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I’m super late to this party, but I just have to add my thoughts to this discussion. First off, Joni, I can completely relate to you– we are so similar! I am also a 35-year-old woman who can’t stand garments. We should be best friends. 
I’m also short-ish– 5’3″– but not super thin, and I have really struggled to find garments that fit properly. The length of the regular bottoms go past my knee, but the petite bottoms cut into my thigh. I also have a small chest, and the tops are either super baggy in the breast area and bulk up under my clothes, or the carinessa tops are so high on my chest that I have to wear a high-neck top under everything. Aside from feeling completely un-feminine (my husband once remarked about the “bag lady” look), I also feel very anxious about people being able to see my underwear through my clothes. When I am wearing normal pants, you can see the seam-lines of my garments. When I am wearing a normal tee-shirt, you can see the seam-lines and the bulk of my cap sleeves and neckline. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like garments are way more visible under clothes than normal underwear, and that makes me very uncomfortable.
We say that the purpose of wearing garments is to remind us of our temple covenants, but, as has been said, they have turned into a way for us to police each other. A ward friend recently gossiped to me about another ward member who has been showing up at her son’s baseball games still wearing her gym clothes, and she’s quite visibly not wearing her garments. The insinuation was not just that this woman wasn’t wearing garments, but her overall testimony and commitment were questioned. Garments have become a way for Mormons to quickly visually assess who is in and who is out. Never mind that the Lord looketh on the heart.
Quote:What’s the return policy on garments?
If you can go to a distribution center, they can be returned for different sizes. I’m not sure if they can be mailed back and new ones purchases online.
I would call a major distribution center and ask.
I called the clothing place that services our temple and the policy is pretty much what I remembered. Everything you open to try on, you buy. Only unopened packages are returnable – which I completely understand – but it makes getting outfitted frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive. If there are significant negatives already operating in ones mind, this doesn’t help. In the case of the too-high-under-the-arm top mentioned above, I’d get out the scissors and sewing machine. But most of the women’s fabrics are not easy to sew on with average home sewing machines and average skills. Dax wrote:Ray I have to disagree.
The changes they are making, increasing the length of the sleeves, legs and height of the neck and arm pit openings are not in response to trying to make helpfull fitting changes. The increase of fabric is about keeping more of women’s bodies covered at all times period.Yes that is my opinion but there is no reason my garment top sleeves are now longer than a normal modest tshirt unless it is to force me to wear a larger size shirt or start to wear long sleeves more often. These changes are about control or we would have sleeveless tops that would help with a large portion of the sizing problems and need for women to wear multiple layers at all times. Garments are becoming about female modesty controlcloaked in the untouchable doctrine of covenant keeping. I guess I don’t see garments as something that was ever strategically planned out to become this way as much as simply another LDS tradition that has taken on a life of its own. So maybe they started out as being mostly related to the temple endowment ritual but at this point they largely serve the purpose, intentionally or not, of being yet another obedience test to effectively separate the faithful members from the rest of the world similar to the Word of Wisdom. From that perspective, it makes perfect sense for them to basically force people to choose to wear different clothes than they would otherwise because if Church members could easily wear almost anything they want the same as everyone else then they wouldn’t be much of a real test of obedience or separate faithful Mormons from the rest of the world the same way anymore. Personally I don’t believe that most Church leaders have any malicious intent in this case, to me it simply looks like something they have already gotten used to and that they assume is already the way it should be similar to many other established LDS traditions. The only way around it I see if you don’t believe this is necessary is to stop caring quite as much about what other Church members think about you which is definitely easier said than done in many cases.
I was outside yesterday mowing our lawn and I was thinking about how to conserve water in drought-stricken Utah. Never mind my thoughts about how we’ve created a standard for lawns that wastes much of our water supply, I started thinking about our garments. I do our laundry and probably a load’s worth of Garments every week and that’s a load that wouldn’t be done if we wore underwear like the rest of the world. I thought it’s too bad that the LDS population uses more water for laundry than others. I imagine that there are hundreds of loads done every week in every stake that are primarily garments. Anyway, imagine if we could save that water! Imagine if we were a little slower to activate the air conditioning because we’re wearing an extra layer compared to others. Days later would add up in the long run and maybe we wouldn’t push our thermostats so hard to keep cool. Just imagine . . . Ann wrote:In the case of the too-high-under-the-arm top mentioned above, I’d get out the scissors and sewing machine. But most of the women’s fabrics are not easy to sew on with average home sewing machines and average skills.
You aren’t supposed to alter your garments, or the mattress tag police will come and get you. But it seems fair that if
theycan alter the garments (by making the same size bigger, or adding extra fabric to the armpits) weshould be able to alter them too. Joni wrote:You aren’t supposed to alter your garments, or the mattress tag police will come and get you. But it seems fair that if they can alter the garments (by making the same size bigger, or adding extra fabric to the armpits) we should be able to alter them too.
