What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls.
Or maybe they're not.
At any one time, I have a bunch of posts in the works, some of which are on concurrent themes. This is one, basically, as it touches on a larger topic.
Something is going on.
A couple of years ago I started to see some women, by which I mean, let's say, women 40 years or older, resuming the wearing of chapel veils (mantillas). They were clearly on the traditional end of things.
Recently, however, I'm seeing young women do this.
I shouldn't, probably, have used the term "girls" in the caption, but for whatever reason, culturally, we tend to use the term "girls" for young women well into their 20s. Maybe somewhat beyond. It seems to encompass women in their late teens on up to that point.
And that's what I'm referring to here.
I noticed it first the year before last, and at an early morning Mass on a Holy Day (All Saints Day, I think). Two young women, probably very late teens or very early twenties, sat right in front of me. One was dressed conservatively but contemporarily. She was wearing a leather skirt. . . and a chapel veil (mantilla).
Now, there was a young woman from a very trad family in the parish who dressed almost as if in a Medieval costume for young women every Mass. That's not what I'm talking about here. This young woman was wearing a nice wool sweater, and a leather skirt, and a chapel veil.
It caught me off guard.
I'm seeing stuff like that all the time now. Young women, often early twenties, dressed conservatively, but not in costume, who have adopted the mantilla. Indeed, just yesterday, at the early morning Mass Sunday, the Church did the Ritual for the Elect for those who were coming into the Church. They all have a sponsor. One young woman coming in had, as her sponsor, another young women.
Frankly, the sponsor was stunning. And she was wearing a chapel veil. Last Sunday across town there was another young woman dressed in that fashion who was eye catching as well, and the week before that there was another so dressed who was a head turner.**
I note that, as it was easy, when the only women who did this were let's say older, and otherwise dressed in a fashion that was old-fashioned, perhaps, or dour. These young women aren't. They're hard not to notice.
Indeed, yesterday, the young woman mentioned went from the front of the Church to the back with a very proud carriage, which is not to suggest sinful pride. Rather, she carried herself the way that people who are very self-assured, for very good reasons, do.
Something is going on.
And It's not just here. A friend of mine in Oklahoma noticed the same thing at his local parish. And it's crossed into other regions, or perhaps hit there first. For example, notable Korean figure skater Yuna Kim is Catholic, and people like to snap photos of her at Mass wearing a chapel veil.
And it's interesting that this is going on at the same time that some members of the leadership of the Church, which tends to be up in years, seems to be trying to insert the liberal.
I've often noticed that people who come up in particularly devise or stressed eras, and maybe more of us do than not, tend to form our view of the world in those times. A lot of people in their upper 60s, 70s, and 80s assume that "what the young want" is what they wanted when they were young.
The evidence for this is to the contrary.
There's a lot more to this. It's interesting.
Footnotes
*It's important to note that categorizing what an entire generation, or generations, want is hazardous. For example, at least superficially, here I'm noting a return to Catholic tradition among the same generation that is exhibiting such things as a belief that you can change your gender.
Well, a couple of things.
At any one time you can have an overall trend in a generation while individual members of it hold an opposite view. There were, for example, more volunteers who served in Vietnam than there were conscripts, contrary to popular imagination, meaning that quite a few young men sought to serve in the war at the same time history informs us their generation had turned against it. By the same token, you can find a few examples of Americans who were adamantly opposed to the country entering World War One or Two, and continued to hold that view after the country declared war. Beatniks were a feature of the supposedly superconservative 1950s.
Secondly, people are more complex than categorists and political parties may suppose, and as a result they can often hold contrary views, or views that seem to be contrary, or views contrary to the ones they themselves exhibit. Indeed, I've heard some of the stoutest denouncements of tobacco from smokers. They smoked, but wished they didn't.
You get the point.
**For some reason, you're not supposed to say this. Well, noticing that a woman is attractive is not the same thing as engaging in Hefnereque behavior, and the fact that creeps have co-opted this entire aspect of communication is just evidence of how weird and pornified our culture is.
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