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Category: UFOs and other matters...
- What on earth is a "UFO?"
- I would like to join your site, but I do not use Paypal. Is there another way? Keep up the good work. Sis. Grace
- I love the paintings you choose to use on your site. I would like to obtain some for my home and have visited Art.com. However, most paintings are listed by artist and it is difficult to find appropriate items in a timely fashion. Would you please supply
- What happened to the LAF message board?
- Where could I find a copy of the picture on the home page of your web site, "Young Woman Reading"? It is so beautiful. I've never seen it before. Thank you.
- Hi
do you think you could have a page that says how to act gracefully and move gracefully.
I find it hard and tend to crash into a seat, shove things on the table etc.
Thanks
- We would like permission to reprint the Lady Lydia article "Dress Standards for Teen Girls", in whole or in part, in our quarterly church newsletter. Please advise if permission can be granted. Thank you!
- I have been praying that I can help a young teenager in our church as far as her dress is concerned without alienating her or her parents. Her dressing style is immodest and accentuates her body parts. She is a 16 yr old who is choosing to date now and I am very concerned about her. We are not very close but I want to help her. I was thinking about sending her an article from this website annonymously but I don't want to 'weird' her out. Any suggestions?
- I'm just wondering if you allow your articles to be reprinted? I'm a frequent visitor to your site and have been challenged and blessed afresh by the simple and yet profound reminder of my calling as a daughter of the King. I'd love to print some of your articles in the newsletter we publish for our family quilt store. Is this possible? Thank you for your time, not only in reading my question but in the diligent faithfulness you have put into maintaining this site.
- Where do the paintings on your site come from? I love them! Thanks.
- Since dressing modestly and almost always in skirts or dresses I have had comments from some women that distinction in dress between men and women should not be an issue at all. They note that men and women in Biblical times seem to wear very similiar clothing, almost completely the same, and that does seem to be true from artistic renderings of biblical characters. So my question is: is wearing pants really a male thing, or are we just going back to an older concept, practiced by early Jews and Christians that everyone wears the same basic style of clothing? Sorry that is not worded very well, hope you understand!
Thanks,
Margaret
- Can I subscribe to this magazine by mail, or is this just electronic?
- What on earth is a "UFO?"
Here at L.A.F. that acronym stands for "Uncommonly Feminine Object." We encourage ladies to compliment other women publicly when they see them dressed beautifully -- dressed to inspire. You can get all the details on our What Can We Do? page!
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- I would like to join your site, but I do not use Paypal. Is there another way? Keep up the good work. Sis. Grace
Yes, you can send in donations via snail mail to P.O. Box 1883, Harrisonburg, VA 22801. Thank you so much! Donations pay for our server space and allow us to pay our contributors and artists. We have also donated extra funds to relief organizations like Messiah's Ministries and the Persecution Project (helping widows and orphans in Africa).
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- I love the paintings you choose to use on your site. I would like to obtain some for my home and have visited Art.com. However, most paintings are listed by artist and it is difficult to find appropriate items in a timely fashion. Would you please supply
Art.com does not have the most user-friendly search engine. Allposters.com is easier to use. But the best way to find beautiful classical art is to visit Art Renewal, which is a site dedicated to reviving classical standards in art. There are thousands of paintings and drawings archived there, and you can search by artist. Here is a list of some of our favorites:
William Bouguereau
Mary Cassat
Jacques Tissot
Millais
John Singer Sargent
Carvaggio
Albert Tanker
Rosa Bonheur
Vermeer
Rembrandt
Waterhouse
Vigee-LeBrun
Sir Frederick Leighton
Degas
You will stumble across hundreds of other wonderful artists on Art Renewal. Prepare to spend some time there!
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- What happened to the LAF message board?
The message board took so much time and effort to run that we could no longer keep up with it. We did not want to force others to do a job we were not willing to do and did not have the time to do. However, many of the posters asked if we would leave the forum up, even though we'd not longer be monitoring it. It is now run by several of the former moderators and is called the Beautiful Womanhood Message Forum. You can access it at this link. If you wish to join the forum, you'll need to contact the administrator of the board to request admittance. Just click on the contact link on the board. Thanks!
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- Where could I find a copy of the picture on the home page of your web site, "Young Woman Reading"? It is so beautiful. I've never seen it before. Thank you.
We find a lot of the classical art we use at ArtRenewal.org, but there are so many wonderful works of art it might take you a while to find what you're looking for! The exact title of this painting is "Girl Reading," and it was painted by Jean-Honore Fragonard. www.allposters.com carries prints of this painting. Hope this helps!
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- Hi
do you think you could have a page that says how to act gracefully and move gracefully.
I find it hard and tend to crash into a seat, shove things on the table etc.
Thanks
Mrs. Sherman has several features in the works for these subjects, and they will include video clips to show how to sit, stand, and walk gracefully. Stay tuned!
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- We would like permission to reprint the Lady Lydia article "Dress Standards for Teen Girls", in whole or in part, in our quarterly church newsletter. Please advise if permission can be granted. Thank you!
