Lovely Aprons and Pretty Dresses

Journey to Homemaker

Aprons are making a big comeback nowadays. At least they are in homemaking circles. Most Christian homemaking blogs contain a post or two about them, particularly if the blog owners believe in modest dress. There is something about how you feel in an apron. It is the homemaker's "uniform". When you put it on, you feel as if you have truly begun your day.

I often feel more productive when I am dressed, my hair done, and wearing socks and shoes (I am a lover of slippers). But when I don that old-time wardrobe necessity, that's when I feel truly ready to work. The aprons I have now are simple, modern, solid-colored aprons with logos on the front. Only one is long and has pockets. As a plus-size woman, most aprons don't give me the coverage I desire.

A lot of homemakers like the cute half-aprons of the fifties, the kind meant to use while serving your dinner party guests. But for me, those are kind of pointless, because when I spill stuff, it's down the front of me, not on my lap. There are many styles out there, the no-tie type often seen in Jane Austen movies being a popular one. The type I like is one I would consider more of a pioneer style--feminine but not frilly, flowing and very practical...giving me the full coverage I need. These are hard to come by, but I found a pattern for them online here: www.candleonthehill.net/store/catalog.php?item=40&catid=12&ret=catalog.php.%3Fcategory%3D12

I plan to get the pattern at some point, but I may for now try to just wing it. I know, I know...I don't know how to sew. LOL. But I found a free pattern online that tells you how to make a similar apron for a child. I just have to figure out how to make the back of it, since I think it is different. I have some nice blue toile I plan to use, and then make one for my older daughter to wear. That style with that particular print should make a really lovely apron. If I ever get the time!

Lately I've been wearing my nicer dresses around the house. I always avoided that, for comfort and also to keep them nice. But how many "church" dresses can you have? Plus they are mostly prints, so stains won't show as much as they do on my solid-colored casual tops. And most of them are actually pretty comfortable, and really aren't all that dressy. I twist my hair up and clip it, then blow dry my bangs and curl tendrils over my ears. It's quick and easy, and I look pretty good.

Now I need some comfy shoes for the house. I feel silly in a dress and sneakers. Those go better with my denim skirts. I have some nice sandals I wore all last summer. Very comfy, and I don't have to search for matching socks. I'd never worn sandals before because I thought I had ugly feet. But I did my toenails (and plucked hairs from my big toes--I know, too much information, lol) and moisturized my feet, and they looked pretty good. I actually felt prettier.

Wednesday I was on the back deck with the children, sweeping up the sand from their sandbox. I actually wasn't worried about people seeing me, because I had on a nice dress, an apron, had my hair done, and was peacefully sweeping the deck. As a mother of a "large" family (small compared to most people at my church) I often feel like the "poster child" for moms of large families. You feel uncomfortable if you and your children look like slobs, and you're screaming at them as they run wild. Really, it's the moms of one kid who should feel like that if they look that way, they don't have as much of an excuse, lol! But since you're a spectacle if you have more than two kids (especially as young as all mine are) you don't want to be any more of a spectacle than you have to!! So looking nicer is definitely a good thing!

Modesty, Part 2

Journey to Homemaker

Modesty is crucial to maintain the moral backbone of any decent society. When we dress in a way that unnecessarily stimulates the sexual drives of others, we contribute to the increasing frequency of adultery, fornication, obsession with pornograpy, rape, and child molestation. And that's just for starters. God intended for our bodies to be enjoyed by our spouses, not strangers. Some people may disagree with this opinion, and for those who have angry reactions to it I would say wait and read further, because that reaction, although strangely emotional, is not uncommon, especially among Christians. I plan to address such reactions later.

It is important to safeguard modesty for many reasons. For one thing, the way we dress affects other people's opinions and treatment of us. When I started to wear only modest clothing, I was treated with much more kindness and respect. Even now as an overweight woman, I recieve more respect than many thin woman who are immodestly dressed. When I am modestly dressed and pregnant, people will literally trip over themselves holding open doors for me, asking if I need help bagging my groceries, letting me cut in front of them in grocery store lines, etc. Of course not everyone is so kind, but I see it much more often now than I did on past occassions when I didn't dress modestly.

Our dress will influence the way our children dress. They will take cues on what is appropriate from observing us. You may think nothing of your daughter going around in shorts at age five, but when she's sixteen and flirting with boys, you might not like seeing her leave the house with a boy, dressed in a halter top and short-shorts. Especially when you catch the boy "eyeing" her. And if you women don't feel uncomfortable, believe me, your husbands surely must, since they know how the mind and emotions of a teenage boy work. Also, even at a young age, with all the perverts out there trolling the parks, libraries, and school yards, do you really want your daughter to be dressing like a worldly teenager, exposing most of her body? I myself would prefer not to have my daughter stand out like that in the eyes of a molester.

