Beauty Tips for Ministers

Interesting Shapes

Dressing simply and in a classic style doesn’t mean having to stick with the same old same old. It means paying close and careful attention to line, fit and fabric and making sure that all three of those elements are appropriate and flattering, and of as good quality as you can afford.

Real classics (think cashmere sweater, perfect wool skirt, etc.) don’t need to be updated every season or even every few years, but if you want to add something very “of the moment” to your fall wardrobe, consider some of the interesting shapes out there in sweaters and jackets. I saw this little sweater at a local boutique and thought it would be beautiful with a pair of charcoal trousers, a pencil skirt, or even a super pair of dark denim pants (notice I’m avoiding the word “jeans”). Add a beautiful, simple pendant on a long chain or a set of silver bangles and boom, you’re set to go.

(I don’t know how the sleeves work, but there are sleeves in there.)

Time To Get Into Trousers

These have no business being on your legs past Labor Day:

They’re far too casual and inappropriate for professional wear.

Even if you wear them with super-fabulous shoes like these, not okay. What makes them too casual? The ruching on the leg, the cargo pockets, and the drawstring. I’m not a fan of capri-length pants in general, having seen them on too many frumpy clergygals over the years, but if you must insist on a shorter pant, consider something like this:

Or if you’re a very slim woman (and I mean VERY slim), you might go the cigarette pants with sweater-set and flats a la Audrey Hepburn route.

Scale Your Accessories (And That Includes Your Shoon)

Here’s “Hairspray” star Nikki Blonsky, darlings, giving us an opportunity to talk about proportion and cloven hooves:

Nikki is a heavy, beautiful young woman and this outfit is hip. No minister should wear pants that are stained and shredded at the hem, but that’s not what I want to point out here. I want to bring your attention to the fact that Nikki’s bag and belt and earrings are the right proportion for her size, and that’s a good thing. I also want to point out that Nikki is wearing a bra that gives her enough support, and that’s a very important factor in looking appropriate and pulled-together.

If Miss B. were to professionalize this outfit, she’d have to update the trousers (a darker fabric and a wider hem would be so much more flattering). Thick gals don’t do themselves many favors widening their shoulders with a boatneck collar or cutting themselves in half with a belt as Nikki has done — a long, funky necklace would have added a nice line of vertical interest — but she’s a kid at the airport, she’s not a working woman. Her outfit is fine as it is for her purposes, and she looks a far sight better than most of young Hollywood these days. At least she knows enough not to wear a tiny belt or to carry an armpit warmer.

But our Nik’s had a bit of a whoopsie in the shoe department. Don’t get me wrong, I love the shoes; they’re adorable. But as I’ve learned the hard way, an open-toed wedge heel on a heavy, short, busty girl in pants with small feet looks like a cloven hoof. It really does. And that evokes unfortunate memories of Miss Piggy.

Nikki would do much better with a boot here, or a high-heeled Mary Jane or some other shoe that better suits her proportions. She’s too plump to look right in a ballet flat (too ethereal for heavier women, and who can walk confidently in them?) or even an unstructured flat. She needs shape and heft on her tootsies to balance out her grand bosom and bottom.

PeaceBang, having much the same shape and having made the Miss Piggy error many times herself, wishes Miss Blonsky godspeed in finding more flattering shoes. She also congratulates her for an extraordinarily winning and impressive cinematic debut in “Hairspray.”

PeaceBang’s Guide To Surviving Cyber & Techno Life

Dear Rev., can I be your FRIEND on FACEBOOK?

How about on MySpace? How about it?

Darling pigeons,

We live in complex times. Part of our work is ancient and resonates with the practices of far bygone eras: we dress in vestments based on pre-Christian Roman garb, we spend hours of study poring over texts written thousands of years ago, we ascend a pulpit on Sunday mornings as has been done for many hundreds of years and preach in a way that hasn’t changed all that much over all that time. We visit the sick, we bury the dead, we pronounce words that render people in love “husband and wife” or “married partners for life,” we pour water over the fresh little heads of babies to bless and welcome them into the world. None of that is very high tech, and it certainly isn’t anything new under the sun.

And yet we also organize meetings and keep in touch with parishioners over e-mail, participate in conference calls, become as i-Phone or Blackberry-obsessed as any other tech-addled individual, constantly look to our cell phones for evidence that we are needed and important, and grocery shop with our beepers on. We typically own computers and digital cameras and i-Pods and other gadgets that both enslave us and join us to the world we live in. And that includes social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.

So what to do when congregants ask to be your friend on Facebook or MySpace or start reading your personal blog or sending you Instant Messages when you’re online?

Be flattered and welcome them!

If you don’t have a compartmentalized life and personality and have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of? That your congregants might happen to see a funny, irreverent or slightly personal exchange between yourself and a friend? That your profile picture is too informal and shows you smiling more broadly than your sense of ministerial decorum allows? That people might figure out that you’re a multi-layered, complicated person who is a responsible professional and servant of the Church who also enjoys a martini now and then, is hoping to visit your pal New York City soon, likes to share silly YouTube videos about cats or aging Broadway divas, just had a terrible blind date and loves the Red Sox? Hurrah for such revelations, say I!

