A Year of Biblical Womanhood

by Rachel Held Evans

  All said, my Lenten dress code left me with a grand total of one outfit—a lavender button-up sweater paired with one of three peasant skirts. I went to Marshalls and picked up a black skirt and a couple more tops, which brought my options to four. You would think I’d find this constrictive, but I confess there’s something nice about getting up in the morning and knowing exactly what you’re going to wear that day. There’s also something nice about hiding your crazy hair beneath a cute, slouchy beret. I may have looked like a cross between a hippie, a homeschooler, and an Old Order Mennonite, but I’d cut my morning prep time in half, and the results weren’t so schlumpy after all.

  But the thing about sporting an über-modest look in this day and age is it attracts a lot of attention. Children stared at me at the grocery store. Men avoided making eye contact. Friends struggled to come up with compliments. I think a lady took a picture of me with her cell phone at a rest stop near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

  Even Dan treated me differently.

  “I feel like I can’t swear around you,” he confessed. “You project so much . . . conservativism. It’s like I’m afraid you’ll be offended.”

  What bothered me the most about my new look was the feeling that strangers were judging me as a religious fundamentalist based solely on my appearance. I faced this insecurity each time I walked into church, wandered the mall, sat in a boardroom, or approached a speaker’s podium, and it forced me to confront the fact that the reason I feared this particular judgment so acutely was because I’d grown accustomed to issuing it myself. When I saw women at the airport wearing the hijab, the first word that came to my mind was oppressed. When I saw families at the park boasting long denim skirts and tennis shoes, I labeled them sheltered. When I saw Amish buggies creeping down a busy street, I rendered their drivers legalistic, outdated. When I saw a perky coed donning a pro-life T-shirt and a “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet at a concert, I filed her under Bible-thumper. Now I feared that all those harsh words were being mentally lobbed at me. There’s perhaps no better way to foster empathy for those whose appearances you judge than to spend a few weeks walking in their shoes.

  By mid-March, I’d grown tired of the double takes followed by quick glances away, tired of hurried explanations about my head coverings and skirts, tired of the way other women seemed annoyed by my presence, tired of sticking out in the crowd for trying to be plain. But I’d soon find myself in good company.

  Dan’s Journal

  March 22, 2011

  This month has been a little weird. Not bad, just weird. Rachel has been dressed in her modesty garb. I find myself feeling like I should talk to her differently. I also wonder what people think about me—Am I an oppressive chauvinist? Do I control her and yell at her behind closed doors?

  Then I realize, maybe that’s how I view other people. Maybe those thoughts are what go through my mind when I see people wearing conservative clothing. I automatically suspect abuse and control. I realize it’s shallow to simply assume you know a person by the clothes they are wearing, but at the same time, aren’t we taught that we should “dress for the position you want?” And how many business owners would hire the interviewee with the ripped jeans and dirty T-shirt? There are reasons we associate certain clothing (or lack thereof) with certain behaviors and lifestyles. Isn’t clothing a form of nonverbal communication? If so, should we be allowed to judge others by what they “say”?

  It’s interesting to see people’s responses to Rachel. Some people, after seeing a picture of her online, asked, “Are you mocking those who dress like that?” So apparently I’m not the only one making judgments based on appearances.

  “You may need to find a better Amish lady,” Mary yelled over the roar of the generator powering her clothes dryer. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten rather fancy.”

  “Fancy” is how the Amish describe things like cars, electricity, blue jeans, and people who aren’t Amish. But Mary wasn’t fancy. Plump and grandmotherly, she spoke with a charming “Dutchy” accent and wore all the traditional accoutrements of Amish life—a black apron pulled over a muted purple blouse, a simple black skirt, a heart-shaped bonnet, wool sweater, and black Crocs. (Yes, Crocs are all the rage in Amish country right now, along with Transitions lenses.)

