The Chaplain's Dress: Good Reasons for Old Habits

A couple years ago, a friend and I lamented the seeming problem of a woman's appearance. We both enjoy dressing nicely--professionally, prettily, stylishly but not overly so and certainly not revealingly. We are, as they say, "appropriate," and yet we can never really escape objectification. Often, it is subtle and insidious, such as when people (often other women) comment incessantly on how we look. Other times, it's classically salacious and overt: "How's my favorite chaplain today?," ogled the young doctor. "You look like a lilac!!"

For a woman in ministry (or for me, anyway), this matter of dress and appearance is especially thorny. On the one hand, as a woman, I am expected to be attractive--to meet the societal standard of beauty; on the other hand, as a chaplain, I am expected to be a bit dowdy and plain--or a man or a nun. It's hard for people to place me: "Women can be chaplains?!" "But you're so young!" "You're so pretty!"Are you a nun?" "Are you married?" "Are you allowed to marry?" "Have kids?" "Have sex?" "I love your shawl! Did you knit it yourself?"

After a while, this line of perplexed questioning becomes intrusive--and I wish I had a blanket or a burka to throw over myself. Which is what my friend and I ended up talking about and how we ended up thinking in a rather odd and unexpected away about burkas and other "coverings" such as hijabs and nun's habits.

As modern, "liberated" women, it's easy to view these "veiling" practices as signs of women's oppression and a denigration of our sexuality. And there may be a lot of truth to that. (Let's just say this issue is far more complex than I wish to plunge into here, and I can hear my beloved feminist friends screeching! For a more in-depth account and analysis of this issue of the woman minister and her clothing, read chapter 7 of Sarah Sentiles's book A Church of Her Own: What Happens When A Woman Takes the Pulpit.) But I think there may be another side to it as well--a liberating quality.

Now, I know less than nothing about how Muslim women experience or give meaning to wearing a burka or hijab. But I wonder if some of them who choose to wear it feel a kind of freedom from ogling and harassment, enslavement to fashion and consumerism, and a sense of personal autonomy and privacy: The woman reveals herself only to those closest to and most trusted and loved by her--i.e., her family, her husband.

As for the habited nun, I begin to see the practicality, if not the virtue, of it. In the context of ministry, perhaps the habit (or the collar or cassock for priests) can facilitate a more spiritually focused dialog. It is certainly a clear marker of identity and role. But it can also have the opposite effect: erecting a major barrier, especially if the patient whose room you're walking into has negative associations with Catholicism or religion in general. My priest colleagues encounter this sometimes: Patients who refuse to talk to them will talk to me, in part because I don't look like a nun (or a priest) or any kind of "religious person." More often than not, people think I'm the dietician or the social worker. (Ha! Gotcha!)

So, a good habit (if not a burka) would certainly solve some problems: It might fend off some cads and throw them onto the path of other hapless women; it might diminish the magpie effect of wearing a tasteful outfit; it might deter certain inappropriate questions (but undoubtedly tempt other ones); it would definitely save money and might even collapse certain class distinctions.

For all these reasons, I've come to see the habit as eminently practical rather than exalted or superior or supremely obedient. And yet, I doubt I will be donning one anytime soon. Forgive me, but I like clothes. Time to polish up the mary-jane pumps, wrap myself in a resplendent red scarf and go billowing down the hallway.