Beauty Tips for Ministers

PeaceBang on CULL-ah

When I say the word color, I always want to pronounce it like a Long Island lady,
“CUL-lah!”
as in “Honey, you really got some CULLAH at the beach today!”

It’s the end of the summer, so I have some nice CULLAH right now, which means I can wear dark brown and look nice, rather than like a piece of deadweed.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.
One of you asked my advice on the subject of CUL-lah.

It’s amazing how much of a mystery we have made of color. I’m sure you’ve all participated in some version or another of one of those Color Me Beautiful programs where you sit under a harsh spotlight and some manically enthuastic woman with big hair throws various swatches of fabric against your neck in a desperate attempt to prove to you that you are a Spring or a Fall or a Summer or a Winter.

And then you go shopping and fall in love with, say, an inky blue blouse that feels like heaven, is cut like it was made for you, and looks simply smashing on you, but you don’t get it because you’re a Summer, and it’s NOT YOUR COLOR.

I hope you never did that. By all means, have fun and get your colors done. But, you know, don’t drink the Kool-Aid, my sweets. If you’re a summer and you want to wear black, go out and rock some black. Just make sure you add extra blush and maybe a dramatic smoky eye or add a bright lipstick.
That’s why God gave us cosmetics, my darlings! So that we could not only appreciate color but that we could actually WEAR it on our bodies without having our facial features disappear completely!

PeaceBang has a few tips on color (completely unscientific, you understand, without any swatch throwing whatsoever):

1. Color is supremely important to your overall look. Choose it wisely and wear colors that you adore and that feel right for your personality and persona. This doesn’t mean you should dress all in purple because purple is “your color.” People who hate purple won’t want to be around you, and is that fair?

2. Fabric and cut are just as important as color in choosing a garment. If you love a garment’s color and it hangs wrong or isn’t a nice fabric, or doesn’t fit, leave it be.

3. Adult women should generally avoid soft pastels. They’re too evocative of the nursery, they look good on very few complexions, and certainly clergywomen don’t need them in their wardrobe, unless it’s a delicious buttery yellow classic sweater set, or a beautiful baby pink blouse that makes your skin glow (and that you can wear under a black suit or pair with a smart black skirt). If you must wear pastels, try to limit them to accents and consider them carefully: do they communicate cutesy, or do they communicate soft beauty? Men, you can look fabulous in pastels, but only on structured, crisp garments. ‘Cause I’m not ever going to give you permission to wear that salmon pink Nantucket sweatshirt, no matter how much you beg.

4. Neutrals are important but they are not as simple as they seem. As I have said before, off-white is not just off-white. There’s ivory and ecru and eggshell and tan. Choose whites and neutrals to suit your skin tone (you can only fudge so much with make-up). This goes for blues and maroon tones, too. There are many, many blues in this world, and nothing looks cheaper than a badly dyed navy. Nothing makes a man or woman look more jowly than a flat, deep blood maroon color. And there is a certain shade of powder blue that should be taken out and shot.

5. Orange looks particularly good against dark skin, but it can also be surprisingly beautiful on some white folks. White men, don’t be afraid to consider a tangerine orange tie, or a pink Oxford, for that matter. But not if you have a ruddy face.

5. If you don’t wear make-up and you’re over the age of 40, you have to be particularly mindful of the way certain colors can wash you out or make you look sallow or bluish.

6. Hair color can make or break your look. It is never silly to spend a good amount of time considering your hair color, comparing swatches, looking at photos, examining your skin and hair tone under different lighting, and consulting with your hairdresser. Haircolor has a huge unconscious impact on people’s perception of you, and it is an expensive beauty investment. Don’t feel foolish asking your hairdresser about highlights vs lowlights, what she means by “caramel” when you’re thinking “honey” and asking for a re-do if the color still doesn’t please you a few days after it’s been done. Your hair colorist wants you to be happy. If you need to have a re-do, do not expect to pay, but do tip, unless the bad first effort came about due to egregious failure to hear what you requested.

7. You should love the colors you wear, not choose them because you think they’re “right” for you. You may look terrific in lime green, but if lime green is inappropriate for the season (and it’s gone totally out of fashion anyway, after a huge surge in popularity in 2004-2006) and if it makes you feel peevish, choose something else.

8. Colors have an emotional impact on people, including you. Use them to your advantage.

PeaceBang’s Friendly Nemesis (Part I In a Series)

This is wonderful.

