Memoir: Why We Wore Skirts

Current discussion: Learning to and letting yourself be creative and artistic.

In the summer of 1991, when I first heard that I was going to have to wear skirts only, my first response was willing acceptance, with conditions. I had already been in Christian high school the previous year, mind you, and I wore a dress or skirt to church every Sunday year-round and had done that since I was a little girl. It was just “dress your best” on a grander scale. What I couldn’t imagine was running in a skirt, playing basketball in a skirt, or even doing outdoor gardening work in a skirt. But I figured these folks surely weren’t talking about anything like that. They just wanted us to look our best.

These folks already in patriarchy talked to us about how the new unisex clothing made it nearly impossible for anyone to tell if you were a boy or a girl and that another reason we were to wear skirts and dresses was so that everyone would know we were girls. Again, I looked at myself in the mirror late one night, attempting to put a brush through my tangled permed hair and wondered to myself how in the world anyone would mistake me for a boy.

In May/June, a month before we left to head back east to Knoxville, Tennessee, we were busy with sewing. I helped Mom cut out and sew skirts as we certainly weren’t wealthy enough to go buy new clothes. And we were headed back to hot and humid Knoxville in the middle of summer. The heavy knit skirts and dresses I already owned would be too hot. We hemmed the new outfits to just below our knees, thinking the shorter, the better (and cooler). Oh boy, were we wrong.

Arriving in Knoxville on a puddle-jumper plane from Atlanta (the stewardesses threw us our pretzels and napkins just in time for landing), I remember merging into a massive crowd of families that all wore longer skirts than ours. I was rather fascinated with the sight. (There is nothing like being in a sea of skirts and long, soft flowing curls; it’s surreal, trust me.) I didn’t immediately think we were dressed wrong, I was just fascinated with these people. It was another world. I had no idea that so many families with teenagers my age were also trying to figure out what to do with life. It was heartening and bewildering at the same time.

Knoxville, Tennessee is a beautiful city. I loved it much more in the fall, years later, when I visited there in early October. In the heat of summer (June/July), it’s hot, sticky, and well, you feel you just can’t breathe deeply. It’s silly, I know. But I’m a Pacific Northwest girl, born and raised here. We pride ourselves on fresh air, trees, and tall mountains. Knoxville has the trees alright, but the majority of our time was spent on the University of Tennessee campus. We stayed in the dorms, we ate in the campus cafeteria, and our daily classes (8 am to after 10 pm most nights) were held in the basketball arena. It no longer resembled a basketball arena, mind you. The basketball court floor was long gone and the space was packed with neat rows of folding chairs. In the middle was a tall platform with a camera crew. The stage backed up to one end of the long court and on it were two grand pianos flanking the speaker’s table. Two bookends, I thought as I saw them.

Everywhere you looked there were blue curtains hung–to divide big areas into smaller areas, to muffle the noise of the crowds that walked along the outside of the seating area (just like any typical sports arena), and to block the hot Knoxville sunshine that poured in through the many windows.

We were a bit awe-struck by all this setup. It looked so serious and professional. And then everywhere we looked, there were woman and girls in skirts to their ankles, their faces beaming with brilliant, dazzling smiles, their heads crowned with miles of long, soft curly hair (not like my corkscrew, permed curls that in the humidity frizzed into a poof). I hadn’t seen anything like this in my life. I was dazed that first day and quite excited.

The second day they began the official program: the students were to wear the chosen uniform and would go to their own classes. Ages 12 and up were to walk to another building on campus (in the middle of the hottest day that week!) for their own scheduled events. We all sweated our way across campus in our navy blue skirts and white blouses (the boys in navy blue slacks and white shirts with navy ties; many wearing their navy suit coats as well; I did not understand that). I longed for a pair of cool shorts and sandals.

We were too many for the space, I remember that day. The theater in which we were to have our own classes was too small, so many remained standing. The boys were shoved upstairs into the hottest part of the theater while the girls were given the lower level. They said it was polite for the boys to take the hot balcony seats. The girls applauded the boys’ sacrifice, and no one thought a thing about the fact that they had just successfully segregated us completely from each other. However, the topics for the day were intense: dating, rock music, and rebellion. Now that I look back on it, the person who thought up the separation of boys and girls that day was genius. Manipulative, but genius.

