Just a Thought

This is the season of confirmations and communions and because I have a family involvement in both, my days have been filled with musings on what to wear. (Yes, I know about the religious aspect, it’s just that this issue is about fashion).

Once upon a time, going to a church ceremony was considered a formal event and people instinctively knew that neat dress was appropriate. Well, as the card I sent to my sister this week read: ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all’ (accompanied by a harassed woman with a round tummy and slack breasts discovering that none of the clothes she’s brought into the changing room fit her). The point being not that I have

a round tummy and slack…well maybe, but that I found some of the fashion at a recent confirmation (not in this parish, I hasten to add) a bit of an eye-opener and tut-tutted like the middle-aged mother I fear I have become.

There I was, waiting expectantly beside my nephew as his sponsor at his confirmation for the arrival of the bishop. I cast a quick eye around to see if there was any sign of the army of important-looking teachers and helpers, who were scurrying around like ants distributing commemorative booklets and looking like they were about to agree the Geneva Convention, ready to settle down so the ceremony could begin when I spotted her.

Lord, did she stand out! Miss Midlands Confirmation Sponsor was in her late teens or very early twenties. She was seated beside her confirmation candidate, who was dressed in her school uniform, as were all the other children to be confirmed.

Very sensible. Not so Miss Midlands. Her idea of an appropriate confirmation / sponsor’s outfit was a tiny yellow spaghetti-strap vest and a pair of black hot pants that left nothing to the imagination. Not mine anyway. I’m sure there were plenty of men in the church very glad of the unexpected floorshow they were about to witness.

As the confirmation progressed, we were all asked to form a queue to process towards the sanctuary and up all of the steps to where the bishop was seated. There was no chance of spared blushes as each pair was ushered up the steps towards the bishop and the sponsor stood while the child knelt. Miss Midlands had the congregation in rapt attention while she negotiated the steps in spindly heels and gave us a bird’s eye view of her waist length hair extensions, and her outfit that looked like she forgot her skirt but remembered the belt that went with it.

The bishop went as red as his mitre but I’d say he was the only person who didn’t know where to look. At confirmations nowadays, the bishop no longer slaps faces (if he ever did!), but I’d say he wouldn’t have minded making an exception in this case. It was a case of barefaced cheek upstaging the bishop.

Times might have changed and rules relaxed, but church ceremony fashion-wise, it seems that less is definitely not more.

Just a thought.

This article was first published in News and Views aPRIL 2007