Exponent II's Blog, page 48

The Blessings of Marriage and Motherhood or a Graduate Degree: One sister’s crossroads

The semester was nearing its end when I found myself walking to my car, exhausted after a day of work and night classes. My backpack weighed heavily on my shoulders and my mind was absolutely full. As I pushed the crosswalk button on the way to the college parking lot I thought about the thick manilla envelope in my backpack. It contained my enrollment paperwork for the Master’s Degree program at Stockton College in New Jersey. I’d filled out the necessary forms to enroll in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program and needed to mail them back. There was a problem though. I was torn. I knew I wanted to pursue this degree, but I’d fallen in love with someone I met in an online LDS chat room circa 2000. 

I was at a crossroads that felt like a reckoning during this time. I’d come out of what I considered my rebellious period marked by a small 4 leaf clover tattoo, a non-member ex-boyfriend and was in the throes of repentance. I had joined a singles branch and confessed my sins to the Branch President. I was repenting for buying a pack of cigarettes and a chastity sin and had now committed to living a life worthy of my ancestry. Being committed to righteousness was intense pressure for me. 

I grew up in the church at a time when it was more common knowledge that women must be “married in the everlasting covenant”  to receive exaltation and women who had not had the opportunity to marry would be assigned to a righteous priesthood holder in heaven to receive exaltation. In other words, it was my responsibility to find a worthy husband or risk being assigned one. I’d been assigned enough group projects in school to not want to be assigned a husband.

This led me to an online LDS chat room since there was zero chance of getting a date with a member where I lived in southern California. Only pretty girls in the branch got asked out (and married) and most often they were the ones who introduced themselves as being in the area to nanny until they got married and had children. In my entire LDS life I’d been asked out by a member exactly 1 time and he was quick to comment that this was a “friend” date. I quickly became focused on my appearance and didn’t go out of my way to introduce myself as a local UCI student. 

My friend in the branch who was a convert and an epidemiologist asked me during a “break the fast” lunch what I was doing to lose so much weight. I replied “not eating” as I grabbed barely enough calories to keep me standing. If losing weight meant what I needed to do to get married, so be it. That chat room saved me from continuing to starve myself and introduced me to a wonderful guy. His name was Matt and he and I hit it off immediately and switched to phone calls instead of chat. Not long after we began talking, I knew I’d marry him if he asked. One night as we were talking into the early hours of the morning he asked me what I knew about polygamy. I told him what I knew which wasn’t very much. That’s when he told me that Jesus Christ had appeared to John Taylor and set apart 12 men to carry on “the everlasting covenant” despite the church’s agreement with the US government to stop practicing polygamy in exchange for Utah statehood. 

He was raised fundamentalist he said and he taught me more details about early church leaders and their teachings than I had learned in all my years of Sunday School. It all made sense to me. This was getting to my roots. This was Mormonism straight from the writings of its earliest revered prophets. We discussed living plural marriage even though we hadn’t met in person yet. 

Those were the crossroads I stood at as I pushed the crosswalk button on my late night walk back to my car. Should I mail my enrollment documents or should I pursue marriage and devote my life to living the fundamental teachings of Mormonism? As the thought of dropping off the manilla envelope to the post office the next day formed, I heard a voice sternly yell “No!” In that brief moment my decision was made. After graduation Matt bought me a plane ticket to visit him in Utah. We dated for a few days, visiting church sites and doing a tour of the Salt Lake City Cemetery with a printed map of the graves of famous church members. The next week Matt flew to California and proposed. I was happy, proud, and relieved when it was my turn to stand in the congregation as the branch president announced my exit via marriage. I felt so old at 21. 

Some people reading this today may question why I couldn’t do both? Wasn’t there an option to pursue my career and still marry the person I fell in love with? Drumroll for the 10th Article of Faith please…”We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth” Before the modern church interpreted this scripture as a symbolic “gather where you are”, people took the literal meaning of the word literal, literally. Zion was Utah and from there a trek to Independence Missouri, not a college in New Jersey. As the patriarch of our family and therefore responsible for protecting his family, Matt helped me to understand we had to live in Utah. The teachings I grew up with my entire life helped me to understand I could not put off motherhood and that I should not pursue a career. My divine mission was to give birth and raise children in righteousness. There are countless talks and counsel from official church sources saying this. Regarding women working outside the home “she should be certain those needs are valid. She should be sure they cannot be met through careful budgeting and home production.” (The Latter Day Saint Woman, Basic Manual for Women, Part A page 206)

Our oldest was born 16 months after we married. Matt and I talk about the early days of our 24 years and going marriage fairly often. We recognize how we both squeezed into gender roles that didn’t feel comfortable for either of us. As the years went by we recognized how much better he was at managing school info for the kids and how I was always seeking new community roles to learn and lead in. I started bringing him flowers he loves and he told me to live a life that would make our kids proud, not live for my ancestors. We talk about how pressure and beliefs made our decisions until we learned to trust ourselves. We don’t regret our decisions but we also can’t say that “we” really made them. Once in a while when we’re recounting memories we wonder aloud together what it would have been like if we had gone to New Jersey and focused on building my career. At the time of writing this I’m involuntarily unemployed and my kids are wholly independent. In some ways I’m still pushing the button at the crosswalk while also being grateful for the road I’ve walked. 

***Do you have your own thoughts to share about graduate programs vs. not putting off motherhood? We would love to hear from you! Submit a guest post and let us share your voice on Exponent II.***

Main image photo credit: Michał Parzuchows

Post Note: At the time of publishing Jen is in her first week of their career in Social Work.

Why I Can’t Get Excited about “Sleeveless” Garments

Note: This blog was originally posted on my Substack.

This week news broke through social media that the LDS church is introducing “open sleeve” garments in select hot climates around the world. These styles will come to the United States in the 4th quarter of 2025. People around the internet are rejoicing about this change, but I can’t join in.

I feel like I should be celebrating. This is what I wanted, right? More garment options? But as I think it through, I realize no, it’s actually not at all what I want. It’s a crumb, an appeasement, something people can hold up and say “see, the church is changing” then ignore fundamental frustrations.

I can’t feel excited because at the core of it, my underwear is still being dictated by men. How and when it changes is completely up to men. I’m frustrated because the many decades of advocating, activism, and begging have finally culminated in women receiving one inch from men. Literally.

[image error]The new “sleeveless” garments coming 2025 to the US. I don’t see much change in the shoulders from the cap sleeve to the open sleeve. Yes, I think some tank tops will work with this new style. Most, however, will not. Plus the high armpit will continue to restrict. I fear the excitement of “sleeveless” garments might be a bit premature until it’s verified what is possible to be worn with them.

There are so so many things to say about garments. You can read my previous piece about them here. For the sake of post length, I’ll keep my thoughts today to the newest change. I also highly recommend posts like this or this that share more about this change and the painful feelings it brings up.

