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.