Getting the Boot

 These are currently my favorite boots.They're about 3 years old, and, as usual, I fear that they will be at their most comfortable right before they're worn out.

I have other boots; boots are my favorite footwear. No heels, though - I hate heels. Not on other people, just on me. Heels are pretty, but they hurt.

They might hurt less now; I had surgery on my feet to correct congenital bone deformations a few years ago. The receptionist asked me, as I left after getting my cast removed, "Are you going to go out and buy some great high heels now?" My answer was a resounding NO. I am all about comfort.

For most of my life, "dress shoes" meant high heeled sandals. A solid shoe had a tendency to squeeze my bunions, which was beyond painful. I bought sandals so that the bunion could stick out between the straps. Sure, it looked kind of funky, but it didn't hurt as much. My daughter did the opposite with her bunioned feet, because she was embarrassed by the bunions. No sandals, no flip flops - she wore shoes that hid her feet.

When I was in high school, these were my favorite dress shoes. (Yes, that's me wearing them.)

They were a big name brand, Candies, but I got them at a steep discount, because it was spring, and they were in fall colors. Pfft! I didn't care. I loved those shoes. But man, they HURT. If I wore them to a 2 day debate tournament, Friday and Saturday, I'd have to spend most of Sunday on my couch, off my feet. I'd limp through church, and most of that required sitting. Still, at that point, I considered it worth it, because the shoes were adorable.

At that age, I'd also deal with tight waistbands and other indignities, if I thought it looked good.

At 20, pregnancy forced me into flat shoes and clothes with stretch, and I realized that I'd been living my life all wrong. Now, if it isn't comfortable, I don't wear it, unless it's a lifesaving device.

The first time I came downstairs wearing these black boots with a dress, on my way to church, my youngest daughter informed me that I was fashionable. "That look is really hot right now, Mom! Good choice!"

That was not the response I got from my oldest daughter when I unpacked the boots at her house a couple of years ago. I'd come to attend my grandniece's naming ceremony, and was staying at my daughter's house; my nieces live about 30 minutes away from there. I'd worn sneakers through the airport, and had the boots in my luggage.

My daughter looked concerned. "Did you bring dress shoes?"

"These are my dress shoes." She looked blank, so I re-phrased. "I wear these with my dresses."

"Did you pack any church shoes?"

"These are my church shoes." Again the blank look, again the attempt to explain; "I wear these to church. (My daughter blinked.) I teach Gospel Doctrine in these shoes, every week."

"Did you bring any other shoes?"

I pointed to my sneakers. "These."

She was aghast. This is not surprising; she's despaired over my clothes, and wanted to dress me, since her age was in single digits.

She felt a bit better after we arrived at the synagogue. Another niece, the new baby's auntie, is easily the most fashionable person on that side of the family. She had on a dress and cowboy boots. My sister, the baby's grandma, is also terribly fashionable (and lovely); she had on a dress and knee high black boots.

My daughter felt better; not that she likes my boots, mind you, but because, "At least you aren't the only one." To be the only one doing anything is horrifying to her. I hope that she didn't notice that I'm the only one here in a pattern instead of a solid. Well, OK, not the only one; my niece has on a striped cardigan.

I think we all look pretty good. I certainly don't think that I look scandalous.

I am so very aware, however, that not everyone agrees with me. One of the things that frequently makes my life more difficult than it ought to be is the expectations for women's footwear, in either a business context or in a special occasion context.

My husband and I like to cruise, and cruises have formal nights. Dressing up isn't required, they won't bar you from the restaurants if you're dressed casually, but dressing up is nice. Plus, you can get great portraits on those nights. But, formal clothes are hard for me, specifically because of the shoes. I have a dress that I bought specifically for cruises. It's black and silver, from a higher end store than I usually patronize, looks good, and packs well. Yet it has never left my closet, because I can't find shoes that I'll wear and would be considered appropriate. My daughters lean on me to get ballet flats, but those are usually either too narrow or have zero arch support (or both), and as someone with collapsed arches, arch support is often a deal breaker issue.

Narrowness is also a huge issue. Go to the store, and put women's casual and dress shoes next to each other. The dress shoes will always, always be narrower. I've seen shoes marked "wide width" whose soles are an inch and a half narrower than my actual foot. With uncorrected bunions, that was easily 2 1/2 to 3 inches too narrow. I have seen too many dress shoes whose soles are less than two inches wide. Whose foot is that made for?

Men can, and often do, pair suits with casual shoes, even sneakers, and it's considered fun and fashionable and appropriate. My husband has a pair of black tennis shoes that he frequently wears with his dress clothes, because they blend, and people don't even notice. I can't do that. I've seen too many people raise their eyebrows when I wear sneakers with casual clothes, even on vacation.

When I competed in high school speech and debate, and thirty years later when I coached high school speech and debate, the students were supposed to dress up in "business" attire, to compete. The guys often just tossed on a blazer over their T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes, and they were considered well dressed and prepared. Even if the T-shirt had a design on it, or the jeans were ripped, it could be passed off as edgy and trendy. A girl dressed the same way was seen as being inappropriately dressed, not caring about herself or the event, and unprepared. Even swapping pants for a skirt, but wearing the same top and shoes she'd worn to school, was often deemed inadequate. One of my students wore brand new, deep blue jeans with her blazer, and got "inappropriado wardrobe" written on her ballot. (We are still trying to figure out what "inappropriado" is actually supposed to mean, since it's not a real word.) Many, many girls packed slippers to wear between rounds, because their "appropriate" shoes hurt. 

Business women do the same thing. How many go out to lunch in their office suits and skirts and sneakers, because their dress shoes are just for show, like for when they clock in or meet clients?

This was a constant struggle for me over decades of taking wedding photos. I could "look appropriate," or I could wear shoes that were comfortable. Sure, men sometimes face this struggle, too. I remember cringing when I heard a woman say that she "should have known" that she'd get "terrible photos" of the wedding when her male photographer showed up in sneakers. "How much of a professional could he be, dressed like that?"

