Responses to Things People Have Said to Me Opposing My Wearing Plain Dress

Wearing plain dress is a form of public witness that invites all sorts of responses, both positive and negative. Some people assume all kinds of wonderful things about me that may or may not be true. Other people assume negative things--which are never ever true ;) . It seems to me judgments like these (positive or negative) say a great deal more about the person who is judging than the person being judged. I keep it centered where it belongs: God's purpose and will for me. Here are a few of the most commonly raised negative responses to my plain dress witness.
Separately, please see, Three Essays Defending Quaker Plain Dress

• Not Simple.
  
  "You know, plain dress isn't simple."
  
  A couple of things here. One, I have found plain dress to be simple and simplifying. I can see how others might not experience it as such, but it has been so for me. However, this is not why I wear it. I don't have "head" reasons for wearing plain dress. I am not wearing plain dress to witness to the Quaker Simplicity Testimony. Simplicity is a side effect of plain dress. I wear it as an obedience. God asked me to wear it and so I wear it. It is that simple.
  
  For men, it is often argued that plain dress is just too expensive to be simple. Again, if being simple (and inexpensive) is why you are wearing a $300 plain suit and hat, then that would indeed be rather foolish. It is possible for a man to "go plain" and not break the bank. Martin Kelley (the Quaker Ranter) calls it Sears plain.
  
  
• God.
  
  "God doesn't care what you wear."
  "God doesn't know or care about what you wear."
  
  The speaker believes either that God has a will but it is never God's will that a person wear any sort of observant dress, or that God isn't willful. In the first case, the speaker assumes they know the will of God and that I don't. In the second case, the speaker knows that God doesn't have a will for people and I am mistaken when I believe I am experiencing a God who does. Both types tend to come across as paternalistic and superior, almost as if they are kindly trying to correct a child. Those espousing the second variation seem to imply that if I had simply applied logic and common sense (or checked with them first) I would never have committed such a foolish error in judgment. I always wonder if they expect me to have a de-convincement, suddenly realizing the universe is ordered as they perceive it, and that I'll strip naked on the spot.
  
  
• Vanity.
  
  "You wear plain dress because you are vain."
  "Plain dress is a vanity."
  
  Definition of vanity: "excessive pride or admiration of one's own appearance, the quality of being worthless, futile." Oxford American Dictionaries
  
  In the first variation, I am vain and wear plain dress because of "excessive pride and admiration" of my own appearance. The speaker imagines that I plaster my photos all over my website to encourage people to admire me. Sigh. It simply isn't true. It was excessive pride that caused me to resist posting my photos for months and months. It became clear that this reticence to expose myself on the website was a false modesty: my online witness has to show me and my journey as it is. Honesty and openness are the requirements for my faithful witness. If I were vain, I can't help thinking there would be better ways to express personal vanity.
  
  In the second variation, plain dress is a vanity because it is "worthless, futile." Meaningless. The speaker seems to be assuming religiously observant dress can only serve the purpose of puffing up the self and as is used as a badge of religious purity, a sort of self-righteousness. Here I think the speaker is imagining what the experience would be like for them, coming to the conclusion that it would be meaningless to them, and assuming it is therefore meaningless period. God obviously isn't asking them to wear it. It would indeed be a vanity if they wore it. God is asking me to, and so for me, it isn't a vanity, but an obedience.
  
  
• Ugly.
  
  "You'd be such a pretty girl . . ."
  
  I want these people to speak to the people who think that I wear plain dress because I am vain. Beauty is obviously in the eye of the beholder.
  
  
• Immodest
  
  Definition of modesty: "behavior, manner or appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency, also, the quality or state of being unassuming." Oxford American Dictionaries
  
  I really can't believe they are arguing that plain dress is improper or indecent, so it seems their argument is that plain dress is immodest because it attracts attention. I wasn't very surprised to get this from conservative "women should keep there place and be seen and not heard" sorts of people, but others not in that arena have raised this judgment. If modest means trying to make sure no one looks at you, then not going out into public at all would seem the best option. A Muslim solution is purda.
  
  By modesty, some seem to mean "blend in" and "don't stand out." This stance is more along the lines of the definition of being unassuming. The burqa, by this definition, would be immodest in the United States. If I were wearing plain dress to be unassumingly modest, I would indeed be making a mistake. Plain dress is not indecent, which is my standard for modesty. It is my experience that God calls some to live the plain dress witness, which means witnessing to their faith in a public way every day, day in and day out. If that is immodest, then I am immodest.
  
