Really? You’re Going To Make Me Talk About Skirts Again?

Oh gosh, you guys. I really wish that The Inner Miriel did not feel so compelled to write this post. I’m tired of it already, and you will probably be tired of it before you get to the end of the first paragraph. But The Inner Miriel is adamant: there is a point! A point that must be made! And yes, Simcha Fisher has probably already made it, but I must make it too! And so I write.

A couple of weeks ago, an anonymous man at a website called CatholiCity—a website of which, for the record, I had never heard in my life before this morning—wrote a “message” in which he urged women to, ahem, “discard their pants.” SWEET! Let’s all discard our pants! Oh wait…he wants us to replace them. With, quote, “comfortable skirts or dresses whenever possible, which means, in practice, in pretty much every normal daily circumstance.”Ahhhh. I knew it was too good to be true.

He then proceeds to explain why we ought to Eschew The Pants, in a series of fourteen points ranging from the pants-are-ugly angle (“[the fashion industry], and their damned pants, accentuate your flaws,” and YES SIR THAT IS A QUOTE) to a Braveheart-inspired acclamation that skirts offer us FREEDOM! FREEDOM! From…pants!!!

Mannnn. I’m having such a hard time with this. I’m mad, I’m really mad, and I also really want to mock. Part of me wants to take this guy on with every ounce of philosophy and theology I’ve ever learned, with copious quotes from John Paul II and some really, really long words. The other part of me has a hard time taking him seriously enough to respond at all. Because…really? We have to go over this again? There aren’t enough hours in a day to hit all the necessary points. And then, on top of that…I have to try really really hard to be charitable. Because, you know. God said so. And also because there are few things more ridiculous than one Christian angrily chewing out another Christian in full view of the whole Internet, including a whole lot of atheists and agnostics who can just sort of half-nod in our direction and say: Yeah. A whole lot of good that Gospel does them.

So I am going to try to say this carefully. Be forewarned that I will probably fail. But I am going to try.

I’m aided in my task by the fact that most of the things I would want to say (and plenty of good points that I would never have thought of making), you can find here. Simcha Fisher is a faithful Catholic, a mother of eight, and a fantastic writer. Her stick-it-to-the-man (with a heavy dose of good-natured humor) approach to the No Pants Dude? Is pretty stinking fabulous. In fact, you should probably just go there now and not worry about reading the rest of this post. It’s really, really, really good.

Okay so. Here’s the thing: there is can be a moral element to the decision I make in the morning when I decide what to wear for the day. That moral element plays out as follows: Are the clothes I am putting on my body fitting to my dignity as a person made in the image of God? Can I honestly say that they are not intentionally provocative? And also, are they warm enough to keep me from freezing to death in my frigid office? (People forget this last question, but we do have a moral responsibility to preserve our lives and the circulatory health of our extremities.) If I answer, “no, I guess not…” to any of those questions, I have a moral responsibility to change my clothes.

What do not enter into the equation, as moral elements, are any of the following:

• Whether or not any of the men I will encounter that day have a marked preference for Women In Skirts.
• Whether or not the clothing in question makes me look fat (which is what I’m assuming Mr. Catholicity means when he refers so delicately to the idea that “pants rarely do anything but exaggerate extra volume on our figures”).
• Whether or not a man who likes to swagger around in a plaid skirt with a sporran and no underwear thinks that my outfit looks comfortable. (Incidentally: do you think it has ever occurred to him that perhaps pants are less uncomfortable for women than they are for me, all…things considered?)

There I go again, with the ridicule—but the thing is, this situation isn’t actually that funny. As one of my college professors, a woman whom I greatly respect and admire, put it when I emailed her a link to the piece: “If it weren’t for the fact that this type of commentary can deeply affect insecure women attracted to the domineering type, it would be risible.” And she’s right: it would be funny if it weren’t so deadly serious. This man—a layperson—talks freely about “the responsibility [men] have to guide and influence the moral, psychological, and practical implications of clothing that is purchased” by their wives and daughters, and shows due deference to family by issuing an “appeal to our male readers to make clear your moral clothing preferences to the women and girls within your realm of responsibility or influence.”

There is a moral issue here—but it’s not the one our author friend thinks it is. The real moral question in this situation is not the great battle of skirts v. pants; the resolution of THAT war is, quite simply, a matter of practical reason applied to particular circumstances and taking into account our great freedom as children of God. The real moral problem here is the great responsibility any man takes on when he ties up a burden, heavy and hard to carry, and lays it on another person’s shoulders. He does not carry it himself—by virtue of his place among “the minority of chaste men,” he now “merits the gift of enjoying your beauty in such a way as to be grateful to your Creator without temptation”—or, in layman’s terms: if he does happen to sin, it’s your fault.

And this troubles me. It troubles me on his behalf, but more importantly it troubles me to think of the young women who hear these words and others like them and believe them, who let these burdens be strapped to their jumper-clad shoulders, and who subsequently assess their own holiness (and, as Fisher points out, the holiness of other women) with reference to those burdens, bound up and tied on not by the hands of God but by the hands of men. Every person is responsible, because of his or her own dignity and with reference to that dignity, for dressing modestly. But that’s it. That’s it.

In closing: Pants.*

*Simcha Fisher.