The conformity of a nonconformist
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 11:44PM Although it's been around for as long as mankind has been in existence, I remember when nonconformity became really really really popular.
As in, to be a nonconformist made you hip and with it and far out and cool, all of which you most certainly wanted to be. Groovy, man.
Beauty is always in style. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
It was when I was a kid.
With the '60s came the hippie generation and that was all about burning your draft card if you were a guy and burning your undergarments if you were a girl.
It was about indulging in "free" love and taking drugs and tripping out to rock 'n roll music and telling your square parents where to get off.
It was about rebellion against God.
Changes Were Made And Not All For The Better
Girls went on the pill, forsaking chastity. Guys went on Herbal Essence shampoo, having forsaken haircuts.
Kids barely old enough to shave called out their social-drinking parents for suggesting it wasn't a good idea to smoke pot and drop acid.
Tasteful ornamentation is an art form. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
As an era it was about flying in the face of authority and making your own indelible stamp on society by refusing to look like and live like the over-thirty "establishment."
Supposedly.
If I had done any one of those things -- forget all of them -- I would've ended up in traction. Wearing a chastity belt. My parents would have seen to it.
Anita Bryant found out what it cost to speak out against a particular brand of sexual nonconformity. She lost her orange juice contract … and her career. Her very life was threatened because she believed in moral decency and traditional marriage.
Hindsight being the flawless thing that it is, we all know how well those attitudes and that gradual shift in social mores worked out.
The drug culture was responsible for frying more brains than a million chicken legs at a gazillion church suppers.
Girls who shed their bras in 1968 now pack it all into eighty-five dollar Spanx and call it a business expense.
Guys who grew their hair to their shoulders and lit up their minds with hallucinogenic substances don't have anymore hair. Or in some cases, minds.
The rock 'n roll music caused more than hearing loss. There was also loss of virtue, loss of conscience, loss of innocence, loss of moral compass, and significant loss of personal hygiene.
Then As Now, Being Backward Could Get You Banned
Now if you speak out in favor of traditional marriage -- as in, existing solely between a man and a woman, as God, whose idea marriage was and is, ordained it -- you're the one labeled a freak. And that's the nice way of putting it.
Back then it became a crime to pray in school. Now it's frowned upon to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Merely thinking about God in today's schools can get you fired or expelled.
Sometimes it pays to come on strong. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
Mention the Almighty's name and you're likely to be banished from distinctly impolite society, minus your pension or your transcripts.
Fifty-five MILLION unborn children have been slaughtered since abortion on demand became the "law of the land" in 1973.
So here we are nearly a half-century later and now, ironically, the nonconformists who started the whole thing get really mad if others choose not to conform with them.
Truth be known, the children -- and in some cases the grandchildren -- of those original hippies are now driving the car.
And you might want to get off the road.
Now, more people have tattoos than have driver's licenses, it seems. In summer when people wear less in the way of clothing, the areas of their bodies that are covered with ink is truly stupefying. Why? Why do that?
Oh, honeychild! To be a nonconformist! Because you're just stupid if you conform. Not to mention narrow-minded. Judgmental. Bigoted. Moralistic. Extremist. A homophobe. A hater.
The Red-Headed Stepchild Of Corporate America
One of my adult daughters works for a major American corporation. She's been with them for five years -- ever since graduating from college -- and she is a valued employee.
My daughter is a beautiful young woman. She has a lovely figure and long chestnut-brown hair and laughing hazel eyes. She's also very smart and has a highly-defined sense of identity. She knows what she believes and why she believes it.
Well-planned details often carry the day. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
She is a fiscal and social conservative and let me just warn you, if you are a progressive liberal you might want to think twice before engaging my daughter in a conversation about politics.
She reads voraciously and is a student of history. She knows what she's talking about. She can put it all into context for you and she's … shall we say, seldom at a loss for words.
The darling has been a clothes horse practically since birth. I blame it on that first purple sleeper that just dripped with lace, and the way I gushed while complimenting her on how smashing she looked.
Most weekends find the girl shopping for bargains to augment her already substantial and stylish wardrobe.
For work she wears classic, feminine, seasonal, age-appropriate, modest, professional outfits. Just like she wears for church, or when we go out to dinner, or even just shopping for more outfits.
I think the way she dresses for work was at one time known as "business casual."
Even so, as much as they can get away with, people today seem to want to push the envelope when it comes to the "casual" part of that. Regrettably, it's become the way we do business.
As in, most people would wear jeans and old t-shirts with flip-flops on their feet to work every single day if their employers let them. And call that progress.
Subsequently as far as company-wide "dress down" days go, they necessarily come with a directive about how far down you're actually allowed to dress.
(I once worked at a law firm where a certain paralegal -- a 40-ish mother of two -- wore her flannel pajama bottoms with a massive baseball jersey EVERY FRIDAY OF THE WORLD until the office manager told her to rethink the ensemble. By then my retinae were permanently damaged.)
Be Ultra-Casual Or You'll Be Ultra-Sorry
Recently the company where my daughter works announced there would be an "ultra-casual" week.
(Yes … a whole week of "ultra casual." If contemplating that doesn't curdle your blood, you might be past help.)
