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.)
34 Responses
Abby, we are the same person apparently 😂 This has been my experience almost exactly! I just freakin hate them. I remember when someone told me she was allergic to something in the garment fabric that gave her massive rashes so she had to stop wearing them and all I felt was jealousy. Huge, wild jealousy. That was a wake up moment for me. Why was I literally coveting someone’s painful rash?! Underwear shouldn’t be something you pray for medical issues with so you can take them off. Just take them off!
Like you, I’ve discovered how much I love my skin. My body issues are still a struggle at times but I love the feel of clean sheets on my legs, my long hair on my back, even my cleavage in a cute dress. I feel like myself and beautiful!
Ha ha, you’re my twin! Feeling my hair (especially right after I’ve just washed and dried it) wrapping around my bare arms (especially with a slight breeze in the air) feels so incredibly pleasurable – like my body is hugging me. Garments kept my body from touching itself in gentle ways and feeling the pleasure of just … being alive.
I’ve been learning a lot from ex-evangelical sex therapy podcasts (to slightly change the topic 😅) and one thing they talk about for people who grew up in purity culture (as we all did!) is how disconnected from our bodies we all tend to be, and how we’ve been hardwired to feel shame whenever we feel pleasure. (For example, if you masturbate instead of feeling happy because your body just gave you a relaxing, pleasurable, totally free, stress relieving orgasm – yay for our awesome bodies – we feel guilty, dirty and ashamed.) These therapists talk about baby-stepping our way out of the harmful teachings we had ingrained in us by simply allowing ourselves to feel pleasure by like… gently stroking your arm and enjoying the sensation of giving yourself pleasure.
It sounded almost silly, but that advice has been so helpful for me. And my hair on my arms has been the single most pleasurable (non-sexual) touch my body can give itself. I will put on just a sports bra or a tank top with thin spaghetti straps and go into my backyard and just enjoy the sensation of not having garments blocking my body from touching itself. I did not realize how freeing this would be for me until I did it the first time and got unexpectedly emotional about how grateful I was to be able to feel pleasure (instead of guilt and worry about someone seeing me) over my bare shoulders.
I keep unpacking sexual shame and the effects of purity culture and modesty rules on my life, and realizing exactly how much beauty and human connection is on the other side of garments and the rules I grew up with about what my body is for.
Thanks for writing this. I wish things like this were talked about 50 years ago when I was first wearing and hating garments. But I suffered through pregnancies in Florida, suffered milk leaking onto the garments that *had* to be next to my skin, so the milk trickled down instead of being absorbed by the pad that is supposed to catch leaks. Suffered through constantly staining the old one piece crotch flaps that crept in under a menstrual pad.
I wish I had anybody’s permission to quit wearing them just because I hated them and tell the church, “well, then I guess I am not temple worthy. Too bad for the church, wasting a perfectly good member like me.” I had a better reason to stop wearing them than just because I hated them. But it was a reason that bishops could not begin to grasp.
In fact, it took me years to be able to verbalize why, as a child sexual abuse survivor, I just could not wear garments. It was because when someone else dictates the choices about my body, it is them exerting ownership of my body. So, when my father sexually abused me against my will, he was proving his ownership of me and my body. When the church tells me that I must wear specific underwear, it is them proving ownership of my body. In order to heal from the abuse, and not just switch abusers, I *had* to be allowed to control my body. And, the choice had to be something I liked and was good for me.and garments were not good for me. They were poorly fitting, bulky, hot, awkward, and they were not designed with the female body functions in mind. They were designed for men then handed to women to make do.
I quickly became suicidal each and every time I tried to wear them. But I wasn’t healed enough to stand up to the priesthood authorities and flat out tell them, the decision is between me and God and you are not part of that decision. So, I went inactive. Then started missing the connection to church, missed attending with my husband and went back. I would soon be pressured into the whole “temple worthy” crap and quickly became suicidal again. Over and over. I finally told my LDS FS counselor that I didn’t need another appointment because I was going inactive. All we had even been talking about was my frustrations with church, how I was pressured to forgive *instead* of healing the damage or protecting my own children from a known abuser. I was pressured to allow my small children to have a normal relationship with their grandfather, expose them to a child molester without me “hovering” to make sure they were never alone. I was told going to a support group to try to heal was “wallowing in it” and selfish. And I was pressured to trust and obey priesthood leaders as is normal in our church, and there was no excuse for panic attacks when some pushy priesthood stuck out his grabby hand to shake hands with his other hand on my shoulder. My body was not mine to control who touched me any more than I was free as a child to say no to my father. Oh, I probably offended them when I backed away in obvious fear. But the church had become a secondary abuser, repeating all the patterns of the childhood abuse.
