How to Be Lovely & Beautiful in Dress & Deed

Ladies,

The topic of dressing can seem surface, but I like to point out how what we wear reflects our deeper held values. Our style, like our manners, are only employed when we feel it is necessary from a deeper belief that it matters.

Many women believe that their appearance does not matter

It does not matter in the sense that God looks at the heart. He is concerned with our inward character and motivations. But what woman attracts a husband by rejecting her looks? Men look at the outward appearance before they get to know our heart. So, our appearance does matter. Once you are married, your appearance matters. It would be a farce to only try to look pretty to attract your husband to only let yourself go once he is committed to you. Your husband deserves your best effort in the marriage not just before it. Looking your best is a way to bless your husband and in turn you get to feel better and retain dignity no matter the season of life.

Playing dress up is fun

What little girl does not like playing dress up? Little girls are drawn to pretty things, and we can enjoy pretty things at any age. Dressing gives you a completely different look but moreso, a feeling. This is why we play dress up as little girls, to be in a story, to feel a certain way and to pretend that we are this or that. It was fun and it still is fun. Clothing is a way we get to change our circumstances to not just look different but to feel different too. Use dressing as a tool to lift your mood and signal that today is important and that you are refreshed and ready for it. Why forget the fun of dressing up just because you are older? Many of the games we play as children are practice for what becomes essential to our daily lives as adults.

Beautiful Examples

Think of the examples of beautifully dressed woman in your life that guided your understanding for how to be beautiful too. Unfortunately, many women could not think of one example in their lives. For decades women have dressed so casually, it would not even be called “casual” by the former standard of casual dressing when it came about. Formerly, casual dress meant less than dressy but still dressed well. It was tailored skirts with a less fancy blouse, but still even a blouse! Maybe it was a t-shirt, but it was a nice t-shirt with some structure to the fabric, and it would be tucked in. Slacks and shorts were more formal looking with thicker fabrics and paired with belts. Jewelry was worn. Silk scarves were tied around necks. Hair was styled. There was an element of decorum to casual wear. Women who dressed casually were dressy compared to what we deem “casual” now.

For many of us, our only examples of beautiful dress came from movies. You watched Cinderella go from rags to a lustrous sparkling gown that most likely still dazzles you today. You admired Sleeping Beauty’s blue (or was it pink?) dress and her fluffy curled hair. Many of us only had classic Disney princesses and old movies giving us something by which to form our sense of beauty for women. The animations for Disney princesses were depicted after the feminine allure of the real-life women modeling for the characters in their dress, their speaking, and their mannerisms of the time. So even if all you had were animated Disney princesses, you were still learning from the women with such poise and femininity. Old black and white movie actresses dished out some valuable style and charm lessons as well. So even if you did not have an in-person example to learn from, you can still become lovely and beautiful by gleaning from any good examples and then be the real-life example to your daughters and other women around you today.

Because we need beauty in this modern day

The modern day is an example of the dire state of womanly beauty. One look around on the streets of any town in America, of which I have lived in many, and this dire circumstance of the modern woman is on display. She is dressed poorly, sometimes less clothed than a peasant would have been in the steepest of poverty in centuries gone by. She feels liberated by a nakedness that is anything but tantalizing but rather an almost medical diagram of her most private parts coated in a thin layer of spandex stretched over them. It is commonplace to see women of all ages sporting ragged, drab, and poorly fitted clothing. People are desensitized to how dire this appears. They are desensitized to the lack of decency and have lacked the teaching of a sense of propriety. The behavior of people in public is testament to this fact. The way that people dress now days is in line with their lack of manners.

And I too, was once a patron of modern fashion in this way.

I do not speak from my ivory tower of timeless style. When I exposed myself to the endless trends of pop culture, I also became desensitized to the indecent fashions of the day. As I grew older and wiser and only by God’s grace teaching me better, I did better. You can dress better, behave better, feel better, and be a woman that God wants you to be regardless of your past. God transforms us from the inside out and we can be transformed by His love and grace to shine beauty that Christian women are meant to shine from the inside to the outside.

What I Want for My Daughter

If I could, I would find someplace we could live where everything was just lovely all the time, in any store we went to, to any person we came across. I want decency and good manners to be the predominant and normal way of life to her, but out in the world today it is the rare experience. Nearly everything we encounter outside of our doors is distinctly unpleasant and an example of what not to do.