  
• Costume
  
  "Plain dress is a costume."
  
  The complaint here seems to be that I am wearing a plain dress costume to create a personal definition that is a shell only, an empty nothing. Of course this could be true, in theory, of someone who wears plain dress, but the same can be said of Goth regalia and a police uniform and a Roman collar. These things can also all be worn with integrity. An essential part of my convincement and my call to the plain dress discipline was the bonnet. The ultimate in plain dress anachronism. I have to say I resisted the bonnet completely. I kept thinking God must be joking. But it became entirely clear it was what God was asking of me, and so I submitted. Not a costume, but an obedience worn with complete sincerity.
  
  In defense of the bonnet, I have to say it is nice to be able to "give someone the bonnet" by which I mean, if someone is staring a bit to intently or for too long (I concede my mode of dress invites this to some degree) I turn my head and block them out of view with the bonnet. All the more reason to wear the largest, deepest bonnet possible.
  
  
• Slavishly historical.
  
  "It isn't religious, it is historical re-enacting."
  
  Some people are quite disturbed by the anachronistic aspects of my form of plain dress. The bonnet. The shawl. It seems to strike them as just plain weird.
  
  What can I say? The bonnet was the piece that was non-negotiable. God made the bonnet and Quakerism requirements. Amazing the things that ended up going along with that.
  
  Also, as a technical matter, what I wear has anachronistic elements but would never pass re-enactor muster. I wear 50/50 polycotton, use zippers, and my bonnets and caps are much more simple in design and much less exquisitely crafted than those ever worn historically. They are modern adaptations of historical garments.
  
  
• A-historical.
  
  "There is a lack of historical precedence among Quakers."
  
  I invariably hear this comment from Quakers who have chucked centuries of Quaker precedence. I don't wear it because I believe it has significant historical precedence, or that it is a historical practice that needs to be revived. I would be wearing it if I were the only Quaker doing so. It was a great consolation to me to learn (via the Internet) that I was not the only person feeling so led. It was also a great consolation to learn that I was in excellent historical company: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Fry, John Woolman, Samuel Bownas all adopted (made a change from one style of acceptable Quaker dress to the more observant plain style of their time) a distinctively Quaker style of plain dress with integrity and worked God's will in the world while they were at it.
  
  Another funny thing here is that the effects of plain dress then and now are so very opposite. Historically, Quaker plain dress was used very consciously as a hedge between the believer and the world. The goal was to look like other Quakers and not like the world. It was also seen as the outward sign of the inward change. No outward baptism, but an inward baptism by the Spirit that showed itself outwardly by the adoption of plain dress and plain speech.
  
  Now plain dress functions among Quakers as a hedge between the world and other Quakers. We just end up standing out completely. It is a-historical not because it was abandoned, but because we aren't conforming to the dress standards of our fellow Quakers. Plain dress as non-conformity, a uniquely Quaker witness.
  
  I don't think it is a surprise that I get the most negative comments from and am most often challenged for my plain dress witness by other Quakers. I am not upsetting any apple carts for Non-Quakers, but for some reason, for Quakers, my religious practice of plain dress is a challenge.
  
  Here is a page of Quaker Plain Dress References offering centuries of proof that such a practice did exist among the Quakers.
  
  
• Is isolating.
  
  "Plain dress makes the wearer unapproachable by people uncomfortable with it."
  
  This complaint is kind of fun, because "creating a hedge," being isolating, was the desired purpose of plain dress among Quakers of a certain period.
  
  Quakers have historically been able to make significant contributions in clothes that were completely out-of-fashion plain dress that told others in a glance they were Quakers: Elizabeth Fry, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelley quickly come to mind. Something that plain dress does besides separate the wearer from others, it separates the wearer from expected dress conventions. I wear plain dress to my husband's office parties, to the theatre, to the mall, to the dentist, to work, to play, to socialize. At no point am I actually dressed inappropriately for the occasion. It has functioned for me as a very egalitarian response to situations that request stratification. I am judged to be weird, but not to have the wrong shoes on, or to be wearing a color out of season or a sleeve length that is so last year. They sort of take me at my unspoken word that these rules are not to apply to me.
  
  Plain dress, in much the way of nun's habits, can distance, but they can also draw people to you, help people perceive you as trustworthy, help them believe you are not there to judge them for their income or the education, but for themselves. They believe that you are meeting them on equal ground. I am regularly approached by people who are homeless, people who are working poor. They have been invariably accepting and comfortable with me, something I never experienced when I did not observe the discipline of plain dress. It is more often among the wealthier classes that I ever get a sense of dis-ease and distancing. Like what I have might be contagious.
  
