When Kim Kardashian Made Me Wear a Church Veil

On Beauty as Queen Argument

I stick myself into the hornet’s nest of women wearing veils with both fear and glee.

I sometimes wonder if I am a glutton for punishment. But I can’t help but enjoy the enigmatic, disjointed breadth I get to live in as a Catholic, living in progressive LA and working in its most progressive sector, singing both Gregorian chant and pop songs, wearing dresses and garden boots, fasting from meat on Fridays, enjoying a gin & tonic on a Saturday, hanging out in Santa Monica and inner city diners, and contemplating my role in producing edgy scripts. This post aligns with my persistent contrary streak and gives me cause to smile.

My tale of veiling starts not with dusty Church documents, or historical accounts, or the insistence of some young dude in a three-piece suit whose YouTube-formed opinion about women in the modern era is hot off the press. This is the story for many younger Catholics, but not me.

Mine starts in earnest with, I believe, Kim Kardashian.

Now, let me say that this is not really a post about veiling. I have no interest in stumbling into a debate either with the world which will condemn the whole thing as a firm step back into oppressive patriarchy, or with an increasingly fragmented Catholic Church where everyone seems to be out for blood and compulsive infighting. If that’s of interest to someone, let me assure you there are many treacherous internet backwoods where these debates can be seen in full. But for me, the whole story is simply that veiling for Mass is something that, surprising to me most of all, I now do.

Now, if this post, ostensibly about the lace head coverings becoming increasingly synonymous with the perpetuation of the Traditional Latin Mass, is not a treatise on why women should start veiling—what is it about?

Beauty. It’s about beauty, and its remarkable power.

(Did you expect any other punchline here?)

The first time I saw someone veiling many years ago, I was horrified and disturbed. I thought it was bizarre and some brand of “Catholic Amish.” I have a respect for the quiet, Amish way of life, and have not infrequently in recent years contemplated aspects of that life that have borne out as wisdom in the wake of increasing government control, inflation, and low food quality. But as a Catholic, seeing women who shared my convictions dress in a way so alien to my understanding of my faith, with the implicit statement that maybe I should do the same, I was only disoriented and disturbed.

Throughout the years following, I heard many screeds punctuating my Catholic life on the reasons for veiling. Nothing convinced me it wasn’t just unnecessary, archaic, and devastatingly strange. But in my strange way, I knew that if I came to believe I ought to through other means, one day I might just end up one of these lace-laden ladies.

Enter Kim.

I don’t follow her. I have no interest in her life, and regularly bemoan that our culture elevates those who earn fame and money via pornified internet presences, apparent exorbitant plastic surgery, the sale of vanity and commodified insecurities, and a sex tape.

But one day a few years ago, I saw she posted an exquisite image of her at an Armenian church, purportedly having been baptized.

She was veiled.

Her beauty in that photo was stark, arresting, shocking. I had never seen such a beautiful veil—the fabric, the hang, the placement. There was something so deeply feminine, timeless, and mysterious in this image of a woman covered so elegantly—perhaps made even more powerful by the contrast with her normative provocative modus operandi—that I couldn’t help but stare. In our hyper-sexualized world, perhaps an improper interpretation can arise, but let me be clear: it was an experience akin to seeing a sunrise or a painting or another great work of art. It was an encounter not with Kim and some individual, thin sexual value, but instead with woman as woman, and in that, it was an encounter with my own deepest personhood. It was a resonance of the dignity, mystery, beauty, loveliness, and nobility of my experience as a person and a woman.

The image haunted me and regularly came to mind. Within a few months, I felt my heart softening to the possibility of veiling at church as I had begun to see some of the women around me do. It surprised me, but in the summer of 2019, I ordered my first veil, adamant about and committed to finding one absolutely beautiful to be able to step whole-heartedly into this part of the kaleidoscopic experience of womanhood.

There are valid theological reasons, for those to whom it’s relevant, for why a woman could consider veiling. Again, this is no conversation I am remotely interested in having here or really anywhere. What I want to explain is, and only is, the absolute power of beauty to bring about even previously insurmountable influence. We grossly overlook the compelling nature of what is beautiful in drawing many instantly and powerfully toward the things we care about—the things we lose our breath and heart over trying, tirelessly and often fruitlessly, to make known.

Arguments, over many years, perhaps warmed me up to the possibility of donning the veil while reaching for the Holy Water every time I enter Mass—namely, and especially, that in Catholicism, we veil not what is bad or unholy but instead what is most precious and most holy. But it was, I believe, an experienced beauty in Kim which of itself was the sealed, self-sufficient argument which pulled me into this ancient custom.

So we can blame Kim, of all people. for this particular instantiation in my life of the “Patriarchy,” I suppose. There is a comedic value to the whole thing that fascinates me—perhaps some Dostoevskyan monologue due here about the cosmic ability of the Divine to use the most imperfect, counterintuitive instruments to bring about an otherworldly will. Maybe it was own microcosmic Hound of Heaven experience, where I was continually chased down by the Divine, even through the most surprising means.

Another stroke of possible interesting providence is that I have the photos, included here, to prove it—and the most exquisite photos possible, taken by incredible LA-based film photographer, Thom Kuo, who is a genius behind the camera in this under-appreciated art form. What was initially planned as a pop art shoot by my friend Philip Ruiz, where all kind of textures brought to the shoot were meant as potential aesthetic features, instead ended with multiple shots of me veiled in a church courtyard. I can assure you that not one of us showed up that day thinking we would be leaving with a promotional brochure for Catholic veiling.

Regardless, I am happy through this means to shine a light on the elusive but decisive power of beauty I encountered in Kim that we need to urgently rediscover if we have an interest in reaching a broken, desperate culture with anything better than the dross and destruction that marks our time.

Maybe it’s time to ignore whatever ugly and grotesque aesthetic is dominating the awards shows, and instead focus all of our energy on creating things compelling enough to quickly outshine and eclipse it. If a beautifully veiled Kim Kardashian can play a role in my comfort of wearing a seemingly outdated piece of lace to church against all odds, maybe excellence and beauty in the arts and beyond can also win back a culture so far gone and dark as to appear hopeless.

That’s my mission.