But a Bonnet Would Cover Up My Shaved Head

Got up this morning, played a little Animal Crossing in bed with the boys, and then made up my daunting to-do list for today and tomorrow. Extra-daunting because what I have really been wanting since I got back from my trip a week and a half ago is a day off, and there's no prospect of one until...well, until Yehva is a teenager, really. But in the current-world sense of "day off," until at the very earliest March 13. March 20 if David and I follow through on a casual plan to take the kids to Brickworld Indy.

So, having made the daunting list, I have decided to ignore it for the moment and write a blog post that has been taking shape in my mind for a few days.

I was poking around the links at QuakerQuaker the other day, and found my way to Quaker Jane's blog. She is a Quaker who wears plain dress, and I've read her before, but looking through her blog again reminded me of my own thinking about plain dress over the years.

I have been drawn to plain dress from time to time in the years I've been a Quaker. I know several men who wear, or have worn, plain dress. Not in my local meeting, but through my yearly meeting or from bumping into each other at FGC Gathering or FLGBTQC events. I don't personally know any women who wear plain dress.

Religious witness is one reason I've been attracted to the idea--being more visible in the world as a Quaker. I have really struggled over the years about how be present and visible as an individual Quaker with a religious conviction. That Quakers could and should be more visible in the world is not something I question much; I was once in a college classroom where the professor told the class that there were no more Quakers. Clearly our public relations arm has fallen down on the job.

I have also been drawn to plain dress as a clear statement that I have stepped outside mainstream fashion. Quaker Jane says--and I can't re-find the quote this morning but will slot it in if I come across it later--that when she wears plain dress to, say, her husband's business functions, people seem to understand that she is not "underdressed," but that she has stepped outside the whole system, and they seem to accept that.

In some sense, I do dress "plainly." I used to dress a little funky, but as I've gotten older and had kids, I find that I have even less time and patience for thinking about, buying, and maintaining a wardrobe than I had in my youth--and I never had much. So my closet tends to have a few pairs of pants in black and navy blue (and in the summer, lighter blue and maybe light khaki) pants, and about twice that many solid-colored shirts. I like bright colors, so I have a lot of purple, red, and bright blue, and one or two single-color tie-dyes that I'm very happy with.

But that's just "style," however non-stylish. I certainly couldn't show up at, say, my brother's wedding in my black pants and dirty sneakers and a blue t-shirt and have anyone think I was anything but underdressed and possibly rude. Nobody would see that as a religious witness (though they might, if I did it at enough family weddings over enough years, come to accept it as my own eccentricity).

When I have tried to imagine what plain dress would look like for me, I have been stymied. Quaker Jane has chosen plain dresses, and a traditional shawl and bonnet. I find that a darn cute look, but can't see it on me. And, given that in my early child-rearing years I have drifted away from skirts, which I used to wear all the time, I can't see myself coping with the impracticalities.

But I am definitely female, and not much gender queer, and adopting something like men's plain dress--dark pants, light collarless shirt, suspenders, hat--just also feels wrong. (Besides, it would look terrible on me. I know, part of the point is supposed to be stepping outside that system--but I'm not out yet, am I?)

At least one woman I know has chosen to "cover"--wear a cap--with whatever other clothes she happens to be wearing. This works I think on the set-apart, religious-witness level, but for me, covering was always the part of plain dress I was least drawn to, as having a very specific connotation about women's role relative to men, and their place in the church.

(I like Quaker Jane's description, though, of "giving someone the bonnet"--turning her face just enough that the deep side of her bonnet blocks them from her view. Like the Quaker version of "the hand.")

Then, too, plain dress like Quaker Jane's doesn't just say "religious witness." It says, "Conservative Christian religious witness." Quaker Jane took up plain dress as part of a leading that included conservative Christian Quakerism. It's a path I can respect, but not one I can walk down.

And ultimately, that's the answer there: Quaker Jane adopted plain dress because she was led to. I never adopted plain dress in any way because I was never led to. I had an interest in it, and have had off-and-on--but then, I'm interested in everything! If I did everything I was interested in enough to try it once, or read up on it and think about it, I'd be a sky-diving geologist/linguist who does financial planning on the side when not teaching math to fifth graders. Or a quilt-making economist who consults with schools on collaborative problem-solving when not baking birthday cakes for friends and loved ones. Or a newspaper columnist who manages political campaigns, and vacations by kayaking down remote wilderness rivers with my 14 foster children.

I guess God does not need me in plain dress. God prefers me as a frumpy middle-aged mom. Probably the world has some very specific need for a frumpy middle-aged mom, and I'm meeting that need in ways I can't see. (Or God just doesn't care, because whether I am in plain dress or not doesn't matter to my wholeness.<==note to self: future blog post on answers and non-answers to questions asked of God.)

On the other hand, though, I have found in shaving my head some of what I thought I might find in plain dress: a sign that I have stepped away from questions of fashion, just removed myself from it for now. I have been interested to find that, although my shaved head clearly draws attention, it has removed a huge piece of my self-consciousness. I have become so unself-conscious since shaving my head that when I catch people staring at me in public, I check for "toilet paper stuck to shoe," "food in teeth," "something on face," "forgot to wear bra," and so on, before it occurs to me they might be staring because of my head.

Shaving my head has, for whatever reason, largely freed me from thinking about my appearance. Since thinking about appearance can be a huge burden for women in our culture--both those who measure up, and those like me who mostly don't--you can imagine what a relief this is. I suppose plain dress also brings this kind of peace to some people. It certainly did for Quaker Jane--but I have drifted to talking about a kind of worldly peace, and while she certainly experiences that (she enjoys not having to get haircuts or worry about how her hair looks on any given day) the peace she experiences from plain dress is also, and most importantly, the peace that comes from being in harmony with God's will as you understand it.