Adressing the Skirt Issue

**Bible quotes taken from NIV unless stated otherwise**

I have a comment on the post about dressing the baby:

Anonymous said...

request lodged for clarification of reasoning: not wearing pants.

expressions of gratitude for same tendered.

Since I only know one person who talks like that, I know who posted it, but since she's chosen to remain anonymous, I'll not out her. I will give the clarification requested however.

The bible clearly tells us that we are to dress modestly:

1 Timothy 2(9-10)

9I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, 10but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

Lets have a look at modesty.

From Wikipedia:

Modesty is most often rendered as humility, shyness, or simplicity. The general principles of modesty include:

• Avoiding attracting attention to oneself by moderating one's actions or appearance;
• Downplaying one's accomplishments (see humility);
• Avoiding insincere self-abasement through false or sham modesty, which is a form of boasting.

and:

Standards of modesty usually discourage the non-essential exposure of the human body. This applies to the bare skin, hair and undergarments, and especially to intimate parts. The standards not only call for the covering of parts of the body, but also obscuring their shape, by means of suitable clothing. There are also standards covering the changing of clothes (such as on a beach), the closing or locking of the door when changing or taking a shower, etc..

For me, dressing modestly means keeping myself covered, to a certain degree. Not "showing off the goods" as it were.

• I aim to dress neatly, to look nice - not to have people (men especially) staring at me because my bust is about to fall out the top of my shirt, or the entire world can see what colour underwear I have on.
  
• I do not wear sleeveless tops, because I feel uncomfortable with everyone seeing my arms like that. I also rarely wear short-sleeved tops, reserving them for very hot days.
  
• If I feel the neckline on a top is too low, I wear a singlet underneath. Too low means my bra is showing, my cleavage is showing, or I would simply feel uncomfortable if someone was staring there (then again I would feel uncomfortable if someone was staring anywhere for extended periods of time, wondering what was wrong with me.. but you get the point). I have a few tops that fit this criteria, but are otherwise fine, so I just toss a singlet underneath.
  
• I avoid button-up shirts, because I cannot find any that fit me well. If they fit properly over the bust, the waist is far too big and I look frumpy. If they fit at the waist, the buttons pop over the bust and I look like a tart. Neither fits my aim of "neat and nice".
• I do wear fitted tops. Loose and baggy makes me look and feel frumpy, and does not fit in with "neat". Note there is a difference between "fitted" and "tight". If everyone can see whether my bra is embroidered or not, precisely where my belly button is, and all the flab from having 2 children, thats tight. If people can see where my waist is, and I do not look like I've lost weight but never bothered to buy smaller clothes, thats fitted.
• I do not wear pants. Every pair of pants I've ever tried on is too tight in the front and too loose in the back. There may be some out there that fit me properly, but I probably can't afford them. I've also never found a top that looks nice when standing, but is long enough to cover any waistband-falling-down in the back when sitting. Other people can pull of the long top look, I just look like an idiot. If that wasn't enough, baggy pants look stupid on me, and fitted ones just scream at the world to stare at my butt. Not want I want.
  
• Skirts are A-line. Not only does a tight skirt still scream at the world to stare at my butt, I just look plain stupid. Everyone can see what kind of underwear I have on, and the not-so-slimness of my legs, also I have broad hips and end up looking a very peculiar shape. An A-line skirt is flattering on almost everyone, can easily be dressed up or down depending on what you wear with it, and they seem to be in fashion at the moment, so they're easy enough to find.
  
• Skirts come to below the knee. The longer the skirt, the less chance of it blowing up and showing things you didn't want shown. The knee also provides a handy reference point. If you don't have a set length, its a lot easier to say "Well, I don't think thats as long as what I usually wear, but its probably OK," and before you know it, you're wearing a glorified belt.
• A slip is worn under un-lined skirts. I have a few skirts that are unlined. One is a nice chocolate linen, that just happens to let the light shine through. A skirt is not very modest if everyone can see everything through it when I walk past a light. I have another, thicker, skirt, that is unfortunately pale enough that everyone can see the colour of my underwear. A slip comes in handy here. A slip is also handy for very windy days. my slips are all tighter fitting that my skirts, and no matter how much my skirt blows up, the slip will not. I do not always wear a slip because of modesty however. I have a lovely, thick, dark brown corduroy skirt that certainly doesn't need a slip to be modest - but the seams make my legs itch.
  

