral erosion leads to anarchy.  Anarchy threatens lives, which results in a popular call for the restoration of order.  And, thus, fascism emerges in the guise of strident leadership proclaiming “bread and peace” (Bolshevism) or “one people, one empire, one leader” (Nazism) or “socialism builds and capitalism destroys” (Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez).

In his book Twelve Types, G.K. Chesterton wrote that “politeness … is everywhere understood and nowhere defined.”  Such definition really is unnecessary, since the rites of courtesy are only the formalization of intuitive conscience, of the moral stirrings that cause us to help an elderly woman up a staircase or open a door for a mother with a stroller.  Or keep one’s pants pulled up over his briefs.

Our Founders argued that if we lack self-restraint and basic virtue, we were unfit for self-government.  “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt,” wrote Samuel Adams.  In the era of such diverse but somehow connected phenomena as Lady Gaga, eroticized childhood, abortion on demand, and bizarre cosmetic surgery, is such universal corruption far behind?  Only if Christians are willing to stand against it, and work to restore a society where honor, courage, kindness, and enterprise are fostered and not demeaned.

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