So, because the church became kind of a secondary abuser, it took me completely leaving the church to heal the abuse. I had to stop believing the temple was anything but made up to bind people to the institutional church. I had to stop believing in a “prophet” who married a 14 year old girl. I had to completely stop believing in patriarchy. And I had to stop wearing garments for life, knowing no one could ever force me to wear them again. I own my body, not some men in SLC.
Oh my goodness, yes! That’s one of those things you can’t always see or verbalize when you’re in the middle of it, but with a lot of space and healing you can look back and realize exactly why garments were so harmful to your mental and emotional health.
Unless you object, I’ll share your comments on the blog IG page. I think what you’re saying is so important!
As a person who drifted into being a deist and/or agnostic, it came to feel “disrespectful” to wear underclothes representing a promise made to a God I wasn’t sure even existed anymore. So I thoughtfully stopped wearing them during the week as a “sign of respect”, a symbol of honesty about my uncertainty. I wore them church-only for a while, but then what people thought about my upper knee became the least of my church worries.
A friend of mine who had stepped away from the church stayed on the phone with me in solidarity the day I cut up brand-new garments I wasn’t ever going to wear as a sort of memorial. I am truly grateful that she did that for/with me.
I kind of wish I had done someone ceremonial with my garments when I stopped wearing them. I think it would have been healing, but I was too traumatized at the time to come up with a ritual on my own. Instead they sat in garbage sacks in my closet for at least a couple years – then one day I realized I was totally done and never wanted to open those bags ever again. I just walked out to the trash can on a random Tuesday and tossed them all in, including my temple clothes. It felt like I’d lifted a huge weight off my chest when the trash lid crashed back down. There was no chance I was going back again, and they wouldn’t be in my closet just a few feet away from me every morning when I was getting dressed anymore. (So maybe it was kind of a ritual after all.)
That makes sense to me too. I think I actually did that with some items.
My mom taught me that we were supposed to cut out and cut up the emblems to convert the garments into regular cloth (it sounds super folklore-y now in hindsight), so I have sat down and completed that process a few times over my lifetime for garments that were past their prime on my own.
When it came to the never-worn garments in their packaging, I was up a creek without a paddle. There wasn’t a local donation center that I could hand them off to, and I wasn’t close enough friends with anyone to hand them off that way.
I knew I would be doing that process again of cutting them down and I needed the moral support of a friend to get through it. It really was the mourning of the money invested in those garments and the finality of admitting I was never coming back to wearing them (at least those specific garments) that was heavy. So, I created a ritual phone call to help me through what needed to be done.
For myself, I had issues with the bottoms. They never fit right and I ended up with UTIs. Also, it was a terrible experience during my menstrual periods. I grew up in a part member family and my mother used to say how ‘sacred’ garments were and how God protected you when you wore them. My BYU roommates who served missions would leave them in the sink. I remember finding salt by the sink and asking my roommate if that was part of the ‘ceremony’ of cleaning garments. I know I was naive, but I didn’t know as at the time it was highly discouraged from talking about them or any part of the temple ceremonies. **That’s probably why I had a HUGE negative reaction during my first time at initiatories. I was quickly taken to the temple president after I refused to finish the procedure. That was in 1985, I’m glad now we’re being more transparent. I also wish they listened to women on temple clothing designs.
I try to imagine what it would’ve been like going through pre-1990 with all of the penalties and throat slitting and disemboweling and stuff. I was not a violent person. I can’t imagine going in as a young bride or innocent missionary and having to do what you did on the temple back then! It was strange enough with just the remnants. Bless your sweet soul in 1985 for not being able to finish the initiatories and trying to process that whole experience. Someone should really run recovery groups for the 90s temple people to heal in!
