Maybe it’s already happened in your neck of the woods, but I’m just getting used to it. I’m not complaining, but it seems odd to see bare shoulders in the temple now, along with knees. With the weather getting warmer, these are starting to become more commonplace. Do you like ’em or hate ’em? Women, what’s your experience with the new garments?
It seems to be more embraced by the younger crowd than the older crowd. I haven’t seen men wear anything sleeveless inside the temple. (Is there such a thing as a dress shirt without sleeves?) What do you think this means for modesty culture within the Church? Are you glad “porn shoulders” are a thing of the past? Or is it still a thing among the older crowd?
Wheat & Tares 
As the Church now is, society once was. As society now is, the Church may be.
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, except when it comes to temple garments, ordinances, holders of the priesthood, and children of same sex marriage.
60 yr old PIMO male. I only continue to participate to support my TBM spouse. Personally, I think it’s time to make garments a ‘Temple Only’ requirement, but I’m all for the recent changes. I mostly only wear garments to church, but would like to try the sleeveless top. I hate that traditional garment tops always seem to find a way to show, especially when wearing t-shirts. In my ward, a few of the Millennial sisters and at least one Gen-Xer are sporting sleeveless tops in church meetings during the summer months. I don’t attend the temple very often, so have yet to see any there. Interestingly, over the last couple of summers, I have personally witnessed several scenarios (Costco, Stake summer BBQ) where prominent sisters (Bishopric spouses, RS Presidency members) were obviously not wearing garments AT ALL (but should have been). But I’m not complaining.
The garment slips are the best thing that’s happened to me in years. I adjusted well to garments and wore them for over thirty years with no problems until I hit menopause. Rashes, infections…it was a nightmare. The slips mean I don’t have to choose between garments and my health. It’s also been surprisingly wonderful to wear them as nighties, thereby eliminating garment wedgies at night. (They are less aggressively unsexy than regular garments which is another plus.) And being able to buy sleeveless dresses is pretty great. My only complaint is that the slips have a higher neckline than my old garments so some of the clothes in my closet don’t work with my new slips. Trade-offs
Porn shoulders were not a thing when I was growing up, or at BYU in 1966-67. Sleeveless was allowed on campus, formal dances, and worn by the homecoming queen.
Short skirts were allowed.
When feminine equality became a threat, things had to change! Women could not be allowed to get out from under the control of the patriarchal culture!
Women’s bodies were both scrutinized and vilified and blamed for being temptresses and the cause of all men’s lust. A product of the prevailing culture, which we are still suffering from today!
For me any garment changes are way too late. I stopped wearing them long ago and nothing on God’s green earth will make me wear the awful things again.
Perhaps I might feel different if I had been given several comfortable and workable options back 59 years ago. But the garments available did not always work with the things female bodies do. Maybe if the men in charge had been more flexible, I would not have built up 50 years worth of rebellion about men forcing women into underwear that simply does not work for female bodies on the days or months when a female body does things male bodies do not do. But the men in charge didn’t listen. They just forced compliance with all the available pressure they could apply. Not caring if what they were forcing was harmful or not. I think that is a pretty good definition of “unrighteous dominion”.
So, at this point it isn’t about different styles or “maternity” garments, or “period” garments. It is about the control. It is about the whole principle of men forcing women. They list any right in my mind to tell me what is best for me. You know, keep telling people they must drink poison “for their own good” and use your authority as “boss” to force them and pretty soon those people will not do anything you tell them. You lose whatever authority you had.
Also, for me it isn’t and was never the exact style, but that men are dictating to me what I must wear as underwear. Maybe if that underwear had worked, it would not have turned into the control issue it became. But for me as an abuse survivor, I need control and ownership of my body. For me, that control is not optional. I have talked with other sexual abuse survivors and they also have this issue of *needing* complete ownership and control of their body. Someone once took that control away, not once but for years for some of us. So, having men tell us that we do not get control over our own body is just not something we can live with.
The only change with garments I would care about is if the church officially backed off. Maybe said that wearing them “is between the member and God” and *meant* it. Not between the member, God, their bishop, their stake president, and anyone else interested. The church says it is between the member and God, and then uses temple recommends, social pressure, gossip, and judgmental attitudes as ways of forcing compliance. The church needs to back off. It needs to stop being so controlling in ways that are nothing but control. I mean, what is the purpose of garments other than obedience? So, all that force just to test our obedience to arbitrary nonsensical stuff? That doesn’t test faith, just submission.
They also need to stop using garments to force female “modesty”. Why on earth were my petite garments 5 inches longer that my 6’3” husband’s tall size garments? Only to force dress standards. Having the women’s garments longer than knee length forced longer dresses and forced no shorts at all. But they were more reasonable with men’s garments. Why? Only to force female “modesty”. All the preaching and control over modesty only teaches women that hey are nothing but sex objects. It is objectifying women whether you tell them they must look sexy for men or tell them they must not look sexy to protect men. Women’s clothing becomes all about the male gaze. Either way you are making female clothing all about men and not about women’s needs. It really is exactly the same thing, telling women that they are nothing but a sexy looking body, and that women’s needs are less important than what men see.
By way of fun, see the blog over at Exponent II about the new slip style garment and women going commando. No imagine the men who authorized that slip style garment having apoplexy over women going commando to church.
Thankyou Anna! My sentiments exactly!
Also, I learned a new use of the word Commando!
