By: Alora Yee
About three years ago, after moving to Virginia, I started wearing dresses. It feels like summer 70% of the year out here, so this definitely helps. However, my reason for wearing dresses majority of my days, was not due to climate. My top three reasons for making the switch are personal conviction, comfort, and embracing womanhood.
I’ll start with comfort. For reasons still unknown to me now, I wake up one waist size and by the end of the day I’m bloated to a few sizes larger. Wearing pants and even leggings would have me feeling nauseous and suffocating by 1300. I needed a comfortable solution and dresses were a no brainer! I could go out to eat in a dress, still being comfortable and happy when I left the restaurant! The joys.
Although comfortable, this was rough for me emotionally, my wearing dresses to restaurants, the grocery store and even sometimes church. Where you happen to live, it may be no big deal for a woman to wear a dress because most women do. However, in my experience, I hardly ever see women in dresses, with the exception of church or a formal event. This would oftentimes make me feel extremely out of place.
I would even find, that I received many more looks, both positive and negative, from my wearing dresses verses wearing leggings. Ladies I’m sure you can imagine what I am referring here. I just wanted to be comfortable, but I was also battling with not conforming to what every other wife and mother was wearing. I realized this meant much more to me than comfort; this was a working in my heart to embrace my femininity God designed me with.
Why a personal conviction? When I started wearing dresses for comfort, it quickly made me reflect on, “why not sweat pants”? When I found myself being the odd woman out, I asked God, “am I to worry about what man thinks of me, or what You think of me”? Have you ever asked yourself why you wear what you wear? Who are you glorifying with your wardrobe?
This opened up a door in my spiritual life that I did not know needed to be opened. Embracing womanhood, who God made me to be, and enjoying my femininity through changing my everyday clothing options with skirts and dresses. I had to ask myself, do I wear pants and sweatshirts to hide my femininity? Do I struggle with who God made me to be? Are there negative connotations I feel when I see myself in a dress? And why? It was so much more to me than just “dressing more girly.” It was dressing in a way that reflected Gods design and instead of complaining or criticizing Gods design, finding joy in it instead.
You may even wonder, outside of clothing, how are you glorifying God? What we wear, what we eat, what we watch, where we go, who we spend time with, and how we spend time with others… absolutely all should be for the glory of God. Sometimes these things look different for each of us and for me it has been wearing dresses.
Alora goes much deeper on this topic and how she came to this conviction in this podcast episode: Thriving Together Podcast
