Beauty Tips for Ministers

Packing For the Festival of Homiletics

What to pack, what to pack?

The Festival is in Minneapolis this year, which means to plan layers! Minneapolis can be either very chilly or beautifully springtimey this time of year.

Since I am not a presenter and am attending during a time of sabbatical (rest & renewal!) my own list will look something like this:

Pants: nice dark flared jeans, brown super-wide-legged chinos, black yoga pants for travel and long walks.
Skirts: white cotton eyelet skirt or other depending on weather forecast and social plans.
Shirts: crisp white collared shirt (bias cut, waist definition), a few nice T’s, striped short-sleeved blouse (again with defined waist).
Outer layer: fitted denim jacket to wear with brown pants and skirt. Bright green cardigan because it makes me happy. Navy blue cotton pea coat for rain or wind. A few faux-pashmina shawls. Cute cotton hat with bright green trim.
Shoes: Brown platform sandals or cowboy boots (depending on weather forecast). Gym shoes or Keenes for long walks. Wedge flip flops for casual look with skirt. Slippers.

I’ll add some necklaces and earrings, pack my toiletries with more thought and care than I do my clothes, and add i-Pod loaded with fave music and meditation exercises, lavender oil for the flight, Vitamin C packets, loads of hand wipes, phone charger, i-Pod charger, journal, folder and pad for conference, pens and highlighters, a book of crosswords, camera, and a little book of photos to share with old Minnesota friends (church, parsonage, cat, dog, nephews, family members they’d remember, B.F., etc.).

I’ll be getting in touch with those of you who wanted a private consultation while we’re there. I may also bring my little make-over kit, and you bring photos of yourself in vestments and in “street clothes” and a little pad and pen to take notes. We’ll do a skin analysis, hair review, clothing and image review, vocal technique feedback (if you want it) and a little bit about pulpit presence. We’ll spend between 30-60 minutes together and you decide what kind of free-will offering you want to make for my personal attentions to you.

Privacy, Please

Privacy Please happens to be the name of the lovely, delicate and sheer pink nail polish I’m wearing right now (by OPI), but the issue of privacy also happens to be on my mind this evening, as I drink Gatorade and thank God for having made it through an 8-hour class today. Not only do I have an Evil Stomach Bug, I threw my back out a few days ago and woke up this morning in absolute agony (the bug and the back may be related, I know how that can work).

Lower back-pain sufferers, can I get a sympathetic “AMEN?” If I tell you that I was flinging around heavy furniture on Wednesday, will you still sympathize, or will you smack me upside the head as I deserve? Don’t be afraid to do the latter; what was I thinking ? I know better than that, I really do.

So I awoke this morning in a friend’s guest room in too much pain to put on my pants from a standing position, to reach for the radio dial in the car without gasping and wincing, or to do much but take two Advil (Lord, spare my stomach lining!)and hope that a brisk ten minute walk before class might help with my general alignment. I knew I would be in class from 9-5 and prayed for the stamina to make it through.

I am eternally grateful to my professor and the others in our small class for encouraging me to do “whatever it takes” to be as comfortable as possible throughout the day. I decided to follow their advice and got up frequently –and I hope, unobtrusively– from my chair in order to walk quietly around the room, do some gentle bending or to get my knees moving. At one point I stretched out on the floor in the back of the room, hidden by chairs, and carefully pumped my right leg straight up into the air. I am convinced that this fifteen-minute period of yoga stretching and working out that leg saved me from many additional days of suffering because I felt immensely relieved afterwards.

Except that of course it must have been distracting even from behind an armory of chairs and I’m sure I looked most undignified. Had I been in a ministerial setting I would have most certainly excused myself from the gathering in order to contort myself in this fashion — and it occurred to me that I might need to discuss this issue with you all, my Lovely Incarnate Ones.

Were you at that conference with me when one of the attendees took out her insulin and needles at the dinner table and proceeded to loudly call attention to herself and her subsequent injection, causing me to almost swoon to the floor when the needle pierced her skin? She wasn’t a minister, but she will forever be my poster girl for the Indiscreet Sharing of Those Things That Should More Appropriately Remain Private Ministrations. On the poster with her might be the Minister Who Clips His Toe Nails During TV Time On Retreat, the Pastor Who Digs a Bit Too Busily In His Nostrils With His Hankie During a Vestry Meeting, the Reverend Who Wears a Heating Pad For Cramps During Counseling Sessions,* and the Priest Who Excuses Herself From Eating Bread at The Dinner Party With a Lengthy And Graphic Explanation of Effect of Celiac’s Disease On Her Digestive System.

