Here is an interesting article on the women and young teenagers in the court battle over the FLDS children:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/magazine/27mormon-t.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
And here is a link to a slide show of pictures of these women at home:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/07/27/magazine/20080727_FLDS_SLIDESHOW_index.html
You will notice the second picture of the slide show is of a 17-year-old mother and her 1-year-old daughter. The one year old has a prairie dress on! I was really astonished that they began so young! Even the hyper-pats that I know personally don’t dress babies in prairie dresses. They do start early (maybe 3 or 4), but not for infants. However, I have seen this type of fundamentalism before–with Muslims. Take a look:
Not so different, are they? And the scary thing is that the hyper-pats aren’t that far off from the FLDS in dress-code.
The hijab thing I really don’t get. According to Islamic law, girls aren’t required to wear hijab until puberty, when they begin menstruating.
I was about to say that Anne.
I guess maybe all extremes eventually begin to look alike.
Looking at the first little girl in the hijab, the sticker did stand out to me. In protest I would put myself and my daughters in hijab. I have a number of friends who are hijabi wearing muslimahs and take it very seriously. It is a choice that they made for themselves, and value it. I think they should have the right to wear it if they choose, and would stand beside them to protest it’s ban.
oh dear …
this is just scary nasty stuff
I guess I don’t see it as all that scary. Of course parents are going to dress their children the way they themselves choose to dress. Parents who think females should wear dresses are going to have their daughters wear them, too. Parents who think it’s okay for women to dress like sluts often allow their little girls to dress that way, too, even as young as 1 or 2.
Do I think there is something very wrong going on with the FLDS group. Yes! But how they dress is relatively minor IMO and not necessarily an indication of anything but a poor sense of style and imagination.
A Presbyterian gothardite elder told my kids how you dress is what you think of God. He wanted all shirts pj’s included tucked in, top buttons done up and more. Of course, this thinking began to skew my kids view of what God is like.
A friend who came out of Old Colony Mennonites said how they dressed, dark colours, white bobby socks, hair style, was part of how you earned your salvation. She married in a deep purple dress which looks no different than what the group wears for everyday. She was told to have a “white wedding” the way the English do was sinful because it diverted attention to self and not to God.
When I see people in a religion dressed similarily and off-kilter to the greater society around them I wonder what it is that prompts them to do so.
Right, also the Gothardite Presbyterian elder’s wife told me after at length complaining about what everyone was wearing at a wedding the previous evening that she “felt dowdy”. I looked at her and thought, “you ARE dowdy.”
Anne2, Stacy McDonald brings up this very point in Raising Maidens of Virtue. She writes that how you dress is a direct reflection of your theology. So, if you have a low view of God and don’t really love Him and care about pleasing Him, you’ll dress like “the world.” But if you really love Him, you’ll wear long, flowing skirts and dresses. I’ve never read anything as judgmental and snobby as what I found in this book. I wonder if she’s ever read James 2.
The concept behind this book is, to me, scary & nasty! My 18 year old and I watched “The Color Purple” last night as a result of this post and another. The movie is about incest/sexual abuse, etc. in a humanistic “patriarchy” type community that claimed to be Christian. Frankly, we did not see too much of adifference between this movie and Raising Maidens of Virtue … this is just evil nasty stuff
I am guessing the little girl with the sticker is actually wearing it for the protest . . ? I do see your point, though. It bothers me to think that some people do, in a sense, actually sexualize children in this way– thinking they have something shameful or sexual to be “modest” about, you know? I mean, they’re babies!
This topic reminds me, though, that I meant to ask– for the feminine dress week, do we wait til the end of the week to send in all of our photos?
*should be “with the sticker is actually wearing the hijab for the” etc.
In Kuwait (and the ones I see in here in Lebanon) the children dress just like kids anywhere else. There have even been kids I’ve seen dressed in a way I wouldn’t let my daughter dress (not modest at all). When they reach puberty, it’s a different story. I do know of one man (the neighbor of a friend from church) who won’t let his daughter cover. He said that when she gets married she can dress how she wants, but for now, he won’t let her. I don’t know if he’s speaking of just hijab or actually covering her face.
I will, on ocaasion, see girls much younger than puberty wearing hijab, but it’s very much an exception rather than a rule.