So why aren’t I rejoicing with the Saints over this “win?” Because nothing has fundamentally changed. The church has doubled down on garment wearing recently, instead of acknowledging that all bodies and circumstances are different. Instead of trusting members to do what is best for themselves, they are trying to appease us with small changes while maintaining ultimate control.

At the end of the day, women’s underwear is still being dictated and controlled by men. The patriarchal structure of the church makes it so no women ever has final say on decision made about their bodies. Male leaders may ask for input or suggestions, but they are always the final decision makers and gatekeepers. Whether women have long sleeves, short sleeves, no sleeves, is all up to men. By controlling garments, men control how women dress. They’re the ones who get to decide what is “modest” and what is acceptable for Mormon women to wear every day. Men get to dictate when women wear what clothing, down to the specific activity they are doing.

I’m glad that the men in charge seem to be listening to women’s struggles; that is an improvement. But how long have women been asking for changes to the garment? Literally decades! Decades of advocating have finally brought us in 2024 an inch of fabric difference that might allow for a few different articles of clothing to be worn. And nothing has changed to improve the many health issues women face while wearing garment bottoms.

We’re still going to get infections, bleed through the white fabric, struggle to keep a pad in place. We’re still going struggle with body issues when we look in the mirror. We’re still going to cry when we go into a dressing room and try on a dozen perfectly modest dresses that don’t work with one small curve of the garment neckline. We’re still going to struggle with never-ending guilt when its 100 degrees outside and we longing stare at the women wearing sundresses. We’re still going to judge and police each other, as if the perceived length of a sleeve or pant leg is the ultimate sign of righteousness. We’re still going to gaslight ourselves and tell ourselves it’s all in our heads and it’s only our fault we struggle, not the church’s. We’re still going to feel like Joseph Smith and the legacy of his polygamy is holding us hostage from almost 200 years ago.

So no, I cannot join in the celebration. I cannot thank the men for deigning to modify a style or add a new one because it doesn’t root out the real problems.

What we need is true equality and freedom in our own choices. We need women in the structures of power in the church and in every room where decisions are being made. (Diverse women. Women who aren’t specifically chosen because they bend to patriarchy either way.) We need to truly examine the history and purpose of garments and see if they’re actually serving us, or if they’re simply a tradition entrenched in our dogma. We need to allow every member to wear the garment as they see fit for their personal bodies and circumstances without judgment or punishment.

If you’re excited for this change, I hold space for you and I’m honestly very glad for you. If you love your garments, I love that for you.

But I am mourning and I feel my Heavenly Mother weeping with me.

Garments Still Feel Awful to Me. How About You?

Yesterday I shared a blog post about why I stopped wearing garments a decade ago. It’s obviously been awhile since I shopped for new garments because of that, so last night I logged into my account at store.churchofjesuschrist.org and looked at what has changed over the past few years. The pictures of garments brought back so many memories! I can feel them on my body even though I haven’t worn a pair in years.

In the past decade without garments I’ve also learned how to better dress for my body type. My main issue fit-wise is that I’m on the short side (at 5’2”), so clothing tends to have too much fabric and bunch up on me. I no longer shop anywhere that doesn’t have a petite department, because I know that most regular clothing fits pretty awkwardly on me. (And yes, I know there are petite garments. They were never anywhere short enough to actually be considered petite in my opinion.)

My second issue fit-wise is that I’ve never had a flat stomach, and three pregnancies have only made it less flat. A waistband on underwear that cuts directly across my soft stomach is very unflattering.

Before I go any further, I want to reiterate that I only speak for myself, and no one else. If you are a person who loves wearing garments, I am genuinely happy for you! I really struggled with garments (and I covered my journey in the link in the first sentence of this post). Don’t worry about anything I have to say if it doesn’t apply to you personally.

That said, I looked at the garments available for purchase online with my own body in mind. In no particular order, here are some things that stood out to me:

First off, I’m unclear why everyone is excited about the new sleeveless garment top, and how this is going to revolutionize anything for women in hot, humid climates. It looks almost exactly the same as what you could already buy. What am I missing?

These bottoms look incredibly long and very skinny to me. To fit my thighs into these, I would have to size up quite a bit, making them hang well past my knees and the crotch sag very uncomfortably.

These tops would look comically long on a short body like mine. Even on the mannequin (who looks about a foot taller and 20 lbs thinner than me) it hangs below her crotch.

Other short people will know that capris are just pants for us. And these pants would just be pants underneath my other pants. Unless I was really cold, I can’t imagine ever wanting to wear two pairs of pants on purpose.

The full-length bottoms would be hanging out at my socks.

Would it okay to show your garments if they’re peaking out the end of your sleeves or the bottom of your pant leg? I feel like it would be fine to roll them up if that happened, but that begs the question – if it would be okay to roll them up in those scenarios, why can’t someone also roll up other styles of garments to not hang out of their clothing awkwardly? (I’m probably thinking about this too much for someone who doesn’t wear garments anymore.)

I feel claustrophobic just looking at maternity garments covering up so much skin, because the best maternity underwear (for me) were the bottoms that sat underneath the belly. (I wore comfortable ones like that for the last few months of my last pregnancy – but otherwise I wore maternity garment bottoms just like in these pictures!) Pregnant bellies vary quite a bit in size from beginning to end, so this will be a circus tent under your clothes one month and cut off your ability to breathe the next. Pregnant women can’t justify spending so much money on underwear that will only fit for a few weeks though, so usually they purchase the largest size that will fit at the very end and deal with the excess fabric in the meantime. Real maternity underwear is designed to work with a pregnant body at all stages comfortably and is made of considerably less material.

And those legs – they are stick thin! I have deep stretch marks on my inner thighs to remind me permanently of the weight I gained in my legs while pregnant. What percentage of women have cute little basketball bellies on super thin legs like this while nine months pregnant?

Since this tent of a top is already covering your entire pregnant belly, I ask again: Why can’t the bottoms go underneath the belly rather than up and over the top of it? So many women deal with nausea and heartburn during pregnancy, and I’ve heard many say it was made worse by the extra layers over their stomach.

I wore one-piece garments for a time underneath dresses because my tops kept coming untucked and the only way to re-tuck was to go into a bathroom stall and take my dress off. The trade-off for that convenience was the gaping, sagging crotch flap.

I tried these with pants but it was too uncomfortable when the flap wouldn’t stay shut and my lady bits were rubbing against the inside of my jeans. My deepest sympathy to those of you who wore garments when this was the only option!

These are the new garments that will be available in the U.S. a year from now. This option (and all of them available for purchase, actually) do not look like they were designed to fit a female body. These are shown on extremely tall and thin mannequins that resemble a very small percentage of actual human women.

***Do you have your own thoughts to share about garments, either for them or against them? We would love to hear from you! Submit a guest post and let us share your voice on Exponent II.***

The Single Best Reason to Never Wear Garments Again

I stopped wearing garments about ten years ago. Discussing my underwear preference isn’t something I’d normally do on a public platform like this, but when you’re Mormon you do weird things – and everyone has been talking about their underwear this week! Church leaders seem to have noticed the younger generation not wearing their garments regularly and made adjustments including sleeveless garment tops, likely in the hopes that they’ll start wearing them again.

