Cynthia and Susan share their own experiences, as well as listeners’ stories, in an introductory exploration of the current Latter-day Saint approach to modesty. What are the possible unintended consequences of the rules, rhetoric, and culture in which we’re raising our young women?
Notes:
Reinventing the Swimsuit, Susan M. Hinckley
The Lord’s Standard of Morality, Tad Callister
KAJSA BERLIN-KAUFUSI
Listening to this now while I make pancakes for the kids. I AM SO TRIGGERED. In a good, productive way, so thank you sisters. Thank you for speaking up and talking about this, thank you for advocating for change, thank you for demanding that WE DO BETTER. I have SO many stories related to each of these posts you bring up. Looks like I better get going on my next blog post. All my love, carry on!
Erin
I recently listened to part of this episode with a car full of young women, including my own daughter. They were so relieved to talk to someone about the unfairness of dress standards between boys & girls and loved the idea of having greater freedom to choose for themselves the type of person they wanted to be rather than have it dictated to them. Several of the girls asked if I would send that podcast to their mothers.
Thank you for creating the circumstances for that meaningful discussion.
Arissa
You shared some examples about the importance of not shaming semi-active YW when they show up for activities not following all the ridiculous LDS culture modesty rules. Just want to take one step further into the bigger picture. Years ago I attended my stake youth conference. The psycho stake YW president was going around sending girls back to the dorm to change into pants if their shorts weren’t long enough. She didn’t send the one semi active YW to change out of her very short shorts. A YW with shorts almost to her knees asked her why & she responded “we’re just glad she’s here.” The YW then asked “but you’re not glad I’m here?” & was told “But you’re always here.”
Easy solution- get the culture to judge less & love more.
In the meantime, thank you for your work trying to sort this culture out
Katrina
I would love to see the For Strength of Youth re-written to be focused on standards that hang off of the two great commandments (love God & your neighbor) instead of standards helping everyone fitting a certain norm. (More than just modesty). It felt silly in retrospect that the young women leaders all didn’t go through being told all this while dealing with trying to learn how to buy clothes that fit. Apparently we were so lucky to have everything spelled out for us. 😛
When I was younger, the issues I had with modesty was more to do with styling, and the generational difference with my mom wanting me to dress adult aught styles not my own version of teen styles. (I was the Guinea Pig, my younger sisters had it better). My mom liked natural styles, very low makeup, and she raised us to not need makeup for our self-esteem. I was really shocked when I went to a young women fireside and there was a talk about the leaders finding a young woman’s purse and they looked through it and found out how great a young woman she was because she “took care of herself” (mirror and makeup, I think it was) amongst a couple other things. My mom was like “yeah different people have different ideas about that.” In California I was accepted for wearing makeup when I wanted to, but when I moved to college (SVU) there were certain guys that totally judged me. You obviously don’t have to put makeup on to practice hygiene. It’s sometimes better to NOT in fact. And these people seemed to have a code of acceptable clothing styles too, which was a bit annoying. They would be really mean to the socially awkward dressed people (and I think probably the LGBT+ crowd too just based on who hung out with who. I was bad at realizing who was LGBT until I found out later through fb after we were all graduated. I think some of them labeled me as a goody-two-shoes who wouldn’t be friendly.). So I have extremely strong feelings about that. That portion can be easier to talk to people about why it’s problematic if they’re not open to the other arguments.
Anyways it wasn’t until I got married that I started to have issues with the whole idea of modesty. My husband as a teen totally judged girls who weren’t “modest.” I always thought that guys who did that weren’t spiritual at all. To find someone who was and had those judgements pre-mission just made me realize it was extremely problematic. It’s also kind of funny he felt that way because his member mom is literally a beauty queen and wears things for pageants that are “out of bounds” but he didn’t have an issue with that too much.
The modern idea of modesty was born from evangelicals who didn’t like the sexualized 50s styles. I can’t really find information (web cruising) about when our church adopted it, but it’s been something I’ve been curious about. I’m guessing it would’ve been post 60’s when we moved conservative.
Marie
If God cared about clothing he would have made clothing for Adam and Eve when He placed them in the Garden of Eden. He didn’t. They were naked. And it wasn’t a problem for we don’t know how long. It was only a problem when Satan made it a problem and shamed them. Only after that did God make them clothes. Shame about our bodies comes from Satan not God. Yet in the LDS culture today, women and girls are frequently shamed and judged based on their bodies. Kind of ironic.