Oh darlings, I’ve done it. I’ve over-shared. When I had serious and debilitating gynecological problems this past fall that led to overuse of Advil that led to a trip to the Emergency Room ’cause my stomach lining was basically in shreds, some parishioners went with me and told others who worried, and of course I gave them the gist of my medical situation. I love and trust them, and they love and care about me. But there is a time and a place, and that time and place is at a relatively private moment outside one’s study with a small gaggle of dearly beloveds, not at a dinner party or at coffee hour. Not at social time at the retreat, and not during Religious Education class.

Use your best judgment. Getting up from your seat periodically and gently stretching is one thing. Engaging in full-out calisthenics on the floor like a fat waterbug is entirely another, and although I’m willing to subject a supportive class of seminarians and ministers to the sight, never would I be caught in such an inelegant position by my parishioners. There are some positions only my chiropractor should see me in. Maintain some mystery, darlings. Just plunk it all in under the general heading of Boundaries and be well.

Me, I’m heading back to bed with my cat snuggled under one arm and my beagle snuggled under the other. Neither of them has any boundaries whatsoever and I love them for it.

*Nursing a baby, however, is fine and need never be apologized for. There are all kinds of ways to do so modestly without sharing portions of your anatomy that you’d rather stayed your private business. The heating pad doesn’t need to be explained — any woman will know what it’s for and if any man asks just tell him it’s an old sports injury. With a straight face. How about, “It’s from an old sports injury I got when I rowed for Harvard Crew.”
When he says, “I didn’t know you rowed crew,” you can say, “I didn’t. But will you spread a rumor around church that I did? And by the way, my health is perfectly fine, thanks for asking.”

Bare Legs, Hose In Summer And Self-Tanning

Hello my little May apples!

Taking up an inquiry about going without hose in the summer months, PeaceBang’s response to a recent commenter was YES, you can do it if you have nice, smooth legs, are otherwise respectfully dressed and clad, and have a lovely pedicure if your tootsies are showing. This isn’t a matter of age, exactly, but one might discern that she is aiming for a more mature image and opt to wear sheer hose with her summer outfits.

And let PeaceBang make this perfectly clear: it is NOT necessarily a fashion faux pas to wear hose with sandals or open-toed shoes. One simply must search for the sheerest possible hose and wear them with the seam carefully tucked under the toes, and not with Birkenstocks or any other super-casual shoe, of course. We are aiming for elegance here. And of course the fashionista clergy out there know full well that it has been au courant for some time to wear opaque hose with peep toed heels or flats in the fall and winter. The risk with the latter option is that the hose should not bunch up at the toe and ruin the line of the shoe — nor does this trend tend to look good on women with tiny feet, who risk looking as though they walk not on feet but on hooves.

THAT said, it is important that the bare-legged pastor keep her legs smooth, moisturized –and if she is of a particularly lily-white hue (think anywhere from pale to Casper the Friendly Ghost)– possibly fake- tanned with one of the many excellent products on the market.

PeaceBang loves, loves, loves Neutrogena Summer Glow Daily Moisturizer with SPF 20 but has been unable to find it in the stores this season and will have to resort to ordering it online. It is one of the only products that smells good, provides SPF protection and builds a natural-looking base of color after only one use. This is her go-to product for summer days and she recommends it far above any of the other color-adding products out there (and believe me, I’ve tried them all: Jergens comes in second, but other Neutrogena products smell hideous and make me Oompa Loompa-hued).

Darlings, learn from PeaceBang’s mistakes: DO NOT USE FAKE TAN SPRAYS ON SUNDAY MORNINGS. Even with plenty of time to dry, you’re likely to sweat a lot under your robes and you may, like PeaceBang once did, wind up with orange streaks running down into your Bandolino pumps by coffee hour.

Here’s how to do the Fake Tan Routine:

1. Shower. Shave your legs all the way up to the thigh (this takes the place of exfoliating, which you may also choose to do but which is too harsh for PeaceBang’s skin).
2. Dry yourself well.
3. Prepare a few cotton balls wetted with witch hazel.
4. Briskly and using broad circular motions, spray the front and back of each leg with the spray tan product, keeping at least a 6″ distance between the spray and your leg. DO NOT SOAK.
(5. Keep the cat out of the way.)
6. Wash your hands well with soap and water. Scrub under your nails.
7. Use the witch hazel to wipe the product off of your heels, where it may turn an ugly dirty brown. (I also make sure to rub the product into my ankles really well to avoid brown stains there).
8. Walk around in the buff for at least ten minutes. Standing in front of a fan works very nicely to expedite drying results.
9. Get dressed and go have some iced coffee.
10. Expect your lovely glow to last 3-5 days (don’t shave in the meanwhile).