Underwear torture to underwear happiness…Yes, it is glorious ❤️
Someone should start a post-Mormon underwear line and that could be the tagline, or the lyrics to their TV jingle. 😅
Thank you so much for saying this out loud. Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish this was talked about more openly everywhere: thank you 🙏
I’m happy to discuss my underwear out loud to everyone, because not that long ago I was way too afraid to do so. Many, many of us are thinking the exact same thing – but not many of us are in a safe position to be vocal about it. I’m very grateful to finally feel confident in my underwear choices now, so whoo hoo!
I really like this post, Abby. I especially appreciate your straightforward frankness with this line: “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.” When you strip away all the Church-specific labels as you have, it really lays bare the ridiculousness of all this patriarchal desire for control!
People on the outside looking in are like, “WHAT?!” when they see our Mormon weirdness. Yet if it’s what we’ve been exposed to for years (many of us since infancy) it doesn’t always raise the red flags it should. Had the same thing happened to me two years earlier, I probably wouldn’t have batted an eye. I would’ve thought *I* was the one out of line for not wearing my garments daily, not them for holding meetings about my underwear.
What I love about this post is your simple, clear message: not liking garments is enough of a reason to stop. It is enough it is enough it is enough.
Thank you for this validation – for reminding us that bodily autonomy matters 🙂 Any institution that takes that away should be met with skepticism.
I must have a short torso but my whole 40 year garment wearing experience wasn’t the sleeves but the constant anxiety that they were showing below the bottom of my top, especially when I bent over. It was so damn hard finding tops that were longer than that garment top. I didn’t know about the buy petite size hack. Oh well not a problem now because I choose my own underwear, among others choices I make without any input from nonagenarian men.
The way your ward leaders treated you was so invasive and inappropriate. Unfortunately, Church priesthood councils seem to have these kinds of gossipy, boundary violating, and judgmental conversations regularly. It us part of the accepted culture. Leaders pretend this is for the spiritual good of members, but it’s harmful and unethical. One time a leader told me they’d been chatting with the bishop about how they both suspected I was having certain personal life problems. It was traumatic for me. I haven’t forgiven that bishop. We make people into project and raise awareness of very private things almost no one should know about. Right now a leader seems to be turning our friendship into a project after I mentioned not belonging at church and since my RS attendance has declined. I susoect there was some kind of convo that filled in blanks no one actually knows the answers to behind my back.
Yes, I really hate how church members talk *about* others (most especially women) instead of talking *to* them. Rather than ask me what is going on with me, the leaders always ask my husband as if I was a three year old and he is my parent who knows everything about me and knows perfectly what is best for me. It becomes gossip and speculation and most importantly, it doesn’t solve the problems because often the information is just wrong. It is hurtful and especially treats women as children.
Anna, something like that happened to me recently. I shared one of my unconventional comments that made a leader concerned. The leader went to my husband to ask what I meant and what is going on beyond the surface as if he can understand and articulate it and I can’t. Or maybe he’s just anxious about asking me directly. When I bring up concerns directly with leaders, they often deflect them and avoid any real conversations. They seem to be a little more willing to have these with other men. It’s a symptom of inequality and the parent-child relationship the church fosters with ordinary members and esp. women.
Wonderful post, Abby! I remember with delight the day my beautiful spouse stopped wearing her garments. Who knew that wearing just a bra and panties could be so energizing for marital relationships.
I’m so sorry for the horrible experiences you endured with male priesthood discussing and then formally judging you on your choice of underwear. When I was in that role, I truly did not appreciate how bizarre and inappropriate such a thing is. Thank God I can clearly see it now, and how I wish it was understood by all of our church leaders.
Thanks for your comment, Jennifer! ❤️ Of course you didn’t see what was wrong with it when you were in leadership – you’re been taught since birth that was the way things were supposed to be done. We’ve all done things we regret for that exact reason.
I recently had a conversation with a good friend and she said she loves putting on her garments and thinks of the scripture in Isaiah 52:1 every day: Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments. I was stunned. I’m really happy for anyone who finds it a privilege and a joy to wear garments, but they do not represent anything positive for me. They represent a lack of personal choice, control, and one more instance of regulation by men who have never taken the time to consider a woman’s perspective.
