You Are What You Wear

Way way back in the myspace glory days, I wrote what could probably be called my first of many opinion blog posts. I tried to find it, but due to the ever changing nature of myspace, it disappeared somewhere into cyberspace. Such a shame. Anyway, I wrote about something that I still feel very passionate about: the way we dress.

I'm rewriting about it now because in the last few days I have witnessed a few discussions regarding the way we dress. And everything I have to say about it can be summed up to this: the way you dress DOES matter. If you dress like a bum, you will be labeled as a bum: regardless of if you are a bum. If you dress like a slut, you will be labeled a slut: regardless of if you are a slut. It may sound materialistic to put so much emphasis on the subject of clothes, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a society where clothing is not optional, so yes, clothes do matter.

The first discussion I witnessed was in church yesterday, where the comment was made that it is superficial and wrong to judge a person by clothes first, rather than by their actions. That is true to an extent. But before you ever see a person's actions, you see their appearance. And I'm sorry, but if you're not dressed appropriately for whatever that first meeting may be, you will be judged.

This has nothing to do with how much money you spend on clothes. I completely agree that a person should not be judged by the stores they shop at or how much their outfit cost. That's not right. But for anyone who makes the excuse that they can't look nice because they can't afford it? I'm not buying it (two words: thrift stores). Or someone that says that putting an effort into your appearance like spending time doing hair/makeup, etc. is vain and materialistic? I'm not buying it either.

At church, I work with the young women. Naturally, we talk a lot about dress, since it's something teenage girls are bombarded with so much. We talk about dressing modestly, and we talk about taking pride in your appearance, because you are a child of God. My go-to scripture about this (found here) says: "...and they did not wear costly apparel, yet they were neat and comely." There you go. Just because you can't afford the designer duds, or maybe don't want to spend an hour doing your hair (who does anyway??),  or maybe you feel like you don't have a good enough figure to dress cute. None of these reasons mean that you have an excuse to look like a mangy scrub.

The other discussion I was a witness to this week was on facebook (of course) arguing about what is okay to wear at a military ball, which fellow mil spouses and I attend every year. Some girls were getting up in arms accusing these "judgmental and un-classy wives" of making snap judgments by labeling women as sluts who come to the ball dressed as--you guessed it---sluts. It sounds harsh, and yes, judging is bad, blah blah blah, but I'm still on the side of those women who don't defend the women that don't know how to dress appropriately for the appropriate occasion. You're not going to a night-club, you're going to a formal military event.

Know your event, and dress accordingly. That's all there is to it.

So yeah. That's how I feel about that. And on a kind of related note, here is a tribute to two of my favorite things: Harry Potter and songs about thrifting

Thanks for reading!
xoxo Annie