First they started in on our music choices. Now, mind you, I was pretty good at music. I played the piano starting at age 6 (even before that actually) and had accompanied countless choirs and soloists in many occasions. I knew about keeping rhythm with a drummer, and I also had already heard all the horror stories of the big hair bands that had “back masked” their records with scary voices telling me to die (back masking is the playing of records backward as there were messages on some of the records; for those who aren’t sure what records are, they are bigger than cds and were really popular in the 1970s and 1980s until the cassette tape kinda took over). However, that day I also learned that the rock beat ran counter to our natural heartbeat, which caused our hearts to beat abnormally, and that the beat was witchcraft from Africa. I also learned that the music was driving me to rebellion. It was addictive, counterproductive to me being successful, and that rock musicians secretly desired to have me commit suicide.

Well, I didn’t agree with any of this obviously. The beat had never made my heart beat abnormally (and my mom has an abnormal heart thing, so I knew what it was), and I loved the drums (my dad played them all through my childhood), and the whole idea about African witchcraft was just made up (Africa has very cool music! I’d already heard it; we hosted African children’s choirs at our church and their music just made you want to dance, so I knew it wasn’t witchcraft). I remember staring around me at the other girls wondering if anyone else was thinking what I was thinking.

One girl looked back at me. Her name tag read the name Sarah and she was from Georgia. “Your skirt is really short.” She said. I looked down at it. It covered my knees with navy blue fabric and looked good enough to me.

I looked back at her, half shrugging. “It’s all we have.” She pinched her lips together and slightly shook her head back and forth with disapproval.

Uh-oh. I looked down at my skirt. It still looked fine to me. I then looked at her skirt and at the skirts of others around me. Mine was the shortest. Now, in that moment, so many things were happening in my 17-year-old brain. I was trying to fit in (darn peer pressure) and I was trying to adapt because I love and respect my parents and I knew they loved me and wanted the best for me.

Even though what I was hearing and seeing at that moment contradicted everything I knew about life (which wasn’t much, but still) and even though I wished that I had stood up and walked out right then and there, I decided to give it a shot. What would it hurt? I could nod my head along with the gal standing on stage asking me to put all my Christian contemporary music (the Christian version of rock and roll) along with my few tapes of Elvis and the Beach Boys up on a shelf for six months to see I could live without it. I knew I could. (I’m blessed that I can sit down to a piano and make music whenever I want it.) I knew I wouldn’t die without it.

I didn’t agree with their points though and I thought their reasoning for rock music (and Christian contemporary music) being bad music was really off-kilter and dumb (my dad was a radio dj during my childhood and so I knew lots of Christian contemporary music), but I could flex. I was tolerant. So I nodded my head along with everyone else and went along with it. It didn’t touch my heart; it didn’t suck me in. I could handle it.

But what did touch my heart was the skirt thing. Something got inside and changed my heart. Something shifted in that moment. I compared my skirt length with that girl’s skirt length and I came up less spiritual, less worthy, and less holy. My skirt was too short. In that moment, I took that ill-placed idea and tucked it away deep inside my heart. It would be years before I would allow that idea to fully bloom and I would realize the idiocy of measuring skirt lengths, hair lengths, and whatever to prove myself holy enough.

What happened in that overstuffed, hot theater was that I let go of grace (I know this now). I let go of my ability to discern what was right for myself. I gave up something right then and there. No one took it from me, no one forced me to do it. I did it myself.

And that’s when I stepped into this Patriarchy/Quiverfull belief system, this cult that to so many of us looked so very good, that looked like the way through and that promised so much. That took away so much.

(Remember, I’m okay now. I made it out.)

But the meeting wasn’t over yet. They had asked me to change my music and my clothes. There were several more things they would ask for before the week ended. But the first day had changed everything already.

Tagged as: grace, integrity, memoir