Skirts
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
We were not Pentecostals. We were not the Duggars. My mother wore her hair short and I wore pants to school. My parents were, however, rather conservative and encouraged modesty in clothing. Our argument was skirts. I was not allowed to wear anything above the knees once I hit puberty. (Shorts were okay as long as my fingertips hit the hem.) “Knees are ugly,” my mother always said. In the late 90′s, skirts and dresses tended to be short or very long. It is very easy to find cute, flowing calf-length skirts now, but it wasn’t quite as easy ten years ago. So my clothing tended to be rather frumpy. My parents’ rule presented quite the problem when my 8th grade choir director mandated our female choral uniform to be white, button down blouse and knee length black skirt, and hose.
My parents grudgingly allowed me to dress that way for choir, but I was not allowed to wear my choir outfit anywhere else. We had a huge argument one Sunday when I had a performance after church and did not want to change from one skirt to another. My parents won.
Seriously, while I was not required to wear skirts and dresses all the time, the Duggar girls look rather fashionable compared to the skirts and dresses I wore. A classmate told me I dressed like a secretary. Looking back, I dressed more like the older teachers than the students my age. I had the long skirts, blouses, and vests. I shudder thinking about those hideous sweater vests. . . Add to that some frizzy hair, crooked teeth, and a very sheltered background, and I was one unpopular kid in middle school.
I still don’t wear shorter skirts for the most part, though now primarily because I have shockingly white legs. I don’t even wear shorts that often anymore because of it. But one thing that still remains, at least occasionally, is that awkward feeling I get when speaking to people. I wrote a lot, but did not speak much. I have come leaps and bounds over the last year, but I still avoid the phone at all costs and I still have to try really hard when conversing with people. Yay for social awkwardness!
Me now. Still not the hottest thing in the world, but at least my hair and clothing look better! 
Tags: modesty
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May 27th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Reminds me of our high school guidelines. As long as your finger tips can touch the edge then you’re good…not that everyone followed it. But it was public school. I was lucky that my parents were relatively laid back about what I wore. Except nail polish, that is. My dad hated anything but beige, light pink, or red. Needless to say I wore a lot of reds. Lately, I’ve been all about the blues, greens, anything funky because I can. Now it’s “socially acceptable” to wear black even so I’m not really taking any big chances. lol
May 28th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Mhm…I hear you about social awkwardness, it tends to happen when one comes from a conservative-tilted or fundamentalist Christian background.
It’s taken me quite a while (2 years at college) to get over most of my social awkwardness. Combine those years with lots of time on stage in the theater and I had to learn to be social for my social life to survive at college. It just so happens that I became more liberal as I became more vocal, so perhaps it is correlated. I also spoke up a lot in my classes, ironically with my youth ministry class being the exception. You kind of have to tow the “Christian” line in a youth ministry class, where as in all my other classes on religion, I could stand out with my views.
August 8th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Bah, judging from these pictures, you were a cute kid back then and are a beautiful young woman now, don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different!