This is why my husband, also a wedding photographer, always said, "I'm dressing up even if I'm the most formally dressed person at the wedding." To me, though, that's just evidence of how men and women move through life differently. It would be difficult, and often prohibitively expensive, for me to try to be the most formally dressed person at a wedding. Other women are likely to be in gowns, silk, satin, taffeta, sequins. I'm not going to be working in those clothes. I often end up climbing on chairs or benches, or getting flat on my stomach, to get the shot I want. It irks me tremendously that wearing clothes, and especially shoes, that let me do my job well is seen as being inappropriate, not caring about myself, the clients, or the occasion. I can't do my best work if I'm in pain. I shouldn't have to.

Three of my childen are married. To two of those weddings, where I was not only the parent of the bride or groom but also taking the photos, I wore boots under my floor length skirt.

Even if I was the only one in boots.

Honor Code Violations

I hesitate to write anything on this subject again; it did not go well on my Facebook page.

It started with this article about Brigham Young University (BYU) and the students challenging the school's honor code. The claim was made that it unfairly targeted female victims of sexual assault. People were very angry, because sexual assault is a dreadful crime, and they insisted that school policy further victimized the women. How? Because if they were in violation of the school's Honor Code when the assault occurred, they would still face censure for any rules they, themselves, broke.

(You can read the entire Honor Code here.)

I sincerely thought that this was a misunderstanding of the policy at best, and knee jerk reaction at worst. It should be possible to clear up this misunderstanding easily, I thought. I posted the article and said so - "It's not about gender bias or shaming. It's about breaking contracts."

I mean, to me it's obvious that if you know that a policy exists, you agree to that policy in writing, and you sign your name to a contract saying that you will follow those rules or accept censure, there's very, very little room - no, strike that, there's no room - to complain if you're censured for breaking the rules. Simple. right?

A few people saw it that way. They said things like, "I agree that if a student agreed to attend this school knowing that they have such a code, that they should not feel like they get a pass if they're the victim of any sort of crime."

Most pounced on me and quite roundly accused me of condoning rape, of saying that women "asked for it" or "deserved it," and voiced the opinion that I only thought this because I was brainwashed and controlled by my religion.

This was a typical response: " There is NEVER a good reason for punishing the victim of rape."

I could not quite get across that no one was punished because they were raped, they were punished because they broke rules, even when I said things like, "They're referred (to the disciplinary committee) if there's something to show that a rule's been broken - no different than if a male student was pulled over for DUI, off campus." I spent the better part of two days answering every response, and people STILL accused me of condoning rape.

It's been months, and I am still astonished that anyone could take the statement, "Contracts are enforceable" and turn it into, "Women deserve to be raped." That is just such a huge, ridiculous, illogical leap that, if you'd told me before this that people would make it, I would have told you that you were wrong.

And I said "it's about contracts" repeatedly: "It makes no sense to say, "I agree to these rules," but then disagree with them if they negatively impact you. I wouldn't get a free pass on an honor code violation if I was a victim of any non-sexual crime, so why should I get one if the crime is sexual? The students are not being held responsible for their assaults, but simply for breaking the school rules" "As an example, the woman in the article who said, "I'm being honest here. I was doing drugs. But you're not going to censure me for that, are you?" If I was being asked, the answer would be, "Um, yes, I am. It's breaking the law, AND violating the code of conduct to which you agreed.""

Someone responded by telling me that someone was raped "because she was out past 10pm."

NO. To be clear, the women were NOT raped because of what time they were out. They were raped because they were alone with a rapist.

I didn't even bother to point out that, if you read the article, you saw that some of these women were groped, through their clothes; although that is sexual assault, and both immoral and illegal, it is not rape. I went ahead and let people assign the word "rape" to ANY assault.

It's bad enough to have acquaintances, people who don't know me very well, tell me that I believe that certain women deserve to be raped, but many of the people insisting that it was OBVIOUS that this was what I thought were people who've known me for 20 or 30 years, or more. That was quite painful. You've known me for most of your life, and you honestly think it's possible that I hold this opinion? What about my conduct or speech has ever given that impression, even for a moment? I don't even joke about this.

I realized that many people were obviously having a discussion about whether or not rape was OK, and I said, repeatedly, "This is not about rape. It's about contracts." I was told, "No. It's about rape." So, what if this were about men who were robbed when they were out after curfew, because someone was sure that they'd never report it? I was told that such comparisons are wrong, because rape was a violent crime, and therefore in a different category. OK, what if these men were beaten when they were out after curfew, instead? Do we say that you get a pass if you're the victim of a violent crime, but not a non violent one? Do you get preferential treatment if you're a woman? Both those options seem ridiculous and ill advised.

One friend finally understood what I was saying the next day, after protracted conversation, when I said, "First, here's what they did wrong: 1: choose a university whose rules they intended to ignore. 2. Sign a pledge stating that they would uphold the rules (or accept the consequences). 3. Break the rules. 4. Complain that they shouldn't be penalized for breaking the rules. Now, I'm not a sports fan, but that looks like more than three strikes, you're out.

But let's assume that nobody did anything morally wrong. Allow me to illustrate that point with an example starring: my husband.

Now, I think my husband is a pretty great guy. That's why I'm married to him. He has a job. His job has a dress code. It used to be just things like the kind of footwear they allow. Now, they have uniforms. If he did not wear his uniform, the first time, he'd be written up. A second time, he might be demoted or docked pay. A third time, and he could kiss the job goodbye.

It's not that his regular clothes are immoral or dangerous. It's not that he'd be unable to do his job in street clothes, or that he's a danger or distraction to others. It's not as if he turns into a violent pervert if he wears his Star Wars T-shirts. It's just that his employer has a policy. His employment is contingent on following those policies, regardless of his opinion about any of them. (The policy has also changed several times in the years he's been working for his employer.)