How we dress also affects how other people feel around us. In the workplace, many women dress completely inappropriate. Their clothing isn't even professional by worldly standards! How do you think men feel around a woman who wears tight, revealing, or low-cut clothing? Granted, many men probably enjoy it, because their standards are so low. At the very least, it's distracting to them while they are doing their jobs. At worst, it can cause discomfort and even great temptation to decent men who are trying to be faithful to Our Lord, and to their wives.

Now that's not to say that a man's immodest dress doesn't affect women too--it does, just not as often and not nearly as dramatically. Men are just as responsible for the way they dress as women. However, immodesty is a much greater problem with women's clothing. You don't see too many men dressed immodestly at church, but you often see women, especially young women, in sheer blouses, low-cut shirts, short or clingy dresses, or skirts with slits up to the thigh. With men the worst you usually see in church might be tight pants.

One thing many women don't understand is the way men "work". God designed men to be the "hunter", the protector. Because men take on such great responsibility caring for and protecting a family (if he is fulfilling his God-given, traditional role). In order to give a man the incentive to take on such great responsibility, there had to be a big "payoff"--something to make him loyal and faithful to his wife and family. For women, there is a need to nurture, and to be protected and loved. For men, their drive is sexual. Marital intimacy is the main source of love for a man. A woman feels like being more intimate when she is loved, a man feels more loved when his wife is intimate with him. In order to give men this driving force, God created man to have strong sexual desires and responses.

Men are very visually oriented. They react very quickly and strongly to visual stimulation, especially of a sexual nature. So when a man sees a woman's naked body, or even the form or outline of a female body, it usually produces a very strong and immediate sexual response in him. That doesn't make him a pervert--it makes him a MAN. How he responds to those urges determines the kind of man he is. If the woman he sees isn't his wife, then it is his responsibility to do everything in his power to shut down his sexual urges. He must look away, try to think of something else, or escape the situation if necessary. And good men do this every day...usually many times every day, because due to the world around him, he has to. Sexuality is thrust in front of him on a daily basis. Even if he avoids television and the internet, he sees nearly naked women on billboards, newsstands, at convenience stores, even at work.

For many men, it is a daily struggle. And if that man has made the mistake of engaging in premarital sex or using pornography at an earlier time in his life, it will be a hundred times harder for him. Since men are visually oriented, such images are usually seared into their memories. Satan delights in throwing those memories and images in his mind's eye at every possible opportunity, because it is such an easy weakness to take advantage of. And for women, their downfall is usually pride and vanity...which works out perfectly for Satan, because a woman desires to attract the attention of men, so for vanity's sake they dress provocatively. This plays right into his hands, because her curves are just what Satan needs to tempt good men to do evil. And so the cycle continues, and worsens...

Modesty

Journey to Homemaker

I wanted to say a few things about modesty. In today's world, the very word itself seems to be "out of style". People who believe in modesty are ridiculed as religious fanatics, judgemental, prudish, uptight, and even more ridiculous...as perverts! In just a few short decades, the standards of modesty that has been the norm for all decent citizens of every civilized nation for most of human history have been virtually obliterated.

Why should we as a society worry about modesty? The extinction of most empires throughout history can be directly linked to increasing immoral behavior prior to their demise. Rome is a perfect example. Before the fall of the Roman Empire, it had steadily declined into worse and worse pagan beliefs and practices, indecent dress, gluttony, and immoral sexual practices. Now look at the state of America over the last fifty years. We've gone from a society of relatively law-abiding, decent, and primarily God-fearing people to a cesspool of drugs, violence, paganism or atheism, and sexual degredation. Families are being dismantled. Women have been "masculinized" and goaded into the workplace unnecessarily, children shipped to daycares, men trapped into working longer hours to pay the bills for the luxuries that their family feels they need to reward themselves with for all their hard work. Even worse, the men have been emasculated and made to feel that they are some kind of neanderthal every time they try to express themselves in a dominant or manly way.

So what does all this have to do with modesty? The moral decay of this country began small, with the erosion of basic standards of decency. Modesty was the first to go. In future posts, I plan to point out the importance of modesty, why we often become angry and defensive when the issue of modest dress comes up, and some advice to those who wish to become a better Christian example through our dress.