I didn’t have a medical reason to stop wearing my garments. I just… hated them. I didn’t have UTIs or yeast infections or skin irritation – instead I just had generalized irritation. I always felt hot and frumpy. I wanted to feel pretty and not tug on my undergarments all day long. I’m writing this for the women out there who are like I was – miserable in garments but unable to stop wearing them without a valid excuse not to. (And maybe feeling like these new options are a heavenly sign to wait, spend a bunch of money on new tops, and be miserable yet again.) I am telling all of you – the single best reason to stop wearing garments is because you don’t want to wear them.

But before I go any further, let me be clear – if you are someone who loves wearing garments, I love that for you. I have zero criticism of anyone authentically happy in the underwear of their choice, and I’m so glad that many women out there do like their garments. (I’m also super glad that you’ll now have more options to make it even easier. Yay!)

I personally wore garments for many years…

…and here is my own personal timeline of garments:

Childhood: My parents sometimes wore their one-piece garments around the house, which I didn’t love. My mom told me they were sacred and should never touch the ground, so when I was really mad at her I’d sneak into her bedroom, take out her underwear and stomp on it on the floor. (Then I’d fold it neatly and put it back in her drawer to avoid getting in trouble.)

Early teen years: I had two beautiful Young Women’s leaders who I saw in knee length shorts at Girl’s Camp. It occurred to me they wore garments like my parents, which made them feel less weird and unappealing to me. 

High School: My friend would talk about how attractive the “Mormon smile” was on guys (the white scoop neck visible through their white dress shirt), but secretly I thought it looked dumb. Old men in my stake presidency had that, not cute boys my age.

BYU: My roommate had served a mission and would get ready in front of our shared mirrors in just her garments and bra. She was a seamstress and had a degree from BYU in clothing design. She was very open about her issues with garments and told everyone the design was bad because of one very old woman in charge at Beehive Clothing. She said everyone was just waiting for her to die, at which point the garment design would be immediately overhauled. That was 25 years ago. (Did she finally die last week?)

Engaged to be married: I worked in an office with mostly Mormon women when I got married in the temple. One day I said, “I just wish garments looked cuter”. They immediately reassured me, “Guys don’t care. They just want you to take it all off anyway.” I clarified, “No, I meant for me. I wish they were cuter for me. I want to feel cute under my clothes!” The women laughed and told me my days of cute underwear were over.

One told me I’d stop buying colored bras because they just look weird over garments. Another stretched her shirt collar out and pointed to the top of her own white bra. She said, “This is supposed to be a cute sexy cutout, but it’s not because I wear garments.” She didn’t say this like she was sad about it, but just in a matter of fact way.

My favorite bra at the time was a cute little push-up in cherry red. And they were right – it looked ridiculous on top of garments. Sadly, the item of clothing that made me feel the most feminine and pretty eventually went into the trash.

Picking a wedding dress: I had to choose a wedding dress that would cover my garments despite never having worn them before. To be safe I just picked out a dress with sleeves that was on clearance. I didn’t really love or hate the dress – it was just a dress that covered what needed to be covered, and it was white. My sister and my friend actually wore it later for their own weddings, too. None of us were attached to finding something perfect or uniquely ours – we just needed a basic dress that would cover our underwear.

After the temple endowment: I remember ripping open those plastic pink garment packages the first few mornings, trying out different sizes and styles but not liking any of them. The material felt cheap and scratchy and I didn’t like myself in the mirror. 

Getting married: Someone heard I was a newlywed and joked that mesh garments could be kind of sexy, since you can see through them. That gave me an icky feeling, because they felt the opposite of sexy to me.

Temple attendance: I felt strange sitting in a room full of strangers all wearing matching underwear, while the markings on our underwear matched holes on what looked like a giant shower curtain through which disembodied hands would pop out and touch me. 

Garment markings: The markings on the garments felt meaningless to me. For example, the knee was supposed to remind me that “every knee shall bow” – but why did I need that message on my underwear? Was it supposed to make me feel superior to other people who didn’t believe like me, since I knew they’d eventually admit I was right about everything? 

Shopping for clothes: Taller people suggested buying the petite garments so they’d fit better under women’s clothing. Unfortunately as a genuinely petite person, that hack didn’t work for me. Shorts were so difficult to find that I wore mostly capris during the first few years of marriage, which did not look good on my body type. For years I purchased clothing based primarily on one criteria – that they covered my underwear. 

At work: After graduation I worked with a woman who loved fashion. She said to me one day, “I want to get sealed to my husband – but I can’t get over the idea of wearing garments!”. I wanted to say, “Don’t do it. You’ll hate garments! You’ll have to dress like me.” But instead I said, “Oh, they aren’t that bad. I hardly notice them!” I showed her where they hit on my lower thigh through my pants, but knew I was lying through my teeth.

Military deployments: I spent years alone while my husband deployed to the Middle East with the military. I started wearing workout clothes all day as a way to get around the rules of garment wearing with no one there to call me out. My mom stopped by once and I told her I was leaving for the gym soon. She giggled nervously and said, “Oh, you’re so brave to go without your garments and drive somewhere. I wouldn’t dare.” I knew she wasn’t actually calling me brave. She was calling me out for sinning.

Last ditch efforts: I tried almost every fabric and cut and size, including the giant flare legged one-piece garments that required you to stretch one oversized leg up and out of the way enough to use the bathroom through the leg hole. For a time I also wore regular one-piece garments under dresses when my regular tops always came untucked. The large open crotch flap was too exposing so I wore pantyhose to hold everything in place. One Sunday I found myself in a bathroom stall lifting an ankle length dress up with one arm while pulling my pantyhose down with the other, then trying to somehow hold the butt flap open wide enough to sit down and urinate without peeing all over my clothes. The sheer ridiculousness of my situation hit me like a ton of bricks: this is not a thing normal adult women have to do. 

One day in 2011, something came down from church headquarters that made me so angry that I ran upstairs in tears, ripped all of my clothes off, threw my garments on the floor and stomped on them – naked and sobbing – reminiscent of stomping on my mom’s when I was a child. The garments represented the church to me, and I was so frustrated with both. I went garment free the rest of that day, but the next morning still obediently put a fresh pair on.

Pregnancy: I took my first break from wearing garments 5 months into my third and last pregnancy in the spring of 2013. Heat and discomfort finally pushed me past my limit and I purchased regular maternity underwear for the first time in my life. The relief was immediate and I realized how much easier my past pregnancies could have been. I shared this decision with my husband on a trip to southern Utah in our camping trailer, where I apologized and explained my desperate need for a break. In retrospect, it feels crazy that I felt obligated to apologize to a man for making a personal decision about my own underwear while pregnant with his unborn child and camping in hot weather. 