If he lost his job because he just couldn't be bothered to put on the uniform, I'd kick his butt into next week. If your employer mandates that everyone wear a Carmen Miranda fruit hat on Tuesdays, you wear one. You don't refuse to wear the hat, then file a lawsuit, and get the Vegetable Growers of America to back your suit, on the grounds that fruit hats perpetuate the idea that fruit is fun and vegetables are icky, and are therefore discriminatory."

The friend then said, "It sounds like the story you heard was "women are trying to use their status as victims to get out of responsibility for their actions.""

YES! YES! I have used THOUSANDS of words to say just that! I responded, "What I heard was "Women expect to get a pass on any rules they broke, because they were raped while breaking them, and rape is worse than whatever they did." My belief is, "Rule breakers should expect consequences, even if somebody else did something worse." Sex, gender, whatever is irrelevant. "

Most people wanted to discuss whether the rules were good ones, and whether rape was bad. We were having THREE separate conversations in one; and, many people really had no interest in understanding me.

One close friend severed all contact with me after this Facebook discussion. This friend is SURE that I was excusing violence and victimization. I can't talk to people if we're obviously having different discussions. And if you won't even have the conversation, well, I can't help you.

So, I'm going to have all three discussions here, separately. We've already had Discussion 1: Contracts Are, and Should Be, Enforceable.

So, let's go on to Discussion 2: Is Rape Ever OK?

This should be quick: NO. (But then again, I thought that the contract discussion was quick and self explanatory, so I'll say more.)

I said on Facebook: " My opinion on rape has always been, and I've said online, to my kids, and anywhere else, all of my life, that if a woman you've previously had sex with is drunk, naked and alone, but says "no," then you're a cretin if you so much as push the issue or ask again."

I'll admit that there is wiggle room in a marriage for a little wheedling. "No" might get the response, "Oh, come on, the kids are at your mom's! We never get this kind of privacy!" But in or out of a marriage, sexual activity is NEVER NEVER NEVER a given, an inevitability, an obligation. Never. You're allowed to be hurt, frustrated, unhappy with an answer of "no," but you still have to honor the other person's wishes.

I can't quite believe that it isn't an absolute given that I feel this way. But now you know - that's what I think.

People have a right to refuse even non-sexual body contact if they don't want it. Cases of safety, medical care and child rearing are the only times it's OK to touch someone who doesn't want it (screaming, "No bath!" doesn't mean that I won't bathe a child who needs it), and it's legally OK to refuse medical care!

Now let's have Discussion 3: Are the Honor Code Rules Good Ones? Honestly, I think this is where many people got bogged down. Having decided that they disagree with the Honor Code, they could not see any way they would ever be OK with its enforcement.

First, see my analogy about my husband's employer's dress code. I truly do not care if the rules are good or bad. If the school wanted to say that everyone must wear purple on Tuesdays, and must turn counterclockwise three times every time they enter or leave a classroom, those rules are enforceable. If you don't like the rules, don't attend the school. This is not public school, where attendance is mandated by law.

I said, " If I am mugged, neither the law nor popular opinion will consider it my fault. If, however, I was alone, at night, in certain neighborhoods or situations, wearing expensive jewelry, carrying large amounts of cash, people will feel - and rightly - that I did not take all of the precautions, or display all of the awareness, that I could/should have. That's the second consideration.

We routinely warn people to avoid the situations named above, or to lock their cars and hide their valuables, or to lock their doors at home. When we travel, those warnings go up. If someone is robbed, the thieves will still be to blame, and will still be prosecuted, but everyone from law enforcement to casual friends will remind the victims that they should have taken precautions in the past, and should definitely take them in the future."

"Of course, I'm also ticked off that society went from leaving our doors unlocked to locking them to also locking the windows to whole house security systems (in ONE lifetime!). We SHOULD be able to expect people to stay the heck out of our houses, belongings, etc. without them. But, when my house was robbed, one of the first things the police asked was, "Were your doors and windows locked?" And you can bet I would have kicked myself had the answer been "No. I trust in the goodness of my fellow humans.""

"If you (the rhetorical, as well as individual "you") don't like the rules at BYU, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. I mean, are campuses that are OK with all night alcohol and sex situations in short supply, somehow? There's only 3 BYU campuses (and the admissions are highly competitive). Surely someone who thinks the rules are Draconian is best served by going elsewhere."

"I mean, at its core, the point is that each person is responsible for their own actions, and accepts the consequences when they take any action. Just as we're not responsible for others, we also can't forgo the consequences of what we do.

The only reason this has people freaking out is because there's questions of sex, religion and violence pushing everyone's buttons. If I made the above statement in almost any other situation, people would say, "Sure. Of course. That's obvious.""

"To me, the BYU rules say, "You have to be more careful here than you did at home. You are away from family, familiar places and your safety net. The lines have to be adjusted accordingly. Even if you might not have a problem, the person next to you might.""

"I know that there are those who disagree with BYU's honor code. I've even had people tell me that following such rules "ruins" the students' chances of "living a normal life." People who feel this way should choose another school."

"Often, non-LDS people respond to hearing those things (included in the Honor Code) by saying, "They got suspended/kicked out/disciplined for that? That's normal behavior on any other university campus!" And THAT is why most people should attend schools that are NOT BYU."

"I have active, temple recommend holding LDS friends who say that they would not attend BYU or encourage their kids to attend, because they disagree with the honor code. That's OK; it's a valid opinion. But anyone who HAS chosen to attend does NOT get, in my opinion, to say, "Oh, wait, I've now decided that I don't like these rules, so I shouldn't be subject to them." Universities are supposed to prepare students to be productive citizens. Is there any civic law that will say, "oh, OK, you're exempt," if you say that you're philosophically opposed to the law or policy? Sorry, officer, I think that speed limits are wrong, so you can't ticket me."

I think everyone also ignored the fact that there are many, many possible outcomes when you're investigated for an Honor Code violation. From the official BYU website: " An appropriate action will be selected from the following: No Action, Counsel and Education, Referral (to a responsible person or agency—e.g., reconciliation process), Warning, Probation, Suspension Withheld, Suspension, and Dismissal."

