I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate
for women who profess to worship God.
—1 TIMOTHY 2:9–10 UPDATED NIV
TO DO THIS MONTH:
□ Dress modestly (1 Timothy 2:9)
□ Wear a head covering (1 Corinthians 11:6)
□ Wear only dresses and skirts; no slacks or jeans (Deuteronomy 22:5)
□ Abstain from wearing jewelry (1 Timothy 2:9)
□ Hang out with the Amish
“You look like a hippie,” Dan said, “But it’s not that bad. I promise.” I stood in front of the bedroom mirror in a billowing brown peasant skirt, matching brown tights and flats, a simple lavender cardigan buttoned all the way to my collarbone, and a white, looseknit beret on my head. No makeup. No jewelry. No product in my nest of hair.
“I look like a religious freak,” I wailed. “I can’t go out like this. People will think I’m—I don’t know—homeschooled.”
Dan sighed. (Have I mentioned that he was homeschooled?) “Hon, this was your idea, remember.”
“How can I forget when you bring it up every time I get discouraged?” I grumbled back. “It’s all MY fault. The project was MY idea. I am responsible for my own misery. I GET IT, OKAY?”
We would engage in this same exact argument approximately seventeen times before the end of the year. It usually began with me in the fetal position on the floor somewhere, crying about how much I had to do and how desperately I hated housework and how insufferable I found the apostle Paul’s rambling prose. I’d trawl around for pity until Dan, exasperated and powerless to help, reminded me that my affliction was the result of a contract I willingly signed with a publisher, rather than the mysterious scourge of God—a pretty unsympathetic way to look at it, if you ask me. A cold distance would fall between us until a good night’s rest or a couple episodes of The Twilight Zone extracted me from my stupor.
We were right smack-dab in the middle of the project. And it felt like it.
The arrival of March put me in a special kind of funk because it forced me to confront a subject of particular sensitivity to women of religious breeding—modesty. Drop the m-word around the wrong girl and she’ll be environed by ugly flashbacks—rulers against bare legs, turtlenecks under homemade jumpers, swimsuits hidden beneath T-shirts and shorts, and red-faced pastors blaming the fall of Western civilization on the exposure of cleavage.
On my blog I posed the question, “What first comes to mind when you hear the word ‘modesty’?”
My readers had some opinions about that:
• “Selfish Hypersexuality. The word ‘modesty’ to me rarely implies anything about actual clothes but more about the sexuality (availability, intention, allusion) of the wearer as seen by those who look.”—Sandra
• “’Modesty’ rings a whole lot of negative bells in my mind to do with ‘controlling how women dress and behave’ and ‘blame the victim’ attitudes. Something about the word ‘modest’ just yanks my chain. It smacks of imposed restrictions and judgmental tastes, and making women take responsibility for the thoughts of men.”—Elizabeth
• “Humility. That’s the first word to come to mind.”—Verity
• “When I hear ‘modesty,’ I flash back to my childhood and shorts that came to my knees and a list of things that ‘good girls don’t wear.’ And I think of the freedom of choosing my own swimsuit my freshman year in college and the lecture I got because it was immodest (French cut legs), with my mother insisting I purchased it to get men to look and me insisting that I got it because it was beautiful with black and turquoise flowers and I felt good in it.”—Rea
In Judaism, the term used for modesty is tzniut, and it refers to both the inward traits of humility and the outward observance of laws pertaining to dress. I asked Ahava about this and she said, “Tzniut is more than just a list of rules about how to dress. It’s a state of mind. The idea is to avoid dressing in a way that draws attention to your outer self, but instead to dress so that your inner self is allowed to shine through. You should try to be pretty, but not alluring. You do a huge disservice to modest dress if you wear the same outfit over and over again, particularly if it’s frumpy. Nobody wants to be around a schlumpy dresser.”
Schlumpy. I love these useful Jewish words.
“Tzniut is also about how you act,” Ahava added. “You don’t want to try to make people notice you or force yourself to the forefront for attention. Having the newest and nicest things is a way that many people try to get attention, but that is not the way of tzniut.”
The apostle Paul seemed to be getting at the same idea when he wrote to young Timothy, “I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God” (1 Timothy 2:9–10 UPDATED NIV).
The Greek word translated “modesty” here is kosmios. Derived from kosmos (the universe), it signified orderliness, self-control, and appropriateness, with its closest antonyms being disorder or chaos. It appears only twice in the New Testament, and interestingly, its second usage refers specifically to a godly man, who is expected to be “above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2 UPDATED NIV). In that context, kosmios is typically translated as “self-controlled.”
