My 2 cents

The moment to jump into the conversation about the immorality of pants has come and gone, but can I still add a p.s. to the discussion? I know I can’t come close to being as funny as Mrs. Fischer or the Darwins or my sister, but I keep replaying the argument (and I guess Mrs. F did too, because she wrote 3 entries...). So now I want to say something even though while I was busy doing other things everyone else got over it.


When I first encountered the pants vs. skirts debate several years ago, I knew you weren’t supposed to wear shorts to churches in Rome, or clothes that revealed your underwear, and on Sundays you tried to dress your best, but who thought about clothes as a moral issue? My mother let us wear tube tops and tube socks. I ran around in short shorts and singlets in high school and college because that’s what runners wear, like swimmers wear swimsuits and ballerinas wear leotards.


Although for a short time I was into wearing clothes as an identity statement, I was never as fashion conscious as my sister Betty.  I had to be reminded to brush my hair and at least to try to match my shirts and socks. And I needed help with my makeup. But I did join my sister in pouring over Vogue magazine, mostly looking for good models to draw rather than clothes to wear. I don’t remember being shocked by it; it was Seventeen magazine that was scandalous for its tutorials on French kissing and how to get the boy from math class to notice you.

Last spring when my mom and sister came to visit, they toted recent issue of Vogue; I took my turn browsing it, too. When my mom held up a photo of two lightly clad femmes on the beach with their arms draping over each other, she held it up and said “Isn’t this awful?” but I had seen the same photo and thought, “Oh, look, looks like me and Betty almost!”

But back to the story: a few years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Dressing With Dignity. The author, Colleen Hammond, makes a powerful argument for skirts, but all I could think was, “She’s from TEXAS! She never has to wear panty hose or tights!” I had recently moved from the north of Chicago hinterlands where I had suffered every Sunday from September to May about what to wear to Church. I like wearing skirts, but tights are like ancient torture devices. But we had moved to Virginia, so I bought a few skirts and practiced wearing them during the week. I felt pretty and flirty and impractical. Wrong effect.

Shortly thereafter, on a camping trip with some different friends who knew the book, we had a great conversation around the fire. Vogue got slammed by the blog criticizing professor, but his sister-in-law, 7 months pregnant and looking fabulous clad in a long black belly hugging dress – too fabulous for a campout – made the great point that the way you dress is something of a calling. Some people are called to live in the world, while others are called to be more withdrawn, more contemplative, even if they aren’t called to the religious life. They have their own domestic monasteries. And for them long skirts are appropriate. But for most of us, dressing according to cultural norms is no moral issue. If we were African natives of a certain tribe, we’d go topless. If we were Muslim, we’d wear Burqhas; if we were Inuit, we’d wear parkas. But since we are Americans, pants are acceptable tribal wear.

That said, modesty is a real issue, and wearing clothes that let your muffin belly hang out or show your undergarments is immodest and just plain unattractive. And to a certain extent modesty depends on where you live and your body shape. I let my little girls wear sleeveless sundresses to church because they look cute and don't have hairy armpits. I wear v-neck shirts without feeling immodest because even four finger-widths below my neckbone you’re not going to encounter any cleavage. Someone else might need a different shirt. It’s one thing to dress nicely, and it’s another to dress like you’re working in Vegas.


But all that history and reasoning weren’t really what I wanted to say. What I meant to get around to is a thought project I’ve toyed with before, and that’s the issue of how much time and attention and resources should we give to fashion anyway. Unlike my mother, I don’t like to spend hours shopping and when I do, I get frustrated and irritable (although I’m happy enough to waste time on the computer). Having an attractive home fits into this topic, too: I’m tempted to spend more money on home décor than fashion, so I’ve thought about the argument in terms of how to make a house look pretty and homey while being fiscally prudent and without getting obsessed about the house and the stuff so that you walk around yelling at the kids when they touch it. How much time and money can you invest in looking pretty or having pretty things before they become distraction? How detached should we be from material beauty?


I think you could make the argument that the desire to be attractive and to have attractive things is, to a certain extent, a theological issue. Beautiful things make us happy, they lift our spirits and hearts, and can lead us toward praise of God, if we’re disciplined enough to not turn the objects into the ends.



And then there is the issue of intent. If you don’t intend to attract a lover or make the other ladies glower with envy over your fine figure and stylish life, but rather just want to look tidy or professional or like a person someone else would like to be friends with or you just feel innately attracted to that particular sweater or whatever, and someone else looks at you with lust, that’s their sin. Calling pants immoral is a little like demonizing alcohol. Certainly, alcohol can be used improperly, but the sin is in the user not the object. I had a friend whose church not only forbid the ladies to wear pants and make-up to church, but it also refused to have musical instruments in their service because they believed the Bible instructed us to praise with the voice. (They weren’t supposed to dance or watch movies like Footloose, either.) And of course there were no statues or stained glass in their little brick building. But those objects are supposed to lead our thoughts to God, both in their content and in their form.



Anyway, it’s a fun topic to debate because when you come down to it, there’s no formulaic answer to the question of what constitutes modest wear, or what amount of money is too much to spend on adornments, or what will provoke admiration and pleasure versus what will provoke envy and lust. The human heart is too gloriously various.