  Mary was giving me, my friend Janet, and Janet’s friend Kathy a tour of her sprawling ranch-style farmhouse, which sat on sixty gorgeous acres in Gap, Pennsylvania. Noonday light poured through the windows, but Mary showed us how the house was equipped with gas-powered lamps built into oak stands that looked like normal end tables but hid propane tanks inside. The décor was simple, though not sparse, with framed embroidery and Thomas Kinkade prints decking the walls. The playroom, for Mary’s grandchildren and neighbors, was littered with blocks and coloring books and, somewhat ironically, nearly naked Barbie paper dolls.

  Mary was Kathy’s aunt and an acquaintance of Janet’s. Janet grew up in the Gap area but in an Old Order Mennonite community. Though she left the Mennonite tradition as an adult, she still knows just about everyone there is to know in rural Pennsylvania, and had arranged our meeting that day, as well as several additional stops in what I’d come to call the “Amish Paradise Tour of 2011.” Dan and I made the ten-hour drive from Tennessee a few days before and were staying with Dan’s brother and his family in Downingtown, where, despite the fact that it was late March, we were greeted with snow flurries and ice—a friendly reminder of exactly why we choose to live down south. Fortunately, the weather cleared up by the time I arrived with Janet and Kathy on Mary’s farm, but it was still freakishly cold outside. Mary hurried the three of us inside and to a large kitchen table covered with a lace tablecloth, where we talked and snacked on pretzels, cheese, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Two brown-eyed little girls wearing simple beige dresses and long, brown braids crept shyly to the table to watch us.

  “Tell me about your own courtship,” I prompted Mary after we’d chatted for a while about Amish weddings.

  “We dated for about two and a half years,” she responded, “which is probably not that different from the length of worldly courtships. We spent the first few months of our marriage visiting with family and living with his parents, which I suppose some might think is strange, but that is traditional in our community.”

  “Do you remember what you wore on your wedding day, Aunt Mary?” Kathy asked.

  “Oh, it would have been something like this,” Mary said, looking down at her clothes with a smile and a shrug. “Nothing fancy.”

  “In Amish and Mennonite weddings, girls can wear any color except for white,” Janet explained to me.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because white is what the worldly girls wear on their wedding days,” Janet said with a wry smile.

  Mary nodded in agreement.

  “And Amish girls can get married in any month except June,” Janet continued.

  “Because . . .”

  “Because that’s when worldly girls get married.”

  At one point in the conversation, Kathy pointed to a hinged leaf on the far side of the table where the two little girls were playing.

  “Is this for family that has been shunned?” she asked Mary.

  “Yes,” Mary said with a grin. “Many of us have them now.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, fingering the hinge. “What does this have to do with shunning?”

  In the Amish community, shunning—or medung—occurs when someone who committed him- or herself to the Amish way of life as a young adult decides to leave the community later on. The severity of medung varies from community to community, but Mary said that each generation seems to grow more tolerant of family and friends who have left Amish life.

  “We’re not allowed to share a table with family members who have left the Amish way,” Mary answered. “That’s why we add the extra leaf, so that when such family comes to visit, they can eat with us without being at the same table.”

  I confess I was a little taken
aback. As an outsider, it seemed rather obvious to me that it was the rule that needed to be changed, not Mary’s kitchen table. At the same time, I found this odd little workaround surprisingly moving, a bizarre expression of unconditional love that spoke to the lengths to which people will go to maintain fellowship with their dearest family and friends. One is hard-pressed to find a culture in which a mother allows a law to stand between herself and her children.

  “Did you ever consider leaving the Amish life?” I asked Mary.

  “No, not once,” she responded. “This is how it has always been for me. I can’t imagine it any other way.”

  Mary and her husband have five children, a relatively small family for that community, and all of them remained solidly Amish, which is a source of much joy to Mary.

  “So what do you think of Rachel’s outfit, Mary?” Janet asked. “Is it plain enough?”

  Mary chuckled, looking over my lavender button-up sweater, black A-line skirt, black boots, and beret.