The King James Version for 1 Timothy 2:9 says that women are to wear “modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety.” These instructions closely resemble those given by Peter in his first epistle, where he also warned against “gold jewelry” and “elaborate hairstyles,” which were apparently the Ancient Near Eastern equivalent of diamond-encrusted teeth grilles. Similarly, the Amish speak of modesty in terms of the contrast between Hochmut (pride), and Demut (humility), citing Proverbs 11:2, which says, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”
Given the sensitive nature of this whole modesty issue, I knew that the dress code I chose for the month would be highly controversial. From the Amish to evangelicals, cloistered nuns to Hasidic Jews, women from a variety of religious groups claim biblical modesty as their standard of dress, and yet none of them dress exactly the same.
What the Bible says about what (not) to wear is clearly open to interpretation. I figured my best bet was to borrow from a variety of traditions to make my own dress code. So beginning on March 9, the first day of Lent, I resolved to observe six new rules of dress for my month of modesty:
1. Wear a head covering at all times.
By far the most ubiquitous item in the world’s religious wardrobe is the head covering. We recognize Sikhs by their dastars, the Amish by their white bonnets, Jewish men by their kippas, and Muslim women by the hijab. Although the Bible often mentions women’s veils (Genesis 24:65; Song of Songs 4:1), there are no explicit Old Testament commandments requiring women to wear them.1 However, it has long been a Jewish custom for married women to cover their hair, and in rabbinic literature, the veil functions as an important symbol of modesty, for it signifies that a woman is married and unavailable to all except her husband.
Like most Orthodox Jews, Ahava usually wears a simple headscarf over her hair. “It’s a mystical thing,” Ahava explained to me. “Since the time of my kiddushin [marriage] my hair has become as much a private part as my breasts.”
The importance of the head covering in ancient Jewish and Christian worship is underscored in the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, where he declares that “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head” (11:5–6 UPDATED NIV).
Modern manifestations of the biblical veil take many different forms. Traditional Catholics often wear the mantilla, a lacy black veil that falls over the head and shoulders. Orthodox Jewish women may wear a tichel (headscarf), sheitel (wig), or mimkhatah. Amish and Old Order Mennonite women refer to their trademark white bonnets simply as “coverings,” with styles varying from region to region. Orthodox nuns wear a long head covering called an apostolnik that covers the head, neck, and shoulders, while Catholic nuns typically wear a black veil over a white coif, (unless, of course, they intend to fly and instead opt for a cornette).
I’d been tossing scarves and bandannas over my head during prayer for six months, but for Lent I resolved to wear a head covering at all times. Fortunately for me, slouchy, loose-knit berets were all the rage that winter, so I found a cute, cream-colored beret at Target that wasn’t too warm and that looked good with both casual and business attire. I’d wear it so often that, before the year was finished, it looked more beige than cream.
2. Wear only full-length dresses and skirts; no slacks or jeans.
Deuteronomy 22:5 says that “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.”
While some Jewish scholars see this commandment as a prohibition against cross-dressing, others interpret it to mean that women should not carry weapons of war, a view sometimes cited in debates about exempting women from military conscription in modern Israel. Growing up in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church, my mom was forbidden to wear pants to church because of this verse, and St. Padre Pio famously refused to hear the confessions of women wearing anything other than skirts that fell at least eight inches below the knee.
In the 1960s, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri warned that the increasing popularity of women’s trousers threatened “feminine psychology proper to women” and signaled “the flattening out of all mankind.”
“When we see a woman in trousers,” he declared, “we should think not so much of her as of all mankind, of what it will be when women will have masculinized themselves for good. Nobody stands to gain by helping to bring about a future age of vagueness, ambiguity, imperfection and, in a word, monstrosities.”
That’s right. Monstrosities.
So for Lent I gave up my dress pants, sweatpants, khakis, and jeans in exchange for the three cotton peasant skirts I’d been holding on to since 2003. This wasn’t much of a sacrifice because I love peasant skirts; they’re like wearing air. The only problem was that skirts are a bit cool for early March, which meant I had to wear tights underneath them. Also, someone who loves the Cracker Barrel as much as I do generally requires a more constrictive waistband material than elastic for the purposes of self-control in the face of breakfast-all-day specials. I must have gained five pounds during the month of March.
