I wear the skirt to be different
To make sure people know who I am
To make sure I am something worth being
To make sure I am the girl in the skirt
Not the freak, the nerd, the diabetic
The thing in the corner that never speaks.
People hear my name and say,
“Rachel? The girl with the long skirts?”
And that’s okay with me--
I’ve been called worse.
It’s better than stupid nerd, emo, crazy.
To be the one in the long skirts instead?
To be benign, and maybe even respected?
I’ll take it.

Boys don’t kick girls wearing long skirts
Or aim a fist at their face,
Do they?

I wear the skirt to be the same
To make sure people know who I am
To make sure I am something worth being
To make sure I am the girl in the skirt
The Jewish girl, the modest girl,
The religious one like the Main Street locals.
People hear my name and say,
“Rachel? The one with the long skirts?”
And that’s okay with me--
I’ve been called worse.
It’s better than dirty Jew, ugly, cheap.
To be the one in the long skirts instead?
To be benign, and maybe even respected?
I’ll take it.

In skirts I can face the world feeling pretty
Because modesty is beautiful,
Isn’t it?
I wear skirts because the female body
Is more than a sex toy for the masses
And is beautiful no matter how much is showing.
I wear skirts because it still turns heads
To have a girl dressing the way her religion prescribes
Because it feels right to her
And not her parents.
I wear skirts because people ought to know
That religion doesn’t exclude you from the world
And morals can travel beyond the bubble from which they are born.

I wear skirts because the one thing we need
Is to stop judging a book by its jacket.

I wear skirts because in this world, being different is frightening
And anyone too ignorant to see beyond my nonconformity
Would see me as a threat
An alien
A speck in a sheet of uniform color.
In this country to be faithful is to be extreme
And to be unusual is to be unsafe.
I wear skirts because really,
We’re not that scary
And someone needs to show the world
So maybe they can believe it.

I wear skirts because this is the twenty-first-century
And houses of worship are still attacked
Holy books still go up in smoke
And mass attacks on faithful innocent
Are still ingrained in the memories of so many
Who never should have suffered.
I wear skirts because the doors of my synagogue
Are not open for everyone at any time,
Not anymore,
Because there would be no one there
To watch the security cameras
In the dead of night.
I wear skirts because the doors of one Ark
Which holds our holy Torah
Are rigged with a system of alarms
And the other is covered with a metal grate
Slammed down before the sacred scrolls,
Locking them in a prison of iron
Until the Sabbath resumes next week
And we release them again.
I wear skirts because I am no longer a child
And I know that the officers from the NYPD
Who patrol the block on which our shul stands
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
Are not there for publicity.
There have been too many bombings
For me to know how to believe otherwise.
I wear skirts because I will never,
As long as I live,
Believe that our faith is not worth protecting
And neither are we.

I wear skirts because it’s not a sin
To be proud of who you are.