I wore a red dress to church today.

Like. SO red. Brilliantly red. Crimson. Fabulous, flirty and fun. It covered me below my knees, to my wrists, fit well, not too tight – nothing that should make any heads turn. But. Wow – people who know me had. comments. Friendly older men whom I know meant very well were very complimentary; girlfriends admired and complimented.

I was so caught off guard by the absolute sincerity of the enthusiasm of those sharing their thoughts that I sat outside with friends to make jokes about not being the only woman in red (another woman wore a dress of red and white flowers), and then hummed the song of the lady in red and called to mind the Al Pacino movie where he was blind. Distract, deflect, and if all else fails… make a joke.

I felt a lot of mixed feelings. Such as… “wow! people really are complimentary – over the top! I must look good today;” and “wow, people are really looking, and that particular older guy is taking his comments just a little too far;” and, also the, “hmmmm, but my dear friend there didn’t have much to say other than to be kind when I was confused about the rather rascally comments of that old guy there.”

And then we get to Mass. The readings today included Ephesians 4.32-5.1-2 and 21-32 (why, oh why, didn’t I remember the readings before picking my new thrifty fun find to wear?). Wives to be submissive; husbands to cherish their wives. We’ve all heard it.

Why is red so polarizing? Why does it bring about so many positive feelings and also have so many negative connotations? It’s such a glorious colour – so full of life and love and happiness. As a woman, wearing a brilliant shade of red instantly straightens the shoulders and makes you just feel so beautiful. Some days, I want to feel young and vibrant and like I’m skipping over the earth as I walk. I want the excuse to sashay and make my skirt swing. I admit, I want to dance and I want people to want to dance with me. What single woman doesn’t want to be seen as lovely to the eye, graceful and pleasant to be around? Maybe I watch too many old movies with Grace Kelly in them… (internal chuckle here)…

I remember when I was young, a girlfriend and I were pouring over our cherished copies of ‘SEVENTEEN’ magazine and read that if you’re not feeling beautiful or confident to picture yourself in a garnet red gown. A gown made of ‘rubies’ if memory serves correctly. Inasmuch as I generally am not someone to put a lot of stock in teenage magazines for life-advice, that one always stayed with me. I don’t exactly practice it, but there is something to the shade.

However, as sometimes I feel like *the* token single mom in church (I know there are others, and they also feel just as singled out in unwelcome ways at times), the choice of a brilliant, fun dress for Mass also meant I was like a bright red flame, “the” separated woman sitting beside her teenage son, in the sea of other colours right as we’re reading all the ways a wife needs to submit to her husband.

So many emotions get raised in moments like that. Do you shrink down and make yourself smaller and smaller? Do you stand up and shout and say – “but what if he’s abusive? but what if you spent 17 years being made to feel less-than? catering and anticipating his every whim and still fearing his return from work and what mental state he might be in on his arrival? What then? What about the guy in the room who uses this exact verse from the Bible to keep his wife in check and obedient and submissive for years? What about that guy who uses the judgment of other parishioners to keep his wife silent and compliant – complicit in her own miserable existence? ”

Sitting here in my red, red, red dress – hearing that verse, it’s hard not to feel shame. We’re supposed to be ashamed, right? When everything we’re taught still fails? I know better, intellectually, but my heart still hurt. I also know, I KNOW, there were married women there who are in abusive relationships who felt shame, who have had these readings used against them in a myriad of ways. Who didn’t hear the rest of the reading, about what it means for a husband to truly cherish his wife. Most of us never hear that part. Our ears get stoppered up, either with the shame of feeling we are not living up to the expectation set forth in that simple sentence:

“Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the Church….”

****how many women, hearing that, felt smaller and smaller because last night, last week, last month their husband complained they weren’t submitting enough in the right ways? not physically, not sexually, not in the meals they cooked – maybe they cooked a meal that reminds them of their own mothers and the husband instantly hated it, criticized it? it’s so easy to close down****

Or, they puff up with the pride of righteousness filling the veins of those who are either proudly submissive or proudly enforcing submissiveness. Funny that, how much the belief that you are living in compliance with one of God’s own laws leads to pride and vanity to the point that you become blind to the reason of the law, to the rationale of it, and never fully grasp the entirety of the meaning behind it?

I was so grateful to our pastor who emphasized that a union of husband and wife is mutual, it’s not one submitting to the other at all times, but the husband too has a role to play in cherishing the wife. That gets missed, I think, or misunderstood a lot. Cherishing a wife isn’t belittling her and then buying her flowers, or bringing home shiny new diamonds or even buying or building her a giant house in the countryside. That can amount, so very much, to building a castle with a deep moat – or a tower in the wilderness that doubles as a prison. You can imprison a person while still providing the trappings of a lovely life. In many ways, that’s how abusers are so successful for so long. Their wives appear, to all eyes, to be living very well, eating very well, but yet every time a fist goes through a wall, every time she is demeaned for her choice of clothing, hair style, eye colour, parents, faith or lack thereof, she diminishes and becomes the same as the wallpaper in the room. Another decoration he owns and directs but no longer herself. And in that very attempt to be submissive and disappear herself, she is also further criticized for no longer being the vibrant woman “he married.”

And so, I digress. The red dress will likely live in the closet again until Pentacost when red is encouraged for the day. Pretty and fun as it is; cotton and comfortable with just the right amount of stretch and swing to make walking feel lovely. It will hang there and remind me that calling attention to myself as an assertive, beautiful woman to be cherished isn’t a good idea.