Church's Modesty Standards Still Affect Me

This past August marked my second year of being out of the Church.  For the most part I'm doing well.  The only current goings-on I know about the Church are what my LDS family members and friends post on Facebook.  Most of the time they're inspirational quotes from Church leaders, and I usually scroll past those posts.  Occasionally something will catch my attention that I just roll my eyes at, like this past General Conference when some guy made up the word "ponderize" to try to make a point, and six or seven of my Facebook friends started using that word.  Stuff like that is really gimicky, and I just move on.  But every once in a while something catches my attention and it affects me strongly; that happened this past Thursday, and that's what I want to talk about here today.

In one of my first posts of this blog I listed the social reasons why I left the Church, and the first thing on the list was that the dress code and modesty standards skew members' views of sex and their understanding of sexuality.  What led me to that conclusion was an article I read online entitled "Men, Sex, and Modesty."  Well, this past Thursday I saw an article written by a woman named Tracy entitled "Perverting Modesty" that one of my Facebook friends "liked", and it was from the same website where the "Men, Sex, and Modesty" article was found, only written two years earlier.  It talks about how the Church's standards of modest dress affected Tracy, who was a convert to the Church.

Here is the article:  http://bycommonconsent.com/2011/07/09/perverting-modesty/

When I read that article, bad memories and feelings came flooding back to me.  It broke my heart to read about Tracy's experience.  To read about the embarrassment she felt when some "well-meaning" woman told her that the dress she was wearing—which made her feel pretty and was nice enough to feel specialùwas inappropriate, hurt my heart.

Reading this article on Thursday reminded me of an unexpected experience I'd had the day before.

I wear this shirt around the house sometimes:  https://www.pyramidcollection.com/itemdy00.aspx?T1=PB5103+BL+2X3X  because it's one of the styles I like, and now that I'm not a member of the Church I can wear whatever I want.  Wednesday I wore this top with a recently-purchased floor-length red skirt.  I'm overweight and so I often don't feel very attractive; but I was surprised to find that as I wore that outfit around the house that day, I felt tall, I felt poised, and I felt pretty.  When my husband came home from work, he saw me and said I looked voluptuous, and that added to how good I felt.  But earlier that afternoon I'd had a strange experience.  I had walked out the front door and around the side of the house to bring a bag of trash to the trash bin, and I realized that I was hyper-aware of what I was wearing.  The only people outside were a woman my age with her young child, and I don't think the woman even saw me, but in my mind I felt like all the neighbors could see me from their houses and that I was being judged for what I was wearing, both because it's not something people usually wear, but also because of the amount of skin I was showing (midriff and shoulders).  It was then that I realized that the Church's standard of modest clothing still affects how I think others see and judge me.

I talked a little bit in my "Control" post last year about my problems with the Church's attempts to control its members' sexuality.  I'm going to elaborate on the topic specifically regarding clothing by using my own personal experiences, because since writing that post, I've come to better understand the issue of the Church's dress standards.

The Church has very strict dress standards for its members.  I was regularly taught that our body is a temple where the spirit of the Lord can reside if we're clean and virtuous, and we're supposed to keep our body covered to please the Lord.  Any time members start reading the Book of Mormon over again, they usually make it to at least Jacob, and in Jacob 2:28 we read, "For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women.  And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts."  There are other scriptures from the Bible that also talk about the virtue of women: Proverbs 12:4 says, "A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones," and Proverbs 31:10 says, "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies."  The way a girl or a woman dresses is a superficial and utterly wrong way to judge her virtue, but that's the reality of LDS culture.

As a teenager I was taught that it's up to us girls to keep boys' thoughts pure by keeping ourselves modestly clothed, which included wearing shirts that had sleeves that at least covered the shoulders, and shorts and skirts that were no higher than the knees.  This caused me to believe that boys were so easily aroused that shoulders and knees were enough to put immoral thoughts in their heads.  I also was instantly resentful of any Mormon girls who showed up to church or school wearing shirts that showed their shoulders (or more) and skirts that came up to the mid-thighs.  In my mind, they were taught the same standards that I was, and now they were going to get the attention from boys and I wasn't, because of how they were dressed.  It seemed to me that they were trying to get the boys interested in them by dressing that way.  I got that idea from the "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlet, which says in its Dress and Appearance section: "Never lower your dress standards for any occasion. Doing so sends the message that you are using your body to get attention and approval and that modesty is important only when it is convenient."  Whether or not that was the case with each girl, I don't know, but I believed it; I believed that's what those girls were doing, and I thought it was unfair.  I'm just glad I never said anything to them about what they were wearing; if I had, I would regret it now.