3. No short skirts, short sleeves, or V-necks.
The Catholic Church took the concept of modesty to a new level of specificity in 1944 when Fr. Bernard A. Kunkel launched the “Marylike Modesty Crusade,” an effort to codify Pope Pius XI’s instructions regarding immodest dress. In addition to producing the perfect name for an indie garage band, the Marylike Modesty Crusade issued the following seven standards of dress for Catholic women2:
1. Marylike is modest without compromise, “like Mary,” Christ’s Mother.
2. Marylike dresses have sleeves extending at least to the elbows; and skirts reaching below the knees . . .
3. Marylike dresses require full coverage for the bodice, chest, shoulders and back; except for a cut-out about the neck not exceeding two inches below the neckline in front and in the back, and a corresponding two inches on the shoulders.
4. Marylike dresses do not admit as modest coverage transparent fabrics, laces, nets, organdy, nylons, etc. unless sufficient backing is added. However, their moderate use as trimmings is acceptable.
5. Marylike dresses avoid the improper use of flesh-colored fabrics.
6. Marylike dresses conceal rather than reveal the figure of the wearer; they do not emphasize, unduly, parts of the body.
7. Marylike dresses provide full coverage, even after jacket, cape or stole are removed and after assuming a sitting position.
I figured my own dress should be as Marylike as possible, at least for the month. This meant topping off my peasant skirts with long-sleeved, loose-fitting sweaters and sticking with high jewel necklines—not the most flattering look for my figure, especially with a veritable tent around my waist.
4. No jewelry.
In his list of God’s grievances against Israel and his warnings of Jerusalem’s imminent destruction, the prophet Isaiah wrote:
The women of Zion are haughty,
walking along with outstretched necks,
flirting with their eyes,
strutting along with swaying hips,
with ornaments jingling on their ankles.
Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion;
the Lord will make their scalps bald.
In that day the Lord will snatch away their finery: the bangles and headbands and crescent necklaces, the earrings and bracelets and veils, the headdresses and anklets and sashes, the perfume bottles and charms, the signet rings and nose rings, the fine robes and the capes and cloaks, the purses and mirrors, and the linen garments and tiaras and shawls.
(ISAIAH 3:16–23 UPDATED NIV).
At first glance, this passage would suggest that Westboro Baptist Church has it wrong: what God really hates is accessories. But the larger context reveals that what so troubled Isaiah and his fellow prophets was the blatant materialism among Israel’s rich to the neglect and disenfranchisement of its poor.
In biblical times, gold jewelry signified wealth, and although several of the Bible’s heroines wore it (Genesis 24:22–31; Song of Songs 1:10–11), jewelry was far more commonly associated with excess and idol worship (Genesis 35:2–4; Exodus 32; 33:4; Jeremiah 4:30; Ezekiel 7:18–20; 16:9–15; Hosea 2:13). This sentiment carries over into the New Testament, where both Paul in his letter to Timothy and Peter in his letter to the churches of Asia Minor discouraged women from wearing gold jewelry and pearls in the context of a Christian community that prioritized simplicity and charity.
In fact, it seems that most of the Bible’s instructions regarding modesty find their context in warnings about materialism, not sexuality . . . a pattern that has gone largely unnoticed by the red-faced preacher population. I’ve heard dozens of sermons about keeping my legs and my cleavage out of sight, but not one about ensuring that my jewelry was not acquired through unjust or exploitive trade practices.
Some conservative religious communities, such as the Amish and Old Order Mennonites, continue to forbid women to wear any sort of jewelry at all. Others simply discourage excess. I’m a bit of a jewelry fanatic—not so much of the gold and pearl variety, but of the beads and hemp variety—so I figured it would be a healthy exercise in self-discipline to ditch my necklaces, bracelets, and rings for Lent. I wore only my wedding band, not my engagement ring, and I avoided the items in Isaiah’s list: bangles, headbands, earrings, bracelets, anklets, sashes, perfume, charms, rings, nose rings, fine robes, capes, shawls, and, of course, tiaras.
5. Dress and speak plainly.
The Amish prefer the word “plain” to “modest,” and a spirit of plainness informs not only their style of dress, but also their customs, lifestyle, relationships, and way of looking at the world. Adopting a plain lifestyle, according to many Amish, Mennonite, and Quaker traditions, means placing a higher value on the inward traits than on outward appearance. It means living simply, without excess, and prioritizing the good of the community over the good of oneself. For those of the Old Order traditions, plainness may require forgoing cars, electricity, modern farming equipment, and modern clothing. For those in more progressive denominations, plainness may simply mean reducing carbon footprints, rejecting designer labels, and not posting a bunch of mirror self-portraits to Instagram.