The closest I can get to the majority of life being lovely and beautiful is to live in the country where it is peaceful and beautiful and make our home lovely. In that, she will see the juxtaposition to the outside world that does things so very differently. Aside from what I do at home, I will expose her to the depictions of the loveliest women from old movies to further back in history to pioneer days and earlier, when women who had very little, still prized a sense of refinement in behavior, dress and grooming. This is so wonderfully exemplified in my favorite book series Little House on the Prairie. My favorite books and movies will always be a point of study: Jane Austen novels, Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, Little Women, A Secret Garden, just to name a few. My favorite Disney princesses will be a beacon of feminine sensibilities from beautiful dresses, well-kept hair, to their kindness and gentleness of spirit.

Our Outward Appearance is a Visual set of Values

“Death by a thousand cuts” is the old saying for the way in which something can die. Manners, dignity and yes, beauty, lived out from a set of ideals deeper than an interest in the latest fashion trends, has been victim to such a death in society, but does not have to die in your own life. Perhaps it began with people labeling men as sexist for opening doors for ladies, or perhaps it was the demeaning of people who had more formal manners as hoity toity. Maybe it was telling women that they are weak if they are not independent from a man. Bit by bit, family roles, decorum and dress degraded. Subsequently all parts of a woman’s beauty and her ability to impart this beauty to her home and family as more important than just looking good to the world, has been nearly obliterated by the modern mindset. Little by little, women have been discouraged from being anything that makes women lovely, as the ideals of modern womanhood took hold. It is hard to be soft when you are hardened by constant fighting to survive. It is near impossible to be a kind and gentle woman when nothing about your modern life feels kind and gentle. How much less so do you feel feminine when you have been in masculine roles and estranged from your femininity. You do not have to be a victim of modernity if you can recognize what has not helped us but hindered us. One thing that has hindered woman’s loveliness is the downfall of their dressing “casual”.

The Plague of Casual Clothing

When analyzing this degrading of women’s wear and their sensibilities toward it, one seemingly innocent idea appears responsible for pushing women over the beauty cliff. “Casual clothing” has probably been one of the worst deceptions that put women in a downward spiral of style. What is considered casual now was once seen as but loungewear or pajamas. Whereas even the pajamas of yesteryear had feminine beauty as seen in vintage nightgowns, dressing gowns, robes and slippers. Our most intimate items were still designed to be another part of a woman’s wardrobe of beauty. How did we go from even our pajamas being beautiful to our outerwear now being pajamas that are not even remotely beautiful? I could not count the times I have seen women wearing cartoon speckled pajama bottoms, scraggly tank tops, bedhead hair, and even slippers as shoes out in public….

By dulling women’s sensitivity to beauty and refinement over time by constantly belittling it to be vain, uncomfortable, or unimportant, women began wearing things that never would have passed as acceptable or polite to be worn out of the house, let alone in the house.

And I believe that much of this total lack of manners in behavior and dress stems from a lack of good teaching in their lives on the value of human beings made in the image of God, that we are indeed meant to live upright lives with a sense of order and higher purpose in even the little things we do. Some women may be living in the gutter in all aspects of life because they do not believe that they are valuable especially if they were ever mistreated.

Our society needs healing that only comes from God through his son Jesus Christ. So many of the surface symptoms we see are from spiritual illness of not believing the truth of the Holy Bible and the gospel.

Meanwhile Beautiful Items Abound

The problem does not lie in a lack of beautiful items still being made and sold. The problem lies in women choosing to not wear beautiful items. Some poor dressing choices simply come by never being trained to pick the better items. But many women have been wearing such casual clothes for so many decades that wearing anything even slightly nice feels too dressy to them and to those around them. People’s senses have been formed to be almost shocked by finery, even affronted by it, as though it is uncomfortable to be around. They may be uncomfortable because they rejected polite dressing as a part of their manners or “good breeding” as it was once called, and when someone else does not reject polite dressing, it makes them feel that they are in fact dressed impolitely.

