“Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes.”
Thus saith Proverbs 6.
According to a sweeping application of the “weaker brother” principle....women should cover their eyes, because enticing with the eyes will cause men to sin. Especially (!) if that is all that she has left to show.
Obviously the weaker brother principle is applicable and it is Biblical and we can’t ignore it. But I think there is a point when church leadership can appropriately tell Christian men to grow up and to quit being the weaker brother (which might mean, quit lusting after women who allow some curves to be discerned, for example).
I do think that the main purveyors of modesty culture (Gothard and Doug Phillips) have learned over time to treat women as objects, and it appears that at least these two “conservative Christian leaders” acted out on their implicit beliefs that women are basically objects for men to rule over and dominate. I think they would be better off in Islam.
The weaker brethren principal is so misunderstood. The weaker brother is not the person with standards, it’s the new Christian who just got saved from the world. The people with standards are the ones who get the weaker brother principal. The mature Christians who ignore standards are guilty of causing “the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died”. That’s a serious charge. God is not suppress your liberty so those fuddy duddy holiness kooks don’t get offended. He’s saying, be like those fuddy duddies so new Christians don’t get offended.