to pants or not to pants: that is not a question

My job has a fairly strict dress code. One component of that dress code is that I cannot wear pants, only skirts and dresses that cover my knees when I am seated. That should do a lot of good to my feminine little heart, but it turns out that it's incredibly frustrating. Especially in winter.

For the first two years I was there, I rebelled by wearing sneakers, knee socks, stretched out knit shirts (which have to cover my collar bone and go to my elbows, by the way), and ugly ass, Penecostal looking, Walmart born jean skirts.

In the past year-and-a-half, I began to think, Hey Grace, maybe you shouldn't wear clothes to work that would embarrass you if you were seen in public. The result of this little musing to myself is that I am superstylin' at work now, and strangely enough I feel better about my job because I look good.

It took me a while to figure this out, but the work dress code completes an odd circle in my life, which began when I was born.

I was reared (yeah y'all, it's reared. you raise corn and cattle, not children) in an Independent Baptist home. Don't be surprised that you've never heard of that; it's a very small denomination. Independent Baptists make Southern Baptists look like hedonists, if that helps. One of the least psychologically and spiritually damaging principles of this sect was that women had to dress very modestly. You guessed it. No pants. I wore my first pair of pants (sweatpants, for karate) when I was 12 years old. And with a skirt over them, natch.

My mom was so anti-pants during our Indie Baptist years that when I was a newborn and someone gave me a teeny pants outfit, my mother only put the pants on me long enough to take a picture for the insistent gift giver, then she immediately changed me back into a skirt.

I will remember my first few pairs of pants forever. The pink sweatpants were the first, if you don't count the newborn ones. Then there were some teal corduroy Guess pants, and some lightweight denim pants with little rosebuds all over them. That pair came with a belt, too. Eventually I settled down and got a pair of standard, 5-pocket, black jeans. When I was in the tenth grade, I went on a passionate search for what I called "regular jeans," which my mother teases me about to this very day.

So, maybe all of this baggage I have with skirts is why it really stung when a classmate told me she thought I was a "goody-goody. You know, because of all the skirts." (I go straight from work to class two nights a week, so I'm always in dress code.)

I'm grateful for many things: I'm not actually a goody-goody. My parents did ditch the quasi-cult when I was twelve. I full-stopped going to church four years ago and it's the best (and hardest) decision I've ever made.

But I'm still looking forward to the day when I can be pantsed seven days a week instead of just over the weekend.