I wonder if anyone will come to church, first of all.

Second of all, I’d better heed my own advice.

This doesn’t give me an excuse to go to church with wet hair, but I’m sorely tempted, as it will be soaking wet by the end of the service anyway. Does anyone have any favorite “wet-look” hair products? Maybe I’ll slick it back in a ponytail and let it dry with some serious gel. I just don’t want to wind up dripping gooey product down my neck and back. Tips, anyone? Anyone?

Bueller?

Here’s former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell wearing one (and a blindingly ugly frock, too, but who’s looking at the frock!!? Miss Halliwell is NOT the modest type, pigeons!)

I’m not sure about this braid business. For one thing, it’s just too hippie-dippie, and unless you’re officiating at some Age of Aquarius ritual, I wouldn’t go there. Look how silly it looks on Gerri, with her bombshell dress and silly Marilyn Monroe white fox throw. She’d have done much better with a flowy Missoni boho dress; the gypsy hair would have gone quite well with that. There’s also the uncomfortable possibility that, if you don’t make that braid thin enough, someone might start calling you Heidi and ask you to milk the goats. Or start humming the Swiss Miss theme, if there is one.

I would avoid this look. If you’ve been wearing a braid this way, try a gentle twist fastened on the bottom with a tiny elastic. Far more adult and still adds some interesting texture.

And while we’re on the subject of misbegotten hair trends: please, Goddess, PLEASE… NO PINK, PURPLE, ORANGE OR BLUE swatches of hair. That is SO over. It was so over in 1997, they heyday of Manic Panic. Furthermore, you’re the minister now. You don’t need attention that badly.

There’s a reason woman are asked to cover their shoulders at every cathedral in Europe; it’s called respect. Bare shoulders are way too informal to be part of your on-duty clerical wardrobe. Spaghetti straps are the worst, but I am against anything sleeveless unless it’s a very steamy day and you’re at a picnic or out boating with your folks.

Guys, no Hawaiian shirts for you. I’m just making this up here, but let’s say it’s roughly the equivalent.

PeaceBang is making a very stern face about this and if you argue she will purse her lips disapprovingly at you.

If you can afford it, research vestment options in lightweight fabrics. Read the archives of this blog for suggestions. Have a talented friend sew something up for you. If you’re in the Free Church tradition and can be creative with vestments, by all means do be. I found a white duster at Lord & Taylor with a lapel and a bustline hook-and-eye closure on the sale rack about ten years ago and I LOVE that thing. It closes entirely over my street clothes, a stole rests beautifully on its lapels, and it weighs almost nothing.

Please do not throw vests or floaty hippie apparel on over your clothes and pretend that they’re appropriate as vestments. Anything standing in for a preaching robe should cover your street clothes entirely. Let’s not get cute with this. You’re either vested or you’re not. There is no such thing as a Preaching Shirt or Preaching Vest. Make a decision and make it work.

A cotton alb is a nice choice for an outdoor summer wedding or christening during the summer months. I have one with the traditional rope cincture that was inexpensive and which can be washed in the machine, praise the Lord. An alb is a distinctly pastoral garment — it is not a preaching garment, so don’t wear it if you’re not doing anything sacramental (for UUs, “fulfilling the priestly functions”).

When I preach in the summer I shower as close to the event as I can, dry off very thoroughly, whap corn starch-based baby powder all over my body with a huge puff, and wear
a 100% cotton slip under a dress (or pack it to change into later). I make sure to tuck a clean, ironed cotton hankie into my pocket for delicate moppings of facial perspiration (dab, don’t wipe). If you don’t have a pocket, tuck it into your wristwatch band or better yet, into the pocket of your folder.

I bring a towel and if need be, a hair dryer. I do not like attending receptions with soaking wet hair, which is always my condition following a summer preaching event in unair-conditioned sanctuaries. I like to change into fresh clothes, which is why the slip trick works so well.

A polyester slip will not do. Neither will a bikini, or even preaching in your underwear under a robe, which will cause rivulets of sweat to rush unimpeded down your poor, flushed body, making you extremely wet, pooling into your shoes, and ruining your robe. You might even get a rash. So please, be wise, a cotton strappy sundress, cotton briefs and a Hanes t-shirt — you want something to absorb the sweat of your labor.

P.S. Hide a quiet fan under the pulpit if you can get away with it. You can plug it into the sound system and no one need know.

As you can see here, I have had fiery red hair myself at times:

Whether you think that particular hue is flattering on me or not is not the point right now (although I’m happy to receive your criticism — it’s all in the past, and if you love it, maybe I’ll go back to it!). The point is that PeaceBang has been seeing some REALLY SCARY red hair out there on clergy lately, and she feels obligated to say something about it.