I was just on a fall break trip (above) with that same daughter I was pregnant with when all of the sleeveless garment news hit. I explained garments to her and realized she had never seen me wearing them. (This is us inside the Colorado National Monument together with my pants rolled up because I was warm and wished I’d worn shorts. It reminded me a little bit of the discomfort of garments, except there was no way to roll those things up!)

My terrible bishopric experience: After that daughter was born I started to wear garments again. The break had been about 5 months between pregnancy and postpartum recovery. It was hard to put them back on, especially with post baby weight and bleeding. I renewed my temple recommend at this time and confessed to the bishopric counselor that I’d had a difficult time with my garments in recent months but was wearing them again. Several months later my recommend was revoked by my bishop when I posted a profile on the Ordain Women website. My husband confronted the bishop about his decision and the bishop told him, “We discussed this as a bishopric and decided it was a mistake to have let her have it in the first place because she wasn’t wearing her garments properly.”

A local group of men had called a meeting to discuss if they personally approved of the type of panties I’d worn during pregnancy, then concluded together it was the wrong kind and because of that I was unworthy to be in God’s presence. Every feeling of ick garments had ever given me increased until it became so overwhelming that I finally admitted out loud the secret I had kept since the week I got married: I hated garments.

So I stopped wearing them.

Post garments: Like many women, I remember the very first photos I posted on social media where I was clearly not wearing garments. I made it purposefully ambiguous by being on vacation in a place where it might just be a swimsuit coverup.

To the vast majority of Americans this is a totally appropriate outfit for an adult mother of three to be wearing on vacation – yet these were such scary pictures for me to share. I now know that many women like me can also pinpoint the first garment free photograph they shared on social media. I believe this is a female milestone nobody really talks about, but so many of us have experienced!

If you are considering whether to continue to wear garments or not, I am here to support you in whatever you choose. It is your body, your relationship to God, and your call. You are going to be okay no matter what.

For me personally, not wearing garments gave me back a connection with my body that I had lost for years. Over a decade later, my long hair will sometimes spill onto my bare shoulders and feel so soft and comforting, or a breeze will lift up the back of my shirt to cool me off on a warm day. I pause momentarily when these things happen and remember what it felt like to have an extra layer of material held against my skin by a sweaty white bra. I have a full length mirror in my closet and often when I’m getting dressed I just look at my cute underwear and feel happy. I’ve successfully switched from underwear = torture, to underwear = happiness.

I’ve heard women say they don’t like the way their bodies look (after having babies, gaining or losing weight, or getting older) so wearing garments that cover more skin is fine with them. While that is a reasonable conclusion, I would still suggest trying on some cute underwear no matter what you think you’ll look like. I believe a lot of women would actually love their older, heavier, postpartum bodies a lot more in underwear that made them feel feminine and beautiful.

(Here are some cute and comfortable underwear options from Lane Bryant! If you feel insecure about your body at all, garments generally are not helping the problem.)

Again, if garments bring you joy, please keep them! However, if you are struggling daily to put them on like I was – just try taking them off. Maybe wear them some days, and not others. Don’t wear them on your period. Don’t wear them when you want to feel pretty. Wear them only when you’re going to church. You get to pick!

No loving God that I can fathom would ever be angry at you for doing something that makes you so happy. 

***Do you have your own thoughts to share about garments, either for them or against them? We would love to hear from you! Submit a guest post and let us share your voice on Exponent II.***

(Main image from unsplash.com and Simon Maage.)

Let them eat crumbs! Mormon women and garment changes

Earlier this week, the LDS Church announced that it was creating a new style of garments with “open sleeves.” It has only been a short time since the announcement and all of my social media feeds related to Mormonism are discussing this change. The Salt Lake Tribune collected some initial responses. Jana Riess, a scholar and journalist, has commented on her column at Religion News Service. I see plenty of people expressing joy and relief and also a lot of anger and upset.

Bloggers here at the Exponent have spent so much time discussing garments. It is one of our most enduring topics of conversation here at the blog. Caroline first wrote about them when the blog was in its infancy in 2007. Fellow Exponent blogger April Young Bennett has written about this topic a number of times. We’ve had other permas write and we have a whole bunch of guest posts here. I wrote an article about my experience presenting my research on garments to the Church Correlation Research Division. I’ve been researching garments for the last decade and hope that my book, written with Jessica Finnigan and Larissa Kindred, will be published before too many years go by. Why do we keep writing about garments? Because there are few things as close to our hearts (metaphorically) and our genitals (literally) as garments. For myself, the physical discomfort of wearing garments eventually started to grate, along with other things, on my Mormon faith. I don’t wear garments any more, but I really empathize with whose who still do.

I am upset by these changes for a number of reasons. I’ll give you the top few, all of which emphasize the LDS Church’s patriarchal structure.

#1
This change prioritizes women’s fashion over women’s health issues. I have nothing against women’s fashion. While this change makes many happy, my survey points to the negative impact of garment wearing on vulvar and vaginal health. Its like the church put #MomTok in charge of these changes, because this change is all style and no substance. Instead of tackling big issues for for people with vulvas and vaginas, it went with a small design fix that will make lots of people happy without making garments substantively healthier and safer for our bodies. The patriarchal church has, once again, thrown us crumbs and ordered us to celebrate.

#2
While women often reported feeling unattractive in their garments, men reported that they found their wives unattractive in garments. This design change feels more like “let’s make the women look less frumpy so that garments will be less of an impediment to sex and then men will be happier.” Once again, men’s sexual pleasure is more important to Mormon God than women’s health. (You might also be asking why garments are an impediment to sex, but you’ll have to wait for the book to come out).

#3
Women reported feeling unattractive in their garments, which made it difficult for many to connect with their sexual desire. While shorter sleeves (technically sleeveless) garments may help that, I doubt that many women locate much of their sexual attractiveness in their shoulders. The image of the new garments for women shows a bit (a teensy bit) more shoulder, but still has a lot of fabric covering the body, with significant overlap between the tops and the bottoms. My guess is that this design change amounts to an inch or two (at most) and that most sleeveless tops and dresses will not work with these new garments, while giving the appearance of significant change.

These changes do nothing (or very very little) to address the health issues that women face with garments. What would actually create change would be to create more flexibility on the current mandate, reiterated repeatedly at the April 2024 General Conference, but echoed by myself and others. Mormon women deserve more from their church.

Opting In to Spiritual Practices

When you have digestive issues, doctors will sometimes recommend returning to a very basic, bland diet. The idea is to remove any potentially triggering or disruptive foods, then gradually add them back in, so you can figure out which ones are causing you harm (and which ones are safe and healthy). The practice is challenging, but it’s intended to help you actively choose foods and nutrients that are right for your digestion.

Ultimately, rather than being restrictive, the hope is to help you find what foods you can choose to help you thrive. Unfortunately, the practice itself can be very challenging. Food advertisements, fast food, treats at work, and cravings are everywhere. Just thinking so much about food can be depressing and discouraging. Sometimes, you are on the right track and then adding something in throws the whole balance off. It’s a process that takes patience, time, and being gentle with yourself.

