I’m enjoying – truly enjoying – the adventure of being a dad to a teenage daughter (soon to be two teenage daughters). It is a great privilege to love, lead, and team up with my daughters through this revelatory season of life. We’ve begun (I know, I know, I’m still very new to this teenage-parenting thing) to have all kinds of interesting conversations about all kinds of interesting teen-years things. I’m learning daily that all the books and articles about the importance of a father in the life of a young woman have, if anything, been understated. It’s a sobering realization. It’s also a lot of fun.
One reality I’ve discovered is that topics I had assumed would be “talk to your mother” conversations, actually need to be mom-and-dad conversations. One such topic was central to our text on Sunday. How should a (young) woman think about adorning herself? I’m still learning, but here are a few principles that seem to be helpful at this point. Use them if you wish as a starting point for conversations in your home about how you want to address these things – but do address them.
Principle 1: Adorning a woman is different than adorning a girl.
In our home, as in many homes with little girls, there was a fascination early on with all the ‘adorning’ stuff. Pretty dresses, fancy shoes, necklaces, bracelets, makeup – all that. At least, that’s what they were excited about when they weren’t climbing trees, making mud castles, and brewing maple leaf stew in the backyard. This fascination with womanly adornment among young girls is great fun and good imitative play. I believe, however, it is best left at that – play. What we’ve chosen to do in our home is encourage our girls to wait to pursue looks and adornment characteristic of a grown woman, outside of play, while they are still young girls. Feminine looking yes, but grown woman looking – not yet. I’ve talked with my daughters about the fact that God has designed a season of life when boys take on the outward appearance of manhood and girls take on the outward appearance of womanhood. When that season comes, then we talk about how to adorn that manhood and womanhood appropriately. Well, it’s teen-time in the Martin house, and that conversation is now in full swing.
Principle 2: Adorning should be positive, intentional, creative, worshipful, and in service to others.
God has given us a beautiful, principle-driven, pattern to follow in creation. I want to encourage my daughters to love and embrace the freedom of expressing that pattern in ways that will be unique to their individual personalities. I want them to hear from me, as their father, that the process of exploring their femininity is one I approve of and hope will be fun and exciting. If all they ever hear from me is, “Girls dress so weird these days,” or, “You aren’t leaving the house in that, young lady,” then I’ve thrown a negative shadow over this entire season of discovery. I want to instill the courage to experiment, and the fun of embracing God’s good design.
Intentionality is also important.
“Hey, I’ve never seen you wear that before. Trying a new look?”
“Yep.”
“Nice. What do you like about it?”
“I don’t know, I just like it.”
We’ve probably all had conversations like this. I am not content to let them end there, however. I want to keep asking questions (nicely, it isn’t an interrogation) until my daughter can articulate what she is drawn to and why she wants to try this new thing. I’m all on board with her trying new things, but I want to make sure she isn’t caught up in a culture of passive imitation but is engaged in an active imitation driven by principles of worship, service, and creativity that she can articulate that she wants to be driven by. This is where words like “cool,” and “cute,” etc., are too vague. What about it makes you think it’s cool? What do you mean by ‘cute’? Not every article of clothing must correspond to a chapter in Systematic Theology, but I want my daughters to know the freedom that comes from adorning themselves intentionally and not reactively. This doesn’t mean I’ll agree with every decision they make. That’s okay. “But what about…” See Principle 3.
Adornment is also a great place for creativity to be on display. I want to encourage my daughters to add a personal touch, a signature of personality, a slightly unexpected expression of individuality. They can operate within defined styles and looks, but I want them to look at the canvas of their adorning with the eye of a creator. Adorning shouldn’t be boring. If they are experimenting with creativity – Dad’s here for it and supportive whether it be triumphant successes or hilarious I’m-never-doing-that-again moments. Sidenote: I’ve learned that we may not agree on which “moment” (triumph or hilarity) is taking place. At least once I’ve clarified that I’m proud of my daughter for trying something new, but was still reserving my right to think that particular fashion choice makes no sense at all to me. “Deal,” she replied with a smile.
All this ought to be in service to the ultimate goal of adorning for the purpose of pointing back to the source of femininity. I want my daughters to understand that absolutely everything in life is theologically significant. If eating and drinking are supposed to be a lesson in the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31), how much more so is adorning and conduct and conversation? A life lived in the flesh is animated theology. My greatest hope as a dad is that the hearts of my daughters are fully and forever captivated by a controlling affection for God through Jesus Christ by the power of His Spirit. As an expression of this, I want them to look in their closet, dresser drawers, and washroom mirror, and to adorn themselves each day to speak true things about God and celebrate true things about how He created them. From shoes to scrunchies, it’s all worship.
If the previous paragraph is about adorning and the greatest commandment, then this last observation is about adorning and the second-greatest commandment. How we adorn ourselves is not dictated by the expectations of others (nobody will ever be adorned to the full satisfaction of everyone else). I don’t want my daughters adorning themselves in fear. At the same time, I do want them to adorn themselves for the service of others. To present themselves in pleasant, feminine, context-appropriate ways is a practical aspect of loving others. As a dad, I want them to hear my affirmation when I see this sort of servant-hearted intentionality.
Principle 3: Protect your daughters’ sexuality.
A final principle that comes into focus in this season of life is the opportunity for parents, and dads in particular, to be guardians of the sexuality of their daughters. Are those shorts, or are they too-shorts? Does that blouse just fit, or is it just fraught? Did we lose the person beneath the paint? These are subjective calls, and will not look exactly the same from home to home. Within each home, however, there does need to be a standard, and it is important that the standard be clearly and lovingly implemented by mom and dad. We are not embarrassed in our home to talk about the many changes that take place in the teen years in mind, body, and soul. At the same time, I am careful not to put emphasis on the sexuality of my daughters. I want them to think of their femininity in joyful terms of creational realities expressed through worshipful adornment – not a reductionist and often unhealthy list of rules about showing off or hiding sexuality. At the same time, my daughters cannot divorce their femininity from their sexuality and there should be no shame in that!
I want my daughters to know that dad cares about, and celebrates, their femininity, and that he also loves them enough to occasionally say nope when something is communicating more than I deem appropriate. The few times I have had to draw such a line, simple questions have revealed in each instance that it was not the aspect of the garment I determined to be out of bounds that attracted my daughters, but some other element of style or fashion. This has precipitated a couple of daddy/daughter dates to the local thrift store to find an alternative that checked the boxes of style and appropriateness. Even when those trips haven’t been immediately successful in finding the perfect article of clothing, it has never failed to strengthen our relationship and affirm my role as both gatekeeper and earnest supporter.
As time goes on, I have no doubt I will be adding to or revising these principles, but I hope they serve, as I said up front, to spark helpful conversation among our church body about how we wish to teach biblical principles of adorning in our homes.
Winsome parental diligence today will lead to powerful gospel clarity in the future. That’s what our study in 1 Timothy, and our role as parents, is all about.