1. Although there is a wide variety of what constitutes “red hair,” your hair color should not approach faded pink or magenta. This tends to be an unfortunate trend on older heads, where I’m seeing a really unflattering combination of thin, fried out hair the color of canned peaches or dried out beets on too many pastors at a recent conference. If this is you, please see your colorist or get a friend to help you. And remember that deep conditioner is your friend.

2. Red hair requires careful application if it’s a home job. Again: get someone to help you! I saw at least four women at the Festival of Homiletics with aubergine-cast auburn hair with big black undergrowth patches at the back of their heads. I am pretty sure this wasn’t an intentional goth design but a testament to how difficult it is to get that color applied evenly. Make a party of it! Invite a pal over, have sangria, and color each other’s hair! Just take it easy on the sangria or you may, as PeaceBang once did, wind up with hair the shade of Ronald McDonald. Also: that purple-shaded red is really hard to carry off; especially for white women. Proceed with serious caution.

3. Henna is not better for your hair than chemical colorants, sweetpeas. In fact, it coats the hair shaft something terrible and can be very damaging. It’s also hell’s own work to correct if you screw up. Not to mention that it stinks so badly that you’ll want to avoid the entire human community for the first few days after coloring, and you don’t want to have to do that, do you?

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!

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?

I feel that we have said so much together in the past two years and there’s SO much material in the archives for you to browse and hopefully from which to benefit. I have been writing quite a lot over at my PeaceBang blog – please do go look and see what flits through my noggin when I’m not ruminating on lip gloss — and haven’t had many BTFM inspirations.

Which is where you come in. What are you seeing, wondering, thinking? Not just about your own shoe choice for the spring (I’m so sorry, but I simply can’t respond to all the personal e-mails I receive and must limit myself to those that are professionally urgent, as in “I have an interview coming up and I don’t own anything remotely presentable, help!”), but about your own professional image, how it’s all going out there, and what gaffes we’re still making as messengers of the good news.

Today we open a new category called “The Naughty Corner.” In it we will put all those reports of startlingly inappropriate attire among our brothers and sisters of the cloth. PeaceBang promises not to publish ANY identifying information. We aim here to be informative and challenging, never punitive.

1. If you’re like PeaceBang, you regularly see parishioners at the gym. In other words, you’re not necessarily an anonymous sweating person when you work out. PeaceBang doesn’t care how much her folks see her sweat, but she does care that she looks fairly decent as she does, which means that she wears boot-cut black yoga pants (L.L. Bean and Land’s End make good versions, as does Avenue for plus sizes), a good sports bra, and a clean T-shirt of some kind to the gym. I like to wear my hair in pigtails and add a bright head-scarf for perspiration control, so most of my T-shirts are solid colors.

Avoid: seriously skimpy attire, ratty old stuff, or anything dirty or totally threadbare. Your work out clothes should fit you; don’t leave the house in your college-aged son’s giant basketball jersey even if it makes you feel closer to him to do so. Save it for sleeping in. No make-up necessary unless you choose to do some mascara or something because you just wouldn’t leave the house without it. I always wear lipstick and nothing else but moisturizer on my face.

Remember: You’re there to exercise. Don’t use your innocent parishioners as an excuse to get drawn into conversation, slow the treadmill and distract yourself. Say hello, exchange a few pleasantries and excuse yourself to return to full cardio mode. If you get caught in an immodest stretch on the floor, don’t worry about it. Smile, wave, and carry on. You get to have a body, too, and if it’s flexible and stretchy, that only means good things.

Personal note: If you load your i-Pod with distinctly unreligious songs to get your mojo going in the gym (I make playlists labelled “Workout 1, Workout 2,” etc. and pack them with 45 minutes of slammin’ tunes), try not to sing too loudly. PeaceBang had two trainers in hysterics the other day while she was lifting weights and singing “U + Ur Hand” along with Pink, thinking she was beyond earshot of anyone in the place and blithely belting out lyrics like,
I’m not here for your entertainment
You don’t really wanna mess with me tonight,
just stop and take a second
I was fine until you walked into my life.
‘Cause you know when it’s over
before it began.
Keep your drink just give me the money,
it’s just you and your hand tonight!”

One really needs to be careful about this sort of thing. I also have Sir Mix-A-Lot in my line-up and other dirty ditties. They’re naughty fun and they get me walking faster, pumping harder and smiling through my work-out, so I apologize for nothing. A healthy heart means a healthier pastor. I do whatever it takes to make that gym a place to look forward to.

In PeaceBang’s gym bag:
Fresh undies, work-out clothes and sneakers, towel and robe, flip-flops, and a make-up bag containing contact lens solution, deody-o, hairbrush and smoothing serum, a few barrettes, mascara, an old MAC eye pencil in Teddy (brown with gold shimmer, very smudgeable), an inexpensive tube of Maybelline foundation for flushed cheeks, pigmented lip gloss.