Posted by:
rogertheshrubber
(
)
Date: May 18, 2011 10:24AM
I was never one to take my own temple garments very seriously. I grew up in FL, and we never kept the house very cool, so as a kid I usually just hung out in boxers at home. My DS would always frown and say someday I would have to wear garments.
After going through the temple, I found as many reasons NOT to wear my garments as I could, including
1. I was playing sports, or was planning, at some point in the next 24 hours, to maybe play sports,
2. I was doing "manual labor," (which, I could rationalize, included scrubbing the floors or pushing an automatic mower) and didn't want to mess up the "holy" clothes,
3. I was having sex with my wife, planning to have sex with my wife, or hoping against hope that sometime in the next 72 hours my wife would give into my begging and have sex with me,
OR
4. It was just too damn hot.
I was aware that this mentality was not in line with the church, but after going shirtless most of my life, I just couldn't get into the habit of double-layering when doing so was uncomfortable.
But I was lucky enough to be a man.
My now-ex-wife is the youngest child from a storied pioneer clan. She didn't have it so easy. In fact she had (and has) it downright awful.
Her approach was to catch little tips from her older sisters about how to make her garments less conspicous, and to find out when she could get away with not wearing them without condemnation. Her sisters even provided her with some 30 year old garments that were extra short, telling her she was lucky to have them because you cannot find them in that size anymore.
LDS women have the worst luck in underwear! The fabrics are flimsy. They are uncomfortable, tight in the wrong places, awkwardly sized (do they fit ANYONE?!), and don't fit underneath anything but the most conservative, long clothing! Whereas mine looked just like boxer-briefs and a t-shirt (with inconspicuous magic signs), my ex had to wear pioneer granny panties and a Shakespearean blouse, complete with tell-tale lace linning that made her stick out like a sore thumb in any situation where she was changing clothes around others.
Now tell me, why MUST the women's garment be 75 years behind fashion, when men's appear almost normal?
This says so much about what I believe are the dynamics of the church. Women learn, and then perpetuate, ass-backwards modes of living that MARK them as belonging to the fold in each and every aspect of their existence. They must "belong" to the church in a much more intrusive and soul-crushing way. I think women's garments are just one example of taht.