I resolved to prioritize plainness in my dress and manners, which meant sticking to muted, solid colors and unembellished fabrics, speaking as honestly and plainly as possible, and resisting the urge to flaunt status symbols, like my second-generation Kindle and my Acclaim.
All said, my Lenten dress code left me with a grand total of one outfit—a lavender button-up sweater paired with one of three peasant skirts. I went to Marshalls and picked up a black skirt and a couple more tops, which brought my options to four. You would think I’d find this constrictive, but I confess there’s something nice about getting up in the morning and knowing exactly what you’re going to wear that day. There’s also something nice about hiding your crazy hair beneath a cute, slouchy beret. I may have looked like a cross between a hippie, a homeschooler, and an Old Order Mennonite, but I’d cut my morning prep time in half, and the results weren’t so schlumpy after all.
But the thing about sporting an über-modest look in this day and age is it attracts a lot of attention. Children stared at me at the grocery store. Men avoided making eye contact. Friends struggled to come up with compliments. I think a lady took a picture of me with her cell phone at a rest stop near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Even Dan treated me differently.
“I feel like I can’t swear around you,” he confessed. “You project so much . . . conservativism. It’s like I’m afraid you’ll be offended.”
What bothered me the most about my new look was the feeling that strangers were judging me as a religious fundamentalist based solely on my appearance. I faced this insecurity each time I walked into church, wandered the mall, sat in a boardroom, or approached a speaker’s podium, and it forced me to confront the fact that the reason I feared this particular judgment so acutely was because I’d grown accustomed to issuing it myself. When I saw women at the airport wearing the hijab, the first word that came to my mind was oppressed. When I saw families at the park boasting long denim skirts and tennis shoes, I labeled them sheltered. When I saw Amish buggies creeping down a busy street, I rendered their drivers legalistic, outdated. When I saw a perky coed donning a pro-life T-shirt and a “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet at a concert, I filed her under Bible-thumper. Now I feared that all those harsh words were being mentally lobbed at me. There’s perhaps no better way to foster empathy for those whose appearances you judge than to spend a few weeks walking in their shoes.
By mid-March, I’d grown tired of the double takes followed by quick glances away, tired of hurried explanations about my head coverings and skirts, tired of the way other women seemed annoyed by my presence, tired of sticking out in the crowd for trying to be plain. But I’d soon find myself in good company.
Dan’s Journal
March 22, 2011
This month has been a little weird. Not bad, just weird. Rachel has been dressed in her modesty garb. I find myself feeling like I should talk to her differently. I also wonder what people think about me—Am I an oppressive chauvinist? Do I control her and yell at her behind closed doors?
Then I realize, maybe that’s how I view other people. Maybe those thoughts are what go through my mind when I see people wearing conservative clothing. I automatically suspect abuse and control. I realize it’s shallow to simply assume you know a person by the clothes they are wearing, but at the same time, aren’t we taught that we should “dress for the position you want?” And how many business owners would hire the interviewee with the ripped jeans and dirty T-shirt? There are reasons we associate certain clothing (or lack thereof) with certain behaviors and lifestyles. Isn’t clothing a form of nonverbal communication? If so, should we be allowed to judge others by what they “say”?
It’s interesting to see people’s responses to Rachel. Some people, after seeing a picture of her online, asked, “Are you mocking those who dress like that?” So apparently I’m not the only one making judgments based on appearances.
“You may need to find a better Amish lady,” Mary yelled over the roar of the generator powering her clothes dryer. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten rather fancy.”
“Fancy” is how the Amish describe things like cars, electricity, blue jeans, and people who aren’t Amish. But Mary wasn’t fancy. Plump and grandmotherly, she spoke with a charming “Dutchy” accent and wore all the traditional accoutrements of Amish life—a black apron pulled over a muted purple blouse, a simple black skirt, a heart-shaped bonnet, wool sweater, and black Crocs. (Yes, Crocs are all the rage in Amish country right now, along with Transitions lenses.)