When I first started questioning my beliefs and heading on that infamous “spiritual journey,” I felt a bit like someone with digestive issues. I had constant flare-ups, but everyone around me constantly advised me to just keep eating the same things and practicing the same habits and my problems would resolve themselves. Unfortunately, they only got worse.

Over time, I started my own kind of spiritual elimination diet, but without a thoughtful practice or plan. I took things out through anger, despair, hurt, and frustration. I stopped practicing things because they challenged my conscience and because they did not lift me spiritually. I opted out to gain control over my own spiritual experience, but it often felt like opting out of spiritual practices entirely.

“Opting out” started to feel very passive to me. It also came from a place of anger and hurt that exhausted me and wore down my spirit. Yes, I wanted to eliminate barriers to reaching God and hearing the spirit speak to me. Yes, I wanted to only engage in spiritual practices that filled me and represented my conscience. Yes, I wanted to feel spiritually alive and nourished. Was opting out accomplishing these goals? No.

This new way of thinking about my spiritual needs led me to begin practicing “opting in.” So much of my spiritual practices before were automatic and thoughtless: say “amen” at the end of prayers, raise my hand to sustain when prompted, sing the hymn when the music starts, attend class at the beginning of the hour, say “yes” to callings, wear garments, and so on. I opted out to no longer simply do without thinking, but now it was time to move on to the next step.

What if, instead of only opting out, I chose a spiritual place that allowed me room to add in and remove spiritual practices and ideas? If I attend church and do not sing, it will certainly look like I’m opting out to people in the congregation. But that’s ok. If the spirit moves me, if the words speak to me, if I feel like singing with this group is meaningful, then I will opt in.

Keeping my hand down when people are being sustained for callings or into priesthood offices will look like opting out to others. But I view the practice of sustaining as meaningless because no one is really meant to disagree and people are criticized when they do. I also believe that any priesthood should include women and, yes, I’ve asked our Heavenly Parents about this. Until women are included, I don’t opt in to this practice. But I do speak to my sons about it when they are confirmed and I do opt in to attending and loving them in their decision to participate.

I have opted in when asked to speak in sacrament, because speaking and teaching brings me joy. I love the process of studying, writing, then teaching. Of course, there are some topics that I opt out of. Will some view this as strange? Perhaps. But it doesn’t matter. This is my process and my continuing, changing spiritual practice.

Is opting in vs opting out just semantics? Perhaps for some. But, for me, it’s the difference between a passive and an active spiritual experience. Opting in invites me to be thoughtful in my practices. It asks me to evaluate my choices and motivations. It challenges me to opt in to practices that may upset my spiritual balance and force me to reevaluate all over again. Opting in keeps me from being stagnant or rote in my spiritual practices or haphazardly opting out; because either way gives me spiritual indigestion.

Where Do You Draw The Line?

This is somewhat uncomfortable for me to write and may be uncomfortable for you to read. But just because a topic causes discomfort, doesn’t mean it is not worth discussing.

I grew up in a town of roughly thirty thousand people. I lived, at the time, in a newly built middle class neighborhood in the 1980’s. I lived there for 18 years of my life and saw families come and go, but the go was still in the same town. They moved just a little more south to the “rich neighborhood”. To the “rich ward”.

I felt the sting of rejection when the families did this. I felt bothered that our neighborhood wasn’t good enough for them, now that they were making more money. I saw that the rich ward (church congregation) got to do cooler activities that required more money. 

The great equalizer however, was that we all went to the same high school.

Much later when my own little family was moving to Utah for one year of my husband’s educational training, my desperate search for an affordable apartment close enough to the University of Utah, landed us in the Avenues of Salt Lake City. This neighborhood consists of many beautiful homes built by wealthy homeowners in the late 1860’s and kept up to date by their descendants or buyers able to afford the remodel, sprinkled with meth houses where the unhoused found refuge in the homes that were left to rot. I found myself in an interesting situation of not liking the wealth I saw and lived around and hating the drug abuse I saw used by those in dire circumstances right next door as well. 

I would then drive my daughter to kindergarten in Rose Park on the “west side” of town for dual language Spanish immersion. Rose park, for those who don’t know, is considered a “scary” side of the valley and it is in large part because it is also a very ethnically diverse side of the valley. The fact being, that in reality, it wasn’t any more dangerous than the less diverse Avenues on the “east side” where I lived.

As my family prepared to move to Texas for my husband’s job, I worked hard to find another affordable place that would help my kids continue in their Spanish Immersion education. I connected with members of the church there to help me find the best place to live. Many of them discouraged me from certain parts of town that were “unsafe”. These were the parts that had the Spanish immersion schools. There was one section however, a very wealthy side of town, that had a Spanish immersion school, but rental costs kept us out. 

We moved to the center of where I was warned to avoid. We were safe and I loved my neighbors.

Our ward was majority Latinx and one Sunday, as I was leaving the building to get something out of my car, an older man drove up and asked me where the “Anglo ward” met. I was flummoxed by the question as I thought through what he meant. “You mean the English Speaking ward? We are English speaking.”

Our ward, after a year or so of us being there, was combined with another ward. A richer, more “Anglo” ward. On fast and testimony Sundays, members who were by their own description forced to be a part of our ward, would bemoan this fact and claim that all was well because they knew that they were “good branches being grafted in to strengthen the bad tree.”

I was invited by a woman my age, one of the new “good branch” ward members, to her home in an effort to be friends. As I showed my license to the guard on duty, and passed through the gated neighborhood, I felt nauseated and wanted to turn around.

A few years later, we found ourselves in Utah again. My husband’s job and Spanish immersion schools, once again dictated where we lived. However, at the time with 40 language immersion programs in the state, we could really choose to live anywhere. 

As I asked around and talked to realtors, I realized there were major town biases in the state of Utah. I looked at homes on the East side and felt my own biases that I grew up with, rise. I did not want to live in a “rich neighborhood”. I wanted to avoid the High Schools everyone thought were better than others…because I could see a clear economic and unfortunately unintended racial divide.  

My kids go to a “title one” elementary school, and their middle and high schools are 48% minorities. Their teachers come from the same Universities that the East side schools teachers come from, so I take a critical look at what the online school ratings really mean.

Out of 20 or so houses in my neighborhood that have school age kids; families send their kids to about 10 different schools. This is because in Utah, you can “permit” into schools you want to go to within your school district. For example, we want Spanish, so we permit our kids to go to the school that is not, by its boundaries, assigned to us. Other families want what is called the “Alps program” which are accelerated learning classes, and others want charter schools that are more religious, more patriotic, or have more technical skills. Then there are the schools with the “better” sports programs (football, basketball, cheer….). Some parents are not granted their desire to “permit” into the school they want. These parents have been rumored to forfeit their rights of parenthood to other parents who live in the school boundaries they want, or lie about their address by using a friend’s, or rent an apartment in the boundaries to use its address, so that their kids can go to the school they want them to.  

