Have you seen Lindsey Stirling’s dress?

May 25, 2015
I love to watch/listen to Lindsey Stirling. Her contagious exuberance makes me happy.
I read a short article about Lindsey Stirling’s surprising outfit for recent music awards.
I looked at the pictures of the dress, and indeed, it looks pretty skanky.
But she points out (in an embarrassed apology/response to criticism) that it’s fully lined.
It looks like a modest, (though very fitting) black dress that has been cut to ribbons.
Indeed, if there was really so much skin showing, you’d be able to see her naked body from almost any angle.
So it’s obvious that it’s lined. And it’s not sheer, either. It’s just a tan and black dress.
It’s just the effect is not the joyful sweetheart that we love and are so proud of.
We’ve all seen the skating costumes that are tan colored with a colored overlay. They also can have the effect of being very racy, but when shown close up, they’re fully covered.
I have tan colored clothes. They don’t look racy. They’d have to be lily white with freckles *sigh* in order to blend with my skin enough to raise an eyebrow.
There’s another element to this dustup that we old biddies need to remember. How many of us actually know how we appear to others? I’m constantly astonished that I look so heavy in pictures.
I once knew a plump kindergarten teacher whose skirts were too short for the tiny chairs and who leaned over too much in V necked blouses. It wasn’t that she was intentionally immodest, she just didn’t know how she appeared to others.
I look back on pictures of me in a bathing suit in my teens and twenties, and even though I truly had the most modest bathing suit of anyone I knew, (I managed to find a one piece in the 70’s!), looking back, it wasn’t all the modest. But I didn’t know enough about men to know that the power of suggestion can be more exciting than actually baring the body.
The same is true of dresses and shirts that I wore that were TIGHT. I didn’t know that they might have been perceived as sexy because I didn’t know anything about sex. I didn’t know the effect my body could have on men, and believed that if something covered me, it was “modest”.
I considered myself to be as strait laced and modest a virtuous young woman as you’d hope to find. And yet, that may not always have been how I appeared to others. I don’t think I’m all that unique.
So, as we’re huffing and puffing over our exuberant musician, lets remember back to what we knew and what we didn’t know when we were unmarried/twenties/living in virginal innocence.
I agree that somebody should have said something to her, but let she who is without (error) cast the first stone at her.
And let’s all take a lesson about representing ourselves correctly in the way we choose to dress.  

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2 Comments

  • Reply Jessica May 26, 2015 at 2:12 am

    Well said Beth. I agree with you.

  • Reply Beth Stephenson May 26, 2015 at 2:48 pm

    Note on the thread picked up on Facebook: I strongly believe that we should all strive to show our self-respect by dressing modestly, and speaking thoughtfully. But the most important thing to consider is how Jesus would treat somebody and then do likewise ourselves. This is to say that we shouldn't speak up when our elected officials go awry.

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