Mary was giving me, my friend Janet, and Janet’s friend Kathy a tour of her sprawling ranch-style farmhouse, which sat on sixty gorgeous acres in Gap, Pennsylvania. Noonday light poured through the windows, but Mary showed us how the house was equipped with gas-powered lamps built into oak stands that looked like normal end tables but hid propane tanks inside. The décor was simple, though not sparse, with framed embroidery and Thomas Kinkade prints decking the walls. The playroom, for Mary’s grandchildren and neighbors, was littered with blocks and coloring books and, somewhat ironically, nearly naked Barbie paper dolls.
Mary was Kathy’s aunt and an acquaintance of Janet’s. Janet grew up in the Gap area but in an Old Order Mennonite community. Though she left the Mennonite tradition as an adult, she still knows just about everyone there is to know in rural Pennsylvania, and had arranged our meeting that day, as well as several additional stops in what I’d come to call the “Amish Paradise Tour of 2011.” Dan and I made the ten-hour drive from Tennessee a few days before and were staying with Dan’s brother and his family in Downingtown, where, despite the fact that it was late March, we were greeted with snow flurries and ice—a friendly reminder of exactly why we choose to live down south. Fortunately, the weather cleared up by the time I arrived with Janet and Kathy on Mary’s farm, but it was still freakishly cold outside. Mary hurried the three of us inside and to a large kitchen table covered with a lace tablecloth, where we talked and snacked on pretzels, cheese, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Two brown-eyed little girls wearing simple beige dresses and long, brown braids crept shyly to the table to watch us.
“Tell me about your own courtship,” I prompted Mary after we’d chatted for a while about Amish weddings.
“We dated for about two and a half years,” she responded, “which is probably not that different from the length of worldly courtships. We spent the first few months of our marriage visiting with family and living with his parents, which I suppose some might think is strange, but that is traditional in our community.”
“Do you remember what you wore on your wedding day, Aunt Mary?” Kathy asked.
“Oh, it would have been something like this,” Mary said, looking down at her clothes with a smile and a shrug. “Nothing fancy.”
“In Amish and Mennonite weddings, girls can wear any color except for white,” Janet explained to me.
“Why’s that?”
“Because white is what the worldly girls wear on their wedding days,” Janet said with a wry smile.
Mary nodded in agreement.
“And Amish girls can get married in any month except June,” Janet continued.
“Because . . .”
“Because that’s when worldly girls get married.”
At one point in the conversation, Kathy pointed to a hinged leaf on the far side of the table where the two little girls were playing.
“Is this for family that has been shunned?” she asked Mary.
“Yes,” Mary said with a grin. “Many of us have them now.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, fingering the hinge. “What does this have to do with shunning?”
In the Amish community, shunning—or medung—occurs when someone who committed him- or herself to the Amish way of life as a young adult decides to leave the community later on. The severity of medung varies from community to community, but Mary said that each generation seems to grow more tolerant of family and friends who have left Amish life.
“We’re not allowed to share a table with family members who have left the Amish way,” Mary answered. “That’s why we add the extra leaf, so that when such family comes to visit, they can eat with us without being at the same table.”
I confess I was a little taken aback. As an outsider, it seemed rather obvious to me that it was the rule that needed to be changed, not Mary’s kitchen table. At the same time, I found this odd little workaround surprisingly moving, a bizarre expression of unconditional love that spoke to the lengths to which people will go to maintain fellowship with their dearest family and friends. One is hard-pressed to find a culture in which a mother allows a law to stand between herself and her children.
“Did you ever consider leaving the Amish life?” I asked Mary.
“No, not once,” she responded. “This is how it has always been for me. I can’t imagine it any other way.”
Mary and her husband have five children, a relatively small family for that community, and all of them remained solidly Amish, which is a source of much joy to Mary.
“So what do you think of Rachel’s outfit, Mary?” Janet asked. “Is it plain enough?”
Mary chuckled, looking over my lavender button-up sweater, black A-line skirt, black boots, and beret.
“The covering is just about right,” she said, “but the buttons are a little fancy.” (Amish women typically use pins to fasten their clothing. Buttons are considered ornamental.)
We talked awhile longer about shoofly pie, children, and the reputation of Amish “gangs” (youth, but I swear the phrase “Amish gangs”
made me want to laugh out loud every time it was said), before grabbing lunch together at a nearby café. On our way out, Janet noticed a multicolored weighted Hula-Hoop propped up against Mary’s fireplace.
“What do you use that for?” she asked
“For keeping trim!” Mary said cheerily, patting her belly.