I too have heard that we shouldn’t alter the garments, but that was always presented with the assumption that the alterer would be a woman trying to wear something immodest or revealing – like a low cut evening gown. I believe the conversation changes (or at least should change) when the proposed modification is to get the garments to fit your body type appropriately and comfortably.
Joni wrote:You aren’t supposed to alter your garments….
I’ve heard that, along with a flood of other directives, old wives’ tales, judgments and generalizations. The sound of it all is deafening, but I finally stopped and listened to the person I had completely discounted and devalued – me.If I can’t be trusted in this area, I’m also too incompetent to drive a car, fly unescorted, or vote. If I need to cut away fabric so that my recently-purchased garments work with my existing wardrobe, I’m okay with doing it.
I was about to say just about what Ann just said. They don’t ask about it in the temple recommend question, so don’t modify them so you can wear a spaghetti strapped dress – but adjust them to “work” for you. Old-Timer wrote:[Admin Note]: This is a forum to discuss ways to stay LDS. It is a site to discuss issues and provide support to help people know they are not alone in seeing things differently than the orthodox norm. It is a site to discuss those issues, and it is a safe site to vent in an attempt to move toward and develop peace and personal faith in whatever form that takes.
This is NOT a site to call for the elimination of the temple or the garment or any other aspect of Mormonism that is central and sacred to most members. It is not a site to position the LDS Church as being in opposition to God. Take that stuff to other sites. It is wholly inconsistent with our mission.
Just wanted to thank you for these comments. This is what I love about this site. I’m not looking for reasons to leave the Church. I’m looking for reasons to stay in it, even if I find myself frustrated with some of its policies (okay, a lot of its policies). I love that I know that whenever I feel as if I’m a horrible person because I don’t fit into the perfect little Molly Mormon mold, I can come here and find people who are going to see things the way I do and still encourage me not to throw the baby out along with the bath water.
You guys want to hear something truly shocking? I’m cleaning out my bedroom today and I came across a bag of old garments. (They are maternty garments. My youngest is seven. Yeah…) And I simply threw them away. I didn’t cut them up to be unrecognizable and I didn’t burn the markings. Frankly, after three pregnancies + years in storage my old maternity garments are nasty. I have no desire to spend twenty minutes putting my hands all over them. The way I see it, the cutting them up is so people don’t come across them in the trash (who’s digging through my trash? And why would they be more interested in old underwear than, IDK, a credit card bill?) and figure out what they look like. But, ever since the Church newsroom put out the garment video, I’ve come to the conclusion that we are no longer obligated to keep the design a secret. As far as burning the seals… that’s always struck me as particularly culty, especally since my faith transition. If the garments aren’t magical or mystical in any way (as the newsroom video claims) then what is the purpose of cutting them up and burning them? Plus, all that polyester is going to produce some unpleasant fumes.
Basically, I’ve decided that since I didn’t actually covenant to it in the temple, I am no longer going to consider myself beholden to the rules of garment disposal that aren’t actually written down anywhere (at least not that I can access; it might be in CHI Vol. 1) and are only spread via word of mouth. So I put my old G’s in the trash can.. But I still did it when my husband was at work so he doesn’t find out
😳 Joni wrote:And I simply
threw them away.
Been there, too. I still have and wear garments sometimes. I don’t hate them, like I’ve been trying to stress, but when I don’t need the particular ones in my hand, I also simply throw them away. I don’t do it gleefully, but it is a relief to have cut them down to an appropriate size in my own mind.Joni, I totally agree with this. I have started just throwing them away now too. Which for some reason was very liberating! I was actually really annoyed with that video because I had been told how sacred they were and that we don’t show them to people. I was also taught to cut out the symbols and burn them. The video made all of that frustrating to me. Guess they aren’t that sacred anymore. But, like Ann, I still wear them and most of the time, but I really wish I could just stop. Partly habit, partly family garment checking , I just can’t bring myself to completely be done with them. So I take that as a sign I am not quite ready. But I am so bloody hot already this summer, dang layers! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Slowly, I feel the same. I have recently been wearing them a little less. Maybe just the top or the bottom, depending on how obvious it is. I feel so much cooler without them, and much more free. In fact my clothes fit better. But my husband has no idea and I don’t intend to tell him. I just change my clothes when he is not in the room. I don’t even feel guilty about it, and that is huge for me. They have lost their magic to me, just a bit. I remember the first time they were put on my body in the temple, it was as though something that had been missing all my life was now there. It was strangely comforting. I wish they still gave me that comfort but they don’t. They have become mortal, if that makes sense.
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