by Shahnana
I can pinpoint the exact date 35 years ago when I stopped liking my body. Before I tell you about that moment in time, I want to mention that my patriarchal blessing tells me that I rejoiced at the opportunity to get a body. That has always resonated with me. My spirit loved having a body — not just for how it looked but because of what I could do because I had a body. Read! Jump! Dance! Sing! Run! Taste! Cartwheel! Kiss! Until this specific date I am referring to I was a happy, healthy, active girl and I loved having a body.
That changed on June 29, 1989 when I went through the temple for the first time. It was the day before my temple wedding. I was a convert to the church and so was my mother. She had only recently gone through the temple herself and was terrified to talk about any part of it with me. The temple ceremony was different then and there was intense emphasis not to talk about the temple outside the temple, so she was nervous to share anything. I had never even seen garments until the day I stood in the temple wearing them. I didn’t get to attend temple prep either. That wasn’t a thing then. I didn’t understand that by saying I wanted to be married in the temple to my husband I was committing to wear garments for the rest of my life. Sure, I had gone to the distribution center earlier that day and the worker sized me up and I left with a bag of plastic packaged garments, but I had no idea what they were until that moment in the temple when I put them on for the first time.
And honestly, I wanted to cry. My first thought was, “This is what my husband is going to see me in for the very first time we are together?” I felt so unattractive in them. They were ill-fitting and uncomfortable. The weirdest part was that everyone kept telling me how wonderful they were and I didn’t feel that way. I was so confused.
For the next several months I struggled with them. I remember they had an elastic band that went around the leg, and so when I wore them with jeans they would constantly ride up and bunch. I was always picking at them and feeling self-conscious. They had awkwardly placed seams that rubbed me in places I hadn’t experienced before in my pre-garment underwear. The tops had a cups for breasts to sit but they were much too large for my minimal chest and so they looked like under-inflated balloons. I might as well have been wearing a sign around my neck that said “small breasted woman,” and that was especially awful as a newlywed. When I looked at myself in them in the mirror all I could see was how unflattering and unfeminine they were. My underwear looked like my husband’s and that felt . . . wrong.
Over the next 33 years I experimented with new styles and materials and I pushed through. I was as devout a garment wearer as a gal could be. And then hormones changed and a long especially hot Texas summer set in and I found myself in a perfect storm. I kept finding myself in my OBGYN’s office with feminine issues. After several cycles of meeting with him, a course of meds, having things clear up, and then finding myself in the same situation again he said to me, “You know this is your Mormon underwear doing this to you, right?” My OBGYN wasn’t LDS, but he had a long line of LDS patients and an even longer history with me. We had been through 4 miscarriages, 5 births, and 30 years of appointments together, and in that moment I was so grateful for his candor. It had never occurred to me. He explained that my Mormon underwear wasn’t really made for a woman’s body which needed a little more room to breathe. He suggested that I change into something that would allow my lady parts to air out at night while I was sleeping. I could wear them during the day all day but I just needed to allow for a little more circulation. He promised that if I would try that it would clear everything up and I would break the awful cycle I was in without medicine.
And by golly, he was right.
I never had an issue ever again.
It was my Mormon underwear.
I noticed two other things that came from that change as well. I liked my body better when I had the chance to wear something more feminine to sleep in. And because I felt more confident about my body in my new sleep-wear, well . . . let’s just say things got better in the bedroom too. Turns out maybe husbands like to see their wives in underwear that doesn’t look like it was made for men. THAT my friends is what we call a win-win!
I’m still a garment-wearing gal. Most of the time. I rarely wear them when I am working out. I wear them sometimes when I am sleeping, but I have noticed a pattern that I tend to sleep sounder when I am not. But if the purpose of garments is to remind us of our covenants, if I am being honest, I can’t really remember my covenants while I am in deep REM anyway. So it works for me.
Here is what I know: There were a couple of garment smack down talks at the most recent General Conference. Afterward it was a hot topic of discussion among my family and friends. Some felt guilty. Some were resentful to be instructed about such a personal thing. My conscience was clear. I had taken my questions about my garment-wearing tendencies to prayer and gotten an answer that it was all good years before. I am convinced that my Heavenly Parents know my heart and they couldn’t care one iota about my garment-wearing exactness.
The other day I pulled out my patriarchal blessing and re-read that line that I love so much. I am happy to be a mostly garment-wearing, body-loving girl again.
