Earbuds, Blue Jeans and the Homogenized Woman

Modesty culture and modernity unite to mock home schooled women into becoming ugly

“What if you got stranded on an island and there weren’t any dresses, would you wear jeans?”

I stared hard at the little girl named Sunshine, stunned by the absurdity of her question. My cousin sat next to us, waiting for my answer. Sunshine had just confessed to me that she hated her name. “When I’m old enough I’ll change it to something common.”

“But why?” I’d asked. “I like having an unusual name. And I like your name.”

She shrugged, “Kids make fun of me for it.”

We were eleven years old, and just about as different from each other as two girls could be. She went to public school and hated her name. I was home schooled and was already planning out long lists of odd names for my future children. Pretty soon she was asking me why I was wearing a skirt, and if I’ve ever worn jeans, and why not.

I didn’t really know what to say. I knew why my mother didn’t let me wear pants. She said they were immodest. But in my childish innocence I had no idea why it was worse to show off the form of one’s legs over the shape of their arms. So I skirted the topic of modesty until a day when I might be wiser of the ways of the world. 

Instead, feeling like I dodged a bullet and was very wise, I said, “We don’t wear dresses because we think girls should dress like girls, and not wear boys’ clothes.” 

“Do you think I’m evil for wearing jeans?” Sunshine asked me. 

My cousin, who wore pants, stared hard at me. We’d never thought to broach this topic, and I was nervous to look at her. Did she feel I was judging her? And yet, I was the one being judged, the one being called to give an answer for why I played in dresses in a day and age when other little girls didn’t. 

“Of course I don’t.” 

“What if you were stranded on an island? What would you wear?” 

I swallowed bravely. “God wouldn’t make me wear pants. Besides, I can sew.” 

Later, I told my mother, a woman with deep Anabaptist roots, about the conversation, and she gently reprimanded me. “Of course it’s wrong for women to wear jeans. You shouldn’t have told those girls it isn’t.”

But I didn’t feel guilty, only confused. I had no desire to give up my unusual name, like Sunshine did, nor to wear jeans. But I also knew she wasn’t going to hell because her mother dressed her differently than my mother dressed me. 

It would take me many, many years to put my feelings on jeans to rest. 

 I am now nearly thirty years old and understand a little better why legs and arms aren’t limbs of the same nature, and that men certainly do not look at them in the same way. I still don’t believe women are going to hell though for wearing their jeans. I don’t really even believe in Modesty with a capital “M”, either. I don’t believe women are responsible for men’s sinful behaviors, either. Give the world of men a horde of modest women, and those who are enticed to lust will create their AI porn models. Men are responsible for their own thoughts and failings and desires. 

I remember first coming to this way of thinking when visiting a small cult where both the women and the men believed in dressing modestly. One of the women was wearing a long, thick linen dress. It was an especially sunny day, and she stood in front of a window. The shadow of her leg outline was visible—she’d forgotten to wear a slip in her hurry to start the day.

One of the men said, “It sure would be nice if the women would dress modestly around here.”

I loudly piped out, “That’s your problem if you’re lusting right now.”

They were aghast. I was dressed in long dresses, apparently as modest as the rest of them. But I’d dared to say her immodesty was blameless.

“A man can’t help what he sees,”  they began to justify him with senseless rhetoric.

I said, “She obviously was trying to be modest. When do her efforts afford her grace? If she meant well, you ought to practice self-control over your thoughts.”

Naturally, although no fault could be found in my own attire, I acquired a reputation of not upholding modesty, when really I intended to provoke serious thought. When is a woman ever modest enough? If modesty is the lone standard and she is solely responsible for the fall of man, she will always cause someone to stumble, and will never be off thin ice around men.

