Habits and Hijabs and Hats! OH MY!

This year at Saint Mary's College, I have had the wonderful opportunity of getting to know the Sisters at the convent on campus. Before this experience, my mind immediately conjured up the image of Whoopi Goldberg wearing a habit and nun garb in the movie Sister Act. Imagine my surprise when I waltzed into the convent for the first time to be greeted by around 100 nuns dressed in normal clothing! I even saw a nun wearing a tie-dye dress. The only two habits that I have seen worn at the convent were either worn by the eldest nun alive there, or a nun dressed up as Ms. Clavelle from Madeline for Halloween.  After this realization that not all nuns wore habits, I began to Google why not. The overall consensus is that with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the habit became optional, limited in use, or gotten rid of all together, depending on the convent.  This was because the Medieval-esque habit was no longer in line with the 20th century. However, some orders still wear the traditional attire.

This reminded me about all the media ruckus that had been made over women wearing the Muslim Hijab head covering. Many people say that it is is a symbol of oppression in a male dominated society. However, it can also be viewed as a liberation from a male dominated society because if you are covering your hair and dressing modestly, you are free from being viewed as a sexual object. Not to mention free from spending hours to make your hair look good!

The decline in usage of habits also reminded me about how for centuries women wore hats in public at all times, and then suddenly in the 1960's stopped. The disappearance of hats and gloves from fashion is a horrible tragedy in my opinion, because religion and politics aside, I look forward to the day when I can wear the hat in this picture above in public and not be alone.

Tradition vs Today: Corsets vs Anorexia

No matter what, there should not be any standards of beauty that women should endeavor to adhere to. Sadly, there are impossible standards set by the media and society of what women should look like. A perpetual standard is a slim waist. Throughout history women wore corsets to achieve this. They were expected to wear them, and it was a societal norm. Nowadays, women are still expected to have an "ideal" hip to waist ratio, but are expected to do this through starving themselves and using the ineffective trendy diets that celebrities supposedly use. Sure, women can wear Spanx, body-shapers, and push up bras, but it is not widely accepted. Women in history who wore corsets were expected to wear corsets, but today body-shapers are taboo and meant to be kept a secret or not worn at all.  We are supposed to look just as good nowadays as women in corsets looked in passed centuries, but now without the corset.

We all have heard of how disastrous corsets were for women's health.  Some resources say that the disastrous effects were due to the fact that corsets were being misused and laced too tightly too soon. Others say that although corsets rearrange women's organs, women's bodies are built for their organs to shift and still function; for this is what their bodies do when they are with child. Thus wearing a corset is perfectly natural. However, multitudes of sources argue that no matter what, corsets are sill bad for you.

Corsets finally went out of style in the 1920s as women were becoming more active and getting jobs as the feminist movement kicked off, corsets were kicked out. In the 1920s, a boyish figure was the ideal, and women wrapped their breasts to appear more flat. However, that was short lived, and now the hourglass figure has been here to stay for decades, but corsets are out of the picture. But now women resort to extreme dieting, binging and purging, anorexia, resulting in many adverse health problems. Such health problems include, growth retardation, pubertal delay or arrest, reduction of bone density, heart palpitations, malnutrition, seizures, tremors, and death.

All in all, both corsets and anorexia are bad, bad, bad. However, it is intriguing to research which is the lesser of two evils. If wearing a corset every once and a while was accepted in society, it may boost women's confidence and self-esteem while preventing them from resorting to extreme diets. However, corsetry could result in further problems if taken to the extreme. There is no substitute for leading a healthy lifestyle with a balanced diet, moderate exercise, and loving your body no matter what images society and the media are shoving up your brain.

The Social Significance of Steampunk Style

I have a recent fashion obsession, and you may call me crazy for endorsing this eccentric trend: Steampunk. Originating from sci-fi novels set in the Victorian era, steampunk fashion has been pervasive in counterculture clothing this last decade or so. Why? Because it's different, it's eye-catching, but most of all, it is a re-write of history. In the Victorian Era, women were expected to be passive and polite. Unless they came from a poor family, they were expected to get married and have kids; never having the opportunity to build their own careers. Steampunk clothing takes the traditional feminine Victorian clothing and makes it more fierce and edgy. It's like pretending that in the era that women were most repressed in western culture never happened that way, that women were able to be heroines and do anything a man could, but with maybe a little more frills and Victorian charm. The message of Steampunk it is women can do anything a man can, and they don't need to sacrifice their femininity for it.

