So, we started these tznius groups in our neighborhood. We had the first meeting last week after shabbas, and the second tonight. 'Cept I missed it because I went to table-read for a play that I will be in. So fun, by the way! My part, which is the main part, which is super cheezy to say, but rolls off the tongue SO NICELY, is super de duper dramatic and I get to wear a wedding dress and sing about my PAIN and LONGING, and it's been a long time since I got to make an audience cry! I love makin' 'em cry!
Anyway. Back to the tznius groups.
So. Tznius discussions always brings out weird things in me. Not weird like a tendancy to grow fur and fangs and howl at the moon, but weird like ambivalent and teenage-ish rebellious stirings.
Now, I consider myself a pretty tznius person. I don't wear tight clothing, I am very careful about the length of my skirt, and my shaitel (which sits so nicely and patiently in my closet beside my oft-worn bin of scarves) is a long less than two feet long. (although if being tnzius means blending in to the neighborhood, maybe I should rock me some two foot-long shaitel and black skin-tight tops. But that is a mean and caty sort of thing to say, so pretend that I didn't say it. Because I'm not mean. Or catty. Meow.) I just have a hard time listening to it being preached. A few reasons:
1. Still a little traumatized from being brought to the front of the room in 11th grade and, using a book that had these little measurements drawn all over little drawings of girls and a TAPE MEASURE, my teacher showed the whole class why my shirt was not tzius. Blush much?
2. I feel like they always MISS THE POINT. (I am going a little capslock crazy in this post, am I not? I apologise. I REALY DO.) Like they talk about the symptoms instead of the problem. Yes, girls do show too much and don't understand the spirit of the law. But they don't ask WHY. WHY do they feel the need to dress this way? I agree with Outdoorsman who says that so much of tznius is all about how you feel about yourself. If you feel good and accomplished in your own skills and merits, you won't feel that pressing need to get attention with your body. And when girls are not allowed to do anything except shop, then yeah, they might show a tendancy to be materialistic and give their bodies more importance then they should have.
3. They seem to confuse being a bas melech with wearing dry-clean clothes and only wearing a shaitel. I know that denim rhymes with gehenom, but seriously? Banning a fablic? I feel that dressing casually, at least for me, means more time for the kids in the sandbox, and letting them cry and get snot all over my shoulder, because I'm a MOTHER, not a runway model, and I'm okay with dressing like one.
I could elaborate for many pages on all of my points, but I'll leave it for now because it's almost one in the morning and my kids should be waking up in oh, around NOW. No...NOW. Yup, there she is. Coco-pop. Am I good, or am I good?
Anyway anyway. I'll just end with a line that Outdoorsman started and I finished:
Tnzuis is not about covering your knees. It's about not thinking that your knees are that important.
5 comments:
I came back to finally comment on that amazing speech about your father and it's all gone! :( Did you delete it or is my computer messed up?
I did take it away. Now I put it back. Maybe I will take it away again? I'm not sure if it should be up here. It's a speech, and a long one. But I would love to hear your feedback!
why take it away? it can give ppl chizuk
I know this post is three years old, but I was nodding my head so much while reading it I looked like a schoolgirl being chastised, that I had to comment.
As a High School teacher, especially for 12th grade, I see, and hear their struggles. I see the effort the school puts in, but like you said, they really don't get it.
It's such a shame.
I think that in a good school,they WANT to get it. They THINK they get it.
But they don't.
You are right.
It's such a shame.
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