That's right - you might face NO action, or a simple warning. There's EIGHT possible outcomes. They're not kicking you out of school if you were 5 minutes past curfew. (The complete article can be read here.)

Having had a couple of months to mull it over, I think that what upsets people most is the BYU dress code. This also doesn't really register with me, because, with a few exceptions, it's how all LDS people are counseled to dress. It's not unique to BYU. I tend to forget how any kind of clothing standards tend to cause people to freak out.

All LDS Church members are told to avoid tank tops (or spaghetti straps) or strapless clothes, bare midriff, bare backs and the like. Shorts should reach the knee. Women's swimsuits should be one piece. The school's is a bit stricter; in church during almost any week, you can find women and girls wearing leggings under skirts that are shorter than knee length, but BYU doesn't allow that.

It also is a code for ALL people, not just women. Men need knee length shorts. They are not allowed tank tops, sleeveless tops, or to wander around topless (except for places like the  swimming pool). They are not allowed beards, including goatees, soul patches, or simple scruff. (If you are a member of a religion that mandates facial hair, you are granted an exemption from that requirement.) My son favors scruff, and when he attended BYU-Idaho, they would not let him take his ID photo or sign in to his student housing until he shaved it off. Was he annoyed? Sure. He griped. But he complied, because those are the rules. He also left his cherished sword and knife collection home, because they violate the school's weapons policy. His weapons aren't considered immoral in any way - LDS Scout leaders gave him some of those knives - but they violate campus policy; so, they stayed home. Again, he griped, but he complied.

"But why have these rules?" people ask. I don't; I don't think that any organization needs to defend its dress code or other policies to me, personally. But, in this case, aside from the normal modesty standards we're all asked to maintain, they have a dress code for the same reason any business, school, company or team has a dress code: this is the image they want the public to see. This is how they want their school represented. (If you don't like it, go elsewhere.)

Asking for modesty seems to freak some people out. They are just sure it's about repression, shame, and subjugating women. They just cannot seem to wrap their heads around ANY other POSSIBLE reason for clothing standards, and I find that really puzzling. If it was about subjugating women, why are there clothing standards for men? Is anyone going to make the statement that the school, or the church, thinks that men should be the victims of crime if they're bearded and wearing a tank top? Then why assume that they're making those judgments about women? It's illogical.

I have gotten some truly infuriating answers when I've asked people questions like that. With some frequency, I get answers like, "It's easier for men. They can be considered fashionable and attractive in clothing like that ("that" meaning that it covers most of their body), but women can't." EXCUSE ME? That is an enormously anti-woman sentiment! Do you sincerely want to tell me that women cannot be "attractive" or "fashionable" unless they are in skimpy clothing? You don't see the rampant sexism in that statement? Do we want a university, of all places, to say, "Ladies, in order to be fashionable and attractive, you're going to need to show some skin"? There is no way that I'm OK with any form of that sentiment.

And if the sexism weren't bad enough, I'm also appalled that being "fashionable" is seen as a worthwhile goal. Don't think for yourselves, folks - do whatever's popular right this minute! Sure, what's popular will change in the weeks, months, and years ahead, but you're expected to change your opinion, and your appearance, to conform! I have so little use for trends of any kind, and certainly not for appearance oriented trends. I have the same basic "style" I had as a child. I never did big hair and parachute pants, despite being a teen and 20-something in the 80s. Am I aware that people make negative judgments about that? Yes. Do I care? No. And do not tell me that it is the job of a university to encourage the following of fashion; I find that thought incompatible with the idea of "higher learning."

Do I find fashion and its followers implicitly immoral? No. I just find following fashions to be superficial at best and elitist at worst. Neither of those things is desirable to me.

I also have a really difficult time with sentiments often quoted in popular media. After a celebrity was recently criticized after she posted nude selfies on her social media, she said, "I'm not going to dilute my sexuality and my power because it makes you uncomfortable." Honey, attention seeking is not power. And if you think that your power and your sexuality are tied to your appearance, opinions about you, what the public sees, exposure, or how much attention or validation you get, I feel very sorry for you. You obviously do not understand either power or sexuality.

I was deeply delighted by what actress Gwendolyn Christie said to TIME Magazine about her role as Captain Phasma in Star Wars, and in particular, about her costume (which, if you don't know, was unisex armor that included a full helmet with face shield): “What I found interesting about the character was when they showed me the costume, obviously it looks incredible, and I got excited by that. But it is rare that women get to play a character and below the neck they are really covered up to the extent that you cannot really see the flesh outlines of their body. This excited me for two reasons. It excited me because I realized that every gesture I made would have to indicate something, would have to say something about the character. So the way I stood, the way that I gestured with my arm, where I put the weight in my hips that would all say something about the character. Because [producer] Kathleen Kennedy said to me, ‘Have you ever Googled female heroines?’ And I said I hadn’t, and she did the Google search and showed me. There were a lot of very conventional images of women in fairly revealing outfits, or at least outfits that showed the outlines of their body. And it felt to me that there was a character where we should respond to her due to her actions and what she represented rather than a more conventional delineated flesh outline. And that felt like a step forward in terms of the kind of characters women play in films in our entertainment industry. It felt really progressive to me. And consequently I’m very proud to play this part because yeah, you look at her and she looks badass. But also it means something much deeper and it represents something of proper progressive thought, and it’s in a package that we all love. That’s why I’m so over the moon to be part of this wonderful thing because it’s actually doing something positive and progressive.”

YES. YES. YES. We should "respond to her due to her actions," not according to how she looked! That's the point! That's what I would expect anyone who considers themselves a feminist to think. About the whole brouhaha over BYU's honor code, I wrote, "And, I consider my position that it doesn't matter if the offenders are male, female, minor offenders, major offenders, sexual offenders, carjackers or term paper salesmen to be very feminist. The whole point is to assess by action and ability, not biology."