I experience the same pleasant reminder you mentioned with your long hair brushing your shoulder when I choose my own underwear and notice the sensation of the fabric on my thigh — such a foreign feeling! It feels so liberating to make my own choices rather than always looking to some external source for authority and permission. When I put my 2 hoop earrings back in my ear after a 15 year hiatus, it felt equally glorious. These are decisions we should be making for ourselves.
One day, during a temple recommend interview, I would love to play a few seconds of Scarlet Johansson being interviewed about her role as Black Widow and the interviewer wanted to know what kind of underwear she could wear under her skin tight suit. Her response: “What is going on? Since when did people start asking in interviews about people’s underwear?…What kind of interview is this?” Are links allowed in comments? https://youtu.be/DHxzxgwJTFc?feature=shared
I personally haven’t had the courage to ditch garments altogether, but I kind of envy those of you who have chosen personal authority over concerns about disappointing other people. Deciding not to wear garments because you don’t want to wear garments is indeed, the very best reason!
That interview with Scarlet makes me laugh. Yes, WHHHHYY do men think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask grown women about their underwear? We have got to break this cycle of insanity!
And you should take your time with garments and deciding if you want to let and wear them sometimes. The problem isn’t actually the wearing of garments – it’s the lack of choice about whether you wear them or not. If you feel free to wear them some days and not others – you’ve reclaimed an awful lot of personal authority and that’s a huge win. ❤️
I find myself reluctant to share (you know just in case someone might read this who would report me). But some many of you are willing to share and your courageous comments are helpful.
About 5 months ago I made the decision one day to start wearing garments for liturgical purposes only. For the past 24 years I would have likely never been willing to acknowledge any frustrations or dislikes with garments. Yet the headquarters push in April to tighten the reigns was the breaking straw. I am not going to allow the church to take away my agency.
Reflections:
I was surprised how easy it was to make this change after wearing them for decades.
I no longer spend a ridiculous portion of my day at work constantly picking a wedgie or adjusting my clothing.
I love feeling a cool breeze through my clothes against my skin.
I love not constantly having to yank my shorts/skirts down lower or bend down carefully.
I am substantially less moist in the vaginal region which has become an issue the older I get.
I now realize that I have had absolutely no personal relationship with my body and have evening enjoying getting to know my whole self.
My desire for sexual intimacy has increased and frankly it’s so much easier to consider without the garment barriers.
My laundry has greatly reduced.
I probably could come up with more, but those are what come to mind. Thankfully my husband has been supportive in regards to my decision. I am definitely reworking each aspect of my relationship with the church and am not sure yet where my journey is taking me. I only really have one concern: potentially hurting my husband and children as they may have milestones in the temple. Still working through navigating that concern, yet I have been at peace through this process.
If you feel nervous paying with your real name, you are always free to use a fake name or just “Anonymous”. No worries. (But also, it can be really empowering to speak up while using your real identity and not be forced to hide anymore, so if that’s where you’re at to, more power to you!)
I also was surprised at how easy it was to stop wearing garments. (Actually, what a joyful relief it was!) There are so many little things that I hadn’t even considered before that you also mentioned – like less laundry, and so much less tughing and pulling at my clothes every single movie of the day. And the other one you mentioned – more sexual desire – is so common when women switch to pretty underwear. Instead of feeling like a frumpy dork all day under your clothes, what a difference it makes to feels beautiful instead. Surely men AND women can benefit from this, so why did the garment mandate persist??
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to not wear them. I felt zero guilt, shame or regret… Just relief. I’m in a similar situation with my spouse and children still being active and I have at least one temple wedding on the line. It makes me sad but it is what it is. My husband is supportive thankfully. I cannot go back to garments though. I put a knee length slip on a few weeks after I quit wearing garments and as I pulled the fabric over my legs my mind and body revolted. I felt trapped in that silky fabric and ripped it off. I was shocked at how much I needed the control over my body and clothing, shocked at how much I had given away. I put in a much, much shorter slip that never would have covered my g’s and was ok. I won’t go back.
