Last week, my 39-year-old niece, a mother of four, started a Facebook thread about the note-passing self-appointed BYU modesty cop. The responses have been interesting. Only one of fifteen or so friends/family even slightly defended the guy. And most of them thought the BYU modesty standards have crossed over into the land of ridiculousness.

Today, my 68-year-old TBM sister added her thoughts.

>>It's very interesting to me that, in retrospect, my mother, who was a stickler on so many issue, and very active LDS, was quite liberal in how we dressed. I clearly remember wearing short shorts and bare-midriff tops every summer of my childhood. I also wore strapless formals on more than one occasion to Church dances, and a spaghetti-strap formal in a road show. Mother had some summer dresses that showed a bit of cleavage. I'm trying to remember when all the harsh lines were drawn on what is modest and immodest.<<

So it's not just the younger members who wonder what the heck is going on with modesty standards. Even mothers and grandmothers are scratching their heads about "harsh lines."

Having been outside LDS culture for more than 30 years, it's interesting to check back in time to time and see how much things have changed. Like the old boiled frog analogy (which is bogus, by the way), active members experience the changes gradually, so they don't notice. Every now and then, though, some of them will think, "Hey, it didn't used to be like this. When did the change happen?" I think some (many, I hope) are starting to realize the church they grew up with, the church they love, doesn't really exist anymore. It has morphed into this harsher, bleaker thing.

My Grandmother has pictures in strapless dresses and tank tops, but she always says things have changed. It is fun to listen to her stories, because the church has changed so much even in her time.

Sister Bednar does not appreciate or approve of your pretense that there is any controversy or gray middle ground on this issue. The way has clearly been defined by the church. Cover up that pornographic female anatomy! The campus at BYU is not some warm up staging area for washings and annointings (where bearing flesh is warranted).

Wasn't Brigham Young seriously upset with the young women in his day because they were showing ankle?

I think it happened in the early 90s. It was maybe my second year of girl's camp when we all got a memo that had exact measurements for modesty. That was the first time I ever heard that your shorts could only be 2" maximum above the knee, and all shirts had to have a sleeve length of no less than 2 1/4" long. So, bye-bye cut-off jeans & cap sleeves, which are still okay to wear to the temple, but I guess that doesn't matter, since you'd be wearing your magical chef's uniform anyway...

I'm thinking it was sooner than that. It predates my growing up in the 80s.

That very well may be...there were always what seemed like ridiculous modesty standards, but that was the first time we actually got a memo before girl's camp. They even had looseness standards about t-shirts and those god awful long shorts. I think the "proper" level of looseness was that you had to be able to fit 3 fingers sideways in the hem of your shorts...it was really ridiculous. We had 5 girls all in at the same time & couldn't buy new school clothes because of having to buy virtually all new clothes for girl's camp! And the shopping was excruciating! Not to mention camp leaders going around with tape measures all week!
Even at school, shorts/skirts could be mid-thigh and shirts sleeveless. I think that says a lot, when you can go to a prep school, but your uniform is considered licentious by church standards! LOL!

I grew up in the 70's and remember a drawing of a girl in a knee length skirt in one of the MIA handbooks. My mother forced me to wear knee length skirts, but I was the only girl in my ward. The rest wore the mini mini's that were popular with "normal" girls. However, I don't remember anything about needing sleeves or needing shoulders to be covered, and I had several sleeveless (knee length) dresses that I wore to church in the summer.

In the mid to late 70's I remember girls who left for BYU or Ricks in mini mini's coming back for holidays in mid-calf length skirts. I don't have any recollection of whether they were still wearing sleeveless tops or not.

My SIL TBM bishops wife is so confused that she has told the family that she would pose for Playboy if she were 20 yrs old again! Yet she regularly dresses like a pioneer/quaker when going on a picnic to the beach.

Mormonism is confusion.

kids dressed like kids--even MOST of the TBM ones. Actually my friends who were from a very fanatical family were the loosest kids I ran with!

BUT I never thought in terms of "will I be able to wear garments with this?" Even when I was in my 20s in a singles' ward, I wore a sleeveless dress to church (for me, who is very modest mormon or not--that was risque). Nobody batted an eye--even the mormon men I worked with didn't bat an eye.

It has become ridiculous. It seems there is a competition for dowdiness.

cl2 Wrote:
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> It seems there is a
> competition for dowdiness.


Oh yeah, competitive righteousness. I ran into that a lot.

I just thought of a great thing the women of BYU could do if they ever wanted to protest this nonsense.

They could go to the testing center en masse wearing Burkas!