Pride, fashion and dancing the fine line

I actually wrote this post early January and then my computer froze up, crashed and I thought I had lost this post (after spending ages writing it!) Due to my forays into the blog "settings" I just realised it saved... so here it is, several months later!Happy New Years all! May God bless, guide and protest you all throughout 2009!Well I have been drifting in between extremes of lazyness and frantic bouts of activity since Christmas!My parents renovated our house this year, adding a bathroom, toilet, bedroom (mine!) and living room area.. it was sorely needed as our house is very small, and nowdays the "children" (myself, and 18 & 15 yr/old brothers) are no longer small! Cleaning, painting, tidying and a myriad of other small jobs have been slowly taking place, but now that the new year is underway and here downunder it is the long summer holidays, it's taking momentum!New Years Eve presented a challenge to me. Perhaps the biggest difficulty of my "change in lifestyle" has been to my social life. Actually it has been a slow period of change that got revved up a little by me headcovering this year.Around a year and a half a go I stopped drinking. I don't think I have ever been a heavy drinker, although teen partying and clubbing did sometimes see me a little worse for wear. Heavily tipsy seemed my limit as opposed to raving drunk. But nonethless this is NOT what God wants for our bodies. Having a lot of Muslim friends who are teetotal, they often asked me why it is alcohol is not forbidden in our religion, and why so many Christians drink. In our circle of friends, comprised of almost all religions and levels of religious observance there is an unspoken rule that we do not judge or condemn one another even if we disagree. Some people drink, some people smoke up the occaisonal joint, and some people are strictly against all of these things.But when I faced myself honestly, even if I only had ONE drink... what were my reasons? There were yummier (and cheaper) non-alcoholic drinks to be bought.. If I was honest I liked the feeling of being tipsy and also it was the social norm (Australians tend to be quite heavy drinkers.) I didn't decide to become teetotal per se.. I just didn't feel the need to have a drink when I went out and slowly stopped drinking at all. I don't feel, like Muslims do, that it is a sin to drink alcohol. I'll eat/drink something that has a small amount of alcohol in it, I just won't drink alcohol for the sake of drinking alcohol.Secondly I started clubbing a lot less (going to night clubs.) In the last year I have been maybe three times. Initially this was because myself and my best friend got tired of men trying to pick us up, buy us drinks (neither of us being drinkers), strangers coming up and dancing with us etc.. I always preferred going out with my male friends because then men kept their distance. One time after voicing my frustration to my bestie, ("I just want to have fun, I don't want to meet new people or make new friends! I'm not here to meet guys, can't they just go somewhere else!!") I realised that after all, what did I expect?! I was puttign myself in an environment where drinking, "picking up" and attracting the opposite sex was taken for granted. How could I expect people to realize I was an expection to that rule! I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and stopped clubbing so much. Luckily for me, several friends of mine are DJ's and there are always bbq's, house parties, beach parties with our large group of friends with dancing and fun.After I started covering things took on a new angle. My clothes had slowly changed over the last year or so. I am embarrassed to think of the things I used to wear a couple of years ago! Cleavage or low cut tops had long ceased to be an issue. But as I investigated the issue of covering, so too did modesty enter the scene. Changing my wardrobe has been much harder than putting a scarf over my head! I struggles with establishing what was "right."As Christians we come without a dress code (unlike Muslims who have defined strictures on headcovering and modesty; only the face and hands should be visible).So what is modesty?To me, it came to mean clothing which would not show off my body or be revealing. But even this isn't easy.. Long dresses and skirts (although they have become a more common part of my wardrobe especially with all those gorgeous maxi-dresses in season!) were not necessarily my interpretation of modesty.. long flowery dresses, or amish style bonnets were definately not my thing!!It was here that I stumbled across a problem I had in my life that I didn't even know existed!PRIDE. That word that comes before a fall, and is perhaps one of the biggest blind spots in our lives!Boy-o-boy was I unprepared for how much my pride was part of how I dressed."wow, this modesty thing is easy," was my first reaction. WRONG! Little did I know!I realised how I dress and look was ultimately governed by pride. Often when I dress myself to "look good" it is based on other people. Both men and women. To show myself off, and to send a message. "Look at me, I'm fashionable/successful/sexy/gorgeous." (Working in fashion retail didn't help!)I began to examine my motives in dressing. When I went out wearing something that showed off my figure and drew attention (from men or women).. I felt proud. Walking into the room, head held high, I was actually closing off my heart by surrounding in it pride. While clothes do not decide your attitude or change your behaviour I realised I tended to be a lot more "myself" when I dressed more modestly. The fact that giving up these sort of outfits was proving so hard was testament to the fact that I cared way too much about how I looked, and what other people thought of me.When I got back to Australia it was tough. The fact that many, if not most of my girlfriends are gorgeous and love fashion does not help. My two best friends also work in fashion and LOVE clothes. One (M) is a model and (Y) is pretty enough to be one. Y is a non-relgious Muslim, who supported my decision to cover and tried to help me find pretty and fashionable yet modest alternatives to wear when we went out. M thought I was crazy and pleaded with me not to cover my hair (It's your most beautiful feature, how can you cover it up?!) and not dress so modestly (Just wear the dress without the cardigan, it looks so much better. I don't understand why you have to dress like this now!) Satan whispered in my ear as I tried to dress, comparing my outfits to my friends, and taunting me that I would be "frumpy" from now on. No one would know how good I COULD look, if I dressed differently.At first in Germany, like many "converts" to a new lifestyle I was a little zealous. I didn't wear sleeves shorter than elbow length, or bottoms shorter than 3/4 length. After a while I relaxed and now wear short sleeves (although not sleeveless) and sometimes bottoms which are just below the knee, although usually not together. I also started spending way too much time thinking about what to wear.. These days I am somewhere in the middle. I am determined not to become a slave to modesty. All in all, I don't want my clothes to be the be all and end all. It is the dressing of my heart that is most important! I still enjoy fashion, coordinating outfits, looking nice.. so long as my look is more "pretty" than "sexy".. and my attitude is focused on my heart not my clothes.However clothing was also related to another problem: Modest dress had in turn led me to consider modest behaviour.
One quesion I am struggling with now is DANCING. This ties in with clubbing as well. I love dancing. I love music, especially Raggamuffin, dancehall, R&B, HipHop, Reggae as well as soul, jazz, latino, brazilian music, arabic, world, african (mostly swahili, rai and ethiopian) and even some electronic (like DJ Tiesto.) But for dancing purposes mostly the first four genres.. The beat of the music gets me every time.. I love dancing. And at the risk of sounding conceited.. I am good at it.
Here it gets tricky.. dancing gives me great joy, it is something I naturally love... but at the same time it can be risk for showing off. For anyone here who knows the ragga/rnb/hiphop scene.. you know how it goes.. the people who will dance in 'the circle,' the people who will get up and start dancing when everyone else is too shy, and get the whole room on their feet.. that is me.
The other tricky part is associated with modesty.. if Im careful not to wear tight clothes.. then I have to be careful about how I dance. Shaking and winding can all be.. hazardoud? At the moment my basic rules are:
I don't "grind" up against people when I'm dancing.. ill dance with guy friends in a non-sexual way
I don't dance to music in which the lyrics are rude or sexually explicit.. I just can't dance to a song where a woman is singing about "her goodies," (and half the girls are singing along.)
This is a hard one.. I'm not an athletic person, I was always shoddy at sports.. but dancing has always been 'my thing' and I love it! hmmmmm any thoughts?