The plague of fashion

Blood, frogs, lice, narrow skirts without a slit, pants worn under a skirt, and shirts that cover up a low neckline. The 'Bit of Modesty' column enumerates the fashion plagues of the religious
Tsofiya Hirschfeld

It’s really easy to criticize, so just before we start talking about fashion plagues, let’s remember that even people who’ve imposed trends both ugly and stupid may have done something useful in their lives. For example, it isn’t inconceivable that the person who invented leggings eventually contributed them to hungry people in Africa, who didn’t know what to do with them.

Still, we only remember the thick pieces of fabric invented some time in the 1980s, and only when we put our legs up on the table and discover that we’re cold in the space between our jeans and our shoes.

By the way, the problem is not the plagues themselves, but the fact that people don’t learn from their mistakes, and recycle old fashions, which has started to happen only in the past century. For example, it doesn’t seem reasonable to think that people from the Bronze Age tried to put bones in their ponytails, which was apparently the fashion in the time of the cave man. In short, fashion is a matter of quality of life, not the quality of the environment, and it doesn’t need to be recycled.

And now to the issue at hand: A list of fashion plagues common among the religious (or more accurately, religious women).

A skirt under another skirt

If you haven’t seen this you should be thankful that you’re young and have been saved from this disgraceful sight. In the sophisticated 90s, religious girls didn’t make do with just one skirt, and not because of modesty. Just like the homeless, who pile on skirts over slips over pants over long underwear, the best of the religious girls would get up in the morning and put two long skirts on, one over the other, with the upper skirt tied at the side, thereby revealing another layer of fabric.

Excuse me, isn’t that what you were wearing yesterday? (Photo: Liron Almog)

The result, by the way, was just what you’d have imagined: fattening and puffy, making it look as if they forgot to take off the skirt they were wearing yesterday.

Straight skirts with no slit

It’s not that narrow skirts without a long slit aren’t pretty—in truth, they can even be gorgeous. But you could also just tie your legs together or join a sack race, because that’s exactly how you look. When you wear a skirt like that you have no chance to move from place to place at a speed of more than 1.5 MPH.

And even if you intend to sit all day in the same spot and not to move, that isn’t the solution. When you sit down you’ll see that there isn’t enough room for both your legs because the skirt is narrow, and putting one leg over the other will make the skirt significantly shorter. And don’t think that you can give your skirt to a poor family in the spirit of the holiday. They have enough problems of their own.

Pants under a long skirt

There are things you can’t make kosher. Yes, it’s true that we’ve made a lot of things kosher (a kosher-for-Passover roll?!), but in cases like that the trick is also to know where to stop. If you have good friends they’ll generally be glad to help you out, and if not, that’s why we’re here.

Did you get that in a “buy one, get one free” sale? (Photo: Liron Almog)

If you don’t wear pants you won’t be able to make pants kosher by wearing a long skirt over them. Yes, you’ll feel that you get the best of both worlds—the modesty of a skirt and the comfort of pants—but the inch-and-a-half of jeans that is peeking out below your skirt looks horrific. There are things that simply do not work. You’ll understand when you grow up.

Long “balloon” skirts

Like everything in life, the balloon is charming when it’s in the correct proportions. Even Passover, if you added another two days to it, would lose its charm if it had any.

The same holds true for the balloon skirt. The original form of the skirt is round, and in the best case it ends a bit below the knee (OK, in the middle of the knee). The attempt to make it kosher by lengthening it to the sock line turns it into a mutant creature. It is not a balloon skirt no matter what the saleswoman told you (yes, of course she has two balloon skirts at home). Girls, its an eggplant costume.

Artificial neckline cover

Although we think that we’re right, the rest of the world apparently thinks differently, which is also the reason that most of the food going around here isn’t kosher, like quite a lot of the clothing in stores.

Have you seen kosher pork? We haven’t seen kosher cleavage. (Photo: Liron Almog)

Just as you wouldn’t try to imitate shrimp and to get it to moo like a cow, don’t try to take a shirt with a low neckline that you don’t care for and put another shirt under it: it looks bad. How bad? Like a villa in Herzliya Pituah whose porch has been boarded up. Is that bad enough for you?

Leggings

Here is an example of a fashion item that at a certain point came back because of a recycling error, and whose name in Hebrew is reminiscent of the item you use to cover a baby’s bottom.

Leggings are a totally superfluous item. They were adopted from the world of dance, where they had beauty and a purpose (let’s say), but since we don’t live in Swan Lake we don’t need them, and that’s how they look when you try to stick them on your leg. To use an image connected to food, it’s as if you’ve got a giant piece of gum stuck to your leg. Religious girls have even succeeded in making them looks worse by combining them with a skirt.

A skirt and leggings are totally unconnected (see “shatnez”), both in this world and in the next.

Since it’s now Passover, we should also mention that Cleopatra was a fashion icon in her time. The bangs that are back in fashion are hers.