As Plain Dress November rolls along, I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to some of the wonderful Plain and modest dressing people you can meet online.
Some Plain people are adamantly opposed to being photographed – the Amish being the most famous for that. Even so, they will allow their homes and sometimes (not sure why) their children to be photographed by people they trust. Bill Coleman’s loving and respectful photographic archive of his Amish friends is a most beautiful record of the highest artist standard.
Other Plain friends feel okay about being photographed. Personally I post loads of pics of me online, partly as an advert for Plain-ness, and partly because Plain folks are few and far between, and many of us rely on the internet for our Plain friendship and fellowship. You can (whatever they say) tell a lot about a person by a face, and I find great sustenance in looking at pictures of Plain friends, or videos where those are available.
One modest-dressing blogger is Anna Cory. I really like Anna. She’s fun and witty and sparky, as well as soft-spoken and gentle and modest. She blogs at Veiled Glory, and she has some YouTube video blogposts as well. I love this one, in which she talks about a phrase she has coined, Women Formerly Known As Sexy. If for any reason the link doesn't work for you, you can find it under that heading on a YouTube search.
There’s an issue that affects women especially, I think, about body change.
We start out as flatchested skinny little girls, grow boobs, get plump and soft as we become mothers, fat as we pass the menopause, and often skinny again if we grow to be old. Of course, some women are skinny or fat all the way through, but even they have to face surprising challenges of body change as hair grows on their legs and faces once they hit puberty; then strengthens on the upper lip and chin and from the nose, while thinning on the head and pubes, as they age. And the zits of hormonal change, and the bingo wings and lizard neck and flabby upper arms and thighs that rub together. Some of these things are caused by weight gain, but some of the weight gain is associated with the natural changes of being a woman, in the course of bearing children, walking at the slow pace of little ones, cooking for a big family, and so on.
Fashion gurus are full of advice about how we might meet these challenges – stacking us in tottering high heels (in which we can’t run and play with a child or work in the garden), squeezing us into foundation garments of strong elastic (which cannot be good for our lymphatic and vascular and digestive systems), painting our faces until we look like waxworks, plucking and tweezing, waxing and squeezing, and if all else fails resorting to surgery.
Plain dress is bold to offer an alternative interpretation of beauty. Plain dress says yes, it is beautiful to be feminine – but also to be comfortable, natural, free to move and work and play and run for a bus. Plain dress thinks plump women and skinny sisters are as beautiful as each other. Plain dress allows little girls to dress the same as mummy – and stops before it starts the common phenomenon of little girls faithfully following in the footsteps of their mothers’ angst about being ‘fat and ugly’, as that offensive phrase goes.
Plain dress also carries the vision of women being beautiful unto the Lord – which is to say, their dress is meant to be beautiful, but primarily pleasing to God; they are not dressing to please men. Women in Plain dress look womanly, and all women want to be beautiful: but this kind of beauty is dignified, simple, humble and natural.
Plain dress says to men: ‘If you want a painted Barbie doll who can’t chip her nail varnish doing household tasks or take off her shoes to paddle in the sea in case she ladders her stockings – look somewhere else.’
My Plain dress has been an acquired taste for my husband, but the call to dress Plain came so strongly in the end that I had to ask him, please, if he would be willing to live with it. Because of the man he is, he said ‘Yes, of course’, at once. But as I thought about it I realized, two things apply. Thing One is that, at 53 and no sylph, whatever get-up I squeeze into I’m still going to look like an overweight middle-aged woman, and dressing fancy would disguise that less with every passing year. Beside, Plain dress is very kind to tummy-rolls and bingo wings! Thing Two is that the people we live with and really love, we kind of cease to see. After six months, when my husband comes in from work and sees me in my kapp, he’s not going to stop in his tracks thinking Omigodhowuglyareyou! He’s just going to think – Oh look, there’s Ember. People get used to things.
As well as that, the Women Formerly Known As Sexy are actually still sexy – in the right place; in their bedrooms, with their husbands, in private. You can be a Woman Formerly Known As Sexy and still have a twinkle in your eye. Have you noticed how big those Amish families are? Can you guess how they got them?
I have been astounded though, by how extreme the reaction can be from some non-Plain sisters. The last retreat I took, I (dressed Plain) sat through an hour of Christian people telling me how ugly and hideous all Plain dressed women look, and how inconsiderate and thoughtless they are seeing other people have to bear the misfortune of having to look at them. After that particular session, one quiet lady who had sat through the session in silence came up to me afterwards and told me: ‘I think the Amish are beautiful’. So responses vary.
There are of course other reasons for dressing Plain than looking pretty, but there are also thirty days in November, so we’ll get onto some of the other things later on!