Its not just about the clothes though. Remember, modesty is also "Avoiding attracting attention to oneself by moderating one's actions or appearance". To this end, I do not wear a lot of jewellery. I wear my wedding and engagement rings, a necklace my husband gave me when he proposed, and earrings to match my clothes. Occasionally, I wear a necklace to match the earrings. This is not because of the "gold or pearls" bit. I do not believe this instructions bars us from jewellery. I do believe that too much or too flashy jewellery can draw attention to us, undoing any modesty our clothes may display. If I'm wearing 17 gold chains and fluro-pink earrings the size of dinner plates, I am not dressed modestly, even if I'm wearing a burqa. (I also do not wear a lot of bright colours. This is not so much about modesty as it is about comfort. I do not feel comfortable, or look good, in bright colours. I look good in brown, so you'll find a lot of it in my wardrobe.)

Back to skirts. A lot of people reference Deuteronomy 22 (5) as a reason not to wear pants.

5 A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.

I don't. For a start, there is too much difference between clothing in different cultures to simply say "Pants are boys clothes. Skirts are girls clothes." Fijian men wear a garment that is, to all intents and purposes, a skirt. (So do some Scots.) Even in european culture, trousers are a relatively recent innovation. Yes, in recent times, men have worn pants while women wear skirts, but prior to that, everyone wore dress-like garments. Can we therefor say women shouldn't wear dresses because men used to? Of course not. Its silly. Women now wear pants. Pants that are made specifically for women. They are women's clothing, like it or not. That doesn't make them modest, or feminine, but it does negate the "girls clothes/boys clothes" argument. Clothing is always changing, and I do not think "pants are boy's clothes" is a reasonable argument. "Pants reveal more of a woman's body-shape than is modest" however, is a reasonable argument, and its my reason.

Sometimes I Disturb Myself

Yesterday, my fever-stricken Critterbug was watching TV while I did the washing (oh the joys of cloth nappies). One of the odder shows was on, one called "Sitting Ducks". Ducks who are friends with an alligator who get teased by the other alligators because he doesn't eat the ducks - he is vegetarian.

This led to one of my peculiar-almost-instantaneous-though-processes. I went through the following in the time it took to lean over and put one item in the washing machine:

• Vegetarian alligator.. Fully vegetarian, or would he eat fish?
• Things that eat fish usually taste kinda fishy.
  
• Hey remember that giant guinea-pig type thing that is classified as a fish?
  
• Probably looks kinda funny swimming around.
• Hippos certainly do.
  
• Hippos are cute.
• I wonder what a hippopotamus tastes like?

Modest clothing for children

Mini-sprog (Spaceghost) is growing so fast (if my ever-so-accurate measurements with the Wii-fit and a tape-measure are anything to go by, she's at about the 97th% mark for height, and she's nearly grown out of her 3-6 month sleepers, which is quite a feat considering she's not yet 4 months old and has only been wearing them for 6 weeks), I'm on a constant search for clothes. Critter too, but until I learn to sew properly I've given up on finding pants that fit him correctly. He just has to make do with everything needing a belt, or being a little too short, or both. There's no lack of good, cheap stuff out there, and with 3 second-hand shops a mere 15min bus ride from my house, I'm able to keep her dresser well stocked. On Thursday for example, among other things I found 2 brand new (seriously, they still had the tags on and everything) t-shirts in the next size up, for $1 each. They will be perfect when the weather changes and things start getting warm again, as I'm sure she'll be well and truly into that size by then.

Being able to get so much good quality stuff so cheap, the cost of her wardrobe isn't really an issue. What is an issue, is modesty. At the moment, its not a problem. Its winter, its cold, most of the time when we're out she's either wrapped up or covered in her pram anyway. However, when spring rolls around, it will be a different story.

I stopped wearing pants about 18 months ago. In fact, a few weeks ago I commented on my facebook than I do not remember the last time I wore pants, other than PJs. I remember wearing pants in September 2007, when we were painting the Critter's room, but I don't remember if I've worn any since. For me, a skirt is the more modest choice. The shape is less revealing, and I don't have to worry about showing my underwear to the world every time I sit down. I have never found a pair of jeans that really fit right. They're always too tight in front, with a huge gape on my back - the waist is the right size, just not in the right spots. For Spaceghost, I'm not sure this is going to be the case, at least until she starts walking.

