In Defense of Amish Femininity

Lessons in Flirtation of the Amish Culture

by our guest

Keturah Hickman

I never heard of TFR (total fertility rate) until I was twenty-six years old.

I was baffled — even though I am the eldest of twelve siblings and sixty-plus cousins and had ambitions of having sixteen children of my own, and my parents and grandparents were all from large families, we were raised believing that children are a blessing from God. If one didn’t have a lot of kids, it was either because they were barren (and God has other beautiful plans for them) or they were a “secular” person with “worldly” values, and it was probably best those sorts didn’t populate America anyway.

I first encountered the acronym TFR on X (formerly Twitter). RedPill Bros and men who fantasized about “the perfect woman with whom to conquer and subdue the Earth” were obsessed. They’d go on about how most women didn’t marry until age twenty-eight and that the average family size was 1.84 kids. I ignored it all because, in my world, those stats didn’t matter. The women who had 1.84 children weren’t the women who I believed needed to be having more children anyway. Compare this all with the Amish, where girls tend to marry between the ages of twenty and twenty-two and have an average of six or eight children each.

My family lived a lifestyle that appeared fundamentalist, but searching for a more peaceful community to join, we lived with the Amish for a few years when I was a teenager. Before that, I had been alone in my dress-wearing and knew few other large families. Now, suddenly, our family — there were eight or nine of us children at the time — felt smaller compared to the Amish families. One family near us had fifteen children! I made close friends with the other Amish girls, all of whom are married and have many children now. We didn’t remain with the Amish, but I continued to be friends with them and to seek inspiration from them. In my circles, I was an old maid by the time I was twenty-two, and half my friends, Amish and non-Amish, had four or five babies already. And yet, the TFR conversation was non-existent.

The X crowd, who was most worried about the declining TFR, though, didn’t seem much interested in looking at the groups of Americans who would “dominate” the country in the next century or so. Online memes insisted everyone needed to be “baby maxing.” However, those who did exceed the average quota for children by three or five times were criticized for how they did it.

The RedPill Bros seemed to want a Frankenstein wife.

They wanted a wife who was sassy but submissive and skilled, a girl who dressed like a hussy but had a zero body count, someone who would stick by them through thick and thin but who also was “a little neurotic and exciting”. They wanted someone innocent and loyal but who had “experience.” They encouraged each other, “DON’T SETTLE FOR AN AMISH GIRL WHEN YOU COULD WIFE A WHORE.” They were delusional with no chance of increasing the national birth rate.

Much of what they wanted does exist, just not in the spaces they searched. If a man wants a virtuous wife, he’s usually got to be willing to find her as she is. Most women aren’t looking to be saved but to be protected and loved. But these men didn’t seem interested in visiting a fundamentalist church (or any church), or in traversing to the wild hinterlands of Amish Paradise. Maybe because they didn’t want to be the sort of man that would be worthy of the type of woman who is willing to have six or more babies.

However, I found their bad-faith philosophy in the real world too. My first boyfriend wanted a wife and a Christian family, but he was also a porn addict and decided he wasn’t attracted to my child-bearing hips. If my family had remained among the Amish, my hips would’ve secured me a spouse by then and maybe a baby or two. I felt confused and devastated, so I went to stay with some secular Christian friends who offered to mentor me.

The couple I stayed with were as confusing as the RedPill Bros I’d encountered years later. They were almost fundamentalist. They believed that women must submit to men in all things — and this man wanted his wife to wear booty shorts. They watched porn together in the bedroom, and because they were honest and had an “open communication” style, he made it clear to everyone that he wasn’t attracted to her during the nine months she carried his children. However, he was willing to sacrifice a few months of “good” sex so he might “populate” the earth.

Before I left their home, he and some of his brothers told me, “I think your boyfriend broke up with you because you look too Amish. If you wore jeans or shorts, you’d get a man much faster.”

“I’d rather be a spinster than anyone’s slut,” I said. And so I embraced being single for the next seven years, continuing to wear the dresses I sewed while turning up my nose at most suitors. Maybe I was too Amish for these men — or maybe they weren’t Amish enough for me.

I didn’t marry as young as many of my friends for many reasons. Most Christian men were intimidated by me — I was not shy, but bold and opinionated and a little rude. I also felt little respect for many of the men in my orbit. They were self-righteous, and half of them were addicted to porn. However, I was stubborn and idealistic. My heart needed a lot of work. But through the mercy of God, I was able to discern my way through the hurtful lies that bad men (mostly women, actually) shoved at me before I met my husband. By then, I’d learned to chill a little — my long list of needs had shrunk to a few basics. I didn’t care what a man did for work, what church he belonged to if he had a history, what kind of books he’d read, anything. I just wanted a kind, Christian husband who could lead me in a way I respected. I’d learned to sift the shallow from the substance.