Shahnana and her husband are the proud parents of five children. Not because they can check certain LDS boxes but because they are just all around good people. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor in private practice in Frisco, TX. She specializes in working with females 12 and older. Shahna just completed her 8th year as an adult institute instructor and also serves as her stake’s mission prep teacher. She has sent 387 kids on missions all over the world and looks forward to her full inbox every P-day. She spends her free time watching a lot of NBA basketball games (Go Mavs!), reading, and spending waaay too much time shopping at Target.
20 Responses
Were they only one piece garments still in 1989, too? (That’s all my parents ever wore, so at least I was prepared for what they looked like and what to expect – I can’t imagine going in blind!)
They really are such a burden for women’s mental health, physical health and self esteem. Can you picture a church where men had to wear women’s underwear to be considered worthy? It would never happen because the men would feel so emasculated and uncomfortable. It feels ridiculous to even consider, but that’s what we’re doing in reverse. As women we lose our feminity and feel ridiculous in men’s underwear – but that’s just how it goes!
I’m so glad you took control and that you’re sharing your perspective and story. Thanks for the post!
I never though of that but you’re right. What if we suddenly demanded that men wear a lacy thong and a lacy bra. But it rides up my butt! But the elastic is uncomfortable and the lace is itchy! But I don’t feel like myself when I look in the mirror! But the bra is just loose empty fabric that bunches up and looks stupid and is uncomfortable and unnecessary! Yup. I stopped wearing garments about a decade ago and at first it was purely practical. They were not physically compatible with my pregnancy, they triggered constant vomiting by touching my mid-section. And I just kind of never went back. And I do not miss them in the slightest. I feel so much better about myself. I think about these men telling us what underwear to wear and I think how wildly inappropriate it is. When a man looks at a woman and identifies her as not wearing garment-friendly clothes and rebukes her, what is really happening is that man is looking at a woman, picturing her in her underwear, deciding what he has imagined she looks like without her clothes does not suit him, and is demanding that she change so his imagined vision of her is what he wants to imagine. It’s gross. And honestly it feels like idolatry, mistaking the part for the whole. Garments are a symbol of covenants. They are not covenants. Obsessing about garments is straining at a gnat when the real issue is are we building a society that reflects God’s commandment to love one another? Because that’s what building up the kingdom of God looks like in my book. Not picturing women without their clothes and then demanding that women present their bodies in a way certain men like.
No we had 2 piece garments. Thank goodness! I can’t even imagine having to navigate one piecers! Ugh! Thanks for your comment.
Endowed in 1972. One piece garments. It helped that my mother had always worn them, so not a surprise.
That would have been a game-changer for me, wish I could have had the experience of having someone I loved and was close to help me with temple preparation.
Wow! Thanks so much for sharing your experience.
Great post! Thank you for your smart and faithful take on managing garments. My husband was complaining about women who have problems with garments. I had to point out that men’s garments are pretty similar to boxers and tees, while women’s garments are nothing like panties and a bra. Dude!!! Get real!
My sweet husband wouldn’t last a day if he had to wear a bra. Comfort is his middle name and we all know bras are not very comfortable.
Great post!
Thanks Cate.
Great post. I put off getting married because I didn’t want to wear garments.
I am sure you are not alone. As a therapist I have heard many females voice the same reluctance. And it’s not because they wanted to wear booty shorts or tube tops. They just couldn’t get excited about the commitment or the judgment that would come from. not wearing them.
Wonderful article. I love how your OBGYN pointed out the cause if your issues..I love your thought about Heavenly Parents knowing your heart in this matter!
Thats ALL that REALLY matters, right?
Thanks for your comment.
Thank you for being brave enough to share. I liked your comment about how everyone kept telling you how wonderful they were and you not feeling that way and how confusing that is. I have overheard or been in so many conversations where women confess to problems with fit, self esteem, body image, or discussing the “least worst” fabric for hot climates, or what to do about female body issues like periods or nursing, and there is always this feeling like, “am I the only one who has this issue?” And “what is wrong with me that wearing them isn’t wonderful?” Once on a ward camp out, I was quiet with a sleeping baby and overheard a conversation through the bushes. They were obviously escaping from being overheard for a secret conversation about how much they hated garments for camping. And come to think of it, they would have been the old horrible one piece, because if I had a sleeping baby, it was 48 years ago. And we were in Texas, very humid and hot, so of course women hated that extra layer and using the bushes in the one piece long johns. I realized then, that most women hate them and yet publicly there is this talk about how wonderful they are. I got this overwhelming feeling of joy that I had decided to stop wearing them and I was camping garment free.
