Cover up please

I could not help but notice both women.
Everywhere I look clothes are shrinking in fit and coverage. Some wearing the look command my attention as did the two women who strolled into the suburban church wearing form fitting, fashionable, strapless, sundresses. Most however resemble either overgrown toddlers with bare, bulging milk bellies or unsophisticated street walkers.

I keep my mouth shut, but the first time I saw a middle aged, trim woman wearing a pelvic cut skirt my eyes popped out. She gave me the evil eye for staring. I don’t know why – the outfit she had chosen to wear in public screamed “look at me!”

I first noticed shrinky-dink outfits in women’s apparel the summer of 2000 when the USA Olympic track team raced in uncomfortable looking, abbreviated Hanes – with no publicized record of any team member objecting.

The only objection I have heard regarding required, competitive uniforms came from a University of South Florida women’s basketball player who wanted to wear slacks, long-sleeved shirt and scarf on the court. The school worked with the NCAA for an exemption to its uniform policy to accommodate Muslim convert and basketball scholar, Andrea Armstrong, 22. Although she gained permission to wear the modified uniform, Armstrong eventually withdrew from the team because her uniform proved to be too distracting to others. (At least she tried. Last time I heard of a student stepping aside from a sport for any religious reasons was in the 70’s when a teenager at our church decided that the cheerleader practice schedule conflicted with her regular church attendance.)

As at the 2000 Olympics, so at 2004 Olympics where the uniforms were obviously sexist. The men’s volleyball team wore shorts and shirts. The women’s volleyball team wore brief bikinis. The theme of the-women-get-less-and-the- men-get-more carried over to the uniforms in other sports. I bit my tongue and avoided the embarrassment of watching the Olympics this year.
Not everyone is biting their tongue. Some are beginning to ask “Why don’t people wear more clothes?”

Because it is the current ‘look’ hardly addresses the question. A few teenage girls in Seattle, Wash. objected to the look. The girls ages 10 to 16, who happen to be Catholic formed a club for girls who want to dress fashionably without compromising their modesty. These girls, and others, have requested less revealing clothing from department stores, according to the on-line story in the Journal Reporter.

“We like to call this new girl Miss Modesty,” Gigi Solif Schanen, fashion editor at Seventeen magazine, who told The Associated Press in June. “I think people are tired of seeing so much skin and want to leave a little more to the imagination.” Some department stores and markets have responded by selling a wider selection of less revealing clothes.

At the church I mentioned earlier, the sermon that week was on the commandment to not commit adultery. One of the ways given to avoid adultery included wearing modest clothes. My mouth dropped open when he lovingly said “Put on some clothes.” He did not make it just an woman’s issue. He told the men to pull up, button up and get decent as well.
Or as cartoon strip Cathy’s mother said last fall, “All right everyone, summer is over, put your clothes back on!”

Some took their pastor’s words to heart. As I left the church that morning, I saw the two women I had met on the way in – both were wearing poncho like shawls. They had put on some clothes.


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