This is just what I had hoped for.

I have just received a thoughtful, very considerate letter from a minister who believes exactly the opposite that I do, and who is working at absolute cross-purposes with me. This gives us an opportunity to delve back into some of the deeper issues around ministerial power, and for that I am immensely grateful to the author of this missive. He can wear jeans to my church any time.

He wrote me off-line with these words,

I have to admit that I read your blog with much dismay. You see, you and I are fighting on different sides of the same war. While you advocate for a more finely honed fashion sense among the clergy, I advocate for quite the opposite.

In my 4 years of ministry so far, I have made it my mission to dress as casually as possible at all times. This means jeans and chaco sandals in the summers (haven’t been able to get away with shorts, yet), and jeans and my beloved Birkenstock clogs in the winter. On Sundays, and for hospital visits, I break out the khakis and dressy shoes. When I preach I wear a tie (but no coat). I fully intend to someday preach a sermon barefoot, just to make a point.

I have spent 4 years being accosted by a small army of old church ladies who have asked me whether I own a suit and tie, whether I would like Santa to bring me one, and whether they might take up a collection to buy me some clothes. My reply is always the same: I have a closet full of ties. I have suits and coats. I have nicer, dressy shoes. The problem is not that of poverty or apathy.
My dear PeaceBang, I am on a crusade which is at cross purposes with yours: I seek the dressing-down of the clergy.

This attitude is rooted in a deep Protestant priesthood-of-all-believers ethic, a deep Stone-Campbell movement distrust of clerical privilege, and a deep liberation theology affection for the poor and oppressed. Simply put, I think that clothes are our culture’s primary marker of wealth and status, and the tradition of dressing up for church is the most insidious development since Judas went to the authorities.

When we dress nicely, we alienate everybody who is not in our club. Just yesterday, I encountered 4 men who came to our church from off the street. One is an unemployed bipolar man who comes for counseling from time to time. The other three were itinerant laborers who were grimy, dressed in work clothes, smelled bad, and needed a meal. I, in my jeans and nice shirt, was obviously more wealthy than any of them. But in my jeans and shirt, I was approachable. In a suit and tie (standard ministerial issue), would the doors of our church or my office have been as open?

I don’t mean to make this so melodramatic. But it is something I feel quite strongly about. I can also tell that you feel as strongly about your position, so my aim is not to convince so much as to exchange ideas. So there you have it. You have met your opposite.”

And he closes with very nice words of appreciation for this blog.

Before I lay my entire response on you, let me point out a few things:
He wears a tie to preach in. Bravo.
He hasn’t reverted to shorts yet. Thank the gods.
He has a closet full of ties and he owns a few suits and good shoes. Good. I hope he’ll decide to wear them more often.
And finally, he has given a lot of thought to his sartorial choices and has put a solid theological foundation beneath them. That’s much more than I can say for some of our sloppy colleagues, whose justification for looking like a mess goes something like this:
“But I’m not comfortable in a button-down shirt and closed-toe shoes!”

Stay tuned for my full response to our jeans-clad friend.

My Response To My Friendly Nemesis (Part II In A Series)

Here is my full response to the reader who wrote to tell me that he is absolutely opposed to my efforts to de-frumpify and dress up my colleagues in ministry. I am so grateful to him for encouraging me to get down on paper the ideas contained within :

“Dear XXX,

This is a great exchange.

I am, of course, dismayed by your own efforts just as you are at mine.

We do have some middle ground, of course! Just not much!

Here’s what I would say to you, my friendly nemesis:
I find it disingenuous and inauthentic to intentionally dress down just to “get with the peeps.” I don’t see Martin Luther King leading his people in a Hawaiian shirt and sandals.
And I think it a most unfortunate choice to intentionally dress more shabbily to show solidarity with the poor, when in my opinion, it is both more authentic and more respectful to bust into a situation dressed to the nines on behalf of a woman or man who is tattered and unclean. It’s my way of saying, “I’ve got a modicum of power here, and I’m going to use it on your behalf.” I think that subverts the world order way more than if I showed up in jeans and a t-shirt, intentionally divesting myself of visible membership in the middle class just for the sake of visual solidarity with people I’m really NOT LIKE.