Jenifer Finlayson Fife and her online lessons were what helped me start to gain my personal authority. I realized I was in charge of my body and I didn’t have to tell anyone how often I wore my underwear. So I stopped. I stopped letting any man interview me and ask me questions and I stopped wearing underwear that men asked me if I wore.
So freeing. I need no reason other than I do not want to wear them because I do not want to. I relate to all your words.
Wearing period underwear instead of garments during my period was the best kind of slippery slope away from church regulations about my body. Well this a lot easier than what I’ve been trying to do for years! Rosie Card (who used to own Q Noor temple dresses) used to host a FB group for LDS women and garments came up frequently. I wonder if groups like that, where we had some anonymity, allowed women to start being more open about our issues with them. (Instead of wrongly assuming everyone was perfectly fine with them except for me.) I remember one conversation in particular, in regards to heat, shorts and garments. I shared that my hack had been to wear a thin t-shirt material skirt with slip shorts over my garments, more air could circulate and wasn’t as restrictive as tight Bermuda shorts. Someone replied, “so you wear THREE layers on the bottom?” That struck me, I thought I had been clever but I was only making it harder for myself. That was the beginning of the end of garments for me. I never spent another summer with them. In a cold climate, I thought I might miss them during winter. But turns out your wool base layers work better if polyester isn’t blocking your skin! Ha. I finally understand layering. Most above 50° days I wear a tank top and a long sleeve and I can take off the long sleeve when I’m hot and I’m actually cool again because I’m not wearing an unnecessary layer underneath. My sex life is better, I feel more desirable. I can make clothing choices that are determined by ME not by arbitrary rules I had no say in creating.
I know some of my children will probably attend the temple one day and I am sad that I won’t be a part of that for them but at least they can get actually married beforehand now. Having true autonomy over my underwear and my clothing in general is worth the loss of my recommend.
Periods and garments have never worked together, even though they are such a totally normal part of half the population’s regular life. I’m trying to think of something normal (but private) being made so incredibly messy and difficult for men. Maybe pooping? 😅 What if men had to jump through ridiculous hoops just to poop every day without getting it all over their clothes because of the weird underwear they were assigned to wear did not allow for basic, normal body functions? How long would the impossible-to-poop-normally in underwear be required for temple attendance if it interfered with priesthood leaders’ normal lives the way garments interfere with menstruating women’s lives? Women put up with so much complete insanity because we have no vote or real authority in the church.
I think periods start that slippery slope to regular underwear for a lot of women.
Thanks for your comment, Jennifer! ❤️ Of course you didn’t see what was wrong with it when you were in leadership – you’re been taught since birth that was the way things were supposed to be done. We’ve all done things we regret for that exact reason.
I’m with you, Abby, I don’t like them. I stopped wearing garments during the last couple months of my second pregnancy and never went back. I don’t miss temple attendance in the least, but I do regret how temple attendance and garment-wearing can be a dividing line in the Church. People like me who don’t attend the temple are second-class citizens in spite of how we may contribute to the Church and align with its teachings in other ways.
While I try to keep my hope alive that the Book of Mormon is inspired, I think Joseph Smith was not inspired when he introduced temple rituals (which I see as largely borrowed from other sources and created to consolidate his power in unrighteous ways), so I don’t have faith in the temple. It just doesn’t feel “true.” That makes the decision not to wear garments pretty easy.
I forgot to add that when I suffered a traumatic fall breaking three bones and dislocating my ankle, the EMTs had to cut through my sweatpants to stabilize my leg. I took my bottom garments off and never put them back on. I never liked garments. Very uncomfortable, unflattering, and a nightmare during my periods.
The start of my garment shift was hot, sandy, buggy Wyoming trek in 2019. Even though I was campsite support staff and changed into basketball shorts almost immediately upon arrival, I developed a pretty severe heat rash, aggravated by all the sandy grit and lack of showers – it was bad enough at my bra line that it oozed and I couldn’t wear a bra for more than two hours at a time for months afterward without irritating the area and oozing again. And then the blessing of home church in 2020 when I learned so deeply that God doesn’t care what I wear, for worshiping via Zoom or daily life. I started wearing my beloved pants to church and picking my underwear and clothes appropiately for each situation and weather condition, especially as my body started feaking out in perimenopause. God understands and loves me exactly the same as before.