As a woman I see that the problem is just as bad for adult women.  Matthew 5:28 (and 3 Nephi 12:28) says, "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."  As we women remember from our Young Women lessons, men are overly-sexual and the sight of shoulders and kneecaps are enough to get them sexually aroused and lustful.  Thus, any woman who knowingly dresses immodestly at church is causing other women's husbands to commit adultery in their hearts.  Not all women consciously realize that's what's going on, but subconsciously that fear is absolutely there.

The Church leaders don't have to constantly remind adult women of the need to dress modestly.  The temple garment ensures that hem lengths will be a certain length, because having garment sleeves and legs sticking out from underneath clothing looks stupid.  But not only that, the judgmentalness (is that a word?) of other women will be enough to keep women in check.  As Tracy showed in the "Perverting Modesty" article, there are plenty of women in the Church who are more than willing to point out clothing of ours that's "inappropriate" and "immodest".  Shaming can go a long way in regulating behavior.

Once I left the Church, almost like magic I was no longer judgmental of women wearing spaghetti straps or skirts that came above the knees.  I distinctly remember one day shortly after leaving the Church, I saw a woman walk past me in a store wearing a tank top and I thought, "Her shoulders are showing... and it's fine! ... She looks fine."

That was a turning point for me.  Over the next few weeks I discarded my old Church-dictated modesty standards and I examined my wardrobe and played around with hem lengths, determined to discover what was flattering on my body and what helped me look my best.  And guess what?  The styles that make me look my best and that make my body look the most proportional are considered "immodest" by Church standards.  And I found myself not caring, because I actually looked good now!  I had been looking disproportional all these years and I never noticed because up until then I had only been concerned with "modest" hem lengths and good colors on me.  And it turns out that my husband doesn't care, either.  I asked him on Thursday night how he would feel if I wore yesterday's outfit in public, and he said quite honestly that he'd be fine with it; it wouldn't bother him at all.  I asked him why not, and he said he didn't know.  I suspect it's because he knows I'm not out there trying to seduce people with showing some skin.  He knows this is my style (I wear it often at home) and that I'm comfortable in it, and I'm guessing he likes that I'm comfortable enough with my body to express myself in the way I dress, and that I would have no ulterior motives if I wore outfits like that in public.

I admire the people who aren't afraid to express themselves in public through the way they dress, even if they're what American society considers "unconventional" styles.  It takes courage to go against the norm, and I'm working up to it myself.  Unfortunately, members of the Church aren't as free to do so.  If you go against the Church's approved dress standards, you risk getting ostracized by the members (mostly the women; it's different for the guys), and because the social aspect of church is such a big part of the LDS experience, you will very quickly find yourself on the outside of all social circles.  You'll probably get called into the bishop's office for a little chat, too, which is embarrassing.  Your options are to conform, to not conform and get ostracized, or to leave.

I truly hope the leaders of the Church will reevaluate this fixation and obsession with dress standards, because these standards are very superficial and they are what causes such judgmentalness among the girls and women of the Church.  And yes, there is causation there.  But I know it will never change.  The Church likes to pride itself on standing out from the rest of society, of staying firm to "God's" dress standards while the rest of the world changes their fashions, and of "being in the world but not of the world."  Not only that, but the Church also has scriptures like this: "What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same." (D&C 1:38).  So as long as the Church leaders feel that these dress standards should stay the way they are, then they're supposedly speaking for the Lord, and so nothing will change.  And millions of girls and women will continue to be taught that they are directly responsible for keeping the minds of boys and men pure, and they will continue to judge one another's virtue and interpersonal intentions based on the length of their clothing.

The author of the article spoke the words of my heart when she said: "I wish I could erase this twisted idea of modesty from my experience."  I've shed a lot of the Church's view of modest dress from my mind, but part of me is still affected by it as I found out last week, and I still have a way to go before it truly doesn't affect my life anymore.  I want to feel free to express myself through my clothing without worrying about who's judging me for showing more shoulder or more leg than is Church-appropriate.