What Happened When I Stopped Dressing In Sweatpants For A Month

About a year ago, I committed to a personal goal: I would fix my hair, put on some basic makeup, and wear nice-looking clothes every day for all 30 days of November. I called it “No Frump November.”

As a young mother, I don’t think things ever got really that bad; I still had good personal hygiene and stayed fit. But I lost the drive to do anything much for myself beyond that. Why blow-dry my hair, I thought, when someone is bound to spit up in it today? Why wear nice clothes to the playground when sweatpants will do? Why wake up earlier to do my makeup when sleep is at a premium?

And, after all, if humans try to look good to attract a mate and have kids, I’d now done that four times (four kids, not four mates). I’m not alone: Many people “let themselves go” at least a little bit after landing a spouse or having a baby. Even men do, and they don’t birth babies.

So I had a frumpy phase. To be clear, I did still dress up on special occasions. But my day-to-day sweatpants-and-ponytail look left something to be desired. I didn’t really like this about myself. One year during this time, my New Year’s resolution was (word for word): “Stop being such a slob.” But this resolution was too vague. I needed something more specific and doable. 

Which brings us back to No Frump November. I decided to treat it as an experiment. I had questions: Wouldn’t it be annoying to take time each day away from more productive activities to style my hair? Would I feel annoyed at the effort I’d put into myself if no one saw or noticed? Would I grow tired of it? How would it affect my everyday life? How would it affect me?

I had hypotheses; one was that it would make it easier for me to be available to my husband. After all, artists never depicted Aphrodite as a frump. (This hypothesis was right, by the way.)

I made a few preparations. I joined a clothing rental company to get me excited about new clothes (without committing to those clothes beyond a month). I made sure I had the basics of makeup: foundation, blush, eyeliner, mascara. Oh, and dry shampoo was a must. I even got an apron to wear over my clothes because of my aforementioned mommy-forward lifestyle. 

I only had three daily requirements: basic makeup, styled hair (didn’t have to be rolled, but had to look clean and intentional), and non-slobby clothes (no screen-print T-shirts or sweats).

Here’s what I observed: It was easier than I thought. I got pretty good at doing my hair and makeup quickly because I often felt like I was “wasting time” getting ready. But I liked the result. Not only was I more confident around my husband, but I found that looking nice made me more likely to engage with all kinds of people, including random grandparents who also had to schlep a kid to swim class that day. I felt more open and social, less likely to slump into solitary scrolling. If someone suggested an outing or activity, I was more inclined to say yes.

When December rolled around, I welcomed my first day back in sweatpants. Those days — every once in a while — are nice. But I definitely kept the frump at bay more than before. I felt more in control. A frumpy day is now a choice, not the default.

And this brings me to the bigger picture. What I did not expect from No Frump November was a lesson in “locus of control.” I slipped into frump when things got hard. Yes, having a newborn baby is hard, and new moms deserve a lot of days in sweatpants — and a lot of grace. 

But young moms today face constant cultural messages — mostly online — that emphasize the raw, exhausting, unglamorous part of motherhood and encourage us to apologize for nothing, including how we look. The motherhood hatefest derides men for their uselessness, defaults to constant survival mode, and mocks alternative tracks like “trad wife” or “slow living” as unrealistic for most moms.

In some ways, my greasy ponytail of unwashed hair was an outward symbol of my internal overwhelm. My life felt chaotic at times; I felt like I needed more support, and to wear makeup seemed like a betrayal of that. My frump was a subconscious distress signal. 

“I can’t even find time to wash my hair,” I thought. What a martyr. 

So breaking my own cycle of frump showed me that this wasn’t impossible. I know that this kind of bootstraps thinking is unwelcome in today’s mommy discourse. In public discourse on nearly every topic today, it seems more popular to be Chicken Little, screaming that the sky is falling, than to be the little engine that could.

I met my goal of conquering my frump phase, and I learned that how I look is both upstream and downstream of how I feel. But I still had unanswered questions: Why does looking good make me feel good? Is it because the world is full of shallow people who value appearance too much? Am I one of those people? Is “this feels good” a good enough reason to do something? (Spoiler alert: My answer to that last one is a resounding no.)

These questions feel more urgent as I’m starting to age. The world offers more and more products and procedures to help me “look good.” How far am I supposed to take this? 

What I need — and what many women today need — is a better theology of personal appearance. Religious or not, there’s precious little healthy guidance for us on this topic.

The closest anyone in our culture gets to a healthy conversation about beauty is within the world of classical education. This model of education is committed to “truth, goodness, and beauty.” We need its pushback against today’s “cult of ugliness.” Even so, ivory tower discussions about the objective nature of beauty do little to answer my questions about blush and mascara.

I’m no theologian, but here’s where I have landed with it: God wants us to cultivate creation, or make the best of it, for his glory. He made me, and my brown eyes were not an accident. So I’m going to make the best of myself, including how I look. And in so doing I’m going to try to avoid being vain, comparing myself to others, or going to unhealthy extremes. That’s a lot of gray area, but, hey, it’s something to work with.

This year, I’m going for “No Frump November” again. Maybe I’ll learn some new beauty tricks — or new insights about myself. If you’re also feeling as I was that you want to “stop being such a slob” or take back a part of yourself that you felt you had to sacrifice on today’s altar of motherhood martyrdom, I invite you to join me. 

Of course, I still believe physical beauty is only skin deep and who we are is much more than our outward appearance. But our appearance says something. No Frump November helped me think more about what it is I want to say, and why.

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Hadley Heath Manning is a senior fellow at Independent Women.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.