In her admittedly-short-so-far-life, Spaceghost has only had two skirts, and one dress. I would love to have her in skirts, and once she's walking, since I'm the one who does the shopping, I'm guessing skirts will make up most of her wardrobe (I'm not going to just ban pants outright, my husband would flip out, and I want it to be her choice, which will immediately be "pants" if I militantly never allow her to wear them), but at the moment, pants are more modest. The skirts and dress she has are adorable - pink and purple, with flowers or butterflies embroidered on them - but they hardly even cover her nappy (this is admittedly contributed to by the fact that she wears cloth nappies and they are by default thicker than disposables). Skirts for babies are all made super- short, for some unfathomable reason*.

As I said before, since its cold at the moment, this isn't really an issue. I just put a pair of thick tights or soft pants underneath, and she is both warm, and adorable. Its cold enough that she would be wearing tights under her skirts even if they were longer, but it gets quite warm here in spring and summer, and I'm not going to have her in those teeny little skirts with nothing underneath. I'm not even sure that learning to sew better would solve my problems. At this size, when they spend most of their time lying down, everything rides up (I can't even begin to count the number of times I had to pull her dress down in church on Sunday. She did look utterly adorable though) so a longer skirt wouldn't do its job for long anyway. Once she starts crawling, a longer skirt may be a hindrance, causing her to trip. Especially if she does the hands-and-feet thing Critter did, rather than the hands-and-knees babies generally seem to stick to.

I think, for the moment, if I'm to have any chance of keeping my girl dressed nicely, I'm going to have to stick to pants. The current fashion for toddlers-preschoolers does seem to be calf-length skirts, and I'm hoping it stays that way so I have a chance to get decent stuff for her when she gets bigger. Since I have absolutely no idea what size she'll be by then, I'm not going to buy bigger stuff now. I'll stick to pants in her current size,or one-up for growth, until skirts become a reasonable option, and then I'll go wild. In the meantime, I'm going to practice my sewing skillz, so my Spaceghost can wear clothes no-one else has, and look right good doing so.




*If the length of most of the baby-skirts I've seen were translated to skirts for biggerpersons, they would be only just past the length at which I cough **belt** when I see someone walking past in one - when you hope you don't see them sit down, because you have no desire to find out what colour underwear they have on, if any.

Grocery Addendum

$93.00

Oh yeah.

We rock.

This week will likely be a lot more however, as we are in desperate need of meat, and cheese, and milk, and fruit and veg. No non-food items I can think of however, so maybe it won't be too huge a shop...

Grocery test

We havent been grocery shopping for over a week. We've run out of milk, and where its $2.79/2L at the supermarket, its $5.15/2L at the convenience store around the corner, so we need to go to the shops. But theres very little else we need.

Even with meat, the last shop we did was about $30 under budget, and this one is looking like a rather small shop (only about 6 items other than milk) so we should have a lot of money left this time too.

I'm wondering if this means next time will be a big shop? Remind me to let you know how it works out.

Too much money

I want a new clothes dryer. The one we have is a good 20 years old, and is incredibly inefficient. The only time its worth using is when the clothes are so slightly damp you could almost mistake them for simply being cold. If I was to put half a load of wash in the dryer and push start, it would go for about 5 minutes and then stop, leaving me with hot wet clothes instead of cold wet clothes, or hot dry clothes.

Fortunately I live in a place where I can usually hang stuff to dry outside, and if I cant, it usually only takes 24-36 hours to dry inside.

There are times however when it rains. And rains. And rains. And then I wish we had a working dryer. The fact that the clothes line is broken and being held up with sticky-tape, and has a tendency to collapse if I put more than one load of wash on it, makes me want a new dryer too. Or at least a new clothesline.

Both those options cost money though. Money that we do have, but really don't want to spend. We have so far been living in my mother's house rent free (for a time with her, now as caretakers while she is interstate), but would really REALLY like to find a place of our own, which means we need to save. And save. And save. Housing prices may be down at the moment, but they are still incredibly high, and even with all the money I have saved up and invested from before I was married, we need A LOT to buy a house, and renting would mean we'd never be able to save, as rent is almost a much as mortgage payments.