Purity of line is essential. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
My daughter just smiled and dismissed the announcement. She wears light summer dresses in hot weather, and high heels. Her coral-painted toenails peek from strappy sandals and jute-wedged espadrilles. Her bare legs are tanned.
She fixes her abundant clean hair all pretty and wears mascara and earrings and bangle bracelets. She smells good.
That's still okay; right? To dress like a woman and smell like a woman if you are in fact a woman? To outfit yourself commensurate with your gender? To go to work dressed like you're there to work and not to take an afternoon nap or wash the dog or pick cabbages or mow the back forty? Huh? Is it still okay to do that?
Apparently not.
Because as she sat MINDING HER OWN BUSINESS in the break room during "ultra casual" week, a male co-worker accosted and very nearly upbraided my daughter for the way she was dressed.
"Hey," began the ultra-casually garbed man, who sported shoulder-length hair and a scraggly beard a la Jesus in old Sunday School pictures, only less wonderful. "Don't you know it's ultra-casual week? Why are you dressed like that? We don't know who you are."
WE DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
Oh yes he did say that.
We Know Who We Are But Do You Know Who You Are?
Also in the room at the time were several flagrantly homosexual men dressed in shorts so tight and so … short as to be grossly lewd.
(At work. Not at a "gay pride" parade but in the WORKPLACE.)
Classic equals classy. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
At work, where my daughter, who is a conservative Christian woman, was -- as were the others -- dressed exactly like what she is.
As in, there was nothing any more ambiguous about her mode of apparel than there was about the way the homosexual men and the Jesus dude were dressed.
And can you imagine the hue and cry -- not to mention a Federal lawsuit and likely involvement of the ACLU -- that would have commenced if she had taken any one of THEM to task over their attire?
The exact opposite of what was asserted is true: Those at work know all too well who she is.
And some of them don't like it.
They don't like it that my daughter refuses to conform with the nonconformists, who have now become the conformists.
Which is to say, in an absolute bumper crop of the most ironic of ironies, they don't like it that she's a nonconformist.
The worm has turned. It's now unforgivable to be a nonconformist if that to which you conform is decency and morality and purity and modesty and a traditional world view.
Someone coming to work dressed like what used to be identified as an ordinary human being, secure in their gender identity and possessed of enough self-respect to be a permanent fixture on the sartorial high road, eats at certain innards like ball bearings languishing in battery acid.
Grab The Maalox Because You're Going To Need It
But see, we're not going to back down. My daughters aren't, and I'm not. We are conservative Christian women who enjoy being female and who are inordinately fond of fashion … and every time you see us, we'll be easily identifiable as such.
If that fact causes an uncomfortable knot to form in the prehensile tail of every liberal-brained, gender-bending, over-exposed, over-inked, under-barbered, style-challenged, fatally atavistic (non)conformist in America … so be it.
The old ways are still the best ways. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010
But before you start (or finish) foaming at the mouth because I and mine happen to be so opinionated? It appears we're not alone.
I close with this quote from the July 2010 issue of Vogue:
I am woman; I am not girl. I do not emulate the pop-burlesque fashion stylings of Ke$ha or Katy Perry. I do not aspire to be passe morning-after chic, with bird's-nest hair and shredded leather leggings. No. Of Lana Turner and Barbara Stanwyck -- and Lena Horne -- I sing.
(Have you felt the smooth, snug tug of fine leather gloves being pulled on? Have you considered the rebellion, the nonconformity, inherent today in a Mamie Eisenhower knit suit? Have you worn a crinoline lately?)
Reader, if you're older than fourteen, fashion for fall 2010 offers more wearable options than it has in eons. Skirts fall back below mid-thigh. Designers are giving us dead-cool-but-still-practical streetwear uniforms for work or school. Black-with-black is totally back.
Can we get an "Amen" up in here?
Amen.
Reader Comments (6)
Well said, Jennifer. And your photos give me a new appreciation for classic architecture. I'm going to link to you from my blog, there are more of us out here than you think. Like-minded people, that is.
Great post Jennifer! I hate casual Friday, and a whole casual week is way too much. I would think businesses would want their employees to look professional!
Great post. :-)
Goodness, where to begin? I've long ranted about pajama pants at the grocery store, or worse, at school. Just yesterday I saw a young lady(?) wearing boy's boxers out in public as her lower-half garment. Scrubby jeans and even shorts have become all too common - with ADULTS at my CHURCH! Sometimes I feel like the "lone ranger" out here (regarding so many topics) until I read your posts. Thanks for being a voice for the way this "neo-non-conformist" thinks...
The notion of a guy WHO IS AT WORK with shoulder-length hair and a scruffy beard questioning Audrey's choice of attire makes me think we're now living in Bizarro World. Up is down. Right is left. Insanity passes for sanity. And it makes my head hurt.
This is one of your best social commentary pieces. I shall Retweet this to my many, many small handful of followers. :-)
Well, You Have MY Vote!!!Hahaaa.....You GO Girl! Like Mother like Daughter! How wonderful...Tell her there's More of US then there is of THEM!!
Loved this post Sweetie!!
hughugs
PS-hunting my pumps.....Hahaa