I wish I could find again and link to a blog I read several months ago. The writer, a woman, said that she had spent her life thinking that modest clothing, and in particular, modest swimsuits, indicated that a person was unattractive, out of shape, or suffering from low self esteem. Consequently, she wore "the tiniest bikini" she could find when she went to the beach or pool. She said that she was constantly comparing her body to those of other women at the pool, either positively or negatively. (And, by the way, the frequently used terminology about whether someone "has the body to wear that" makes me just see red. It's objectifying and demeaning. Whether or not you wear revealing clothing should NOT be determined by whether anyone else thinks you are attractive.).

Then, one day, she found herself enchanted by a little family. They looked so happy, and seemed to be having so much fun. The couple seemed very in love. Then, the writer realized two things simultaneously - 1. she had not compared this woman's body to hers at all, or even thought about whether she was attractive at all, and 2. the woman was the only woman at the pool in a modest one piece swimsuit. "I had noticed her life and her personality, not her body parts. Then, I realized that that was what modesty was about - letting people see my life and my personality, instead of noticing my body or my clothes." YES, YES, YES! That's what modesty is about! It is not about shame!

LDS people are fairly unique in our belief that God has a body, that we are literally made "in His image." That's another reason to dress modestly, avoid tattoos and abstain from alcohol and illegal drug use - to give respect to something that is the image of God.

Another reason for modest clothing is to preserve intimacy. According to dictionary.com, "intimacy" means: "a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship; a close association with or deep understanding of; an act or expression serving as a token of familiarity, affection, or the like; the quality of being warm or familiar." Putting your body parts on unnecessary display erodes intimacy, as your personal body was never meant to be for public consumption. It belongs to you, your partner and your babies, not to anyone with whom you might come in contact.

Even our sexual organs have non-sexual uses, so it makes no sense to me to assume that everything about your physical self is sexual in nature, and that's what you're doing when you insist that the dress code is about sexuality. Many, many things are physical, but not sexual.

Thinking that clothing standards are about sexuality is so foreign to me that I honestly do not consider that possible interpretation until someone (rather forcefully) points it out. In short, I forget that people think that way. Therefore, I'm at a loss to understand the rage that people direct towards the BYU dress code.

In general, I tend to assume that the most reasonable point is between extremes, and on a continuum of "nudist" to "burka," the LDS Church clothing policy falls smack in the middle.

In an effort to use an analogy to explain myself, think of it this way: I have a bank account. There's nothing immoral about it, or about my money. I am not ashamed of having or using a bank account, and I'm not ashamed by what's in it. It's important to me (and to my family). That is exactly why the only people who have access to it are my husband and myself. Even those I love and trust do not have access to my bank account. It would be too easy to do me and my family harm, even unintentionally, if I allowed other people access to it. That is exactly how I feel about my body. That is how I think everyone should feel about their body.

"But fear of being censured for minor infractions is keeping women from reporting assaults!" people have said to me. I understand, and sympathize, with many of the obstacles to reporting and prosecuting a rape. I understand fear of having to tell the story over and over, the frequent lack of physical evidence, fear that you won't be believed, fear that your attacker will retaliate. But if you would rather let a rapist go free, to rape someone else, than receive a curfew or dress code warning, I'm afraid that you aren't very mature, or displaying good judgment. And if your infraction was bigger - say, drug or alcohol use - you would undoubtedly be happier at another university, and should consider a transfer.

I don't mind if anyone disagrees with me. I do, though, mind very much when people try to tell me what I think, instead of asking me, and listening to (and believing) what I have to say.

And I don't mind if you take exception to the BYU rules. However, those rules are not about shame, blame or subjugation. And if your first instinct is to tell me that that statement is wrong, that I am mistaken or misled about that, don't be too upset if I tell you that you are wrong about what you think, or that I know better than you do what your opinion (or that of your family, religious philosophy, employer, club affiliation or anything else) is.

Keeping Up Appearances

I always wondered why my sister Lynne was so appearance conscious. Our mother wasn't. I wasn't. But Lynne very definitely was.

I have always been a function over form person. I really don't care what something looks like as long as it gets the job done. Like most kids in families of limited means, though, I was also very self conscious about anything that singled me out as poorer than the other kids, so I decided that that was what Lynne was thinking.

I was sure there had to be some environmental cause. I grew up believing that all taste was environmental. I have long since conceded that I was wrong.

My oldest daughter is so much more like Lynne than like me in her desire for impressive outward appearances. Since I was born when Lynne was 11, I didn't get to see her as a baby or toddler. I would watch Lana as a baby, displaying behavior that was totally foreign to me, and think, "Where did that come from?"

When she was only about six months old, Lana began to be stressed out by wrinkles in her crib sheet. Really. I would lay her down, and she would frown at the sheet, then begin making a frustrated noise as she smoothed her hand over the wrinkles, trying to wipe them away. Of course, even when she was successful in smoothing them out, any tiny move on her part would cause new ones. So, she'd start smoothing again, going, "Uh! Uh! Uh!" Thankfully, in fairly short order she would look away or be too tired to keep it up, and she would fall asleep.

She announced when she was barely two that she wanted to start going potty in the bathroom. I was sure she had no idea what that entailed, but after she hounded me for two weeks, I figured, fine. We'll see how this goes. It only took her a week or so to get it down to the point that she was dry all day. I was surprised and she was happy.

What annoyed her tremendously was throwing away the diaper she still wore overnight. After I took them off, I had always rolled up diapers and used the tapes to tape the bundle shut before throwing them away. I think most mothers do. It incensed Lana that she did not know how to roll them up herself and I refused to do them. I wanted her to take the diaper off herself and just throw it away. She hated that. It looked wrong! It was messy! She was totally undeterred by my insistence that it was OK for things to be messy in the garbage can. I wanted her to function independently, but she wanted things to look right.

At age two, she also started stressing out about wrinkles on her socks. You know how your foot is usually extended when you put your sock on, but when you flex it back or stand up, it creases across the front of your ankle? Lana hated that. It drove her crazy every day for literally years. She could not understand why this did not bother me, why I figured it was just OK to walk around in wrinkly socks. She dealt with this by pulling her socks up with great force many, many times a day. That stretched the socks out, sometimes to the point that the fibers were breaking, so now the socks not only wrinkled but sagged. This made her just about frantic. I wondered how many years it would take before she started taking our advice and just leaving them alone. Pointing out to her that our socks also wrinkled across the front did not appease her. To her, that was just proof that we were too clueless to know how socks should look.