Reminiscing about my years living with the Amish greatly helped, especially when I began traveling. I enjoyed hanging out in “woke” crowds because while my “friends” were full-throttle sexual degenerates, they never mocked my long Amish dresses as many Christian acquaintances did. If I’d been willing to sleep around/ marry a man who wasn’t a Christian, I would’ve been able to find a partner easily in those days. Because among the woke — as long as the men were straight or bisexual — the men liked me and weren’t intimidated by me. They were quite receptive to my Amish ways.

And what does it mean to be Amish anyway? This is the irony of it all. To a Christian “outsider,” Amish means being prudish, uptight, stiff, extremely modest, ugly, slovenly, and humorless. But to someone who knows the Amish well, that feels like an inaccurate slur. There are few girls I’ve ever known with faces as beautiful as my Amish friends. And those girls are brimming with expertise, wit, and kindness. Even now with babies pulling at their hemlines, they wear wide smiles and have a twinkle in their eye. They are full of clever jokes. Amish girls might be wearing long dresses but are masters of flirtation — shamelessly so! Yes, they aren’t going to be snarky or sarcastic — but those things don’t make a man’s knees go weak like a well-formed gaze does!

Amish girls have a lot of sway over who they’ll marry. They seldom marry in their villages, but often go as a mother’s helper or school teacher to another community, and meet young men at church or hymn-singings. Maybe a boy will feel brave enough to approach her first, but as often as not, a girl will send a message his way inviting him over for dinner. If she really likes him, she’ll try very hard to say clever things— and if he laughs, they both feel as if maybe it’ll go somewhere. They also might play sports after a church event — a girl who runs fast is quite attractive to a boy who is looking for a strong, beautiful woman to mother his children. They don’t need to worry about the future, either. Their families pay for all wedding costs, and make sure they’re set up well in their new home. The Amish have a few spinsters, but TFR isn’t a topic of concern among them. They know how to make marriage happen, and while there are a few bad apples, I honestly only know very happily married couples with many happy children.

If there is anything that truly helps attract a man, I’ve learned, it’s simply being spontaneous and willing to follow along and support a man’s ideas and dreams. It’s not how we dress, or how we flirt. It’s not the state of our sexual purity or about how skilled or intelligent we are. Men mostly just want loyal lovers who are open to adventure and who will not tear them down.

If men aren’t porn-brained, they won’t really care about anything external — which means dressing like an Amish woman isn’t going to decrease a woman’s chances at securing a good match. It might actually increase your chances a little, if you’re dressing effortlessly and carrying yourself with dignity. Sure, men like the sight of a woman’s rear-end in a tight pair of pants — but do you want to know what really gets a man turned on? The way her eyes light up when he starts talking. If you’re wearing a dress he’s just all the more bedazzled and curious. If you slip a little honey into your voice, speak demurely but with confidence, and tilt your head just so toward him, he’ll go wild.

I know it works, because I’ve frequented many bars with one of my best friends — both of us in our ankle length, twirly skirts. It’s like every other woman in the room was invisible once we entered. Men go wild for feminine women. Real men don’t care if they’re Amish or not — because Amish girls have tricks, and if we really want to raise the TFR, we’d all do a little better learning from these Dutch sisters.

I might not have married as young as most girls in my circles — I was just twenty-seven. But if God wills it, I won’t be having just 1.84 babies. Women in my circles have married at my age and still managed to have ten or twelve healthy babies. At the end of the day, statistics are just numbers that don’t have to apply to you if you have friends in the right places.

By the time I met the man I’m now married to, I’d fully embraced my Amish friends as role-models. I like to think that a lot of this is what factored into the success of our early romance. We wrote letters — a dream inspired by the romances of Amish friends — and exchanged a few phone calls. I remember that first call. It seemed to be a sweet combination of me falling in love with the sound of his voice while he grew enchanted at the way I said, “Mhm”. When we first met, I was wearing a simple dress that showed off nothing but my waist — all Amish girls do just this. Then, when I greeted him, I bid him to sit at the table while I donned a pink apron and prepared lunch. We continued to keep things “old-fashioned”. When he kissed me the first time, I knew it was a meaningful symbol of our decision to marry. Everything we did was simple — we “dated” by going on long walks, reading books together, and having picnics. He picked my first bouquet of flowers from the ditch and tied them with his shoe-string.

The “Amish-way” is simple, but it isn’t unromantic or frumpy. It’s often raw, humorous, thoughtful, and kind. It might look “archaic” to an untrained eye, but the Amish way of living rewards pure femininity and masculinity. It’s reliable and honest, and the results are wholesome.

One doesn’t have to “become” Amish or even look “very” Amish in order to reap the main benefits. With a little humility, one can learn all their valuable lessons and then apply them in a way that works for their lifestyle. These lessons are mostly subtle and intuitive — and that’s why when they work they do so only because they require authenticity.

This piece was written in consideration of the article For The Undateable Young Single Christian Woman.