So of course we each took a turn, giggling like schoolgirls as we swung our hips—Janet in jeans and tennis shoes, Kathy in a flowered skirt and heels, me in my A-line and boots, Mary in her apron and Crocs.
The next stop on the Amish Paradise Tour was a one-room schoolhouse just down the road from Mary’s place. Mary knew the teacher and most of the students well, and I was delighted by the prospect of witnessing an Amish school in session, something tourists visiting Lancaster County rarely get to see.
When we pulled into the schoolyard, we were greeted by an austere blond llama nibbling on the grass between a row of seesaws, and by an Amish boy, about eight or nine, tucking in his shirt and dashing from an outhouse to the front door of the modest frame schoolhouse.
We sat in the back of the classroom, where a row of benches was reserved for guests. Inside we found twenty-six students, their ages ranging from seven to fourteen, sitting at large wooden desks. The desks faced a chalkboard covered with multiplication tables and a message in neat cursive writing that said, “Salvation is free for you because someone paid for it.”
A busy but ordered energy filled the room, and it appeared that different age groups were working on different subjects, some collaborating with one another, others listening to the teacher, still others working quietly by themselves. Only the littlest ones looked back and studied our faces with curiosity before returning to their work.
At the front of the classroom was a raised platform upon which sat the teacher’s desk and a castiron stove. Gaslights hung from the ceiling, and a warm afternoon light streamed through the windows, casting a movielike glow over the quaint scene that reminded me of my favorite moments from Anne of Green Gables, the one where Anne slams the slate over Gilbert’s head. Girls wore colored blouses covered by black jumpers or aprons, their hair pulled back with bobby pins into neat buns. Boys donned colored shirts, black pants, and suspenders. The wooden pegs on the coatrack by the door held a myriad of straw hats, bonnets, kerchiefs, and coats.
Presiding over all of this like a master conductor was an energetic and confident eighteen-year-old teacher. When we arrived, she was leading the third graders in a geography game, while answering questions from the sixth graders about their reading work, while keeping a cautious eye on a couple of fourth graders sticking their coloring sheets to the wall with putty. It was the most orderly classroom I’d ever seen.
“Eshet chayil!” I whispered to Janet.
The Amish only educate their children through eighth grade, a religious liberty that is protected by the Constitution. They reason that all a person needs to live a simple Amish life is basic elementary school education and some practical life skills. This severely limits the career options available to girls, who are expected to marry, have children, and tend a home shortly after they are baptized into the faith as young adults.
As I watched the children run around makeshift baseball bases at recess, heads bent down against the cold wind, I wondered how many of them would continue in this way of life as adults, and how many would forge their own paths. I wondered what would have happened to a girl like me—curious, skeptical, and strong-willed—had I grown up Amish in Gap, Pennsylvania, instead of evangelical in Dayton, Tennessee. It was one of those moments when you realize just how much of your own life is out of your control, how little of it you actually choose for yourself . . . right down to the day that you marry and the clothes you wear.
“I kept my head covering in the glove compartment of my car for years,” Janet said with a sigh. “I put it on before family gatherings, even though everyone knew I was long gone.”
It was just the two of us now. We were in Janet’s car, taking a winding highway from Gap to Morgantown to pay a late afternoon visit to Janet’s cousin Sarah.3 We drove through little towns and long stretches of farmland, past general stores and horse-drawn carriages. We stopped to look at the old farmhouse where Janet grew up, and the grocery store her parents once owned. At one point we spotted a woman jogging in a knee-length skirt, apron, and head covering.
“I don’t think I could finish the half-marathon in that!” Janet laughed.
Janet was one of those girls—curious, skeptical, and strong-willed. The Old Order Mennonite tradition is similar to Amish, though typically less conservative. Most Old Order Mennonites use electricity, and some drive cars. Her family initially disapproved of her leaving the Mennonite tradition, but Janet was not shunned for it. One of seven children, the rest of whom remained in the faith, she married a fellow Mennonite, and they left the tradition together.
“It was all the rules,” Janet explained. “I had so many questions, and no one had any good answers to them. I think it’s something you’re born with—that need to inquire and to make sense of things. I just never really fit in here.”
Janet’s a writing buddy I got to know through the Internet. When she heard about my month of modesty, she volunteered to give me a comprehensive look at Amish country, from Zimmerman’s store (where Harrison Ford made phone calls in Witness) to Angela’s I (where I had the best sweet potato fries of my life) to the full-sized biblical tabernacle reproduction at the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster (where a woman appropriately named Miriam gave us the grand tour).
