I saw this YouTube "short" the other night entitled "What is wrong with Christians?!" and showed a guy in his early 40s with a "Eww, yikes!" kind of look on his face.
Among other things, this guy wondered why at his little son's soccer games he'd see home-schooled kids with their Christian parents wearing Dockers pants and plaid long-sleeved shirts (for the husbands) and long old-fashioned skirts (for the wives) that he said looked somewhere between "Amish and Prairie."
This instantly reminded me of my first years (starting in 1992) at Shorewood Bible Church on Neva Avenue on the very edge of Chicago near O'Hare Airport. I was introduced to the church by a stranger and had no church prior to that, save for the First Baptist Church in downtown Loudonville, OH where my dad has us attend as children. Oh, and then there was my early childhood church, Akron Baptist Temple.
At the time in Chicago, I was working as a feature reporter and columnist for the Naperville Sun newspaper in Naperville, the big western suburb and wealthy "bedroom community" of Chicago.
To backtrack, my grandmother was a longtime dress buyer for her Anne Shop boutique women's dress store in Akron, OH that she owned with a partner for decades. Their customer base was mostly older wealthy women and she would travel to Manhattan twice a year (as did her partner at separate times of the year) to buy dresses directly from the designers on 7th Avenue. She taught me from the get-go to always look good and dress well, which included dressing "in style."
So, in 1992 the big fashion style was what I called the "Murphy Brown Look," spurred on by Candice Bergen as Murphy Brown in the TV sitcom of the same name that was No. 1 in the country.
Basically, it was a blouse with a blazer and same-color skirt that was above the knee. It was very popular business attire in Chicago and I thought I was just being a fashionable professional by wearing the same.
One of the problems was I have very long legs (at 5' 10" and a half) and with my high heels it just accentuated the shortness of the skirt, especially when I sat down, as in a pew. Of course, I was always wearing panty hose and often tights when it was cold out.
So, no wonder, I wasn't what you call shocked (but still VERY surprised) when my friend Daniel, the same one who introduced me to Shorewood, informed in a delicate way that he had heard some of the older women at the church were wondering why I wore such short skirts.
The funny thing is, as much as I was somewhat disconcerted to hear the "critique," I didn't switch to any old-fashioned clothing. I just knew that my grandmother taught me to be interested in fashion and I didn't look any different than the businesswomen I saw on the subway, or in Union Station to get the train to Naperville, or in Naperville itself, etc. etc.
Being in style only took on a whole new level when I moved to NYC in 1999 and saw how the women there dressed for work, etc. While I was a normal weight coming into town, I naturally thinned down pretty quickly with all the walking I was doing and became svelte enough where I could wear the latest clothing and shoes with model-like flair.
Of course, I was very much hoping to find a man as well as look good for my employers who were constantly sending me to conventions, seminars, press conferences at company headquarters, etc., to act as a PR agent for our trade magazine (Graphic Arts Monthly, covering the commercial printing industry) as well as a reporter and editor.
I only stopped worrying about being fashionable after quitting my job in 2004 and finding I didn't need to impress anyone anymore or worry about being acceptably dressed for the right people.
Nowadays I NEVER wear a skirt. It's been at least 15 years now I figure, coinciding mostly with me leaving Manhattan for the backwoods of Alabama in 2008. I am a jeans-and-slacks only kind of gal, for better or for worse, not worrying one bit about being "fashionable" for church people or a man or anyone else.