😂
I think it’s great that the new garments allow more flexibility in what people wear.
That said, I’m at once both amazed and dismayed at how the Church has managed to put itself in a position to set a modesty standard of dress for its members:
1. The Church has told members they cannot make their own garments. They must buy them from the Church. From what I can tell, most members don’t question this.
2. Decisions to change the garment–at least the recent ones I’m familiar with–generally don’t come with a claim that they came directly from God. When the sleeveless garments were announced, the Church simply said, “The First Presidency has authorized changes in the garment to bless those members and others who might benefit from the changes.” Yet members generally don’t question that whatever designs the Church produces are the only ones they’re allowed to wear. Follow the prophet, I guess.
3. There is a huge amount of rejoicing whenever the garments are made smaller or more comfortable. A lot of members really dislike wearing them, yet they dutifully wear them anyway. Can you imagine the rejoicing if the Church announced that members only needed to wear garments in the temple?
What I’m getting at is that it seems so blatantly obvious to me that the Church is using garments to enforce its own modesty standard of dress, yet members don’t insist that leaders justify the practice. No revelation is claimed. The Church literally gets away with, “You will wear the clothes and styles that the First Presidency has authorized you to wear.” Again, I’m both amazed and dismayed.
mountainclimber479: If they can dictate such an intimate thing as this (while making it very unpleasant for a lot of people), they can literally dictate anything. At some point, one would have to feel silly to explain to a non-believer that their uncomfortable and ungainly underwear choices are being made by 90 year old strangers.
I know this is a win for many, but for me the biggest complaint about garments is how they fit around my neckline. I can’t seem to wear anything where my collarbone might be showing. (The new slip style neckline is just a no for me.) I swear it has gotten worse over time, as I feel like I fight my garments showing around my neckline more than when I first bought garments more than 20 years ago.
AO – I got frustrated by garment necklines too. I haven’t worn them in years, but when I was wearing them, the necklines were an issue. The thermal garment neckline was so high that I had to basically wear a turtleneck anyway to conceal it, and if I was wearing a turtleneck then I didn’t need the extra warmth of the thermal top. And I noticed that women with bigger breasts could wear more lowcut tops because they stretched out the garments a bit. I was flat chested and even modest v-necks that went nowhere near my non-existent cleavage would show garment edges. Whereas women with large busts could even show cleavage without showing the neckline of their garments.
Interesting comments about the necklines. I’ve seen some brides walk out of the temple with their wedding dresses for photos showing a lot more cleavage than I have seen in the past.
Guy, about brides showing cleavage as they have pictures taken. According to women I have talked to, their dress may not work with garments, so, they do not have garments on for pictures. In the temple, they may wear something over the garments and that makes their dress look funny, so they wanted to look normal in the pictures. I have heard from women that they just could not find a wedding dress that covered the garments. In the Mormon corridor there are specialty bride shops where for a minor fortune you can get a “modest” wedding dress. Outside of the corridor, it is impossible to find a premade dress that covers garments. Sometimes the bride is not wearing garments yet when they buy the dress because they are not yet endowed. So they buy what they think is plenty modest, only to find it does not work once they get their endowment. It is very difficult to buy a wedding dress that works for garments and the temple always used to have things that they could give the bride to go under the dress and cover the garments. Or, I have heard of brides who got to the temple and were told they could not wear their wedding dress in the temple, so they rent a dress. Don’t know if renting extra cover ups is still done or just local temples have stuff. All I know is that in my years in the church I have heard plenty of stories from brides about feeling ugly in their dress in the temple because they had to wear an extra shirt under their dress or put a dicky to hide cleavage. So, then they get dressed for pictures and take off the garment top so the dress looks like it was supposed to look—not garment friendly but sexy bride.
I sometimes see a bit more shoulder at church these days, which is fine, but if they are wearing garments I want to know where they are getting them. My wife still can’t find them in stock in her size. She did finally get a slip to try, and found it wasn’t particularly well designed (too much fabric to properly fit under a dress of the same marked size). That’s about par for the course, as the church has repeatedly demonstrated that it is completely lacking any expertise in modern clothing manufacturing. Why are they still insisting on being the sole source? We know this wasn’t always the case in the past, so this is about control rather than a divine mandate. The slip design in particular shows flashes of radical creativity (more so even than sleeveless tops, I think) and illustrates that it’s the wearing of the symbols that matters and not a lot else. So why not allow for some more creativity around this?
On your more general question about shoulders and modesty culture, I do think we might be starting to turn the page on that. These kinds of cultural changes tend to be generational. Old attitudes will stick around among older people for a long time, I’m sure. I have to admit that while I don’t have a problem with women showing shoulders if they so choose, I’m still troubled by the gender double standards in our culture. Women on TV newscasts now sometimes wear bare shoulder outfits now. It took a bit of getting used to to regard that as professional attire, but I’ve made the adjustment. So why, then, are the men all still wearing the same old suits? That for me gets at the issues that are far bigger than religious purity cultures and still pervade even the most secular parts of our society. Patriarchy comes in many flavors, and the religious varieties are just a subset. We have a long way to go.
Anna, are you saying women are getting married in their garments and sealing dresses and then when they get to the brides’ room, taking off the garment tops for their wedding pictures at the temple?
If so, that would make sense because I’ve been wondering how they were wearing garments with those dresses and cleavage. I’m sure the Temple presidencies would have consternation with that though, if that is really what is happening.