Oh how I wish someone would just drop a bag full of cash in my lap.

Cutie Kid

My husband is Catholic. I'm Anglican. Other than occasional teasing arguments about things like the Catholic Church being hypocritical for making "obscene wealth" one of the new deadly sins (seriously? 'pay us and we'll pray your dead loved one into heaven' and they're now outlawing being rich? HA! (and yes I realise they no longer do this, but I have to be able to tease my man about something.)), what this means is that he has a rosary, somewhere, and a crucifix that I feel uncomfortable with being up in the house (a plain cross would be fine, but a Jesus-figure feels idolatrous to me). So it isn't. Because he is a wonderful husband.

At the moment, as I have recently been pregnant and new-babied and am tired and exhausted and brain-fogged all the time, there is a bunch of stuff sitting on the hall table that needs to be put away, and the crucifix is part of the pile-o-stuff. Today the kid caught sight of it.

CRITTER: This is like the stone at church.
ME: What is like what stone at church honey?
C: THIS. It's like at church inside.
M: Ah.. yes, you're right, it is, and it's called a 'cross'.
C: Yeah and this is Jesus like how He died on the sad day (Good Friday. We discussed Easter this year and Good Friday has become The Sad Day, because He died, and death is sad. Kids are cute).
M: Thats right, He died on the cross, and on the Sunday He came back to life..
C: (interrupting) Yeah and so why do we have this?
M: Well when we see the cross it reminds us about when Jesus died and rose again, and how much God loves us to have done that for us.
C: Oh.. Mummy can I keep this in my room so I can remember Jesus all the time?


I told him he would have to ask daddy, because it's daddy's cross. He is totally adorable. And I'm impressed that he remembers so much about Easter. Usually things go in one ear and out the other with him until he's been told a few times.

Love

Babygirl is three months old. She's been wearing 3-6 months clothes for over a month. Her cheeks are still enormous, as are her eyes, and she still has an Amazing Magical Disappearing Tooth. Her stares are intense, and her eyes are still blue, though considering Critter's are so dark brown they're almost black, and Hubby's and mine are greeny-hazel, anything could still happen.

She seems to be quite happy, smiling as soon as she catches sight of anybody, or even if she doesn't. Many the time I've gone to check on her, to find that she's smiling at the light coming in through the window. She talks when she smiles, often as not, and loves to hear us imitate her noises. Gurgling at her is a sure way to see her amazing smile.

Steve is getting good use, and she often falls asleep in her rocker gripping it. She is also fascinated by the toys hanging from the rocker, and just might have realised her hand actually has a use - she hit one of the toys the other day and then spent the next half hour examining her hand and watching it hit the toys. Not sure if she's doing it deliberately, but she does seem to be aware that its happening.

She thinks the baby in the mirror is hilarious, when I can get her to actually look the right way. She coos and gurgles and smiles like crazy, loving the fact that this other baby talks and smiles right back at her. The other mummy in the mirror confuses her, but doesn't upset her. Which is good. I much prefer her smiles to The Sad Face.

For some reason she still outright refuses to poo during the night. Which is nice, because it means I don't have to change her a million times when I'm barely awake, but it does mean... explosions during the day. And baths in the sink. Which she really rather enjoyed until the water got too cold. For some reason my kids like their baths HOT.

Speaking of night time, I can not figure out her rhythm at all. Some nights she wakes as early as 12:30 for a feed, others she sleeps till 7am, or later. Doesn't seem to matter when she gets fed or bathed, she has her own crazy rhythm, and she's not letting us know what it is.

I love this baby girl so much it hurts. My boy is precious, and I would die, or kill for him in a heartbeat (isn't it terrifying the first time you realise that you are absolutely capable of kiling, if your baby is in danger? Gave me nightmares for weeks). I do not love Spaceghost any more than I love Critterbug, but it is different. He is my precious, gorgeous boy, my firstborn. She is my daughter, my baby, the one I never thought I would have. And my love for these two does not in anyway diminish the love I feel for the one resting in God's arms, who never got to rest in mine. The more there is to love, the more love there is to give.

I survived April without spiralling into the waiting blue, but the sadness lingers. Hugging my children helps. I think I'll go do that now.

April is Over

The fact that I didn't descend into a pit of despair bodes well, I think. If April didn't bring on the depression, maybe I'm safe this time round.