Tea Party!!!!

My lovely sister

This Thanksgiving weekend my older sister and I had a tea party. This is a common occurrence in my household. We got out fancy teacups and fine silverware a la Downton Abbey, and sipped English Breakfast tea with our pinkies curled. It was the perfect day for a spot of tea, for the ground was freshly dusted with snowy sparkles, and I was wearing my best pearls.

Although women have moved far from the days where they would sit in parlors wearing bustle gowns and corsets while their mothers aligned male suitors to stop by, it is still a wonderful diversion to pretend to be a proper lady. I do feel a bit guilty when I partake in tea parties because it is almost a symbol of the days of female oppression in Western culture. However, looking at who my older sisters are now that they are all grown up has assured me that pretending to be a proper lady every once and a while is not going to kill the entire feminist movement. My sisters grew up playing with Barbies, dressing up like Anne of Green Gables, and having tea parties with their American Girl dolls. They grew up to be successful career women with college degrees. In conclusion: there is nothing wrong with putting on your lace gloves and sipping tea while speaking in a British accent.

Etiquette Abandonment: Swearing Like Sailors

Nowadays, it is common to hear swear words being casually  uttered left and right by both men and women. Sometimes it just sounds ridiculous because there are other words that would articulate the murmurer's distress more accurately.  On rare occasions it can be necessary to let burst an occasional 4-letter word, such as when your car gets hit by a deer, or when your pinky toe gets stubbed. But curses are casually dropped into multiple arbitrary places in a sentence structure, the very words lose their meaning, and you risk sounding like a nincompoop. So why do we keep saying these words even though doing so is not best for our personas? The answer is a simple case of where the theory of enlightened self-interest falls flat.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest) We know that swearing makes us sound unintelligent, but many of us still do it. Why? Because we like the freedom of it. Swearing means that we are adults, we are no longer going to be chided by our mothers, or be ordered to wash our mouths out with soap. Therefore, uttering previously forbidden words from our childhoods over and over again gives us a sense of power, however false that sense of power may be.

Being at a Catholic all women's college and hearing swearing day in and day our makes me wonder if swearing has something to do with feminism as well. During the second wave of feminism women were encouraged to do everything a man could. Historically, swearing was something only men did. However, it was not a gentlemanly quality. I wonder if women saw swearing as an opportunity to be more equal to men; a window into further freedom.

So what do you think? Is excessive swearing a result of humanity's wish to declare their freedom to make their own decisions? And is this abandonment of etiquette on the women's side a result of the second wave of feminism?

Opening Doors: Continued

After reading your insightful comments, I came to a realization. It is perfectly fine for a female to let a male open doors for her even if she is a feminist. Why? Because hopefully she would do the same thing for a male, an old lady, a classmate, a boyfriend, a professor, or a stranger. Chivalry may be outdated in this era, but common courtesy is not. Women do not need to be offended by men opening doors for them if the women also open doors for men and other women. This compromise preserves both old fashioned courtesy and feminist pride. Ladies can be gentlemen too. Get out there and open doors for people!

The Social Conflict of Opening Doors

To open, or not to open?

We all know someone who gets offended when a man opens a door for her. You might even be one of those people. Women often get offended when a man opens a door for them in a public location because they see it as a symbol of the days when women physically needed men to open doors for them because corsets and hoop skirts challenged their mobility, making them effectively handicapped. When a fellow opens a door for us nowadays, we may see it as an insult; that men are viewing us as fragile, inferior to men, and incapable of opening doors ourselves. This everyday trivial act of revived chivalry is transformed into the ultimate disregard for female equality. Chivalry turns to sexism. The big question is, was the feminist movement what killed men's politeness towards women because women pushed all the door opening away, or is the decline of etiquette and chivalry merely because men are no longer being raised to act like gentlemen anymore? Tell me your thoughts!