LDS Garments have always been a point of contention with women in the LDS church. They have been uncomfortable, contribute to yeast infections, and are quite hot – especially in the summer.
They begged for years for a change, but were always denied; the policies were set in stone. The garments were not to be changed for “fashion trends” and people were not allowed to modify them to do so.
Women were, in turn, taught that there was something wrong with them. For example, women were taught that showing your shoulders was basically softcore pornography.
Men and women alike have suffered for generations because of these articles of clothing.
However, recently the LDS church announced that there would be sleeveless tops as well as a slip option for garments.
This has left many women feeling betrayed. And now, the LDS church is essentially saying that none of this happened.
There are very few people as iconic to Mormonism as Lindsay Hansen Park. She will go down in history as someone who worked to bring the Restoration closer together while also educating non-Mormons about our people. Lindsay recently weighed in on these changes to the garments, both from a thankfulness for future generations, as well as anger for her and her friends. The two posts where she did this were powerful to me, and so I wanted to put them here on my website as a bit of an archival version.
First Post
So happy for future LDS women and really sad for those of us who lived under a different standard- one that wasn’t benign but that did real damage to many of us and how we viewed our bodies.
But still, progress for our future women and girls is something to celebrate.
(link to Salt Lake Tribune article)
Second Post
Actually, I have more thoughts on the LDS garment change.
I woke up with a rage down in my belly about it. About the absolute futility that this change now validates—the realization of how carelessly absurd it all is. Attribute it to whatever you like, but it is emblematic of the rotten fruitlessness of these senseless, painful, and arbitrary rules.
How can something seriously dumb engender so much rage…?
Do you know- can you possibly know (unless you’ve lived it like so many of us LDS women) how many tedious minutes, hours, years of our lives were impacted by the cut of cheap, shitty fabric that we believe was a symbol of our commitment to God? Garments manufactured in factories by underpaid workers dictated not just by faith, but by a system that never considered the toll on our bodies, our time, and our well-being.
We spent how much time focused on the narrative of shoulder. Dear God, what time you must have to waste.
Why would we believe that these things mattered or came from God in the first place? Because our culture was obsessed with it. The garment design got in between mothers and daughters, between sisters and friends. It entered the marriages of every single devout couple and sent them directives and messages about how to view on another, their relationships and commitments and themselves.
And just like that, the unchanging rule of the sanctity of our skin is cut away with new garment updates. What a thing.
Such a stupid, hollow thing where many of our faithful will argue that it’s small and insignificant and continuing revelation and whatever arsenal they will continue to expend on something that is both so tedious and full of tremendous magnitude. And the rest of us will react with equal rage and energy and worship the emptiness that was offered up as life-giving doctrine.
That’s the encapsulation of the bankrupt theology my generation inherited from old men in downtown Salt Lake City. Dudes whose best crack at God was a laborious amount of effort expressed in sermons, pamphlets and endless activities and performances of the dangers of women’s shoulder. All because they clearly lacked the skills, the will and creativity to come up with theology that actually propelled us towards being better people, instead of turning our shame internally at ourselves.
So much time wasted trying to find clothes that covered my shoulders. So much twisting of my brain to make these covenants reflect in the public performance of fashion, so much signaling to others to stay in line, so much shame.
While I feel a sense of relief knowing that future generations won’t have to endure this, and I’m glad for the change, that doesn’t mean I’m at peace with how it was handled.
It was a weird and frankly, creepy rule, one that poisoned our men with reinforcements and bad ideas about the female body. It’s one that allowed women to literally measure someone’s worth by the length of their clothing.
And just like that, all the damage, weirdness and unmeasurable futile, stupid suffering- will be swept away.
Here’s what this change actually tells us: Mormonism, despite all of its grand promises is a tribute to the mediocrity of old men.
Yeah, good for future women. Truly, truly. No one should endure that- but those of us who wore out our truly terrible, collective sexual dysfunction on our backs- we’re never getting that back unless we claim it. And even then, to see how absolutely pointless this is- is the exact reason I will never stop having my rage aimed to match the tediousness of the most hollow, insignificant nonsense that we grew up thinking God cared about.
God is so big, they told us- and then they showed us how small he was. And then they trimmed him down even further, once again, on our shoulder line.