This doesn’t mean I believe women shouldn’t be modest, though, nor that we should completely disregard our part in tempting men. I simply see no point in making Modesty the focal point of deciding how a woman ought to dress. This mindset is vulgar. Women aren’t mere objects to be dressed and undressed according to the whims of expectations. To view them as “those who must wear dresses until in the bedroom” is to make some sordid claim that women are sexual beings designed to be hidden until one man may gratify himself. Those who preach Modesty are little different from those who claim “modesty is in the heart”, or those who proselytize their bodies. 

Little “m” modesty is wholesome. But it isn’t something that flaunts and flatters itself and says, “I believe in dressing modestly unlike those whores.” 

Little “m” modesty is beautiful. It is not repugnant and offensive. It is not slovenly. It is not seductive (or if it is, in only the most pleasing sort of manner). True modesty doesn’t even seek to protect, but to please, and is as becoming and peculiar as sacrificial aroma. 

But this is really just philosophical pedantries, because at the end of the day, while I might say I don’t really believe in modesty, I don’t look any different at a first glance from the girls who preach the virtue of modesty. 

I suppose you could say this is because I think it’s immodest to preach about a woman’s wardrobe. That almost hits the nail on the head. It also completely misses the nuance of my point, and overlooks the fact that here I am preaching about modesty, in some fashion. 

Maybe these are merely thematic words to express my distaste for making something beautiful into something crude and ugly. If I am opposed to anything, I am opposed to ugly clothes, especially on women, the ethereal being who represents beauty and grace.

I was recently visiting with some anarchist friends and we were discussing the decline of cultures and communities, and of various potential culprits. I’m always quick to blame it on a lack of hospitality and goodwill. But I’m wise enough to know that those things, too, disappeared for a larger reason. 

“Earbuds and blue jeans homogenizes culture,” a young woman in white linen pants said.

I considered my many complaints against leggings, ripped jeans, recorded music, and polyester. I’d never been arguing against showing off the shape of a woman’s legs and hips, but how these things make all women and all men into one dull blob of meaningless flesh and twist the sentiment in Galatians 3:28 “there is neither male nor female” from we are spiritually equal to we are equally ugly and worthless. 

My fiance and I had just watched the documentary “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga”, a fascinating glimpse of the lives of some Siberian trappers. You can’t help but admire the mens’ attempts to preserve their way of life, but it seemed almost futile and flat when the women came on screen. While the men were away doing the tasks of their forefathers, the women were home in their sweatpants, their hair cut short, watching Netflix and eating Hershey’s. I complained at the end of the film, “Those women are so ugly.” 

My fiance was a bit stunned. “You can’t judge another culture by your standards of beauty” 

I knew he was right. What I viewed as beautiful couldn’t be the only metric. But it wasn’t so much that I was offended by their short hair and saggy bottoms as much as the fact that they no longer exemplified any of their traditions, not like their husbands still did, and that they seemed to have grown lazy, slovenly, and just like everyone else in America. 

It’s the human monoculture that bothers me. Women are being encouraged to give up the fragrance of their essence. They are being smothered in chemicals as they paint their faces, and even conservative Christians are telling young women that men won’t love them if they don’t wax their legs as smooth as an eight year old’s. 

I can’t even begin to capture the lies I was told and heard growing up. Too many people to remember told me, “You will never find a husband if you wear a dress. Decent men don’t want to marry an Amish girl.” 

But I remembered that girl named Sunshine, and I refused to shave my legs or put on jeans. 

There might be brief trends that popularize dresses, but they are as fake as a pair of ripped jeans, offering women impractical, synthetic dresses that are neither comfortable nor durable. These trends do not inform women on how to climb a set of stairs in an ankle length dress, nor how to stay warm on a blustery snow-day. Only authentic culture and tradition would have the answers. But few are ready for that sort of return. 

Overall women are mocked, especially home schooled girls, for dressing like a woman. I know several home schooled families that tried to raise their girls to value femininity. But it became too difficult when they tried to interface with enlightened Christians. 

“Why do you make your girls dress that way?”

“Do you think you are better than us?” 

“They will never get a boy to date them dressed like that.” 

