How Should a Catholic Woman Dress?

These past few years I feel like I lost my style mojo.  I live in leggings, comfortable tunics and flats.  Am not sure when I no longer cared if I left my house without an ounce of make-up and my hair up in a messy bun.  My former twenty-something fashionista self would be terribly disappointed in me.  I’m in a rut and I accept it.  At first it was the result of the spiritual change that was taking place inside me.  I wanted to tame my vanity – so I started focusing less and less on my appearance.  During this period of physical detoxification, I contemplated a secret vocational desire; meaning that I was privately discerning religious life and I wanted to strip myself of the world.  So, my daily getting ready ritual went out the window in an attempt to live more humbly.  Slowly, I realized that perhaps religious life wasn’t for me, but I liked the freedom that I had found in not always having to be dressed to the nines.  Another change simultaneously took place, I started gaining weight and though I see quite fashionably plus-size women I feel like I haven’t learned how to dress for my body type.  In addition, this whole notion of modesty slowly hit my radar and instead of coming out victoriously into a better version of me – I feel like I went to the other extreme: frumpy. 

How should a Catholic woman dress? 

I am still figuring out how to answer that question.  I don’t like matronly dresses or clothes that look like I stepped out of an Amish community.  At first, I tried to imitate other church women.  I figured that would be a proper place to start, but I’ve never been one to copy.  I often read in style magazines that your style sends a message of who you are, though many might disagree I believe what we wear matters.  A professor in university always wore a tie and he explained how just by dressing formally his students respected him more based on years of dressing casually.  A journalist decided to blog about how people reacted to him wearing police, fire fighter and military uniforms - he was so bold to even try a priest’s cassock for a day! His findings were that people generally responded with great courtesy, respect and admiration for people in uniform.  His conclusion: what we wear matters.  

These past few weeks have been a period where I have been forced to examine things in my life.  I've been looking for a new job and wondering where I am going to land, what the next phase in my career will be?  With this wave of looking ahead, of making plans – I realize that there’s other areas that I would like to change in my life, other goals that need to be made.  One is finding balance between my vanity and my frumpy- to come to a middle ground where casual doesn’t translate to unkempt.  I know part of my style struggle has to do with my weight gain.  I don’t feel my best at this size and it’s really hard because instead of fighting I feel like I have thrown in the towel.  Sometimes it seems like giving up is easy, but living with the daily feelings of disappointment is really not.  Usually battles that need to be fought are never easy and most of us give up before facing the fight, or we go to battle, lose and resign our hopes.  BUT – pulling from my mother’s favorite aphorisms, “todo cuesta, everything has a price.”  Things that are worth it are never easy. 

There’s a standard of modesty that goes with answering how a Catholic woman should dress, but in the answer there’s room for individuality for your quirkiness to peak through.  Answering that question, requires a unique personal response one that usually digs into who we are and the light we want to shine thru.  One that takes us into a journey that battles the dragons that oppress and jail us in prisons of insecurity.  God sets us free, but we need to want to be free.  I have tried losing weight many times and I just don’t make any progress, but I realize that my daily appearance shows my defeat.  There’s a difference in a humble exterior and one where the person has given up entirely and I feel like I am becoming the latter.  My heels, jewelry and pretty clothes are gathering dust in my closet because I have lost confidence in myself and not because I have become more spiritual.  Thinking of working in a different environment where I no longer can come in as casually as I do every day pushes me to revive my style.  While, it’s uncomfortable to see weaknesses that cannot be fixed in one day, but require effort and some time– I know that with perseverance the victory will come.  Maybe I am too intense and can never take at a question from a superficial eye, but I want all of me to be "real" from the deepest roots of my soul to the surfaces of my body.