  “The covering is just about right,” she said, “but the buttons are a little fancy.” (Amish women typically use pins to fasten their clothing. Buttons are considered ornamental.)

  We talked awhile longer about shoofly pie, children, and the reputation of Amish “gangs” (youth, but I swear the phrase “Amish gangs”

  made me want to laugh out loud every time it was said), before grabbing lunch together at a nearby café. On our way out, Janet noticed a multicolored weighted Hula-Hoop propped up against Mary’s fireplace.

  “What do you use that for?” she asked

  “For keeping trim!” Mary said cheerily, patting her belly.

  So of course we each took a turn, giggling like schoolgirls as we swung our hips—Janet in jeans and tennis shoes, Kathy in a flowered skirt and heels, me in my A-line and boots, Mary in her apron and Crocs.

  The next stop on the Amish Paradise Tour was a one-room schoolhouse just down the road from Mary’s place. Mary knew the teacher and most of the students well, and I was delighted by the prospect of witnessing an Amish school in session, something tourists visiting Lancaster County rarely get to see.

  When we pulled into the schoolyard, we were greeted by an austere blond llama nibbling on the grass between a row of seesaws, and by an Amish boy, about eight or nine, tucking in his shirt and dashing from an outhouse to the front door of the modest frame schoolhouse.

  We sat in the back of the classroom, where a row of benches was reserved for guests. Inside we found twenty-six students, their ages ranging from seven to fourteen, sitting at large wooden desks. The desks faced a chalkboard covered with multiplication tables and a message in neat cursive writing that said, “Salvation is free for you because someone paid for it.”

  A busy but ordered energy filled the room, and it appeared that different age groups were working on different subjects, some collaborating with one another, others listening to the teacher, still others working quietly by themselves. Only the littlest ones looked back and studied our faces with curiosity before returning to their work.

  At the front of the classroom was a raised platform upon which sat the teacher’s desk and a castiron stove. Gaslights hung from the ceiling, and a warm afternoon light streamed through the windows, casting a movielike glow over the quaint scene that reminded me of my favorite moments from Anne of Green Gables, the one where Anne slams the slate over Gilbert’s head. Girls wore colored blouses covered by black jumpers or aprons, their hair pulled back with bobby pins into neat buns. Boys donned colored shirts, black pants, and suspenders. The wooden pegs on the coatrack by the door held a myriad of straw hats, bonnets, kerchiefs, and coats.

  Presiding over all of this like a master conductor was an energetic and confident eighteen-year-old teacher. When we arrived, she was leading the third graders in a geography game, while answering questions from the sixth graders about their reading work, while keeping a cautious eye on a couple of fourth graders sticking their coloring sheets to the wall with putty. It was the most orderly classroom I’d ever seen.

  “Eshet chayil!” I whispered to Janet.

  The Amish only educate their children through eighth grade, a religious liberty that is protected by the Constitution. They reason that all a person needs to live a simple Amish life is basic elementary school education and some practical life skills. This severely limits the career options available to girls, who are expected to marry, have children, and tend a home shortly after they are baptized into the faith as young adults.

  As I watched the children run around makeshift baseball bases at recess, heads bent down against the cold wind, I wondered how many of them would continue in this way of life as adults, and how many would forge their own paths. I wondered what would have happened to a girl like me—curious, skeptical, and strong-willed—had I grown up Amish in Gap, Pennsylvania, instead of evangelical in Dayton, Tennessee. It was one of those moments when you realize just how much of your own life is out of your control, how little of it you actually choose for yourself . . . right down to the day that you marry and the clothes you wear.

  “I kept my head covering in the glove compartment of my car for years,” Janet said with a sigh. “I put it on before family gatherings, even though everyone knew I was long gone.”

  It was just the two of us now. We were in Janet’s car, taking a winding highway from Gap to Morgantown to pay a late afternoon visit to Janet’s cousin Sarah.3 We drove through little towns and long stretches of farmland, past general stores and horse-drawn carriages. We stopped to look at the old farmhouse where Janet grew up, and the grocery store her parents once owned. At one point we spotted a woman jogging in a knee-length skirt, apron, and head covering.