“People are people,” Janet said as we pulled past a stable full of horses into her cousin’s gravel driveway. “You can be Mennonite and be just as self-centered and arrogant as the next guy, or you can be Mennonite and be generous and loving and kind. It’s about the heart—not the clothes, not the rules.”
Jane’s cousin Sarah is famous for both her baked goods and her green thumb. Though she and her husband drive a horse and buggy, they use electricity and even own a fax machine to help Sarah keep up with bagel and bread orders.
“No computer, though,” Sarah noted after we’d joined her at her kitchen table to talk. “Though I’ve been told I’d sell more if I had a web page, probably more than I could handle.”
Sarah was soft-spoken and warm, with a pretty face and gentle brown eyes. She looked like Emily Dickinson to me, exuding an energy of mystery and peace. Unlike the Amish, Mennonites are allowed printed fabric, so Sarah wore a simple floral dress under a black apron. Her head covering resembled Mary’s but sat further back on her head, without the distinctive heart shape. Her house was smaller than Mary’s, but homey and full of light. A Crock-Pot simmered on the kitchen counter.
“What do you call the ribbons attached to your covering?” I asked Sarah, pointing to the two black ties resting on her shoulders. “We just call them ribbons,” Sarah said.
“Why are some of them white and some of them black?”
“Unmarried women wear white. Then several years after marriage, they switch to black.”
“Is it to mark some sort of occasion?” I asked. “Like an anniversary or the birth of a child?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah answered. “Someone once told me that women with children switch over to black because black shows less dirt . . . which makes sense, especially with toddlers, but still, I don’t know. There are a lot of traditions like that. We keep them, but no one seems to know exactly why.”
She paused for a moment and then told us a story:
“Once there was a new bride who wanted to prepare a special roast for her husband. Before putting the roast in the oven, she cut half an inch of meat off each of the two ends, just as she had always seen her mother do. When her husband asked why on earth she would cut off the best part of the roast, the only thing she knew to say was ‘because my mother always made it that way.’ So the next day, the bride went to her mother’s house to ask why she cut the ends off the roast. Just like her daughter, the mother shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Because my mother always made it that way.’ Now they were both curious. So the two found the bride’s grandmother and together asked, ‘Why do we cut off the ends of a roast before putting it in the oven?’ Shocked, the grandmother cried, ‘You’ve been doing that all these years? I only cut off the ends of my roasts because they never fit into my tiny pan!’ ”
We laughed, and Sarah confessed that sometimes Mennonite life seems a bit like that recipe for roast. Traditions stick around for reasons that have long been lost to history.
“But our traditions give us our community,” she said. “They set us apart, so there is value to them.”
Sarah isn’t naive. She knows that the laws that govern her way of life aren’t perfect, but she submits to them willingly, with her eyes open, because she believes they are good for her and her family. You might say she embodies the spirit of Gelassenheit, a German word that the Amish use to speak of yieldedness and peace, a willingness to let things be.
As Janet had observed, there’s no typical Amish woman. As in any culture, there are some women who wrestle with the rules, some who uncritically accept the rules, and some who thrive within the rules. There are those who flourish under the creative constraints of tradition, and those who struggle to find their voice. There are women for whom the bonnets and aprons foster humility and women for whom the same things foster pride.
That’s because true modesty has little to do with clothing or jewelry or makeup. The virtue that is celebrated in Scripture is so elusive we struggle to find words to capture its spirit—humility, self-control, plainness, tznuit, Gelassenheit.
And so we codify. We legislate. We pull little girls to the front of the class and slap rulers against their bare legs and try to measure modesty in inches. Then we grow so attached to our rules that they long outlive their purpose, and the next thing we know, we’re adding leaves to our tables and cutting the ends off our roasts. We cling to the letter because the spirit is so much harder to master.
More often than not, this backfires, and our attempts to be different result in uniformity, our attempts to be plain draw attention to ourselves, our attempts to temper sexuality inadvertently exploit it, and our attempts to avoid offense accidentally create it.
Perhaps this is why Paul encouraged women to “adorn themselves” with good deeds, why he instructed all Christians, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ,” and why the valorous woman of Proverbs 31 is praised because she “clothes herself in strength and dignity.”
It’s not what we wear but how we wear it.
And like clothing, modesty fits each woman a little differently.