The group gathered together for a picture. It was the end of the church staff retreat. Short people were moved to the front, and the tall to the back.
"Everyone suck in your stomachs. Except for Julie, ha-ha!"
We were having some clothes altered by a garrulous older woman at J's church, the mother of one of her choir members. I was having some pants hemmed, J was having a dress altered. The older woman instructed Julie to strip and pull on the dress. She opened the door to step out and seemed to be expecting me to follow, then reconsidered with a conscious grin and said "I suppose this is something you've seen plenty of times before."
J rattled down the steps in the usual Sunday morning hurry, fresh out of the shower. She was in a dress I hadn't seen for a while, a light and colorful summer sundress under a denim jacket. She saw me notice and turned about to model it, delighted with the way it fell on her body...and then her face clouded over. "No, I'd better change...there's no place for my pack." She was referring, of course to the wireless microphone pack that she clips onto her pants most weeks. But she was referring even more to the effort of fending of the "helpful" men who volunteer in the sound booth and seem to assume unless explicitly told otherwise that she needs their "assistance" fastening the pack to her clothing each week.
We both work in churches. We are both public figures within our church communities, not only attending but visible every week on the platform and on the camera. J especially is on microphone with her congregation every week, leading them through the emotional journey of worship, connecting element to element, and making every effort to have empathetic eye contact and connection with all who enter her space.
This makes her, apparently, public property. There isn't anything terribly surprising about this. She's a slim, well-dressed, very attractive woman. She radiates warmth and goodwill, at least in public. (She doesn't fail to radiate warmth and goodwill after church, she's usually just half asleep from the effort of the morning.)
The questions of appropriate church dress (not only "modest" dress, but finding outfits that are sufficiently formal but not TOO formal for Sunday morning) and the strange and complicated manner in which your body is a part of your presented performance find strange and uncomfortable expressions on a regular basis. If she were heavier, crabbier, or plainer she wouldn't attract so much attention. But, as she is, she is assumed to have invited comment on what she is wearing and how she looks in it.
Things get even weirder when we show up to each other's churches. I suspect that people get used to always seeing us on our own, and there is a borderline prurient interest in seeing the known but ever-unseen spouse. We'll be sitting out in the car sharing coffee and waiting for youth choir to end, and we get gawked at.
It's a weird dynamic. I'm convinced it wouldn't exist if we weren't both up front so much. It's one that (thankfully) doesn't extend beyond the few hundred people in our respective congregations. But it's definitely real, and encouraged by the reality-bending assumption that because a congregant sees you all the time they feel like they really know you. As in, know you well enough to have opinions on what pants you look good in.
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