Perhaps throughout any given school year, and especially at the beginning of a school season, clothing issues can receive special focus. How ought we to dress? How distinctive should our dress be? Last year at our school, some students came up with the idea of a special photo shoot for the yearbook: students were going to be encouraged to wear name brand clothing. That event provided a great opportunity to interact with clothing patterns of students at school. The following was written in response and is intended to encourage parents and students to keep the discussions alive and maintain a God-glorifying focus in life.

Fads⤒🔗

In many communities, it seems that fads can be a substantial reality. When some people do something, others quickly follow. Every community can find a host of areas where this is true. That’s not to say that fads are necessarily good or bad; they just are. Sometimes they’re related to fashion and dress. For example, a few years back (at least in our community) many (young) women needed to wear little frilly bouncy scarves. A short while later they had become passé. The next season, a particular color was in vogue. Six months later that color was definitely out of vogue. People decided they wanted to start wearing contact lenses instead of glasses. Later, the “noticeable frame” look came in. Widths of and patterns on ties change. You can come up with your own other examples of things moving in and out of vogue. If nothing else, these changes keep life interesting.

However, there are several aspects to this topic that are worth discussing, I believe. One aspect is that we live in a materialistic culture, where great value is placed on material things. Marketers know that and, in order to keep sales hopping, they encourage our society to change fashions as often and as quickly as possible. With some products, they target particular ages and lifestyles. Advertising is meant to reach particular potential customers and they are placed under tremendous pressure to purchase particular products. That keeps things moving off the shelves and consequently keeps company coffers healthy.

Pressure←⤒🔗

Unfortunately, we’re not able to stay free of this pressure. Many children and parents have felt challenged by the undetectable but nonetheless very real pressure from others with regards to clothing. While some parents might be able to cope with it slightly differently, they nonetheless also feel it. Many people feel pressured to purchase and wear obvious name-brand clothing; others might feel pressured not to purchase and wear precisely the same clothing.

Of course, there are various aspects to this issue. Do your children wear clothing that identifies with a popular current name brand, such as Aeropostale, American Eagle, Billabong, Roots, Element, Hollister, Hurley, Roxy, etc? Have you ever researched any of these brand names? Most of them deliberately target youth; some of them have at least questionable affiliations or themes that they promote. It doesn’t take long to do some research and bump into some deliberately anti-Christian aspects of what some of them stand for or practice. It might be a very appropriate exercise to determine precisely what a company stands for before choosing to use your chest as a company billboard. Would you really want people to associate you with a company that deliberately pushes an anti-Christian agenda?

It’s not my intention to say which company we can or can’t support. However, we need to ask ourselves the question: “Why do our children dress the way they do?” Are they wearing clothing because they wish to deliberately identify themselves with something that is in reality unchristian? If that was the case, we’d really have quite a challenge on our plates. Another possibility is that they are wearing particular clothing because they wish to belong, in a more general sense, to the 2008 culture of the day in Whatcom County, or in the Fraser Valley, or in whatever community you live in. Do our children wear particular clothing because of a strong sense of a “need-to-belong”? That sentiment can also be an unhealthy one.

Does our children’s clothing reflect their status as God’s covenant children? Or are we blindly letting them follow the dictates of Hollywood/ California/New York so that in their clothing they are completely indistinguishable from the so many other millions of American/ Canadian youth? That might be a good reason to wear clothing that gives deliberate evidence of supporting causes that are good to promote: a Christian school sweater or something that delivers a godly and positive message.

I raise these questions not because I have the answer to every one of them, but because I hope this fosters discussions at the dinner tables and coffee tables in our homes. Let’s keep talking about appropriateness of dress with our children and also about who and what we are identifying ourselves with as we put on that sweater with big letters on it.

Need to Belong←⤒🔗

We can also take a slightly broader view of the issue: How many things do we do just because we feel a need to belong? Choice and style of motor vehicles have long been a good example of another object that people invest in, hoping that it helps them be a bit more accepted in a particular group. In some communities, for example, a young man needs to be driving a truck. Other times, it might be a car with special wheels or tires. Curiously, those pressures were there just as strong a generation or two ago already.

I have often been amazed at the amount of money some people have been willing to spend on their vehicles, so that they could feel part of their group. Many people since have joined hockey teams, or soccer teams, or volleyball teams, or basketball teams, because of a strong desire to belong to a group: “Everyone else is doing it, so I better join in. I’ll stick out if I don’t like it.”

Ironically, there are also some in various communities who pride themselves in trying to be different from the rest of the group; in their effort to be different, they, ironically, all end up looking incredibly similar to each other. I’ve concluded that outrageous hair styles and garish jewellery do little to make anyone more beautiful or handsome. One can find that culture in many public schools; I’m very thankful that this is not in evidence at the school I serve in.

As we work with the next generation of God’s children, we need to imbue in them a healthy sense of self-confidence, combined with a good awareness of how God will have us all glorify Him in all areas of our lives. When children internalize those perspectives, then the need to belong to a particular group and identify with a (perhaps questionable) style of dress can more likely be held in check. Furthermore, an appreciation of healthy stewardship should also help us develop the understanding that we don’t need to slavishly follow latest trends and fashions. So just because my neighbour walks around with an American Eagle sweater, doesn’t mean my perfectly decent (but slightly outdated, perhaps) sweater needs to be mothballed. Let’s instead encourage each other to be ourselves, be modest, be financially responsible, and be godly in our clothing.