We self segregate, but we all have our reasons. Reasons that don’t have anything to do with race, but unintentionally..and sometimes intentionally have everything to do with race. 

I wish our kids would all go to the same school. I wish there weren’t “rich neighborhoods”.

I’ve been desperately trying to start a booster club for my kid’s high school. Seven title one schools (give or take on the year’s enrollment) funnel into my kids’ High School. Many of these students qualify for free school lunch, which means they also qualify for a waiver for sport participation fees, so the kids who don’t qualify for fee waiver have to cover the kids who do by paying more. Then there are the parents that cannot afford $250+ for their kids to play soccer, or well over $1,000 for cheer, but don’t qualify for free lunch, so their kid either uses money from their own job to pay for the activity, or they don’t participate.   

These kids from the west side, then play against east side kids whose parents can pay the fees plus anything extra to help the school raise funds for new gear. Our kids have to have their tournaments at better supported schools, because our tennis nets all have holes in them. 

My kids’ school had the first and second fastest runners in the state. Our track team had the chance to win state and it would have helped us get more attention and possibly more funding. But one of those runners transferred over to an “east side” school because of the reputation and money that they have. Rich schools are taking away poor unnoticed schools’ chances of becoming great.

There is no equalizer. The divide just gets bigger and this is to say nothing of how people have voted to divert tax funds from west side schools, or legislatures have voted to give more funds toward non public schools.

Our wards/congregations could be that equalizer. 

This was possibly the goal the stake president had when combining our economically struggling ward with the wealthier ward in Texas. Ward boundaries in other states/countries are much larger than Utah. It makes it easier to include a diverse group of people, ethnically and economically. This works well if the mindset of the people is in the right place of course. 

My current ward boundary includes two different streets, not a wide enough net to really mix things up. 

But what if the boundaries were drawn in a way that made sure there was a diverse mix? That economically struggling families became friends with economically advantaged families? The kids went to school together and the advantaged families helped support the school financially, so that the disadvantaged family’s kids benefited? What if a disadvantaged kid was shown opportunities by an adult from a more advantaged family and learned all the different ways to obtain a higher education and the advantaged adult wrote letters of recommendation and maybe even introduced the disadvantaged kids to contacts they made in their field and opened doors to these disadvantaged kids that their own parents could not unlock themselves?

What if the disadvantaged family opened the eyes of the advantaged family to a fuller way of viewing humanity and the meaning of life? The advantaged kids could see how hard others work and gain a perspective that is hard to obtain when everything is provided for you. What if the advantaged kids actually realized that their advantages could stunt their ability to really understand what it takes to work hard for something valuable? Their “advantages” have the power to stunt their desires of achieving something on their own merits rather than their parents.

How would either type of family know the other’s needs if they were not closely associated with them? How would they know or care that a poorer school was lacking funds if their own kids did not go there? 

If we lived our lives closer together, not segregated by rich or poor neighborhoods, what would the impact be? What would poverty rates look like? Would we hate as deeply or negatively categorize each other as much? Would the political divide be as wide?

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, David and Goliath, brings up the idea of the “U” curve.  He interviewed a “wealthy powerful person in Hollywood”  who was struggling to raise his kids that had been given every advantage possible. He himself grew up in much poorer circumstances before they, through a lot of hard work, pulled themself out of their disadvantaged circumstances. They said this, “My own instinct is that it’s much harder than anybody believes to bring up kids in a wealthy environment. People are ruined by challenged economic lives. But they’re ruined by wealth as well because they lose their ambition and they lose their pride and they lose their sense of self-worth. It’s difficult at both ends of the spectrum. There’s some place in the middle which probably works best of all.”

Where do you draw the line?

“Inverted- U curves have three parts, and each part follows a different logic. There’s the left side, where doing more or having more makes things better. There’s the flat middle, where doing more doesn’t make much of a difference. And there’s the right side, where doing more or having more makes things worse.”

Point being, no one wants to live in the slums. No one wants to live in high crime, low income housing, where schools struggle. No one wants to live in poverty (ironically enough, I didn’t realize, October 17th is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty when I started writing this). But the same concern may not be given toward that multistoried house, gated with guard access that has schools with unlimited parental funds. 

“There is no such thing as unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have cost that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.”

Pastor Jamie White at Salt Lake City’s First Presbyterian church said this, “When we are poor we recognize our needs, but when we have wealth, we don’t see our needs or know what is missing…It has the power to distract us from what really matters.”

Related Articles from Exponent Blogs: found here, and here.

From the Exponent Back List: The New Garment Styles

Like many others, Exponent bloggers have been talking about the news of new garment styles. Here’s what some of us had to say from our blog email list.

 

Ann

“I’m like 20 percent happy about this and 80 percent angry. Why did we all have to suffer with sleeves for so long just to have this change suddenly happen?”

 

Heidi Toth

“I rationally see the good in these changes but am with Ann and am mostly angry. Why did it take so long? Why are we still so insistent on garments at all? Why not recognize the deeper issues so many people have around being told what underwear to wear? Is the response to people still objecting to garments going to be, well, we gave you some other options, so what’s the problem–just wear them? In my tired-of-the-patriarchy text chain yesterday, I called it rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are major, major issues. This feels like crumbs.”

 

Nancy

“I want to start by saying that I no longer wear garments, but I am (probably) about to get a book contract for my book on the lived experiences of garment wearers. I have presented my findings from a 4500+ survey responses to the Church Correlation Research Division. I am really upset by these changes for a number of reasons.

#1 reason: this prioritizes women’s fashion over women’s health issues. While this change makes many happy, my survey points to the negative impact of garment wearing on vulvar and vaginal health. Its like the church put the Secret Lives of Mormon Housewives in charge of these changes. Instead of tackling big issues for women, it went with a small design fix that will make lots of people happy without making garments substantively healthier for people with vulvas and vaginas.

#2 reason: while women often reported feeling unattractive in their garments, men reported that they found their wives unattractive in garments. This change feels more like “let’s make the women feel less frumpy so that garments will be less of an impediment to sex and then men will be happier.” Men’s sexual pleasure is more important to Mormon God than women’s health.

#3 reason: women reported feeling unattractive in their garments, which made it difficult for many to connect with their sexual desire. While shorter sleeves (technically sleeveless) garments may help that, I doubt that many women locate much of their sexual attractiveness in their shoulders. The image of the new garments for women shows a bit more shoulder, but still has a lot of fabric covering the body. And so much of the message of April’s General Conference was about wearing garments continually.”

 

Linda Hamilton

“I’m honestly skeptical about how much this design will allow for new fashion choices. Based on the picture it doesn’t seem like that wide shoulder is much different than the current cap sleeve. Maybe some tanks would work but I’m doubtful. It kind of feels like a crumb meant to make us “so grateful.” Maybe I’m too cynical about garments in general, but it doesn’t change the fact that men are still dictating clothing choices and modesty for women, nor does it address the health issues unique to women.

