Poll results: who’s reading Haley’s Halo?

I discovered that unless I’m willing to fork over some cash, I have a limit of 200 responses.  Since I’m not willing to part with money for a survey, I have closed the poll for now.  Thanks to everyone who participated!

The results confirmed what I had always suspected, but here’s the breakdown:

1.  Males were 75% of the respondents; females 25%.

2.  Suburban readers were 56% of respondents; urban, 31%; rural, 14%.

3.  Almost 2/3 of respondents (65%), sit on their butts all day at work in an office.  22% work from home or have some other nontraditional job.  13% are blue collar/labor intensive workers.  I realized after I created the poll that I neglected to provide an option to select “student.”  I’m guessing that the students and SAHMs marked themselves in the work from home/nontraditional category.

4.  As I expected, the majority of readers (65%) who responded attend a casual-style church.  29% attend a dressy/upscale church, and 6% admitted that their church is full of superfrumps.

Overall, the results describe a pretty average contemporary American Christian person – you work in an office, you wear jeans to church (and probably sing songs about rivers that flow to God, or how God takes your breath away, or something like that), and you don’t live in the bowels of a major city.  What this means as far as my comments about fashion is:  the average reader probably doesn’t have to push it as far as I recommend in order to get good results.  It really all depends on what level your community generally plays at.  If wearing non-sandals qualifies as dressy in your area, then wear those.  Just aim for a notch above what the rest of the guys are doing.  If your officemates are still wearing the ’90s cube-dweller uniform of pleated khakis and a blousey blue button-down shirt, then wear some slim flat-front pants and a colorful plaid shirt.  It’s still the same basic outfit, but in a more attention-grabbing way.  And GET IN SHAPE.  The clothes often do make the man, but the body often makes the clothes.  Clothes look better on better bodies.

 

Take the survey and help me help you!

In light of my last fashion post, I thought it would be helpful to have a better idea of the sartorial status and needs of my readership.  Please take a minute and answer the following survey.  It’s only four multiple choice questions!  This (I hope) will help me get a better idea of where my readership is at, fashion-wise.

Thanks in advance!

ETA:  On Question 4, if it is common in the summer to see people wearing baggy T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops at church on Sunday, then you do not attend a casual-dressing church.  Ahem.

Wear clothes that fit.

This is a looks post.  Insert standard disclaimer about inner beauty, yada yada yada.

The best ways to look better (and sexier) are to (a) be in shape and (b) have clear skin.  You can’t really separate the two, because a pizza face will defeat a bangin’ body, and nobody will care about your luminous, dewy skin if it houses a 300-lb. body.  Body and skin are two areas where pretty much everyone has room for improvement, too.  Unless your job is to be professionally fit and beautiful, there’s always a next level you can achieve in these areas.

But let’s say you have a decent body and decent skin – are you undoing much of the good of those attributes by dressing poorly?  I’ve talked about this before, but FIT is the number one thing that can make the difference between frump and fantastic.  Clothes that fit properly advertise that you are put together, savvy, and confident.  Clothes that fit poorly suggest that you are sloppy, complacent, and/or timid about yourself – NOT that you are so focused on God that you can’t be bothered with the ~things of this world~ like fashion.  Also, fit is not about sexy, plunging necklines or short skirts (for the ladies), or leaving half of the buttons of your shirt undone (men).  It’s about wearing clothes that are correctly proportioned to your body type.  When you wear clothes that accentuate your body (as opposed to showing it off in a trashy way), you’re basically saying, “I’m comfortable with my body, and therefore myself.  I’m a person you want to get to know.”

Hipsters aside, most Americans wear clothes that are too baggy.  Part of this is probably because too many Americans are also obese or overweight, but how is anyone supposed to see what is good (and sexy) about you if you are hidden inside a fabric bag?  This morning at church I sat behind a row of five twentysomethings, and the frump was plentiful on the part of the women.  The woman who put the most effort into her outfit was overweight, and the other two were wearing jeans and boring knit tops (and no obvious hairstyling or makeup).  Zzzz.  The guys looked like they had put more effort into their looks than the women (the guys, too, were wearing jeans that sort of fit), but they could have bumped things up a couple of notches, easily – like going for darker, fitted denim and collared shirts.  This is the pickings for singles in the church?

It’s just…if you are single and would like NOT to be single, then stop making it harder for other people to see your inner beauty!  If you LOOK like you have inner beauty (yeah yeah yeah, I know, we shouldn’t judge people on their exterior – but when you see someone dressed like a thug, do you not try to move away from that person?  so much for not judging people on their exterior…), then maybe people will be more inspired to talk to you to see if you DO have inner beauty.  If you’re making people look past 50 extra pounds or through swathes of fabric of an XXL shirt on a M body, you’re just making it harder for someone else to connect with you.

Also:  I’ve really come around to the idea that men should always tuck in their shirts.  It just looks sloppy (and kind of stuck in 2001/wannabe member of Rascal Flatts/”cool guy church dad”) to leave it untucked.  Even for knit polo shirts.  Tucking in the shirt and pairing it with a nice belt adds a subtle but nontrivial level of polish to an outfit.  NOTE:  the shirt needs to FIT – tucking in a billowy blouse-shirt is NOT sexy.  But billowy blouse-shirts aren’t sexy and should never be worn in the first place.  NOTE 2:  the pants need to fit as well.  NOTE 3:  do not attempt if you have a big ol’ gut.  But having a big ol’ gut isn’t sexy, either.

Rebranding submission.

Mention “submitting to your husband” to the average woman, and she’ll look at you like you just suggested that the U.S. should bring back slavery.  These days submission has such a negative rep that trying to sell women on submission is like trying to sell paleo dieters some carbs.  In my opinion, given the current cultural climate, trying to pound the submission drum is just going to come up against a lot of resistance.

Last weekend I had lunch with a recently married friend and got onto the subject of submission.  While she had a knee-jerk reaction to the word itself, she actually agreed that deference was a part of her marriage and that it worked for her and her husband.  So maybe submission just needs rebranding.  When a woman hears “submit,” she thinks “become a doormat, throw brains out the window, let husband become a tyrannical dictator.”  Of COURSE women are going to reject submission when it is so closely correlated with those ideas.  But deference – and the connotation of agency involved in the decision – that seems a little more appealing.

So maybe the subject should be approached from that angle – ladies, can you defer to your husbands’ decision-making?

I suppose we can quibble over whether women should just suck it up and ACCEPT that the Bible says submission so therefore they have to SUBMIT whether they like it or not, but there’s also a reason that chewable pills taste like fruit, so………