In kindergarten she added a new sock worry. Now, it caused her a great deal of distress that the seam across the toes of the sock meant that the front end was more squared off than rounded. She would look at socks after she'd pulled them on and start making the familiar frustrated huffing sounds. "Look at that! They stick out!" she would say, pointing out some tiny protrusion or squaring off on either end of her toes. "They're fine," we'd say. "Socks do that." She became even more frustrated, wondering how her parents could be so utterly clueless.

Again, she dealt with the situation by pulling on her socks. She would grab the offending spots and pull them down under her feet, then carefully slide her feet into her shoes so the "corners" would be held down and out of sight. Naturally, this meant that getting her shoes on could take quite a while. And again, the major effect of this was stretching and pulling the socks out of shape, until the toe seams were two or three times the width of the rest of the sock. This did not actually bother Lana, because the wider the socks, the easier it became to wrap them around her foot.

She stopped being so obsessed with her socks quite so much about the time she started obsessing about the rest of her wardrobe. She had a very clear set of wardrobe dos and don'ts at a very early age.

During her kindergarten year, we bought a pair of ballerina flats that were, I thought, slightly large. They were on sale, though, and too large eventually becomes just right. When she put them on for school one morning, I asked if they fit. She assured me that they did, and I didn't think too much more about it in the morning rush.

When I picked her up that day, Terry and I were walking instead of bringing the car. I don't remember quite why. Even though we lived close to the school, we had to go down one of the busiest streets in town to get there. It wasn't exactly a serene stroll, so we didn't do it often. We set off for home, hampered by the fact that Lana's shoes came off every two or three steps.

At first, I thought it was some form of clumsiness. Then I started looking more closely. Her feet popped out of her shoes literally every step, and once out of every three or so times the shoes would fall all the way off. They were obviously still too big for her.

"Lana! Have your shoes been doing that all day?" I asked.

"Well, yeah," she said. "I tried to fix it." She slid her foot out of the shoe to show me that, across the bottom, she'd folded socks and laid them the length of the shoe to take up some of the extra room. "It didn't work, though."

"So your shoes have been falling off your feet every two or three steps all day today."

"Well, yeah."

"Lana! I asked you this morning if they fit! They obviously don't! Why would you wear shoes that are too big for you?"

She looked at me as if this was a patently stupid question. Then she looked down at her immobile feet. "Look how pretty they are," she said.

She went through a stage of insisting that everything she wore, even her underwear, had to be the same color. She started insisting that her hair be "done" for school when she was about seven. Ponytails were one of her favorite styles until she wore one for picture day in 5th grade. "I look BALD!" she shrieked when we got the photos back. "I look like I don't have any hair at all!" I don't think she ever wore a ponytail again. Dressing for the weather was always a problem; she would plan her wardrobe for days or weeks in advance, and was always thrown when told that she couldn't wear something because of the weather. She was happiest dressing in outfits that came with two pieces, so she was sure that everything "matched."

Coats were a constant struggle. "It's puffy! It makes me look fat!" she'd wail, at the ripe old age of nine and ten. We would insist that she leave the house in a coat in cold weather, knowing full well that she'd ditch it as soon as she was out of our sight. Terry, normally blasé about clothes, followed suit with a coat aversion of her own. It was maddening.

We'd get phone calls from friends, offering us coats for our kids. "They looked so cold walking home from school today," one friend said. When I told her that they both had coats in their backpacks, and that they refused to wear them until they were a block away from home, she thought that I was too embarrassed to admit that we didn't own any. Another friend refused to take my word for it, and simply showed up on our doorstep with hand me down coats for the girls. It wasn't the first, or the last, time we would be given coats. It didn't matter if we bought them or if someone else did, if they were new or used, Lana and Terry refused to wear them except in our presence. That problem wasn't solved until high school when they got letterman jackets. Those, they would wear.

Even into high school, Lana would try to put her clothing into "outfits." She would decide that a particular pair of jeans went with only two T shirts, and refuse to wear the pieces with other garments. We would tell her that jeans, any jeans, went with any of her tops, and she'd look at us as though we were crazy. We'd tell her that black and white went with any other color imaginable, and she'd look horrified. To her, black or white went with black or white.

When she was invited to her first formal, she insisted on extensive jewelry shopping, so she could find jewelry with stones the exact color of her dress. We told her, over and over, that pearls, diamonds, gold and silver would all be appropriate with a formal. She thought we had absolutely the worst taste imaginable. To Lana, you could only wear pearls if your dress had pearls on it; ditto for diamonds, gold or silver.

She was mortified when we couldn't find maroon shoes to go with her maroon dress and garnet jewelry. She was sure that her black shoes would look "stupid," and cause her to be a social outcast. She only wore them because it came down to wearing black shoes or staying home. She came back from the ball amazed: "There were other girls there in maroon, and they wore black shoes. There were girls wearing black shoes with blue and red dresses, too," she marveled. It has never done any good to point out that we knew this beforehand.

She still has trouble dressing for the weather. At college, she's been known to wear her favorite mesh slide shoes in six inches of snow.

While I take reasonable care not to look like a homeless person, I am not particularly "into" clothes. And with my children, the most important thing to me is that they function independently. As long as their clothing is clean and at least close to the right size, I will only veto it if it poses a health or morality issue. I don't care if my kids want to wear orange and purple together.

I once let my youngest daughter go to church in a Snow White dress up dress. When she put it on, I thought briefly about asking her to change. Then, I thought: it's a dress. It's clean. It fits. It's not too revealing. She looks adorable in it. Plus, she's 4 years old. So, she wore it, and actually got quite a few compliments. Life works that way when you're 4.

Poor Lana was always frustrated by my willingness to let her younger siblings dress themselves. She gave up trying to influence Alex too much, theorizing that, as a boy, he'd be hopeless about clothing issues. She would frequently tangle with Terry and Hallie.