It’s not About Wealth it’s About Values

In an age when we have access to nice clothing and even poor people do not have to look poor, the way we dress communicates intention more than communicating an ability or inability to afford looking nice. If someone feels offended by someone else dressing nice these days, it is not often because it is a signal of that person’s wealth. It is odd that in a day and age of great wealth and great access to nice things, people have been dissuaded from dressing well, when they are not dissuaded from driving very expensive cars, using very expensive cell phones, taking yearly vacations, and eating out at restaurants regularly which is all very expensive. But a woman dresses nicely as opposed to the lowest set standard for her now days and it is somehow odd, shocking, or vain. Dressing well does not signal wealth in an age when beautiful things are attainable at little cost. Dressing well does signal other held values, such as a person valuing finery in company, taste and manners. But as with everything in a fallen world, it does not always indicate such things, it could actually just be that said person enjoys looking fabulous but are indeed a vapid person who has little moral compass. The truth of our outward appearance is this: it can give us indications of inward character, but it can also be used to deceive. But the rejection of beauty is no more noble than something worse for wear is inherently a virtue. While we cannot diagnose a heart by the exterior, our exterior can be a reflection of our heart. Our exterior can be a way we direct our own senses to be on the up and up, to give good cheer, to show that we care, to be polite, to communicate maturity, etc.

A Difference in Women’s Welfare

I often ask myself how well have women fared in the modern day? The beliefs and the philosophies that created a generation of women who are either masculinized, androgenous, or just less than lovely under modern ideals, are a far cry from a history replete with examples of feminine beauty that never made women less strong, less intelligent, or less accomplished. In fact, it is never the things that the modern women think make them accomplished by which women and men of old measured accomplishment. Look to any Jane Austen novel and see women being counted as exceptional by her playing the piano, singing, penmanship, writing, oration, reading, dancing, and her social skills in high society, the way she spoke and carried herself, and of course, the way she dressed. While we still may consider some of these aspects important, these things are far less regarded than before.

As we know from the Holy Bible, beauty can be deceptive. But that does not mean that all things beautiful are somehow to be avoided, undervalued, or dissuaded. Beauty is often noted in the Bible and not as a bad thing but as a good thing. Often times things that are genteel in nature tend to extend from things that are genteel in heart first. We find as such in the “olden days” where people were from much more Christian societies, with a mind refined by the higher standard of God in all things, from which was birthed immense strides in science, art, and music. On a smaller scale, polite behavior was standard, dressing well was normal, and despite sin always being around, Christian faith has always informed better living since it is the very foundations of right and wrong, law and order. The most orderly, accomplished and beautiful societies were the ones that were transformed by the spread of the gospel by which mankind turns from evil and pursues righteousness. We are benefitting from the spread of the gospel today, because when people know Jesus, they are changed for the better. Criminals who become Christians do not stay criminals. Women who have no self-worth become women who know they are loved by God. Men who treat others badly become men who protect others. Jesus changes us. He changes our hearts, he changes our homes, he changes our society.

Thereby the little things we do like dressing nicely, making our bed, tending to our home, it all becomes highly important because it is our responsibility given to us to steward, enjoy, and bless others. Living a peaceful and quiet life is of utmost importance to the Christian. Making things lovely and beautiful in our quiet life is a part of our life’s work that flows out naturally from valuing what is good.

Becoming Beautiful

The more time I spend away from pop culture, trends and accepted behaviors of society, the better understanding I have of what is beautiful. Standing far off from things gives one perspective enough to see things better. But to see things the clearest, I run everything through the filter of God’s Word to find what is truly lovely and beautiful in God’s eyes.

I find better tutelage on what to be wearing and how to live by avoiding the current mindset in general and this means spending very little if any time around it and more time in prayer, in God’s creation, and with the few people He gave me.

It is not only ok to step away from the current way of dressing or manners (or lack thereof), but I would argue it is essential to step away from it in order to form better and more lasting ideals for yourself. If I were to change my tastes because it is merely “not in” anymore, I would not even be enjoying the things I simply like and I would not be as concerned about being a blessing to my family.

Find the best way to be beautiful with the intention to bless your family with it. Notice what sparks you when you see it. Is it the glitz of 1930s Hollywood, the demure wartime femininity of the 1940s? Or is it French simplicity and glamour? Or colorful florals of Latin America? Fluffy hair? Bold red lips? Sweeping 1800s gowns? Or something your mom wore in the 1970s? Take whatever it is that makes you feel beautiful and find a way to enjoy that beauty in your everyday wardrobe and beauty routine in a way that is graceful. Bless your husband with that beauty. Bless your children by being lovely.

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