Express yourself
yea let it all hang out
Express yourself
Ain’t nothin’ to worr’ about…

Thank you, Black Eyed Peas!

If religious life is going to seem inviting and relevant to more people in the 21st century, religious leaders must be more concerned with authenticity and availability than with maintaining the mantle of piety that was expected of clergy in the 19th century. That is OV-AH.

Let’s not sniffle about the so-called end of privacy. None of us has had any privacy for years now and never will again. If someone has it in for you and wants to find ammunition to shoot you down with, they are free to scour the internet for every word you’ve ever written and every word ever written about you and use those words against you. Are you going to worry so much about that that you fail to enjoy the benefits of all this new technology? Your enemies can also scour every word of every sermon you’ve ever published to find objectionable content, stake out your parsonage and watch who comes and goes, and follow you to the gym, the post office and the grocery store to keep track of your whereabouts and use that against you if they so choose. They can go to every meeting you attend to question your every bit of counsel and leadership. They can obtain e-mail addresses of parishioners and start a campaign against you. They can send letters through snail mail. They can haunt your MySpace or Facebook page and take copious notes on your sarcastic repartee with distant friends.

And you can live in fear that someone might choose to do that, or you can be the free human being God made you and write, communicate, speak and preach according to your true personality and from the passion of your convictions.

How do you want to live?

All that said, let’s not be naive.

1. Yes Virginia, prospective employers will absolutely use the internet to obtain information about you. Wouldn’t you?
Don’t have a nervous break-down, just be savvy about that fact. Thank God we haven’t entirely given up on the in-person interview. If you’re active on-line and that makes your prospective employers or parishioners nervous or disapproving, aren’t you glad you know about that incompatibility up front and can discuss it? Be honest. If you have nothing to be ashamed of, don’t be ashamed.
I mean, you didn’t post photographs of you drunk and dancing in the limbo contest on your Facebook pages, did you? Dummy! If you did and you forgot about it, tell the search committee the truth: you were on vacation, you had had a lot of sun and two rum drinks, and thank them for reminding you that those awful photos are still on the site.

2. If you’re single and belong to on-line dating sites, good for you. It’s one of the legitimate ways to meet people outside your church. However, keep your profile and your photos appropriate, please. There should not be photographs of my minister in a Speedo anywhere on the internet, nor should any clergypeople advertise themselves as just looking for sex on any sites. Creepy. Especially if they’re married. Don’t think no one will find out. Sexual ethics aren’t techno-flexible; just because you think you’re anonymous doesn’t mean what you’re doing is okay — even if you never do get found out.

3. More than one ministry has been destroyed because of on-line pornography found on clergy computers. ‘Nuff said.

4. You are under no obligation to respond to every or any Instant Message that comes through from a parishioner, or from anyone. In fact, I recommend turning the bloody thing off; aren’t you trying to get work done? I once made the mistake of responding to an IM from a few Unitarian Universalist youth late at night. I was a Youth Minister at the time, so I thought I’d be “cool” and say a quick hello when the kids’ names popped up on my screen. To my friendly greeting and explanation that I had just come home from a dinner party, one surly youth (NOT one of my own congregation’s kids, I’m glad to say… in fact, he was the son of one of my local colleagues!) wrote,
“Get drunk?”
To which I wrote: “No, and that question was not appreciated.”
Next on my screen he offered,
“Get laid?”

Of course I let his mother know of his on-line conduct, and it was all a mess (she was of the permissive, “kids will be kids” persuasion of parent, and I was of the “Your kid is totally out of line and I would like to hear an apology from him” persuasion.)

Avoid it. Instant messaging is no way to carry on a conversation with anyone except the dearest of friends.

5. Even if your parishioners never mention your personal blog, don’t assume they aren’t aware of it and aren’t reading it. Simply this: do not blog if you don’t sincerely believe that blogging is a worthy means by which to share your ideals, ideas and ministry with the wider world. If you have a secret blog or blogging identity through which you express a shadow side of your personality or opinions that are at odds with your public persona , destroy it immediately and stick to old-fashioned journaling. And get a therapist to work out your anger with. The internet is no place to do that. Which leads to…

6. Be the same person you are on-line that you are off-line. Yes, PeaceBang is an outrageous and exaggerated version of a few aspects of myself, but she is still Victoria Weinstein. She’s kind of a Victoria Weinstein cartoon, you might say, but she doesn’t ever write anything on-line that Victoria Weinstein wouldn’t be willing and happy to explain, converse about or defend face to face. You do the same. If you can’t stand behind it, don’t write it. If you published something online a long time ago and have changed your mind or repented of your tone since then, be prepared to say so to anyone who asks.

7. Don’t get sucked into non-productive uses of technology. Monitor your time spent on social networking sites, blogging and noodling on your Blackberry. It’s all too easy to persuade ourselves that we’re doing something worthwhile with our gadgets when we’re simply staving off loneliness or isolation, avoiding other forms of self-care, or just procrastinating. For instance, because I can post-date my blog entries, you’d never know that what you’re reading today, in September, was written at 9 pm on August 11, a study leave day for me.