  “I don’t think I could finish the half-marathon in that!” Janet laughed.

  Janet was one of those girls—curious, skeptical, and strong-willed. The Old Order Mennonite tradition is similar to Amish, though typically less conservative. Most Old Order Mennonites use electricity, and some drive cars. Her family initially disapproved of her leaving the Mennonite tradition, but Janet was not shunned for it. One of seven children, the rest of whom remained in the faith, she married a fellow Mennonite, and they left the tradition together.

  “It was all the rules,” Janet explained. “I had so many questions, and no one had any good answers to them. I think it’s something you’re born with—that need to inquire and to make sense of things. I just never really fit in here.”

  Janet’s a writing buddy I got to know through the Internet. When she heard about my month of modesty, she volunteered to give me a comprehensive look at Amish country, from Zimmerman’s store (where Harrison Ford made phone calls in Witness) to Angela’s I (where I had the best sweet potato fries of my life) to the full-sized biblical tabernacle reproduction at the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster (where a woman appropriately named Miriam gave us the grand tour).

  “People are people,” Janet said as we pulled past a stable full of horses into her cousin’s gravel driveway. “You can be Mennonite and be just as self-centered and arrogant as the next guy, or you can be Mennonite and be generous and loving and kind. It’s about the heart—not the clothes, not the rules.”

  Jane’s cousin Sarah is famous for both her baked goods and her green thumb. Though she and her husband drive a horse and buggy, they use electricity and even own a fax machine to help Sarah keep up with bagel and bread orders.

  “No computer, though,” Sarah noted after we’d joined her at her kitchen table to talk. “Though I’ve been told I’d sell more if I had a web page, probably more than I could handle.”

  Sarah was soft-spoken and warm, with a pretty face and gentle brown eyes. She looked like Emily Dickinson to me, exuding an energy of mystery and peace. Unlike the Amish, Mennonites are allowed printed fabric, so Sarah wore a simple floral dress under a black apron. Her head covering resembled Mary’s but sat further back on her head, without the distinctive heart shape. Her house was smaller than Mary’s, but homey and full o
f light. A Crock-Pot simmered on the kitchen counter.

  “What do you call the ribbons attached to your covering?” I asked Sarah, pointing to the two black ties resting on her shoulders. “We just call them ribbons,” Sarah said.

  “Why are some of them white and some of them black?”

  “Unmarried women wear white. Then several years after marriage, they switch to black.”

  “Is it to mark some sort of occasion?” I asked. “Like an anniversary or the birth of a child?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah answered. “Someone once told me that women with children switch over to black because black shows less dirt . . . which makes sense, especially with toddlers, but still, I don’t know. There are a lot of traditions like that. We keep them, but no one seems to know exactly why.”

  She paused for a moment and then told us a story:

  “Once there was a new bride who wanted to prepare a special roast for her husband. Before putting the roast in the oven, she cut half an inch of meat off each of the two ends, just as she had always seen her mother do. When her husband asked why on earth she would cut off the best part of the roast, the only thing she knew to say was ‘because my mother always made it that way.’ So the next day, the bride went to her mother’s house to ask why she cut the ends off the roast. Just like her daughter, the mother shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Because my mother always made it that way.’ Now they were both curious. So the two found the bride’s grandmother and together asked, ‘Why do we cut off the ends of a roast before putting it in the oven?’ Shocked, the grandmother cried, ‘You’ve been doing that all these years? I only cut off the ends of my roasts because they never fit into my tiny pan!’ ”

  We laughed, and Sarah confessed that sometimes Mennonite life seems a bit like that recipe for roast. Traditions stick around for reasons that have long been lost to history.

  “But our traditions give us our community,” she said. “They set us apart, so there is value to them.”