Skinny Jeans and Pumps

Commentary by Wanda

I don't consider myself a Fashionista but I like to have at least one or two items du jour each style season and I try to avoid all fashion faux pas, i.e. wearing white after Labor Day. This fall season the hottest trend is skinny jeans with pumps. My "liberated" mind can't help but deconstruct these fashion trends that have taken place over recent years - capri pants, full-skirted dresses, and now skinny jeans. Is there some subverted message being delivered by the industry- a return to days when women dressed like ladies, neatly put together, the Mrs. Cleaver prototype?

Any card carrying member of the Religious Right would say that those were the good ole days and eagerly spout propaganda how the world is in worse shape because mothers are not at home and supervising their children. The Religious Right states claims that children with at-home moms are far more well-adjusted than children with working mothers and they eventually become successful adults (this has been disproved - read the book Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner). Nostalgia is not an uncommon occurrence. At any moment,you can be overcome with nostalgia. For example, just last night I tried to squeeze into a pair of jeans I wore in 12th grade and dance to a Guy CD. But trust me when I left out the house last night I didn't wear those jeans. Sometimes its a good idea to hold onto some traditions, but determining what to let go of can be a slippery slope, especially for extremists. It appears that the fashion industry has picked up on what is happening within the debate on women's role in the public and private domains and built the latest styles on that discourse.

This autumn I will stroll (sometimes I've been known to strut) across campus alongside true Fashionistas who will model the latest styles in classrooms, the student union, and frat house parties. These young ladies won't give a second thought to the social implications of their wardrobe. Their outfits reflect a time for women when non-existent professional advancement, political and religious silence were the norm and they support on some subliminal level, an agenda to return women, to some degree, to those days. What's next? Will next year's Fall line include an apron, or acorseted underwear to be worn under all dresses, or maybe the industry might eliminate pants altogether and return all proper ladies to the Victorian era. I have to be honest, you will probably catch me in a pair of skinny jeans and pumps but I will wear them with great apprehension knowing that as 21st century woman and occasionally a slave to fashion, I am possibly one style season away from returning to an apron styled with a frying pan.

A Response to Skinny Jeans and Pumps
By Cantice

Wanda, Jesus Christ himself couldn't get you in an apron. And what would be the use, you said yourself you don't cook. What you do, you do well and you have impressively deconstructed another trend, a fashion trend in fact. For better or worse, I am that woman who you probably feel uncomfortable walking with, since I hardly keep up with styles and regularly commit my share of faux pas. Just yesterday I wore flip-flops to work. But while your analysis was on point, many of your subsequent inferences were off. I won't pick your conjectures apart one by one, but I will comment on a few of your notes of caution (namely your at-home-mom/traditional mom phobia) and add some opinions of my own.

To believe that a return to the fashion of the fifties means that a higher power or industry wants women to return to the roles and values they had in the 1950s is short-sighted, especially if the higher power is male. What man wants women to return to the days of no sex before marriage and separate sleeping quarters afterward? I haven't read Freakonomics but I bet I could guess what well adjusted and success mean to the writers. I don't believe that the Religious Right is as uncritical as you describe and I'm not just speaking for myself. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, PhD, a pioneer in feminism, lost friends when she, a Catholic, called for a return to a parent in the home. Her recommendation found in Women and the Future of Family was less a diatribe against the "New Woman" and more of a call for somebody, namely a parent, to begin to care about the well being of children. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is commonly believed to be the definition of insanity, so she calls for a radical shift, a return of the at-home-parent. In her estimation women tend to do the best job of caring for kids. The other evangelicals who respond in the book agree that kids need more care, their parents are the prime candidates to give it, and that the government could make it a little easier economically for them to do so.

Lastly, I don't believe that the Religious Right wants a flat-out return to the homemaker. After all, married folks are the ones who benefit from both parents working. What feminists on the left and the right are beginning to agree on is that individualism is breaking down at least the US American society. But, the idea that somebody (read woman) owes loyalty to someone (read children, family, men) is shocking to some (read "New Women").

So by all means, Wanda, wear your skinny jeans. I don't think you have to worry that subconscious thoughts of learning to cook will infiltrate your brain. And I don't think that those young co-eds with those full-skirted dresses are any less likely to raise them for their less than knights-in-shining-armor at the end of a first date.

About Cantice and Wanda

About Cantice:

A happily married woman and mother of preschoolers, Cantice divides her time between caring for her family and teaching English part-time. Considering that motherhood must be taught and learned today as opposed to being gleaned from family practices as in times past, she reaches out to other mothers both as a mentor and apprentice through work at pregnancy care centers and in small group meetings with mature mothers. She has studied women’s issues and movements since attending Spelman College in the mid to late nineties and recently returned to Spelman as a part-time faculty member teaching in the English Department.

Cantice grew up in Phoenix, Arizona with three siblings and a loving family. Though her parents divorced when she was six, she continued to enjoy stability at home with her mother and contact with her father as often as possible. She recognizes her mother and father’s intellect, her mother’s work ethic and responsibility and her aunt’s faith as cornerstones of her spiritual and material success in life.

Experiments at Spelman with feminist and womanist activities and philosophies, African-spiritist religions, paganism, and pluralism give her a rich testimony from which to pull as she joyfully defends traditional/orthodox Christianity today. She enjoys encouraging women to live their best lives.

About Wanda:

The daughter of a Baptist pastor, at the age of 17 Wanda embarked on an intense exegetical study of the New Testament focused on disproving that women could be called to preach. After a few months of study she realized that not only could women preach but they could also take leadership roles in the church and beyond. Although she was the daughter of devout Christian parents, Wanda was allowed to experience life as a typical teenager; attending school dances, plastering posters of Prince and Michael Jackson on her bedroom walls, wearing the latest fashions and even training as a ballet dancer. Her parents’ Godly wisdom on raising children allowed her the opportunity to discover Christ for herself at the age of 17.

During her second semester in college she enrolled in a course entitled ‘Jesus and the Gospels’ and after her first class she changed her major from Urban Studies to Religion and decided that she would ultimately become a religion professor. Wanda went on to complete her Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies with a concentration in Early Christianity in 1999. Professionally, Wanda has over 10 years in the non-profit sector including experience in fundraising, development, and marketing. Although labeled by others as a feminist or a womanist she considers herself a Christian who is searching for truth and not afraid to ask the tough questions to find it.

Wanda is a native of Cleveland, Ohio and the youngest of a blended family. She is a proud graduate of The Cleveland School of the Performing Arts and alumni of Cleveland State University. Her favorite pastimes are watching reality TV, reading, dancing and laughing. Currently, Wanda is a Masters of Theological Studies student at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.