A recent Tablet magazine article written by a woman who stopped covering her hair is inspiring a lot of discussion. What most detractors are taking exception to, is that the author feels that freeing herself from a mitvzah she resented has made her a better Jew. It made me remember an old blog post I wrote on Little Frumhouse on the Prairie in 2008 about a friend who stopped covering her hair, and her fear that her friends who covered would now reject her.
Do you dress for yourself or others?
This isn’t going to be a terribly well thought out post, although I do have many thoughts on the subject. I simply want to put this question out there while it is fresh in my mind. Trilcat has a painful post up about Shrouds that likens women’s clothing coverings (of hair, legs, elbows) to heavy curtains or garments that bury the essence of both womanhood and self.
When I read the post, my thought was, I wonder if she began dressing modestly for herself or for the loved ones in her life? My question formed because of a conversation I had with a friend over yom tov.
I had been fairly close with this friend, but hadn’t heard from her in a few months. I would bump into her now and then, and we would be as friendly as ever, but we no longer got together or engaged in regular phone conversations like we used to. I am no longer bothered by the ebb and flow of my friendships, because I know first-hand how family life can take over and take precedence over other relationships.
This friend has been going through a personal journey – a transformation if you will – getting healthy, eating right, exercising regularly, and paying more attention to how she feels both inside and out. Along this journey, she discovered that she was dressing in a way that she never felt comfortable with, yet she did it for acceptance. One of the things at the top of this list was hair covering. Over the course of the past year, she has gradually stopped covering her hair, and she feels empowered by this decision. She hasn’t closed the door on covering her hair again in the future, but if she does, she wants it to be HER choice.
She was worried about what my reaction (and those of other hair coverers) would be regarding her decision. Now it made sense why I hadn’t heard from her in awhile. I assured her that hair covering was a personal choice, and that I respected whatever decision she chose to make. Interestingly, her husband, who was standing nearby, expressed the hope that I could “mekareve” her back to hair covering.
I told her that she needed to do what was best for her, and that I had friends who both covered and didn’t cover, and I didn’t judge their choice. I myself didn’t cover my hair when I first got married, and only after learning the halachos and coming to grips with my own view on the matter, did I gradually begin to cover.
Hence my question, do you dress for yourself or others? Does one’s adherence to their dress code depend upon the answer?