Terry, being just a year younger, fared better than Hallie, upon whom Lana felt she could wield greater influence. Lana would try to coax very independent Hallie into clothes Lana had chosen for her. Their arguments would filter out into the hall and occasionally down the stairs.

"Honey, wouldn't you like to wear this shirt with those pants, instead?"

"NO!"

"But sweetie, these would look so much better."

"NO!"

It would finally drive me crazy enough that I'd intervene. "Lana! Go downstairs and let your sister dress herself."

"But Mom! She has no idea what looks good together."

"I don't care. Downstairs."

Poor Lana would sulk away, convinced that no one understood. How had she gotten stuck in a family of stubborn, styleless women, she wondered. And how could I not appreciate her efforts to "help" her sister?

Hallie is a bit older now, and often makes an attempt at matching her clothes. Still, she's young, and her choices don't always make sense to adults. In kindergarten, she wore her velvet dresses as everyday clothes, and chose sweatpants and a T shirt for picture day. Well, OK. It's her photo. She was clean, comfortable and happy.

A year later, she's in first grade and has just performed in her first school music program. She wore a pastel striped sweater under a denim jumper with red and black accents. Again, she was clean, comfortable, happy and even in a dress for a special occasion. She had a great time, and was very proud. We took tons of photos and clapped loudly. I just knew, though, that when I e-mailed Lana a photo at college she would groan and say, "Why did Mom let her wear that?"

All the Japanese People Were Wearing Pants

"All the Japanese people were wearing pants!"

The outrage in my oldest daughter's voice carried all the way over the line, clear as a bell despite the hundreds of miles inbetween us. She was a newlywed, unpacking in her first home with her husband. She'd finally taken most of the stuff from her room at our house (even though she hadn't lived there for 5 years), and was looking through her photos. She'd come across one from Sea Life Park in Hawaii.

We'd taken the trip to Oahu when she was 11, Terry was 10 and Alex was three. We'd tried to sign up for a dolphin encounter at the park; the highlight was getting into the dolphin pool. There was only one opening, so we signed Lana up. She's always loved the ocean and dolphins in particular, so it was obvious which of us would enjoy the encounter the most.

Aside from mainlanders, Japanese vacationers made up most of the tourists we saw. Every other member of her dolphin encounter was Japanese, and most were adults.

Lana wore her swimming suit under her clothes all day. When the time came for the dolphin program and they were ushered into the briefing room, Lana started taking her clothes off. "Honey, we don't get into the pool until the end," one of the dolphin trainers said. "You can change then."

"No, I'm OK," she said, neatly folding her shirt and shorts.

Before they got into the pool, a group photo was taken. Since Lana was one of the shortest ones, she was in front. The other participants hadn't changed yet; no one thought anything of it at the time. She'd been in her suit for half an hour or so at that point.

Each participant also got a photo of themselves and a dolphin while they were in the pool - that's one of my favorite photos from that trip.

Now, years later, Lana was beyond scandalized by the group picture. "I'm wearing a swim suit, socks and sneakers! I look ridiculous! Everybody else has pants on! Why didn't you make me wear pants?" Neither her dad or I could see anything to get worked up about, which made her even more upset. "My husband laughed! He says he's going to send it in to awkwardfamilyphotos.com!"

For the last few years, she's brought the subject of what I should, and should not, have let her wear up several times - "How could you let me wear that?" The thing is, we're not talking about photos of her as a toddler in a tutu and cowboy boots (which, admittedly, would have been fine with me). Most of the time, her age is well into double digits, and the clothes in question were favorites of hers. Sure, they might be out of style years later, but they weren't then. I point out that she has never liked my taste in clothes - she spent most of her life trying to dress me. I remind her that she would have argued bitterly. "Did you want me to spend every day hitting my head against a brick wall? We would have both been miserable." She still insists, "You should have!"

Until she hit puberty and realized that jeans were fashionable, she hated them. "They're stiff, they're hot and they make me sweat." Even at camp, she wore knit stretch pants. In her late teens, this just mortified her. "WHY didn't you take away all my stretch pants and only buy me jeans?"

"Because. You. Hated. Them!"

When I did very rarely put my foot down, she'd had meltdowns. In junior high, she'd tried to wear dirty pants to school. You'd think someone meticulous about appearances would never consider such a thing, but in her mind, it was better than wearing what was still in her closet. After I insisted that she change, she hauled another pair of jeans out of the hamper and I had to be very specific - "You will not just change, you will put on something clean."

"But all my pants are dirty!"

"Then wear a skirt or dress."

"To school?" She loved her dresses, and she owned - I am not making this up, 26 of them at the time - but not to wear to school.

I insisted. She complained. I dropped off a very angry girl in a dress just before the bell rang.

When I picked her up after school, she flumped onto the seat and slouched down, announcing, "I knew it. Everyone said I looked ridiculous."

Sigh. "Lana," I said, "I know you. You walked into class this morning, and the first thing out of your mouth was, 'I feel ridiculous. I didn't want to wear this, but my mother made me.' " She stared at me with that deer-in-the-headlights look. "Honey, I know what you're hoping when you say things like that is that your friends will say, 'Oh, no, you look great! I love that outfit!' but what they're actually going to say is, 'You're right. You look awful. I can't believe you left the house looking like that.' You cannot get angry with people for agreeing with you." She said nothing on the ride home.

At 16, she'd once had to stay home from a dance after having a shrieking fit and throwing her shoes across the living room. (We had guests, too; great.) She always arranged her clothes into Outfits, deciding that a particular top ONLY went with particular bottoms. In this case, it was a denim skirt, white top and white canvas shoes. When the shoes were new, they looked great. They were now far from new; she'd actually used them for creek walking at camp the previous summer, and it was now December. Her teacher at church had actually requested that she not wear them to church any more. After she wore them to church again, her teacher was deeply puzzled - "I mean, I know she has nice shoes. I've seen her wear them." But, in her mind, ONLY those shoes went with the denim skirt. One night, she tried to wear them to a dance, and I'd had the audacity to tell her to put on another pair of shoes. She owned quite a few. After the shoes sailed across the room, accompanied by angry yelling, her dad and I had simultaneously said, "OK, you can stay home," and she burst into tears, wailing, "Dances are the only thing in my life I have to look forward to!"

