My Answers

Raggedy Mom pointed out that I didn’t answer all of the questions myself. I’m glad I waited to read the other responses as they helped me clarify my own thoughts.

1. For married women, do you dress by the same standards as you did when you got married? Yes, as I mentioned in the original post.
2. Also for married women, do you and your husband conflict about this issue? Not really, although he’ll comment if my stomach shows when I life my arms.
3. Have your standards changed from when you were growing up, and why? I grew up wearing pants, going mixed swimming, etc. I stopped completely after my year in Israel, although the changes began earlier in high school.
4. Do you often feel uncomfortable when you are in the company of a group keeping higher or lower standards (for lack of a better term) than you? Lower, not at all. Higher, only if I am wearing something that I myself feel is borderline.
5. If you have ever suddenly changed your standard of dress, did people treat you differently or make approving/disapproving remarks? When I was in college, people often made disparaging remarks about women who wore skirts. Once, while collecting sponsors for a walk (or run?) for Soviet Jewry, a smart-aleck said that he would sponsor me on the condition that I wore pants. I shut him up by telling him that his remark was religiously intolerant.
6. How accepting is your community of women who “deviate” from the generally accepted mode of dress? Good question (if I say so myself LOL). I think in the English-speaking community we are more tolerant. In my town whether or not you cover your hair can affect what school your kids go to, what youth group they attend and who their friends will be for life. So because I have one kid in such a school (for just one more year), I guess by default I am going along with such a division (although the school has additional admissions criteria).
7. If you have a daughter, has tzniut become an issue yet? My older daughter just turned 13. She made the transition to skirts fairly young, and fortunately tzniut has so far been a non-issue. If she wanted to wear pants (out of school) I would not make a big deal out of it. Just as married women can go with uncovered hair and stand firmly within Orthodox observance, so too can women in pants. My take on tzniut, davening (prayer) and shul attendance is that teenagers will have to make their own decisions about these issues soon enough. Unless their behavior directly affects the rest of the family I generally leave it alone and hope to discuss it later.
8. Any other comments to share? Just about everyone chooses to make some kind of statement with their dress, especially about how willing they are to conform to their neighbors around them. As the various responses showed, observant women also decide how much they prefer to fit in with the outside community or within their own, aside from issues such as comfort, fashion, expense, and of course halacha.
   

Original Post
Link to replies

Tweet This Post

Another tzniut link

Lady Light of Tikkun Olam shares her experiences regarding dress in the observant community–I can’t figure out how I missed it yesterday. For the rest see the previous post.

Tweet This Post

Bloggers on Tzniut/Modesty/Jewish Women’s Dress

Last week I posted some comments about tzniut, and tagged some observant female bloggers with questions. Quite a few responded with a wide variety of opinions and experiences. Here are the ones I have seen so far:

Sephardi Lady at Orthonomics: She points out that whether or not one wears a sheitel (wig) and what type may have more to do with one’s “social standing” in the community more because of economics and less because of observance. She also provokes an interesting discussion in the comments section about frum girls and athletics.

She tagged Out of Town, who hadn’t posted in a while:

I think a lot of the ladies in my community would dress a little differently if they were taught otherwise. There are a lot of baalei tshuva here, who became baalei tshuva here, and don’t know any other community. I wouldn’t say they should be instructed to keep a yeshivish version of tzius, but a little longer sleeves wouldn’t hurt either. I makes me a little uncomfortable being around frum women in tank tops, b/c I think they are uncomfortable with me seeing them….

If I understand correctly, in her non-New York community (for those unfamiliar with the term “out-of-town”), there is actually more social pressure to dress less “modestly.” So not everyone in the Orthodox community is headed to the right so quickly. . .

As Frumhouse began to dress more modestly, she was warned that she should not begin covering her hair unless she was sure she was ready, because if she ever decided to stop people might assume that she stopped being observant entirely. That’s something that never occurred to me, and I’m sure the women I know who stopped covering their hair didn’t leave observance. Her blog has quickly earned quite a few readers with her lighthearted style. Unfortunately, recent health problems may force her to cut back and we wish her a refuah shlemah.

