The Dress Question—A Puzzled Woman.
By James White
A SISTER writes to me, asking me the following question: “Why do the Adventist brethren dress so much like other gentlemen, and require the sisters to dress so peculiarly singular? I must confess I have been a little puzzled over the matter sometimes, when I could not tell one of our ministers from other well-dressed men in a crowd.” 1. It is necessary to a proper understanding of any question, that all irrelevant statements should be set aside. In the above question there is a material error in the statement. It charges that the “brethren” “require the sisters to dress peculiarly singular.” Who are the brethren who require this? If there are any such, I would be pleased to be informed thereof. Now, I would invite all the sisters who are in any way perplexed on this subject, to stop and consider anew the reasons of their action. How was this Dress Reform introduced among us? Do our sisters adopt it as a duty, as a matter of conscience, or because the “brethren require it?” 2. Is there any objection to our ministers’ dressing like “well-dressed men” so long as they pay no deference to any prevailing fashion? The truth is, that fashion has but a slight hold on the male portion of the community. The cities are infested with a class called “fops” who are as much a standing advertisement of their tailors, as ordinary fashionable women are of their milliners. But, while very many of our sisters are ever inclining toward the latest fashions, our ministers, and our brethren generally, would be ashamed to be seen on the street in the style of a fop or a dandy. It is a fact beyond dispute that women, more than men, are inclined to run after fashion, finery, and show. Whether it is something peculiar to their nature as “the weaker vessel,” or whether it is the result of education, I cannot say. But no one will deny the fact. Except dandies, the men will not submit to an uncomfortable compression of the waist; but how many women in any community can be found whose dresses around the waist are fitted for comfort and health? What lady will wear a hat or bonnet for protection in a cold day, when fashion requires that only a slight covering shall be stuck on the top of the head? How many females can be found on the streets of any city or even village, with good, heavy-soled shoes on the feet even in very wet weather? Or how many can be found with good, comfortable clothing around their ankles who can walk the streets so clad without a sense of shame? Shame for what? For daring to appear before people in a comfortable, healthful style of dress, which is not in fashion. When large, unsightly hoops were in fashion, well-meaning Christian women would insist that they were necessary for convenience, for comfort, and even for health. When they go out of fashion, neither convenience, comfort, nor health will induce those same women to wear them. For myself, I should be a hopeless invalid on account of rheumatism before one winter passed over me, if I had to dress as the great majority of females dress. And is it any wonder that women are weakly, pale, consumptive, and subject to almost unnumbered complaints known to the medical profession as “female complaints,” the majority of which are truly “fashion and folly complaints?” If females are subject to more complaints than men, by their constitution and nature, why do they not dress so as to avoid them, and to guard their health as far as possible, instead of so dressing as to induce them? Why not? Because they dare not! Fashion holds them with an iron grasp. Now as long as women are slaves to fashion and to the fear of the world, so long they must bear a cross in dressing comfortably, healthfully, or, sometimes, even decently. When they emancipate69themselves from this slavery, then the heavy cross will cease and they can begin to enjoy life. I cannot see that it is our duty to be singular for the sake of singularity. Some love to appear eccentric, but I have always thought that it impaired their influence and usefulness. But where fashion rules, and duty demands a departure from its rules, there should be no hesitation. Let the sisters encourage and assist each other by consistency, and modest independence in the way of right, and they will soon reap the benefit of reform, in comfort and the enjoyment of better health, and in the blessing of Heaven, which requires that we “be not conformed to this present world.”