I will say though that I like that the church is starting to think more globally! That feels positive.”

 

Caroline

“Yes, I don’t think the sleeveless option is really going to make clothing much easier or more liberating for women (or help them to feel good about their attractiveness, as Nancy mentioned). There’s still a lot of fabric on the shoulder, and I’m guessing the armhole won’t be that large. What I am happy about is the shift or slip option. That sounds to me like a win for women’s vaginal health, if women can wear that and either go without other underwear or wear light cotton regular underwear beneath it.”

 

April Young-Bennett

“My first thought was, “Hooray!” I am hopeful that this change will facilitate easier shopping for summer clothing and less necessity of a dreaded 4th layer in summer heat (the shirt to cover the garment on top of the bra under the typical summer shirt with not enough sleeve to cover a garment). I will let that happy thought lead.

I only recently posted about the sleeves, and how their existence is evidence that modesty enforcement and providing an easy way to judge women by their outward appearance are unstated motives for mandating 24/7 garment wearing. So, if this change does anything to mitigate that, I think it is a step in the right direction toward making the tool a better match for its publicly professed purpose as a spiritual reminder, although certainly not enough, because of the many other points I brought up in the post: https://exponentii.org/blog/3-other-rationales-for-the-garment-mandate/ Unfortunately, like Caroline, I’m suspicious that the new design will have tight, tiny armpit holes making it impossible to hide garments under sleeveless shirts anyway, so achieving the same modesty requirement but more insidiously.

But as I said in that post and in this previous one https://exponentii.org/blog/better-styles-and-fabrics-arent-enough-lets-end-the-garment-wearing-mandate/, I think the real solution is not in better design, it’s in eliminating the garment wearing mandate. Even a badly designed garment can be tolerable or even spiritually uplifting when worn in appropriate circumstances, like while doing a mostly sedentary religious ceremony inside an air-conditioned building. Forcing every person to wear the garment at all the times during every activity is the root cause of most of the health and psychological issues. So it is unfortunate that this welcome change in design is accompanied by a backward facing retrenchment in the 24/7 garment wearing mandate.

Also, the professed reasoning behind this change is to help people in African nations, but most of those countries do not have high mean income levels, and to benefit from the new design people will have to dig into their pockets and buy new garments, pointing to the ethical issue associated with the church requiring every member to buy their underwear from a monopoly supplier, which happens to be the church itself: https://exponentii.org/blog/the-mormon-underwear-monopoly/”

 

Bailey

“When I saw this news yesterday on ldschangemaker’s insta stories, my reaction was anger and frustration. I wish I had more eloquent words. I stopped wearing garments three years ago in the summer of 2021. They started giving me panic attacks. My mental health improved notably after I stopped wearing them. Once, in January of 2022, I put them back on to attend a niece’s baptism and I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. I have rage that not wearing this item of clothing, that is underwear, makes me not ‘temple worthy.’ It’s clothing. Can it have ceremonial and spiritual value? Sure. However, not wearing it is not even close to being dishonest, or abusive, or having sex outside my marriage. Even with a design change, that frankly is significant only in the context of modesty policing of centimeters of skin showing, there is still the underlying issue of this clothing being used to judge a person’s heart. I’m happy for the women who will hopefully benefit from this; happy that having a slip option will help for those who choose to wear it. And, at the same time, I am admittedly puzzled that so many women still wear it. In the last few years, all of my sisters, sisters-in-law, and a couple best friends have all gone from being TBM to nuanced or out. Claiming bodily autonomy by not wearing garments played a role for each woman.

I have often thought about what Jody (thank you Jody for your amazing words!) and Maxine Hanks shared when they talked about garments on Valerie Hamaker’s podcast. One thing in particular that I find frustrating was learning that decades ago (I can’t remember the year; I know it was before I was born and I just turned 47) that church leaders agreed that the garment is ceremonial clothing to be worn in the temple but *one* apostle (Joseph Fielding Smith?) disagreed. Since it wasn’t unanimous, the garment remained daily wear. How many thousands and thousands of women have suffered because of one man?”

On my son’s 12th birthday, we held a pet funeral.

My youngest son was already having a lousy 12th birthday. My husband was sick in bed with Covid, forcing us to postpone the birthday celebration.

Because I’d been exposed to the illness, I was working from home, so it seemed odd that I hadn’t seen the cat all day. During my morning break, I went outside and called the tracking device on his collar. No luck.

But later that afternoon the tracker pinged me. The cat was next door, at a vacant airbnb. I sent my youngest over to fetch him.

That’s how he found the cat dead. On his birthday.

On their birthday. When we adopted the cat, the vet estimated he was about 8 years old, same as our son at the time, so we had always treated their birthdays as if they were the same day. When my son turned 12, so did the cat by our reckoning.

“You need to help him!” my son was pleading.

“There’s nothing I can do,” I told him. “He’s dead.”

It wasn’t registering. “Give him water! Give him medicine!”

Just in case, I woke up my husband from his Covid-induced stupor and asked him to come outside and confirm. Yes, he agreed, the cat was dead.

“What should we do with the body?” I asked. I started musing out loud over our options. The vet offered a cremation service, but it was expensive. It seemed irreverent, but we could just wrap up the body and put it in the trash can after holding a little memorial service.

“No, mom,” my son interjected. “Can we bury him? Can we get a tombstone?”

Relieved at this sign that he was already moving out of the denial stage of grief, I quickly agreed.

My 16-year-old came outside and crouched over the cat’s body. Silent tears dropped from his eyes, leaving little round marks on the patio. Always an empath, my oldest daughter sensed something was wrong during a phone call. I heard her sob loudly through the phone. She came home from work early to grieve. My 14-year-old had always been stoic—when he was four, he cut his foot open, covered it with a band-aid and put his sock back on and didn’t even tell us until he came down with an infection and had to go to the hospital—and so his subtle reaction was in character. He said virtually nothing and slipped into the computer room.

Digging the grave fell to me because my husband was sick and I didn’t have the heart to ask my kids to do such a grueling chore when they were already so sad. The soil in our yard looks like concrete and is only barely softer, so I had lots of time to brainstorm about a pet funeral while I made slow progress at the hole.

I remembered my first pet funeral. I was 12 years old at the time, like my son, the birthday boy. My dad shared a quote from Joseph Fielding Smith, a deceased Mormon prophet and former president of our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), about how the souls of animals would be resurrected after death.

Joseph Fielding Smith’s words were deeply comforting to me at the time, but as an adult, I’m more skeptical about what he actually knew abou the afterlife. He developed a lot of problematic theology that has since been abandoned by the church, and other doctrines that the church still clings to but I’ve personally rejected. I liked what he said about animals in the afterlife, but did I believe him?