I don’t like dishonesty and pretentiousness. I am not poor. I am, by virtue of my hard-working , dirt-poor, immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents, a highly educated, privileged woman who has some access to power. I deeply believe that to try to distance myself from that truth does dishonor to my immediate ancestors’ suffering and sacrifices. Perhaps you have no such immediate experience with actual poverty in your family line. I think that if you did, you would worry less about wearing a suit and tie to the office (heavens, do minsiters really do that? Even PeaceBang doesn’t think that’s necessary!) and more about living fully into the power of your office. If we use our power the way Jesus bade us, we have no reason to be ashamed of it, to shy from it, or to masquerade as a powerless person.

I don’t want to get to Heaven and have my Sophie and Max and A.J. and Minette and Charlie and Anna say to me, “We worked our fingers to the bone in this country so that you could become a somebody! We pushed a fruit cart, we lived in tenements, we worked in the coal mines. We went without so that you could go to school and get degrees and fight for our values and for the freedoms we believed in. We suffered and counted pennies so that you could worship God in freedom — even to become a Christian! For this you schlepped around in dungarees and pretended you were poor? Oy gevalt!”

I’m glad to hear that you wear a tie on occasion, because I deeply believe that it actually hurts the little old ladies in your church when you dress like a slob. It insults them. That’s what they’re telling you by offering to buy you clothes. For that generation, your sandals and shorts are a sign of disrespect and hostility. I hope you can understand that. For them, you may as well get up in the pulpit and fart as attend important functions in jeans. It’s a girl thing.
Would it kill you to put on a suit and tie for them now and then? They’re paying your bills, aren’t they? Don’t they need to be reflected in your eyes as much as the poor man does? Aren’t they poor and suffering in their own way? Of course they are. And yet you’re intentionally distancing yourself from them, because it’s more spiritually glamorous to focus on the itinerant laborers who come in “from time to time.” What, your girls who are there ALL the time don’t rate? See what I’m saying?

But this is the hardest thing I have yet to say, my friend:

In my opinion, the only clergy or religious leaders I can respect who dress like the poor ARE the poor. If you are willing to go to your governing board and request to be supported at poverty subsistence level because of your deep distrust of clergy privilege and your unwillingness to publicly identify as a person of means, then you’ve totally earned the right to walk around in jeans and a t-shirt.
But to collect a reasonable salary and to dress like the poor strikes me as … well, let me just quote my ancestors on that one: OY gevalt.

Much love and thanks so much for writing,
PeaceBang”

Stay tuned, readers!! He writes back with more interesting clarifications and good arguments, and then I write back AGAIN!
Is this not HOT?

PeaceBang and Rev. Blue Jeans Continue (Part III)

[The conversation continues thusly… I formatted slightly for your ease in reading. Rev. BlueJeans speaks:)

As I was hoping! A Great Coversation!
And yes, of course you can post, sans identifying information.
I think you misunderstand the thrust of my argument. Or perhaps I don’t understand the thrust of yours.

I guess the question is this: what is the baseline of human attire? You point to my dressing-down as hypocrisy. This would indeed be true, if it represents a “disingenuous and inauthentic” departure from what I would otherwise be wearing–a “masquerade,” as you say.

If I would naturally be inclined to dress in suits and ties, but instead wear jeans and sandals, all in an effort to “get with the peeps,” then yes, that would definitely qualify as hypocrisy. But that’s not what’s happening. I would submit that no human, being in a state of nature (a la Locke or Hobbes), would of his or her own free will choose to wear a suit and tie, or a skirt for that matter. And don’t even get me started on high heels. These items of clothing, far from being the thing most of us would choose to wear, are dreaded, uncomfortable, and expensive encumbrances. At best, we wear them because we’re expected to wear them, and because we assume they’ll gain us the approval of others.
So when I wear jeans or shorts, it’s hardly as if I’m stooping my otherwise lofty perch to “get with the peeps.” I’m being as I would like to be in the world–comfortable, and not broke from dropping $400 on a suit.

I ask you this: would it not be less disingenuous (more ingenuous? more genuine? how does that work?) for me to wriggle into a suit and tie on Sundays, simply to satisfy the expectations of the upper-middle-class folks that pay my bills? I can wear what I’d otherwise wear, or I can move into an entirely foreign class of clothing (ties: nooses for men!) based solely on the proposition that it will set others at ease. How is that not disingenuous!?

I don’t propose that we all dress as coal miners or auto mechanics, in an attempt to imitate the dress of the working poor. I simply propose that we don’t all wear, minimally, $100 worth of clothing to church. Why should people who have a desire to come to church be forced to climb over an obstacle like that? Why couldn’t they wear whatever they want? What could clothing POSSIBLY have to do with God, church, and community?

