On being a Lady

I do think that an important part of following the Lady is to be a lady.  I don't mean that in the sense that only females can honor the Goddess, of course.  I'm simply talking about myself here, and how I believe I should choose to comport myself.  My image of the Goddess is elegant, graceful, patient, and serene, and nurturing those traits in myself can only make me feel closer to that ideal.

As an example, I choose to wear skirts or dresses; I simply don't wear pants.  I don't even own any pants.  In the non-summer months, I often wear tights under my skirt, but as is famously pointed out on the internet, tights are not pants, they are undergarments.  When asked about this (and I have been asked), I usually reply, slightly jokingly, that pants are against my religion.  Jokingly, because the "religion" of a Pagan spiritual path certainly doesn't have any Commandment against women wearing pants.  Seriously, because my spiritual path would strongly encourage me to do those things which help me feel more like a spiritual being, and to avoid those things which make me feel less so.

My partner has actually become something of a role-model for me in this area.  She and I were having a discussion in the car the other day, when I pointed out that it seemed like she just simply doesn't use swear words.  Not even like the people who end up saying "Oh fudge!" in such a way that it's obvious which 'f' word they really wanted to use; I mean she really doesn't curse.  She was telling me how, when she was in the Air Force at a time when there were very few women, she had resolved herself not to let herself become "one of the guys" like some of the other women did; she did her best to be ladylike even wearing a flightsuit, making sure she wore perfume and making a conscious choice not to use the 'salty language' that the men tended to.  In contrast, my work history (in the office of a manufacturing facility) brought me in contact with the blue-collar set for several years, and my vocabulary picked up several unfortunate additions along the way--I don't curse like a sailor or anything, but I do use the occasional swear word.  Not that it isn't perfectly acceptable for a woman to speak that way in modern culture, but it just doesn't feel very ladylike.


It does seem like over the past few months as I let my spirituality go to an extent, I also may have let myself go at the same time.  I've gained weight, I often don't put on makeup in the mornings, I let my nails get shabby-looking, and so on.  While that may seem like superficial stuff, the overall effect is that I haven't been feeling as much like an elegant lady as I did at one point.  So, I'm making kind of a mid-year resolution to start undoing some of those changes, and to remember to try to always be a Lady.