As a general rule, any original articles on the site may be reprinted, as long as you provide information on the original source (a link online or a URL in a newsletter) and credit the author. In a few cases, authors have asked us not to grant reprint rights. Those articles will always have a note at the bottom stating this. For articles located offsite, it is best to contact the individual site owner for reprint permission. Thank you!
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- I have been praying that I can help a young teenager in our church as far as her dress is concerned without alienating her or her parents. Her dressing style is immodest and accentuates her body parts. She is a 16 yr old who is choosing to date now and I am very concerned about her. We are not very close but I want to help her. I was thinking about sending her an article from this website annonymously but I don't want to 'weird' her out. Any suggestions?
Here are just a few ideas to think about.
You might have good results by first asking the mother if she minds if you give her daughter a few hints
about clothes and dressing. It is possible that the mother has had problems about it but doesn't want to
create a stir by saying anything. You might just be the thing she needs for reinforcement.
Have a book handy to give to her that has illustrations in it that might help. The Christian Charm Course is only
about $7.00 on the web, and has a few pages that tell what to wear to what occasion (church, formal, day wear, etc.) Beauty and All the Best, also on the web, has a few hints about dressing modestly. There may be articles you can print off into book form with pictures and illustrations, and make a nice cover on it from your computer, laminate it, and put a binding on it or punch holes in it and put it in a nice ring binder. It is always good to give these girls an alternative, because sometimes we tell them they aren't properly dressed, but they don't know where to go from there.
You could also have her get on a good Christian message board and ask questions about proper dressing, such as "what is wrong with me showing my belly?" etc. The women there are very good at answering in a manner that doesn't put you off.
Maybe a ladies' luncheon or tea party where you could have a special guest speaker about fashion and include a section about modesty would work. Perhaps you could find a shop owner who would be willing to bring clothing and show it. Or you could be the speaker, and you could give a pep talk on how it lifts the mood of others when we dress beautifully. Have some posters ready to show of beautiful fashion ideas. Then give them a list of sites and seamstresse, where they can get these clothes. If you include many girls in the group, one or two won't feel singled out.
At any of these events, have a little giveaway bag or decorated envelope with articles and ideas in it. Include swatches of pretty material stapled to the pages. My daughter created a fashion newsletter once and included the fabrics with drawings and photos of current patterns, and she got very good responses. Girls that dressed horribly came up to her after church and said they wanted to get those kind of dresses, or make them. A lot of the problem is that they haven't been exposed to anything pretty or modest. They only buy what they see, and they want to follow the crowd. I was told recently that if you dressed any differently you'd be ridiculed right out of school.
Invite the mothers to these functions also.
Another suggestion would be to invite some mothers to a tea where you would offer to them some ideas about dressing, and give them each a "modesty packet" of materials from the web and other things. Tell them what the men are thinking when they look at their daughters, and put it to them the danger it poses when the girls are out there like a lure--it attracts the wrong types like a magnet. For their own physical and spiritual safety, they need to disguise their newly blooming bodies with flowing, drapey coverings, not things that look like a map that shows every detail of their private parts.
If the daughter is going to public school, she will fight her mother every inch of the way for the right and the freedom to dress as she pleases. Therefore, you might put to them the importance of dressing differently for church. In the world, the girls wear sexy clothes, and the men think about sex. In the church, the girls wear modest clothes, and the men think about holy things. Hopefully, this will extend to everyday life.
That is about all I can think of right now. I'm getting ready to approach a mother myself about her daughter's church garb. I'm thinking it through carefully. If I say something, then I have to direct her to something better.
If you know a shop owner or a place with clothing that is lovely, you might work out a deal with the owner to have an account (that you will pay for, of course) and then give the girl a gift certificate for the first dress (you pick a number of dresses and tell the proprietor those are the only ones you'll pay for) and then a 10% coupon for future dresses she buys herself. You can do the same with a seamstress. Everytime you want a girl to dress modestly for church, you just give out a coupon, and they go to the store. They have to agree to wear it to church, though. I don't think we should have to pay for these clothes, because I know these girls have money for ballgames, concerts, and expensive rags, but it is just an idea I'm turning over in my mind right now. Maybe you could arrange to pay the "difference" if the proprietor gave the girl a discount. That is, you pay the extra 25% or whatever.
If you think of anything yourself, be sure to let us know.
Mrs. Lydia Sherman
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- I'm just wondering if you allow your articles to be reprinted? I'm a frequent visitor to your site and have been challenged and blessed afresh by the simple and yet profound reminder of my calling as a daughter of the King. I'd love to print some of your articles in the newsletter we publish for our family quilt store. Is this possible? Thank you for your time, not only in reading my question but in the diligent faithfulness you have put into maintaining this site.
Thank you for asking! You are welcome to reprint any of the original articles on the site as long as you provide a link to the original source (for a web reprint) or a credit line that lists the original link. If an author has an e-mail given in the byline at the end of an article, it is also a good idea to drop that person a line to see if they mind you sharing their work. LAF does not purchase exclusive rights to articles, so authors are free to publish them elsewhere. That's why it's a good idea to ask the original author first if you can. We're so glad you've enjoyed the site!