Clothing functions as a social marker…it sets us apart from each other, illuminates differences in class and status, and reminds people of their sitz im leben. I don’t see it as all necessary in the practice of religion. In fact, I see it as fairly inimical to the practice of Christianity.If I could wave a magic wand, I’d institute mandatory casual dress at every church in the country. Luckily for the church ladies, I can’t.

It’s interesting that you bring up family history as it informs our fashion concepts. I do in fact have a great deal of familiarity with poverty; I am the child of Appalachian farmers many generations back, and my mother didn’t have indoor plumbing until she went to college. As a kid, we didn’t have two nickels to rub together, so perhaps my ethics of clothing has been influenced as much experience as by the Marxist-liberation critique I encase it in.

I await the next volley….”

So Then I Said (Part IV In A Series)

[This is how I last responded to Rev. Bluejeans:]

“Oh man, I should really be cleaning my office, but this is so great!
I wondered if you were a southern guy with roots in Appalachia, and it’s nice to know that I was right. Not that it matters, but I think it makes it easier for us to talk.

I totally hear you on the whole first part of your post. You’re not dressing down to “get with the peeps” but because it’s more comfortable and you think neckties are nooses for men. Okay, but that wasn’t your first argument to me.Your first argument wasn’t based on that kind of Thoreauvian, “beware any enterprise that requires new clothes” philosophy at all, but was a rather clear statement that you dress casually as a visible sign of your commitment to liberationist theology.

To which I responded, basically, “Oh come on, middle class guy! Your wearing jeans does not make you closer to the poor! If you want to be in real solidarity with those who suffer poverty, take vows of poverty and walk the walk.” I mean, we both know that Christian life certainly provides an easy opportunity for either of us to take up the Cross in that particular way.

But now the conversation has changed course. You say that it isn’t so much dressing up for church or ministry that’s the problem (because of your desire to remain approachable to less privileged folks), it’s clothes themselves that are the problem. You don’t like them, you see them as tools of oppression. You don’t want to have to wiggle into a suit and tie.I get that.

And to that, I would say Yes, yes, yes. Sure. I don’t love heels, either. However, I don’t see clothes as the problem — I see the attitudes that we take on with our choice of clothing and grooming as the bigger problem.

I see a lot of clergy people claiming that dressing like a slob makes them more approachable when actually, it makes them more ‘approachable’ only to those it’s more spiritually glamorous to respond to. That’s what I find disingenuous, lazy, inauthentic and pretentious — and it’s not good or loving ministry. I’m glad you’re not succumbing to that particular sin. I think it’s sheer B.S., and again, I point to the example of the Black Civil Rights activists as my example of how to dress for a revolution.

(Yes, I believe I did just coin that expression, ’spiritually glamorous’)

I guess my final point, though, is to say that throughout all of human history, human beings have adorned themselves in their finest garb to meet the sacred moments of their lives, and I dig that. No matter how limited their means, humans in all cultures have contrived to come before their God in as beautiful condition as possible, saving sackcloth and ashes for times of penitence and grief.

To me, dressing well (at whatever cost, whether $30 or $300) says, ‘This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ In other words, by dressing beautifully (especially on the Sabbath), we are arraying ourselves not just in finery, but in hope, in gratitude, in dignity, and in respect. When I put care and intention into my dressing in the morning, it is a way of thanking God for this life and for this vehicle that I will adorn with care before going out to do God’s work in the world.

I think that you get dressed in the morning with a very different attitude. I am guessing that you get dressed in the morning thinking, ‘How can I dress today so as to seem brother and kin to every human being that walks this Earth, no matter how humble his or her means?’I think that’s a beautiful Christian sentiment, I just don’t think it works as a public message about ministry. Certainly it doesn’t work for some of the elder ladies in your congregation.

I suggest that just as clergy should be bi or tri-lingual verbally, so should we be sartorially flexible. Obviously, I wouldn’t go work at a shelter in a suit and heels, but I might go in a sweater and nice jeans. On the other hand, I wouldn’t go on a hospital visit in shorts and a t-shirt, because that would communicate something I don’t want to communicate to a respected elder. And I wouldn’t preach barefoot ‘just to make a point,’ because I think the only ‘point’ one can make by preaching barefoot is ‘I know how to take off my shoes.’