But a while later, I let some bishop shame me back into them.
I needed ownership of my body, and allowing a church to dictate my underwear gave ownership of my to the men leading the church. They were the ones telling me that I had to wear them, so obeying was giving those men control. As a sexual abuse survivor, I really needed control over my own body. Giving control to anyone else was the same as letting them rape me without so much as a protest. I. Just. Could. Not. Live. that way. Long story, but the way I eventually healed from the abuse was to not let anybody have control over my body but me. And I do not let them shame me for “not keeping my covenants”. If that means I never go back to church, then fine because people just could not accept that God would not ask me to do something that I cannot do without being suicidal. The church claims garment wearing is between the person and God, but I never had a bishop who could accept my reason for not “obeying” and I knew it was not God I was disobeying, but men. So, I am out, and never returning.
I’m just so glad the culture is changing and LDS women are comfortable admitting that this particular aspect of our religious observance is hard!
Finding myself in a similar situation as I heal from a marriage that was psychologically controlling the idea that church men are telling me how to wear my underwear or behave in any manner outside of the reminders to be Christ- like is unbearable. I fought for to many years to escape coercive control to walk into church every Sunday and feel like my voice has no value as a happily divorced- not really interested in marriage woman. Think Celestial isn’t comforting to me after my experience- it feels manipulative
Why I finally quit attending. It just destroyed my mental health, and when I am paying a counselor $200 a week, and all we talk about is coping with church, it just makes sense to get rid of the mental health issue. Just like I could not see my parents daily without becoming suicidal, I just could not expose myself on an ongoing basis to being unworthy if there are any consequences in my life of having been abused. Just like you do not like the constant expectation that you want to remarry, when that sounds horrible, and you just can’t trust men because they expect you to without having to prove themselves to you, there are just some expectation of church that hurt all the time. Time alone doesn’t heal everything, and some scars I just have to live with because it is as healed as it is going to get, at least in this life. The church gives zero help to abuse survivors and I just got tired of not being good enough because of someone else’s sins. If the church put in one one hundredth of the effort in helping the survivor heal as it does in helping the sinner repent, then I would go back. But I just got blamed for being “unforgiving” when the real problem was there was zero restitution. He can repent and fix his life, but I get abandoned and blamed if there are any injuries and get zero help fixing those injuries. Nope, don’t need that. It took me 60 years to figure out that church is worse than no help.
There can be no reconciliation or restitution with an abuser who will not acknowledge the harm he caused to his victims. Devoid of empathy, abusers rarely stop themselves until they are caught. You can forgive and forbear and turn your pain over to God but He needs you to maintain a protective boundary from the people that abused you. Even if the abuser expresses true Godly sorrow, swears he will never repeat his abuse, offers to do whatever it takes to make amends including criminal justice, it would be foolish to forget what he did, foolish to trust him. The risk is too high. The entire Godhead would not want you to put yourself emotionally or physically in harm’s way. Trust must be earned and it’s up to the survivor to decide if and when to trust. Pressuring a a sexual abuse survivor to interact with their “repentant” abuser at family gatherings is cruel and compounds the harm. Space is essential for healing.
I know a woman who was sexually abused by her father. She assumed he would “never” abuse his grandchildren, left her child with her parents and sure enough the abuser found a way to abuse her little child.
Our church is only beginning to understand the lifelong damage done to these innocents robbed of their agency suffering from layers of betrayal and complex trauma. Some leaders now vaguely offer to help when a survivor confides in them and then ask “do you have a therapist?” They recognize this is not their area and beyond their capacity.
Anna, may you feel the loving arms of your Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father supporting you on your courageous journey. May you feel the protection of your brother Jesus who abhors evil and holds fast to the good. May you feel the empathy of your sisters in the gospel standing with you. From what I’ve experienced, peace for sa survivors can come in life as an unexpected gift. But complete restitution for sa survivors may not occur until the resurrection process. The damage done to survivors lies deep in the body’s cells. Mercy cannot rob justice and abuser’s must pay the price whatever that entails. God sweeps nothing under the rug. Millstones await. Opportunities for eternal progression may be granted in some cases. In the meantime hope on. Compensatory blessings sustain us.