This may sound like an arduous process but it really isn’t, and it helps the nuclear-white skinned among us to avoid pantyhose (worth it at any price!) and to look glowing and lovely in the leg area for special occasions. Believe me, I don’t apply this stuff a whole lot — it’s probably absolutely poisonous, for one thing, and I don’t have the time or patience, for another.

I have found that this L’Oreal product works very well and leaves me with a natural hue, not orangey at all.

Women of color, bare legged summertime is the season to bring out your most emollient moisturizers and apply them religiously. Cocoa butter or shea butter based products are wonderful, and if they add a bit of glow factor, even more fun! Sephora makes delicious body butters; the coconut almond flavor makes me swoon. The dog also likes it a bit too much — when I wear it he keeps mistaking my legs for a bowl full of cake batter that Mommy has invited him to lick clean. Max, yuck!

Pigtails May Be Hip, But They’re Not Ministerial

SweetieBang and I are heading into a time of “see ya later, Stranger” because of his work hours combined with the intensive course on congregational discernment I am starting tomorrow (with a paper due every day!!). Since we both had yesterday relatively free we decided to go sightseeing in Salem, MA. I knew I’d be far out of town and put my hair up in little pigtails, wrapped with a print cotton scarf:

The scarf routine is my typical vacation look.

A pretty, zaftig gal about my age working at the local cafe was wearing long pigtails and I thought they were cute and told her so. “You’ve got to stay young somehow!” was her reply, and I thought exactly…and there’s a time for that and a time NOT to do that. This type of hairdo is fun when we’re not in work mode, but pigtails and derivations thereof can scream “LITTLE GIRL” and should therefore be assiduously avoided when we’re pastoring. That goes for cutesy barrettes and any style that prompts you to look in the mirror and say, “I wonder if that looks too immature for me.” Fellas, you can look too boyish, too, if you slick your hair to the side like a first grader going in for his school portrait, so keep an eye on your own mop, too. And for God’s sake, no pigtails on you!!

And no, braiding the pigtails doesn’t make them any more appropriate for professional wear, nor does wearing two messy buns as I did a few months ago when I was trying new fun clips and was enjoying my longer hair. Hey, how can I advise you if I don’t make some bloopers myself?

The Quest For A Brown Sandal

When I was in college I purchased a pair of dark brown platform sandals for probably about $12. They were incredibly comfortable so even when they went WAY out of fashion I kept them in storage, and took them out a few years ago where they’ve been in constant rotation ever since.

They’re actually very clonky looking with thick straps, but I love them. I can wear them walking all over New York City, which is my ultimate test for a shoe’s true worth. The footbed is all worn down and dirty-looking where my toes have pressed themselves for all those millions of wearings, and I realized a few years ago that I needed to find a dressy brown sandal for professional wear. So I did. I bought a pair of snazzy brown platforms that have a very comfortable footbed but that kind of pinch my toes. Then I bought a pair of Nine West *very* dressy brown sandals with a tiny golf-tee heel for $16 that were comfortable in the store (Famous Footwear) but are just too dainty to run around in like the galumphing troll that I am.

I keep going back to my college clodhoppers.
I wore them when seeing an old, best friend for the first time in 20+ years. He took one look at my feet and said, “So, you’re gay now?” I socked him in the arm and we laughed but it’s true that they’re, um, not very feminine. I was wearing them with a pretty skirt and white t-shirt. I kind of like wearing heavier shoes with lighter dresses when I’m out as a civilian. I think it’s cute. (So Jud, a Bronx cheer to you!)

So my quest for a comfortable, tromp-around-worthy brown sandal continued. I found these at half price on a website called 6pm, and bought them today after having tried them on at DSW Shoe Warehouse at twice the price:

They were *very* cute on, and also comfortable. If they work out, I’ll wear them to the Festival of Homiletics and they won’t cramp my style the way any of the others do. They’re Borns, and at under $50 I feel like I got a really great deal.

But tell me: why is it SO HARD to find shoes that look good, that fit, and that won’t require me to mince around with aching toes like some kind of courtier in the reign of Louis XIV?

The Dreaded Sandals With Pantyhose

I’ve been writing this blog for two years, and I know you’re out there. You read. You iron. You look in the mirror and do hair management and Stole Straightening before you go preside at a funeral. You are walking taller and looking sharper because you’ve realized that clergy image matters, that whether we like it or not, our exterior selves do represent an interior reality. You’re spiffin’ up for Jesus (or God or Buddha or Allah or … The Great To Whom It May Concern).

And then Peacebang attended a Ceremonial Event and one of her colleagues was wearing Bierkenstocks with vestments. But not just that: Bierkenstocks with panty hose.

And PeaceBang knew her work was far from done.