In my community, I haven’t found huge differences in observance between the middle-of-the-road Orthodox women who do and don’t cover their hair. In fact, I am constantly surprised by what some women choose to be careful about, or not.

Raanana Ramblings writes how while unwilling to wear skirts or cover her hair for one potential husband, she came halfway around the world for “the right one”! Unlike in my community, mothers in Raanana can come in pants to pick up their kids from the religious school. Dress standards for picking up kids from school is a big issue everywhere, I think.

Trilcat‘s husband did ask her to do a bit more than she had planned, and she still struggles with it a year into the marriage. In a follow-up post, she writes about her unusual religious background as the daughter of an army chaplain.

Safranit also recently made some changes to her dress. Check out what the “kiruv queens” said to her.

Raggedy Mom makes a statement about fashion (and definitely not a fashion statement, according to her):

I think that it’s sometimes easier to look ‘cute’ in pants for a casual look than a casual skirt-outfit. Or, rather, harder to look frumpy in the pants.

I agree with that one! Also, skirts calls more attention to your (non-stylish) shoes.

Pearlies of Wisdom answers the meme in the comments section of Raggedy Mom’s post. She also mentions the school pick-up issue, and how she often feels uncomfortable mixing with women who dress more strictly.

Kallah wrote a slew of thought-provoking posts on the subject:
Translating Tznius,
Top Ten Reasons (humor),
Tznius Summer Suits,
Store Windows,
and
Mishpacha Magazine on Tznius.

One more, this time from Lady Light.
My own answers.
Orieyenta has what to say too.

If I missed anyone please leave a comment or email, or simply link back to me in the post. I’d especially like to hear from non-Orthodox bloggers, and the experiences of those who chose to lower their level of tzniut observance at some point. Please don’t wait to be tagged!

Tweet This Post

A Family Trait

Today my five-year-old son reached a milestone, exhibiting for the first time a traditional family trait that he shares with his siblings and some first cousins. Like their parents before them, the kids in my extended family never let their teachers get away with giving incorrect information in class.

He came out of the gan somewhat distressed:

“Ima, Itai asked the ganenet how many legs a bee has, and she didn’t know. She looked it up in the dictionary and it didn’t say in words how many legs it has, but she showed us the picture and in the picture the bee had four legs.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said that that was wrong, and that bees have six legs. Ima, how do you say insect in Hebrew?”
“Charak. And what did the ganenet say?”
“She said that the book was right.”

So tomorrow our copy of “The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive,” including dozens of pictures of six-legged bees, will visit the gan. Stay tuned. . .

Tweet This Post

In an NYT op-ed, Linda Hirshman argues that we need to encourage highly educated women to come back to the work force after their babies are born:

Should we care if women leave the work force? Yes, because participation in public life allows women to use their talents and to powerfully affect society. And once they leave, they usually cannot regain the income or status they had. The Center for Work-Life Policy, a research organization founded by Sylvia Ann Hewlett of Columbia, found that women lose an average of 18 percent of their earning power when they temporarily leave the work force. Women in business sectors lose 28 percent.

And despite the happy talk of “on ramps” back in, only 40 percent of even high-powered professionals get back to full-time work at all.

That the most educated have opted out the most should raise questions about how our society allocates scarce educational resources. The next generation of girls will have a greatly reduced pool of role models.

I guess being a role model for the next generation of feminists and guilt about using up “scarce educational resources” are not strong enough reasons to make economically secure mothers want to leave their babies every day for most of the day, even if it’s true that “educated women . . . work [only] 42.2 hours a week on average and those with professional degrees, 45.” Of course, the women who work those kinds of hours are not often the ones who are going to “powerfully affect society;” the true policymakers must work much more.

Ultimately Hirshman sends a mixed message. If women are raised to be exactly like men, including splitting childcare with their partners and cutting back the amount of time they spend with their children in general, as she seems to advocate, what edge will they have to help them change society for the better?

In other words, women should be feminine enough to affect public policy for the better, but not so much so that they wind up putting their families ahead of their careers.

She believes that women should not waste their sympathetic, caring nature on raising their own children (uneducated women can do it for them). Instead, when making personal decisions about their own families, they must think of the economy and the supposed good of society.

Tweet This Post