When you grow up in the church as a girl, there’s a heavy emphasis on the way you dress. In my case, I remember it starting long before I was in my phase of lowcut shirts and pushup bras or skin tight leggings. When I was maybe ten or twelve, I remember women scolding me for what I was wearing, even though I was in clothes that my mother had picked out for me. I’d be in a jean skirt down to my ankles or a dress for a colonial doll, and still, it somehow ended in a lecture. It made no sense to me, and in hindsight, I think it only drove me to rebellion once I reached adolescence.
I don’t think I was ever actively trying to run away from my faith, but I was definitely sprinting towards the world. I was eager to get out of church, because that’s where it felt like my real life was.
Maybe as a result, I love revealing clothes, and I almost always have. I have one memory of being grossed out by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator’s cleavage when I was a 5 year old at Disney World, but I can’t think of a time since then where my personal preferences reflected Christian convention. Maybe it’s because of the Betty Boop I was exposed to in my formative years, but for whatever reason I’ve loved dressing like the woman you’re supposed to hate in a movie.
The defiance didn’t end with my dresser. The same instinct that drove me to contradict the stylistic status quo became evident in my ideology. Between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I underwent a political transformation that took me from streaking down the hallway in celebration of Obama’s reelection as I was beginning the journey to interning for Ted Cruz as I was ending it.
I felt like an anomaly on the right for more than one reason. People were nice and when it came to what we believed, we had a lot in common. But when it came to who we were as people, sometimes I felt like we were from different planets. So many of the women I interacted with were from small towns or suburbs, their favorite artists were Taylor Swift and the Jonas Brothers, they had scriptures in their Instagram bios, and it seemed like their values had been passed down to them by their parents and reinforced by their communities as opposed to conclusions they’d reached on their own. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But it was so far off from my experience. It was like they were examples of the well behaved church girl I was supposed to grow up to be, but nothing like who I actually was.
I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. While I definitely knew the words to a handful of Taylor Swift songs, I listened to a lot more Kings of Leon, Paramore and Odd Future. While I never stopped believing in God, “Christian” often felt like more of a description of the way I was raised than an active part of my life. And for a while, the only other person I knew that thought like me was my best friend. My parents didn’t agree with me, my extended family didn’t either, and I became a pariah among most of the people I went to school with.
Their “conservatism” felt neat and normal, while mine felt wild and unruly.
But I didn’t feel like I needed to – or should – fundamentally change myself to fit a political prototype. I didn’t care if I was the only Republican girl in crop tops or bodycons, I wasn’t going to lie about who I was.
Girls I knew would share things along the lines of “modest is hottest,” and I didn’t agree with them.
To be honest with you, I still don’t.
But I’m trying to cover up more for the first time in my life, not because I want to, because I think it looks best or because it comes naturally to me, but because it’s what God commanded me to do.
As I’ve grown in my walk with God, I think I’ve known at the back of my mind that eventually, my wardrobe had to change.
I was reluctant to start publicly writing about my faith in the first place, because I knew how it looked. People would see the drinking, the skimpy outfits, and leap at the opportunity to berate and belittle me, just like the old women from church 20 years ago.
It’s not that I thought that drinking in excess or dressing like a lady of the night was biblically permissible. But if I had to wait to become a perfect Christian or give up my every vice to get started, I knew I never would.
At the beginning of 2022, I went through a brief period where I was haphazardly trying to dress in a more God-honoring way. But in retrospect, I don’t think I ever fully committed or that I had the right motives. I think there was a part of me that believed I could barter obedience for outcomes. In 2023, I archived a bunch of pictures with plunging necklines and high hems because I was sick of the way some men were commenting on them. But even when I was fully covered, leaving much more to the imagination, it seemed like their perversion persisted. In conversation with a friend that had been a devout Catholic her entire life (and dressed like it) but received similar treatment, I realized that it didn’t really matter what I wore – if a man couldn’t control his lust, a carefully curated feed wouldn’t fix his behavior. After all, when you look at the regions of the world where men treat women the worst, they’re often dressed head to toe in bed sheets.
As I developed spiritually, I realized I needed to stop focusing on other people’s hearts and start asking God to change mine.
I began to earnestly plead with God to mold me into the person He wanted me to be – especially with my fashion, because that’s where I needed Him most. I knew I couldn’t do it on my own, and I knew I wouldn’t do it if it felt like a performance. And seemingly overnight, He answered. Out of nowhere, I felt discomfort when I tried on outfits I’d worn for years without a second thought.
Now I’m finally trying to surrender my style to the Lord, not because I want something from Him, not because I expect people to treat me differently, and not to fit in with wannabe trad wives, but because as I grow in my relationship with God, I feel a conviction – and borderline compulsion – to get rid of the things that are standing between us.
Because even though we might not think of it, that’s exactly what sin is.
No matter how seemingly innocuous or insignificant, sin is sin for a reason. And while it’s easy to downplay it for our own convenience, what God tells us to do is ultimately for our own good.
Sin isn’t sin because it looks bad or feels bad, it’s sin because whether we realize it or not, it eventually destroys us.
And that’s especially true for the sins that are hardest for us to let go of – and that we begin to think of as integral to our identity.
It’s not like I had to be half naked to feel beautiful or seen. I loved the “old money” look long before it was a disastrously misapplied Tik Tok hashtag. But I also loved dressing like a barely literate bimbo.
And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think I looked great doing it, or if the process of packing away some of my more scandalous pieces has been a walk in the park. It’s been extremely challenging for me. But I want to love God more than I love sin, so it has to be done.
I’ve never seen a girl that lives exclusively in borderline Amish ensembles, and wanted to look like her. Because if I’m being frank, I don’t think modest is hottest. But I don’t think modesty has to be mundane either. You don’t have to dress like a prehistoric peasant to please the Lord, and finding ways to embrace both God and glamor has only reinforced to me that He made me exactly who I am on purpose.
what do you think?