{"id":58408,"date":"2017-08-30T15:24:38","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T20:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=58408"},"modified":"2017-09-04T07:48:04","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T12:48:04","slug":"shell-game-women-can-wear-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/shell-game-women-can-wear-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Shell Game: Women Can Wear What They Like"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last week, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Forward<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> featured an article by Michelle Honig entitled \u201cWhy This Orthodox Layering Trend Has To Stop.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0In it, the author opines that shells \u2013 the snug, long-sleeved shirts worn by women under otherwise immodest tops \u2013 \u201care the absolute worst.\u201d The problem is that shells \u201cgenerally look cheap, and make everything you put on top of it look cheap.\u201d Finally, a shell \u201ccommits a cardinal style sin: It makes everyone\u2019s arms (including fit women) look like ten-pounds of sausage meat stuffed into a five-pound casing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In this rather informative article, Ms. Honig details the origins and ascendancy of the shell, noting that it evolved from a means to rectify an immodest outfit to a garment worn in its own right, as \u201cOrthodox women began buying patterned or colored sleeveless tops to wear over their shells.\u201d As readers have likely noticed, shells are now even worn under gowns at weddings. Honig concludes that it\u2019s \u201cimpossible to look good in a shell. It\u2019s not stylish, it\u2019s not flattering and it cheapens every look.\u201d In short, \u201c(i)t\u2019s a lazy approach to dressing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a fairly innocuous piece about fashion, there has been a surprising amount of pushback, largely in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Forward<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> itself:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Daniella Levy wrote a response called \u201cSorry, Frum Fashion Police: We Orthodox Women Will Keep Wearing Whatever The Heck We Want.\u201d (Excerpt: \u201cLazy? Are you kidding me?! Do you know how much extra time it takes to match the dreaded shell to the additional layers of clothes I\u2019ll need to look decent?\u201d) Her title generally reflects my thoughts on this matter. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Emily Schneider penned \u201cModesty Isn\u2019t About Shells. It\u2019s About Patriarchy.\u201d (Excerpt: \u201cWhy would restrictions imposed by men be necessary in order for women to dress creatively? What legitimacy, in fact, do such restrictions hold?\u201d) I can\u2019t really get behind Ms. Schneider\u2019s premise.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ms. Honig herself held her ground with \u201cSeriously, Orthodox Women: It\u2019s Time To Shed The Shell \u2014 Here\u2019s How.\u201d (Excerpt: \u201cIf you truly enjoy wearing them, then more power to you. But my point was this: If an Orthodox Jew who dresses modestly does care about fashion and style, then she shouldn\u2019t have to sacrifice her fashion sense just to abide by Halacha.\u201d) Honestly, I preferred this to her original piece as she doesn\u2019t merely decry the shell, she suggests fashion alternatives.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(Reading these four articles has increased my lifetime average for fashion-based journalism by a factor of 5,000%. I don\u2019t have to read another fashion article until 2034.)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of my books is on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tzniyus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It\u2019s called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Tzniyus Book<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (no joke) and you can find it on Amazon. In the introduction, I make it clear that my intention is to be <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">descriptive<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> rather than <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">prescriptive<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In other words, I explain the practices, I don\u2019t tell people what to do. I don\u2019t say, \u201cWomen have to wear skirts and those skirts must extend past the knee, even when seated.\u201d Rather, I say, \u201cOrthodox women typically only wear skirts: here\u2019s the source\u2026. Those skirts are meant to extend past the knee based on the following source\u2026.\u201d I\u2019m quite clear in my introduction that I\u2019m not telling anyone how to dress. I\u2019m more than happy to tell people the sources for the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tzniyus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> laws but it\u2019s up to them to decide what they want to wear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The same is true for Shabbos, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">kashrus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and everything else. I\u2019ll be happy to explain the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">halachos<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as I understand them but that does not obligate others to abide by my standards, nor does it obligate me to abide by theirs. We are all individuals with free will. With that comes the right and the responsibility to make our own decisions in these matters. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hakol b\u2019yidei Shamayim chutz miyiras Shamayim<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2013 everything is preordained except for our religious observance (Talmud Brachos 33b). That\u2019s literally the one area where a person can exercise a significant degree of control! Who am I to take that away from them?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m against both <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tzniyus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> police and fashion police because policing what others wear is a dangerous game. Once you accept the principle of policing, whose will gets imposed? There are Middle Eastern countries that require women to wear a chador, hijab and\/or burqa. For example, Jewish girls in Iran must wear hijab! Do you think that\u2019s right? But conversely, France does not permit Muslim girls to wear their headscarves in public schools! Just last summer, French police forced a woman to remove her modest swimsuit (\u201cburqini\u201d) because it did not \u201crespect\u2026 good morals and secularism.\u201d And let\u2019s face it, there are Jewish communities whose standards of dress are too extreme even for most Orthodox Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t claim to love every fashion. Being a person of a certain age, I must suppress the urge to pull up the pants of some young men I see on the street and, unless you\u2019re the catcher, I don\u2019t get why anyone would wear a baseball cap with the visor anyplace but in front. But it\u2019s not my business because others can dress how they like.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you run a school or a business, you can make a dress code. If you\u2019re a parent, you can tell your kids how to dress (at least until a certain age; after that, good luck!). If you like, you can buy a bunch of Barbies and dress them up all day long! But other people? Leave them be. Does <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">halacha<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have an opinion on how we \u2013 both men and women \u2013 should dress? Absolutely. But as with every other <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mitzvah<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it\u2019s up to others to make up their own minds what to accept and how to proceed. If others are open to it, we should try to be a source of information. We should never take it upon ourselves to be a source of compulsion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, The Forward featured an article by Michelle Honig entitled \u201cWhy This Orthodox Layering Trend Has To Stop.\u201d\u00a0In it, the author opines that shells \u2013 the snug, long-sleeved shirts worn by women under otherwise immodest tops \u2013 \u201care the absolute worst.\u201d The problem is that shells \u201cgenerally look cheap, and make everything you put<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":58431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - 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