8. Never e-mail when a phone call would be more appropriate, and it almost always is. Use e-mail sparingly: to coordinate meetings, to check and discuss agendas, to send out reminders, that sort of thing.

9. Leave your cell phone off sometimes, for God’s sake. This includes during collegial gatherings. It is SO disrespectful to be interrupted by someone answering a phone call or see people fiddling with their Blackberries or text-messaging during ministerial gatherings when they would never be that rude on a pastoral visit (or I hope they wouldn’t!). Unless a death is impending, you shouldn’t answer — or even check — your phone. We all need to get over ourselves. If you must answer a call (don’t you have voice mail, and isn’t that what it’s for??), step out of the room at least, and carefully time your re-entrance so that it comes at an unintrusive moment. How can we preach on civility and model it so poorly with one another?

10. If all this techie social networking/blogging/podcasting stuff isn’t for you, don’t participate in it. And no apologies. You’ll just make yourself miserable.

Questions? Comments? What have I left out? I didn’t mention anything about Second Life or other alternative cyber-worlds because I’ve never had any experience with them. Would someone care to do a guest column on that subject?

Scarves, Scarves, Scarves!!

You may have noticed that summer-weight scarves were very in fashion this year, and I think they’re a great way to add some interest to the typical T-shirt and skirt warm weather outfit. But it occurred to me as I fiddled with my accessories a few times this summer that I was going to have to pack up or give away a whole collection of scarves because they’re just really dated and/or they age me.

Square scarves worn knotted at the neck? Out. Nothing says dowdy faster or more completely. Sorry!
Long, skinny scarves are where it’s at now. Here’s a student type wearing one:

I don’t like the color of the scarf, but the texture and length are interesting and if she brushed her hair, upgraded her jeans to a dark denim, stood up straight and added a bit of lipstick or blush, that would be a perfectly appropriate look for a minister. Earrings would also be a nice touch.

I don’t know why this girl doesn’t own a hairbrush or who just insulted her mother, but her cashmere scarf is lovely. This is just the thing on a chilly day — and projects much more energy and vitality than wearing it granny-style as a shawl:

This is a classic 1980’s scarf. If you KNOW that it’s an 80’s scarf and can balance the vintage feel with something intentionally more 2008, great. However, if you wear it with a blazer you got in 1997 and never had tailored (jackets were far less shaped then than they are now) and a big ole A-line skirt, you’re going to look very dated, and, I’m afraid, possibly quite frumpy:

But you’ll still look put together and professional and nowhere near as awful as if you actually wore this in public…

… thinking that it communicates color! and life! and cool symbols! and flowy goddess energy!

That scarf communicates one thing and one thing only: Harmonic Convergence, 1984, and crystal readings with Shirley Maclaine. Use it as a beach sarong, use it as a dog blanket, wear it in private for your old hippie lover, but please do not wear it unironically in public.

A final word on scarves: they need not be matchy-matchy and in fact should not be. Use them to add texture, movement and color to your outfits and have fun with them!

Massage Envy: Ethical Questions

PeaceBang is a big believer in the benefits of massage and wishes she had a special Massage Budget so that she could submit to the ministrations of Jen, Anne or Eddie on a much more regular basis. Alas, at $70 or so per hour, massage is a luxury.

In comes a company called Massage Envy, which is expanding incredibly rapidly and now has franchises in hundreds of U.S. locations, including in PeaceBang’s own town.

The deal is this: you go have an introductory massage for $39 and then submit to a fairly hard-core sales pitch (under the guise of your therapist’s “recommendations” for your needs — well what do you THINK they’re going to recommend for you? More massage!). The pitch is to join Massage Envy for $59 a month, a price that gets you one massage per month, with subsequent massages in the same month at an even deeper discount. If you don’t use your massage for that month, you can roll it over into the next month. You can get massages at any of the Massage Envy locations, and you can supposedly freeze your account at any time. (I tend to take this last bit of information with a grain of salt, knowing that once a company has its hands on your credit card number, you’re likely to go through many irritating phone calls trying to put a hold on automatic monthly withdrawals. I’d read the fine print on this very carefully if I joined Massage Envy).

This sounds really good to me, but I have to wonder: what kind of massage therapists must ME be attracting who are willing to work for such sub-standard pay? So there’s a quality issue there, and you don’t want to waste your time or money suffering under the hands of an inexperienced or worse, resentful, masseur. There’s also an exploitation issue: while you and I may know enough to tip the therapist generously to make up for his or her substandard pay, other clients will not. Furthermore, if I’m going to tip to the extent that my massage therapist gets a fair wage for pummeling my pudge, it’s not such a bargain there, is it?

Does anyone have experience with Massage Envy? Want to share?

P.S. Do look into massage, though, especially if you’ve never had any bodywork done before. If you find the right environment and the right therapist, it is incredibly healing.