In those pre-internet days, it was quite a feat that my dad managed to find a relevant church quote about such an obscure topic using only the undigitized resources available in our home library. Today, I can whip out a whole list of quotes by living and dead church leaders with a simple google search. I see them side by side, with their contradictions, their evolutions over time, their biases, their context. Simply knowing that a church leader said something is not enough to make it true to me any more.

By the time I finished the hole, I still hadn’t thought of a reassuring theology I felt confident about sharing. Even so, I called my family out to the backyard for the pet funeral.

Apparently, my 14-year-old had been doing his own internet research in the computer room. He told me that the life expectancy for our cat’s breed was 10-13 years, lightening a burden of guilt I hadn’t realized I was carrying about this death on my watch. Our cat had lived a full life. It was his time.

My daughter brought the headstone she had made by writing the cat’s name on a pretty river rock. Names—plural, actually. For years, we knew this cat as a friendly neighbor cat who liked to wander into our yard whenever he heard the kids playing outside. He would follow us around, chattering non-stop, jumping into our laps. Over our long acquaintance, most of us had independently started greeting this frequent visitor by some name, and when we finally adopted him, it seemed a little late to change.

After a prayer, thanking God for the time we had together with our beloved cat, we shared some memories, like how he spent every school day on my oldest son’s lap while he did online school during the Covid pandemic, and how he would join the kids on the trampoline when they brought out sleeping bags for backyard camp-outs in the summer, and how he got involved in matches on our giant chessboard. Once, during a game of checkers, he was standing right on the square where I wanted to move my piece, so I set the lightweight plastic checker on top of him like a hat. He paused from his usual frenzy of activity and held like a statue for the next several turns, until I moved the checker.

As my kids recalled these memories, they smiled through their tears. By the end of our simple pet funeral, there was a tangible change in atmosphere; I could feel that healing was underway, and the realization surprised me.

Why was I feeling so surprised? It’s common knowledge that funerals are therapeutic; that’s why they happen in various forms across so many cultures. But most of the human funerals I’ve attended have been religious rituals, usually based on my own or another branch of Christianity. In addition to sharing memories, they almost always include some confident pronouncements about the afterlife, and I’ve never needed to parse out if the comfort I felt at a funeral came from these testimonies or from something else about the ritual.

Our little pet funeral had been nothing more than an exchange of memories, but the simple act of remembering together had been therapeutic in and of itself. Memories have power; togetherness has power.

It wasn’t a great birthday, but my son will be okay.

Ticket to a Polygamous Man’s Heaven

An acquaintance of mine, Sister Doe,* shared an interesting story about her experience in a recent temple sealing. At the end of the ceremony, the sealer gave a few words of advice, including this gem to the bride:

“You are now the groom’s ticket to his full exaltation, like a visa on a passport.”

Sister Doe gave him a withering look in return and should be commended for not standing up and flipping the over-priced chairs.

As if the sealing ceremony itself wasn’t sexist enough, he had to add insult to injury by reminding the young bride that doctrinally, she was only an object—a means to a man’s eternal salvation.

In the 19th century, the LDS church practiced plural marriage, or polygamy. Men married an average of 2-3 wives each, though some leaders had as many as 50. Regarding this principle, Doctrine & Covenants 132 states:

61 And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.

62 And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.

This scripture––which is still canonized––hinges on men as agents and women as objects, something to be received, given, and owned. Even the idea of a woman giving her consent isn’t really true only two verses later:

64 And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law.

Women who refuse to give consent to polygamy will be destroyed. How can women be true agents when they are told they must consent or face destruction? Women are something to be collected, told what to do, and obey. They are given in marriage and received like a present or a prize.

In the doctrine of plural marriage, men are required to be married in order to receive exaltation and achieve godhood. As Brigham Young taught: “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.” A woman—a plural wife—is a literal ticket to heaven for men.

Or to put as plainly as Heber C. Kimball: “I think no more of taking a wife than I do of buying a cow.”

Marriage is still required for eternal exaltation and the Celestial Kingdom. Russell M. Nelson taught, “Only those who are married in the temple and whose marriage is sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise will continue as spouses after death and receive the highest degree of celestial glory, or exaltation.” While the language used now is more equal, stating both men and women must be married to obtain it, a wedding is still treated as a forced pit stop on the road to heaven.

(Believing that marriage is required for salvation brings in tricky doctrinal questions too, like how much does the atonement matter if a gospel of works is required? What of grace? Why wasn’t Christ married or at least preach of marriage in the New Testament? But these questions might best be explored in another post.)

Celestial marriage. The fulness of the gospel. The new and everlasting covenant.

These were all code words for polygamy that we still use today. We’ve renegotiated their meaning to just be temple marriage, but that doesn’t mean the roots don’t fester beneath our feet. Plural marriage exists in Mormon heaven. Both President Nelson and President Oaks are married polygamously, believing that they will be with both wives in the next life. There is controversy over whether or not polygamy is required for us to practice in the next life. I grew up being told that I would practice polygamy one day and “love it.” Others never heard such a thing until they stumbled across it on the internet. But I think that’s one of the worst parts about it.

The modern day church has never stated one way or another what the requirement of polygamy will be in the next life. We are cautioned not to speculate or perpetuate rumors, but wouldn’t it make the most sense for the church to just clarify it themselves? Why leave room for rumors in the first place? Simply state unequivocally that polygamy is not an eternal requirement and that women don’t need to lie awake at night fearing an eternal future they know next to nothing about.

But they can’t do that, can they? That would be admitting the ugly truth—that plural marriage was a farce. That it led to abuse, poverty, and broken people. That it helped consolidate structural power into the hands of a few men in a tradition that continues today.

And it would make women agents, not objects: in marriage, in the family, and in church structure.

If women are more than something you collect like tokens to cash in for celestial godhood, then they have the right to say no. To take power. To be in charge of themselves. If we keep that subtle confusion and cultural belief of women as things, equal but also presided over, then they can’t become too powerful to control and bind to otherwise mediocre Mormon men that they wouldn’t be attracted without the priesthood. If the quiet sexism and inequality didn’t exist, then who would populate men’s earthly and eternal kingdoms with children?

When a woman boils down to an object, her consent means nothing. Her opinions and desires are easy to trample or twist into what men want them to be. When a woman is something a man needs to be a god, what stops him from believing that he is a god now, ruling and reigning without consequence or question? When a woman is requirement you must collect like a passport stamp, then the seeds of abuse are fertile for growth.

If I was Sister Doe in that sealing room, I might not have had the control to not scream out loud or break down into loud sobs. I’d probably have to be escorted out before I smashed a mirror. These small thoughts, comments, or jokes are where inequality lives and thrives. This is where women are turned into trinkets. These are the messages we absorb week after week, sermon after sermon, until we forget our own power.

But I am not an object. I’m not a prize for men to cash in for because they served a righteous mission. I’m not a passport to a man’s godhood that isn’t offered equally to me. I’m with Sister Emma—I resist even if they call me rebellious. My Heavenly Mother will not destroy me.

*Name changed at their request to protect privacy.