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- Where do the paintings on your site come from? I love them! Thanks.
Thank you for the compliment! We love fine artwork, and we keep our eyes open constantly for good paintings and drawings that will go with original LAF articles and features. Many of the public domain fine art comes from ArtRenewal.org, which is dedicated to bringing back classical standards for art (be forewarned: many classical works contain nudity, so you'll want to navigate carefully!). We also love Carol Gerten's Art Index. Finally, we have a wonderful CD containing over 25,000 images called "ClickArt Gallery." Whenever possible, we try to include the title of the work and the artist's name, but most of the images on the CD are not, unfortunately, identified.
Hope this helps!
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- Since dressing modestly and almost always in skirts or dresses I have had comments from some women that distinction in dress between men and women should not be an issue at all. They note that men and women in Biblical times seem to wear very similiar clothing, almost completely the same, and that does seem to be true from artistic renderings of biblical characters. So my question is: is wearing pants really a male thing, or are we just going back to an older concept, practiced by early Jews and Christians that everyone wears the same basic style of clothing? Sorry that is not worded very well, hope you understand!
Thanks,
Margaret
Dear Margaret,
Thank you for the question and for your patience in waiting for an answer!
The "dress vs. pants" issue is one that is almost always guaranteed to offend or alienate people. So let me say at the outset that we have no desire to judge or condemn anyone here. As Christians, our main desire should be to glorify God and seek His will even in the area of dress, which might seem insignificant compared to larger issues like submission and salvation! But God has something to say about every area of life, so we need to be ready and willing to dive into Scripture and investigate the issues with an open mind.
When you look at the function of breeches for men (which is what men wore beneath their robes in Bible times), they reflected a man's work out in the world. "Gird up your loins" means to tuck up your robe into your breeches for hard labor. When the Bible talks about men and women not wearing each other's clothing (in Deut. 22:5), it specifically refers to "geber," which is the Hebrew word for "armor." Women were not to put on armor for battle, since women were not to be in the army. From this passage, we glean the principle that women are not to wear clothing that reflects a male occupation. For pretty much the entire history of the world, breeches or trousers have reflected male occupations. Even when men and women both wore robes, men's robes were decidedly different, because they were suited to outdoor work (they were usually knee-length unless they were priestly robes or special occasion robes). Women, however, did not need to do work that involved hitching up skirts for hard labor. God created man to do all the heavy lifting and hauling and mucking about; woman He has created to be suited for home-centered tasks (things most men find very hard to do, in fact, because women are biologically wired for details and managing multiple tasks at once!). And women's robes were very decidedly feminine--never "gender-neutral." From archaeology and history, we know that Hebrew women and their peers enjoyed beautiful, feminine colors (like the scarlet and purple of the Proverbs 31 woman), sashes, scarves, jewelry and other feminine accessories.
I've studied fashion history for over half my life, and it is only in the past half century that women have adopted trousers or breeches as outerwear. Why is that? we might ask. I believe it is primarily because women have gone into male occupations (welding, construction, fire fighting, etc.). This blurs God's line of distinction between men and women and tells the world we don't believe there are any God-given differences between the sexes. Prior to the 1930s, when a woman wore pants, they were pantaloons and meant to be underwear. Even today we have women in foreign countries like India and Pakistan who wear long pantaloons beneath full tunics. This is beautiful and feminine; no one would mistake their outfits for male attire.
But even as I write all this, I want to qualify it by saying that we cannot become legalistic or fanatical about the trousers vs. skirts issue. I do own a pair of overalls that I use at home when I paint a room or do other very messy work. But I choose not to wear these out in public, because I do not wish to give the impression that I am working in a man's field (house painting or whatever). However, I do not condemn other Christian women who wear pants, because many just have never thought the issue through or might feel that, because Scripture never mentions women and pants, it's not important or worth arguing about. We must walk in the light the Holy Spirit has given us and pray for continued sanctification without judging others who may not have seen the same point. Here at LAF, we love to use positive examples of women in beautiful, feminine dress, and we reject mean-spirited articles that condemn women wholesale for wearing pants (we've gotten articles that are so hateful in tone it is hard to believe a Christian could have written them, I am sad to say). We want women to say, "Wow. I've never thought of that before!" instead of shaking their heads and saying, "These are a bunch of mean legalists."
When it comes down to it, women need to go to the Scripture, think, and pray about this issue. Ignoring it isn't biblical, but neither is becoming judgmental and hyper-critical. Those who feel most strongly about a "no trousers" position need to remember the person in the pants and reach out in love and patience. Likewise, those who disagree and feel it is fine to wear pants need to look on their sisters in dresses without thinking, "There's a legalist." And may the Lord lead us to greater unity even as we encourage one another to seek His will and love His Word!
Blessings in Christ,
Mrs. Jennie Chancey
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- Can I subscribe to this magazine by mail, or is this just electronic?
Thank you for asking! LAF is electronic only; we don't have the ability to print it in magazine format at present. We have received this question many times in the past, however, so we're considering bringing out one print issue with all the Readers' Favorite articles. If we're able to do that, we'll post info on the site! Thanks again! Mrs. Chancey
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