“You should give your daughters the option of expressing themselves. What if dresses just aren’t who they are?” 

Several families finally gave up, and allowed the girls to decide for themselves how they would dress. These beautiful girls just wanted to be accepted. What fifteen year old girl can withstand the mockery of peers? Or the fear that a boy would never like her because she is too weird? Of course she will throw away her skirts and buy a razor. As she paints green over her eyelids she might think to herself when she looks into the mirror, “That is so unnatural and ugly” but all her friends will say “you are finally being yourself and wearing makeup! I’m so happy for you” and she will feel relieved.

And she will also feel a little dead inside, if she is honest. This girl has traded the lies of modesty for the lies of modernity. She has not found herself. She has become like everybody else… and not in the wholesome ways, like the days of old where each community had its own ways, but like the rest of the world, that has nothing to offer but earbuds and blue jeans. 

Withstanding these lies was only possible because I truly didn’t care what people told me. If they told me I needed to wear something I was uncomfortable wearing I’d tell them, “I’m not gonna become your slut.” 

Contrary to these people’s doomsday warnings, when I began to travel I found men liked me specifically because they found me evocative in my dress, and wildly attractive in my plain face and natural legs. Men love mystery, and they love beauty. If they say they don’t they probably are thinking of just one thing, christian men included. 

As I slowly left my “judgy” christian circles, and make friends in the wider world, I began to notice something odd. I started to feel more comfortable in my clothes. I no longer felt a need to fit in—I hardly felt like I stood out, either. People loved my and my style. I began to better understand “ye are the salt of the earth” as other, mostly unchristian, women told me that they admired my courage to be feminine, and felt more inclined to wear dresses and lace, too, because of my example. 

They would tell me, “I’ve always wished to wear dresses more, but felt like I couldn’t because I might get laughed at.” 

Now it seems most of my friends proudly wear dresses, in part because I never stopped. 

Those who are raised in the culture of donning dresses have a mantle to wear. None of us want to look ugly. We come to associate certain frumpy home schooled looks as a disgrace, and have our own pet peeves. For instance, I wouldn’t be caught in a denim skirt/ shirt-with-words combo. It’s what all the girls who were forced to wear skirts but wanted to look normal wore. I wouldn’t be caught in a mid-length skirt because it’s what girls wore when they just wanted to show that, yes, they had legs, too. I have a lot of particular ideas about what I would and wouldn’t wear that would probably be hilarious to those who rarely wore dresses. But those of us girls who were raised this way get it. We all have our lines. I never wanted to appear ugly, and I didn’t care how weird it might look to some. 

Quality fabrics and dresses simply look great on women, especially if she is a little overweight. It reminds the viewer that this woman, too, contains beauty, no matter her age or size. While some may ridicule femininity, there will come a time where the woman who dresses with dignity will receive dignity. She will be admired, and rightfully so. Oddly enough, it takes less effort to be beautiful… to put on a comfortable dress instead of trying to squeeze into tight, ill-fitting jeans. Mostly because once you’ve put on a dress you’ll feel less need to stand an hour or so before the mirror applying make-up. The dress does it all.

Does this mean I think a woman should only wear dresses in order to be beautiful? 

Probably, but not necessarily. I think she shouldn’t wear leggings or blue jeans. But floral pants, harem pants, indigo pants, and such attire can all be quite beautiful and feminine and expressive.

What I am against is people trying to convince beautiful home schooled girls into putting on a pair of frumpy blue jeans. She isn’t going to “find” herself by putting on your factory-made clothes. What a ridiculous thing to believe. She becomes herself by being accepted, not changed. These sorts of girls often have fine taste for color and style, and if they can manage the taunts of teenagers, they might grow up to offer a lot of skill and talent to their communities. 

If you are a young woman who was raised wearing skirts, and feel judged by how others view your style, please email me. I’d love to encourage you not to give into the lies. Don’t let them make you ugly. Don’t be like Sunshine. Be proud to be beautiful and unique. 

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