And now I was getting lectures on how I should have argued with her MORE often? To what end?

The thing is, I naively believed that at some point, my kids would appreciate a mom who hadn't micromanaged their wardrobes. I've actually had to reshoot a senior portrait session, because the girl showed up to the shoot alone and her mother hated what she was wearing in the photos. She wasn't dressed scantily, or in anything dirty or controversial, but she was (gasp) wearing pants, and her mother wanted her photographed in a dress. "And she didn't even DO anything with her hair!" the mother told me in outrage, intimating that I should have refused to photograph a girl who showed up looking the way she did every day. I never put my kids through that.

The thing is, my oldest still hates my taste. Not six months before the conversation about the Japanese people and their pants, she had literally been in tears over the shirt we bought her. We took a family trip, and on one day we all planned to wear matching shirts, so we bought all of us one. She hated hers, convinced it was too big and too baggy and she "looked ridiculous." All five of us assured her that she looked fine, but she only consented to wear it under a jacket that she kept zipped up. And this is an adult! How in the world would it make sense to have had those conversations every day?

(I wrote this in 2003. We will obviously never be on the same page about this.

My daughter loves me anyway.

But, I do fear that she'll destroy childhood photos.)

Panting Indignantly

Do I have to sacrifice a poodle skirt to the gods of fashion to find a pair of reasonable pants, for crying out loud?

By "reasonable," I mean "totally unrealistic, given the current whims of designers and manufacturers of garments." I want pants with a waist that is, see if you can follow my arcane logic here, designed to sit at a person's waist. Today, that's apparently about as likely as winning the lottery.

I do not mind being mocked by my desire for "old lady pants." I know that these same people will change their minds in a few years. How do I know? Because I have an amazing ability to predict future events based on past events. Gasp, you say. Allow me to demonstrate my prognosticating prowess.

First, though, we have to go back. Since we're talking waists, let's go back to my childhood, the 70s. Yes, the period often mocked as "The Decade That Taste Forgot" that now has its staples appearing again as up-to-the-minute fashion. Huge Afros? 70s. Fringed leather? Yup. Blue eyeshadow, flared pant legs (they were called "bell bottoms" then) ... need I go on?

Back then, we called pants that rose no higher than your hip bones "hip huggers," not "low rise," as they're called now. Parents were scandalized, but everyone else loved them. I had a pair - and I was 4 years old in 1970, which (amazingly enough) made me 14 in 1980 - that was handed down by my sister. They had little metal star studs that we'd hammered in ourselves, all down both outside seams. The "waist" had a tab that buttoned off center. They were tres chic. My mother insisted that our shirts had to at least meet, if not be tucked into, these pants (and good for her.) That wasn't hard back when. Mostly, I wore them with bodysuits. Remember bodysuits - like leotards, only with a snap crotch?

Even though they weren't terribly low, they still had to be stabilized or tugged up several times a day, mostly when you sat down, stood up, bent over - in short, moved at all. Back then, it was considered a faux pas of the highest order to let anyone see your undergarments. Bra straps were carefully hidden. Visible panties or boxer shorts were unheard of, and would have caused the wearer much embarrassment.

When hip huggers went out of style, the style mavens had an explanation. "They're universally unflattering," they said. "They draw a horizontal line directly across the largest part of the body, making hips look even wider. Even if you're slender, they make you look chunky. Without anything holding in your tummy, it looks bigger and rounder as well. They draw attention away from your face, your legs, or other, more flattering, features."

"They're soooo right," the collective population said. "What were we thinking? We looked awful in those." Now, of course, it's been, what, 15 years or so that "low rise" and the even more heinous "ultra low rise" pants have been back in style, and what do the style mavens say? "They're slenderizing, and look good on all body types. They remove bulk from the waist, giving you a leaner silhouette, and lengthen your torso, making you look taller and slimmer."

And the collective population, the same population that agreed that the pants were unflattering, now agrees that they are flattering. Near as I can tell, I am a very rare person indeed, with 1. a long term memory and 2. the ability to realize that both things cannot be true. When they go out of style, and I hear, "What were we thinking?" again, I will scream.

OK, I won't scream. I'll say something snarky about how my unfashionable, frumpy self knew that years ago.

I keep hearing that "high waisted" pants are coming back "in." Sometimes, I even see famous people wearing them. I'm not sure how much that I like truly high waisted pants, the ones whose top extends clear up to or over the rib cage, except that I like them a lot more than I like the low ones. They're more comfortable (I've owned those as well), and I think they look better. They're certainly more modest. I'm just waiting in vain for stores to carry pants whose waistbands aren't a mere three inches up from the crotch.

You know what I really don't understand? Pants that fit at the natural waist in back, but dip lower in the front. I understand that no one, least of all fashionable women, want plumber's butt, and that the lower front is probably an attempt to look like low rise pants, but whose bright idea was that? All it says to me is, "My stomach is too big to be contained by my pants." It's a dreadful look, on any age, size and shape.

Can I please, for heaven's sake, just get pants with a waist at the waist? How hard should that be? Really, are we next deciding that the heels of socks look better and "offer more support" on the balls of the feet?

Two of my pairs of pants are so old that the store that sold them went out of business years ago, and has since been demolished. Eventually, I will need new ones.

I hate clothing shopping.

I bought some pants the other day, unwisely not trying them on. They were a familiar brand at a familiar store, a good price and a nice fabric. I held them up, and the length seemed right. On my body, though, they were all wrong. They fit exactly the way they were made to - about six inches below my waist.

Now I'm growling and hunting for the receipt, so I can return them.

Do you think they'll accept "collective insanity, instigated by the manufacturer for the purpose of reaping obscene profits" as a reason for return?