If Adam and Eve had had Prada and Armani to wear in that first moment they realized that they were conscious, that they had consciences, that they were responsible for their choices, and they lived in God’s world, I think they would have decked themselves out in it. That fig leaf was their way of saying, ‘Whoa, we get it. We have just been made aware of who we are and Whose we are. We’d better get dressed up.’

Cheers again!PB”

And Then He Wrote Back… (Part V Of A Series)

[In the next exchange with young Rev. Bluejeans, he sez to me:]

“OK, I lied. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else until I responded for real, so I got myself a diet coke, and here we go:Again our views of human nature diverge.

It’s fascinating to frame this debate in the mythology of Eden; the fig leaf as the first fashion move is brilliant. You and I should co-author a book on this, seriously. We could title it “Spiritually Glamorous.” Anyway, you point to A&E’s first fig-leaf-accessorizing as the moment when humans had been “made aware of who we are and Whose we are,” and that this caused them to decide,” “we’d better get dressed up.”

This is, I would think, a very optimistic picture of the Garden, and one that I am not at all inclined to imagine. Perhaps it’s the weight of 30 centuries of Judeo-Christian interpretation, but I’m much more inclined to see the fig leaf as an implicit rejection of body and self in favor of a facade, a veneer, which takes the reality of human existence and hides it behind prettiness. I wholeheartedly agree that the fig leaf is a seminal moment in human fashion history. I just don’t think it was a good thing. And that’s why we should co-author a book.

You’re moving into more familiar ground with your “this is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” motivation for dressing up. Here in the South, this is the express argument for dressing nicely 98% of the time. We once had a dress-down day at the church, because we were having a picnic outside right after the service. A man in the church wore a tie, and was getting a fair amount of teasing about it (not from me). He said, with a great deal of dignity, “it’s a sad day when you can’t wear a tie in the house of the Lord.” His point, and yours I think, is that church is a place which is worthy of our respect, and that respect is effectively shown through proper dress and decorum.

I don’t buy it.

The entire thrust of the life and teachings of Jesus–the entire thrust–is away from religiosity and toward an interior life of faith. That is, Jesus shunned external displays of piety: praying out loud, being obvious with your gifts to the temple, bragging about your lawkeeping. He embraced a certain humility. I don’t know how accurate the movies are about his clothing, but I do know he wore sandals (it’s in the bible, of course), and whatever he wore was low-key enough that fit in just fine with lepers, prostitutes, and a ragtag bunch of fishermen from the Galilee. And then there’s that whole “life is more than food, the body more than clothes…consider the lilies of the field” thing.

So I don’t see a tie as a sign of respect for God. But I also don’t see God as the sort of God who goes around needing signs of our respect, either. At the end of John, Jesus doesn’t say “if you love me, wear Armani.” It’s all about feeding the sheep.

Alas…I’m out of time.”

***

Here’s PeaceBang again, ladies and gentlemen.

Let me respond with a few more words to him and to you.

First of all, it’s so funny that I was going to use the overly-pious thing with HIM but then I didn’t, and he went ahead and used it on ME! Because to me, dressing all humble when you have the means to afford perfectly swell clothes is an expression of false piety — but my correspondent there is saying that dressing UP is an expression of false piety.

There you have it: perfect evidence of how two smart ministers interpret the same exact teachings of our Master.

The other thing I want to say is that my faithful correspondent and I have two absolutely differing ideas about veneers and prettiness. To him, hiding behind the fig leaf was an original act of falsifying reality (i.e., laying a pretty exterior over a sinful, disobedient, suffering interior).

But to me, that fig leaf says, “Well, damn, we got thrown out of Paradise but honey, we can still look FABULOUS. I mean, we lost Paradise but we got the planet! Let’s work it!” In other words, it’s not so much a rejection of body and self to me (although my correspondent gets the traditional Christian interpretation points there, certainly) as it is a brave little move to adorn the self out of recognition of blessing within the midst of existential loss. That is so Matthew Fox of me, now that I think about it.

I thank my correspondent again for this really terrific exchange — he and I probably should co-author a book — a sort of North-meets-South exchange on religion and fashion — just because I like him so much, he gets to be the Rev. JeansBang!

As for the rest of you, you big smartypants heads, you’ve gone ahead and contributed more provocative and important insights to this conversation, proving once again that Beauty Tips For Ministers just seems to be mere fluff, when we all know that we can get all brilliant and deep at the drop of a fig leaf.

Which is why I love ya’ll.