Dress Makes a Man

I had to go to NJ the other day for work to visit the home office. While driving home, I was listening to the BBC on my Sirius radio. They had a news item where they referenced a British saying that dress makes a man. That's probably not the right phrase - my memory doesn't retain as much as it used to... but it's very similar to our saying in the States.

But anyway, they were doing a segment of three incidents that happened in the world recently about the style of dress. I only listened to the first segment because they were going to report on them in separate parts of the hour's show. The first incident they talked about occurred in South Africa. A woman wearing pants was attacked by a mob who were unhappy about her wearing such modern, urban attire. They stripped her of her pants and made her parade half-naked in front of them and then they burned her house down. On BBC they were debating whether this was done because they feared the pants as being an urban symbol or because they viewed pants as being too modern. Such attacks are unfortunately not uncommon.

When we were in Niagara Falls the other week, there were a large number of Muslim visitors. I'm assuming they were tourists since they were in the tourist area, but maybe they were residents. It was a warm day, but not overwhelmingly hot if you were wearing light clothing. Several of the Muslim women were wearing the full burkas, including only a small slit for their eyes to see through. Dressed all in black, it must have been extremely hot for them. Others were fully covered and wore head scarves, while a few had decorated black burkas without the full headcovering, but only a scarf covering their hair. Most of the young Muslim female children were wearing less clothing, but I did see one or two very young girls wearing full coverings and head scarves. I also saw a few families with several generations where the older women wore the full coverings and the other generations were less covered, the younger they were. Grandmothers in almost full burkas, mothers fully covered but only with a head scarf, teenage girls fully covered but with their hair uncovered. The fathers however, all were wearing short-sleeve shirts and shorts, much more appropriate for the weather.

I remember trying to leave my house as a teenager and my father would stop me and tell me to go change because no daughter of his was leaving the house looking like that. Young girls today, like my daughter, dress in a sexier fashion than I would like at times. As Chair of the Worship Commission at church, I sometimes get complaints about the attire of the young female acolytes. At the later service, which mostly older members attend, we ask the acolytes to wear a robe. Short skirts can cause problems when lighting the altar candles. I remember arguing with my parents that people should judge us by our character, not by our clothes, makeup or hairstyle. Problem is people don't see your character, they see your appearance.

I can understand dressing modestly, or wearing certain clothing styles, as part of your religion. I can't understand covering yourself up from head to toe in black with even a black net covering your eyes.