  I just went through the experience of seeking a new job. It is a little nerve-wracking, imagining how the interviewer is going to respond to my attire. Funny thing. It has yet to seem to phase them. I thought it might be isolating in the sense that I would not be able to get jobs, but that has not been my experience.
  
  
• Is expressing self-righteousness.
  
  "People who wear plain dress feel they are religiously or morally superior to those who do not."
  
  I cannot agree. Plain dress is very humbling in a great many ways. For starters, as a Quaker, I can't just say I am conforming to the standards of my community. I am not. I have to confess that I am doing it because God asked me to. I don't think God asked me to because I was some excellent example of Christianity and Christian values. I think he asked me to because subtlety doesn't work with me. I needed a kick in the head by the Holy Spirit, and I seem to require plain dress because I am terribly self-important, self-conscious, shy, spiritually recalcitrant, intellectually prideful, belligerently arrogant, and way too desirous of people's good opinion. And, for me, plain dress sends all of those out the door. Interesting. The very things plain dress is criticized for, things I am without a doubt prone to, are the things that plain dress inhibits in me.
  
  I wanted to be seen as insightfully intelligent. I think, therefore I am the center of the universe. Gone. I wanted to be seen as beautiful, elegant. Gone. I wanted to believe I was in control of my destiny, to have my judgments judged as sound, intelligent, wise. Gone. I wanted to be able to explain everything and make everything make sense. Gone. Humbled. Daily. By. God. In. My. Plain. Dress.
  
  I also know so many weighty Friends and spiritually wise non-Quakers who dress in so many varieties of ways that I can't think for a second that what a person wears bears any impact on that. Except if their dress is their idol, and it becomes an empty form. That can happen, and then it is time to let it go. I laid the plain dress discipline down for a period of, I think, four months, while God was re-ordering me on that. I was so *mad* about that. First he makes me look the fool by making me put on that enormous bonnet and those ridiculous clothes. Then he says to stop. Then I get to look twice the fool. By the time that exercise in humility was done and I returned to plain dress, I finally had a sense of when my orientation is true. It comes and goes at God's will, not mine. It isn't a rule. It is a witness. It is not unchangeable and it is not for my ease and comfort. God is entirely capable of handling us when we stray off the path.
• Margaret Fell's Condemnation
  
  It is common for Quakers to bring up Margaret Fell's (Later in life she married George Fox, and was a Weighty Worthy in her own right.) I particularly like Martin Kelley's insight into this "epistle" that he calls "the red dress macguffin".
  
  Here it is in its entirety:
  Our monthly and quarterly meetings were set up for reproving and looking into superfluous or disorderly walking, and such to be admonished and instructed in the truth, and not private persons to take upon them to make orders, and say this must be done and the other must not be done: and can Friends think that those who are taught and guided of God can be subject and follow such low mean orders? So it's good for Friends of our country to leave these things to the Lord, who is become our leader, teacher and guider, and not to go abroad to spread them, for they will never do good, but has done hurt already: we are now coming into É that which Christ cried woe against, minding altogether outward things, neglecting the inward work of almighty God in our hearts, if we can but frame according to outward prescriptions and orders, and deny eating and drinking with our neighbours, in so much that poor Friends is mangled in their minds, that they know not what to do. For one Friend says one way, and another another; but Christ Jesus saith that we must take no thought what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or what we shall put on: bids us consider the lilies, how they grow in more royalty than Solomon. But, contrary to this, we must look at no colours, nor make anything that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them, nor wear them: but we must be all in one dress and one colour.
  This is silly poor gospel! It is more fit for us to be covered with God's eternal Spirit, and clothed with his eternal Light, which leads us and guides us into righteousness, and to live righteously and justly and holily in this present evil world. This is the clothing that God puts upon us, and likes, and will bless. This will make our light shine forth before men, that they may glorify our heavenly Father which is in Heaven, for we have God for our teacher, and we have his promises and doctrine, and we have the Apostles' practice in their day and generation: and we have God's holy Spirit, to lead us and guide us, and we have the blessed truth, that we are made partakers of, to be our practice. And why should we turn to men and woman teaching which is contrary to Christ Jesus' command, and the Apostles' practice?
  ...Friends, we have one God, and one mediator betwixt God and man, the man Jesus Christ; let us keep to him or we are undone.