There was much rejoicing on the Church campus around Temple Square yesterday, as word of some policy changes for Church employees (at least those on that Church campus – I do not know how they affect Church employment elsewhere) circulated among employees. Surely the most important of those changes was an announcement that paid family leave would now be offered to both new mothers and new fathers. One of my friends received that word while he and his wife were getting to know their minutes-old daughter; they will be among the first to benefit from the change.
Important as that is, I suspect the greatest glee came with announcement of changes to the employee dress code: Men can vary their wardrobes with the addition of light-colored shirts! Hurray! Oh, wait. Yeah, while that’s true, it’s something many employees, at least at the Church History Library, have been getting away with for years, wearing the palest pastel colors on judiciously chosen days.
No, really, all those happy dances, the thunderous cheers, the tears of joy, came from the announcement that women employees may now wear pantsuits to work, even in the offices and hallways of the Church Office Building, Church History Library, and associated buildings. Imagine! Why, that’s a positively cutting edge development, bringing the enlightenment of the 1960s to downtown Salt Lake City!!
Okay, I jest. A bit. It is a welcome adaptation.
Women’s dress has often been an issue in the LDS church, we all know. I first thought of writing a post tracing attitudes toward women and pants (slacks, trousers, jeans, shorts), but quickly realized that was a dissertation-level subject, far too ambitious for a post. So sights were lowered, and this covers but a few general principles, with one data point example from our not-too-distant past.
So far as I am aware, the earliest pants-related issue in Mormon history is the proposed – short-lived, mocked by nearly all – “Deseret Costume” of the 1850s, an outfit designed and favored by Eliza R. Snow to curb the “waste” inherent in constantly changing and expensive fashions for women. The Costume included a full-skirted short tunic with several inches of pantalettes peeking out below. It did not catch on. (Gee, I wonder why?)
In the 20th/21st centuries, we’ve seen the discussion of pants-for-women take three forms:
- Taste: While trousers might be appropriate for women on camping trips or working in the garden, certainly no lady would be seen in pants in public, anymore than she would be caught walking around on the streets in her nightgown, or wearing curlers to the grocery store.
- Modesty: Pants reveal too much of the female form, the claim goes. If they must be worn at all, they must be loose enough not to be too revealing. Ditto, especially, for the length of short pants.
- Politics: The hubbub over “Wear Pants to Church Day” in the recent past evidences the power of pants-on-women to be a political, even subversive/rebellious idea even in the 21st century.
Curiously, at the very moment I heard about the dress code change yesterday, I had a relevant item on my screen, dating to 1967, one that could be used to illustrate all three concerns of taste, modesty, and politics:
Through much of the 20th century, Relief Society lessons, including visiting teaching messages, were printed in the Relief Society Magazine a month or two before they were to be taught. Those lessons covered only eight or nine months, however – the Relief Society, Primary, and MIA (but not Sunday School or priesthood quorums, which functioned year-round) either went on hiatus during the summer, or provided a modified, recreation-based program for the summer, before relaunching their programs again with the opening of the school year (oh, how Utah-centric we were! The presumed rural life with its extra summer workload shaped the church year for us as much as the liturgical calendar shapes the high-church worship of other churches today!)
The Smithfield Stake in Utah’s Cache Valley evidently intended their Relief Societies to continue visiting teaching even during the summer, and provided locally written messages for the sisters to deliver. (I don’t know how common that was; I was unaware of the practice anywhere until yesterday.) The message provided to sisters in June 1967, read:
Visiting Teacher Message
June – Smithfield Stake
OUR STANDARD OF DRESS
At our February Stake conference, the YWMIA representative called attention to the LDS standard of dress as well as other standards. We hear a lot about this in connection with our young people, but can we expect them to uphold the standard if we as parents don’t set the example?
If we dress our small children in scanty, short clothing, are we not setting a pattern of immodesty for them as they grow up?
From a pamphlet given to our youth during the last year, we have the following information on the subject of dress:
“It is difficult to make an over-all statement concerning modest standards of dress, because modesty cannot be determined by inches or fit since that which looks modest on one person may not be so on another.”
Our youth are advised to wear clothing that is comfortable without calling attention to a person’s body. No woman looks as lovely as when she is properly and fully clothed. What woman can suppose that ugly knees and bony shoulder blades can add luster to her charm?
Pants, not too tight fitting, are appropriate dress for work in the yard, hiking, traveling to the mountains, camping, or participating in active sports, but should never be desirable attire for shopping, at school, in the library, in restaurants, and especially not in the chapels of our church. It is not appropriate for young men to wear extremely tight fitting pants either. Of course, those who have been through the temple are expected to wear clothing of appropriate style.
Church standards regarding the appropriateness of dress should be a constant guide to the youth (and parents) of the Church wherever they are, so they will always be comfortable knowing they are within the realm of good taste.”
This message covers the ground of both taste and modesty. The references to bony knees and bony shoulders also strikes a very familiar chord – in my youth, it’s the way modesty was nearly always taught: Bare backs, bare shoulders, bare knees were frowned on because of supposed ugliness, not because of any sexualized interpretation.
But that one line regarding pants and women (“Pants, not too tight fitting, are appropriate dress for work in the yard, hiking, traveling to the mountains, camping, or participating in active sports, but should never be desirable attire for shopping, at school, in the library, in restaurants, and especially not in the chapels of our church”) – and it was directed solely at women, because the young men are addressed in the next line with an “either” – was not sufficient to convince one young Smithfield woman of the propriety of wearing pants at all. She sent her copy of the message, with that sentence carefully underlined, to the “I Have a Question” department of the Improvement Era, asking Elder Joseph Fielding Smith for his input.
“I’m enclosing my visiting teacher message for this month to you concerning the sentence I have underlined,” she wrote. “Is loose-fitting pants appropriate for these occasions, or are they definitely against church policy?” She needed to know, because the goal of this young woman and her husband, “is to make the Celestial Kingdom, so we want to keep the Lord’s commandments.” (I do not have an indication of Elder Smith’s response, if any.)
We’ve come a long way, baby.
Great, again. Thanks, Ardis.
About three years ago, “Wear Pants to Church” Day coincided with the parting address of a young elder whose family hails from Tonga. There were at least three men present wearing lava lava’s. For some reason it made me really happy to see men wearing skirts to church.
I grew up in Smithfield and remember this well. That stake conference was in February of my sophomore year of high school, and this particular advice became A. Very. Big. Deal. We heard about it in YW all the time. Since the YWMIA representative undoubtedly preached the same doctrine in other stake conferences, I mark this as the beginning of the current focus on head, shoulders, knees, and toes.
You must remember that in those days, the high school dress code prohibited girls from wearing slacks. Miniskirts were at the height of their popularity. My mother was extremely angry when I experimented by hemming up one of my skirts to mid-thigh. (I had legs worth showing off back then.) Girls were regularly required by school authorities to kneel, thereby demonstrating that their hemlines were at the middle of their kneecap. It would be several more years (after I had graduated) for the rules to be relaxed and allow slacks, but (gasp!) never anything remotely like denim or jeans. Through all of my high school career, however, our gym uniforms included shorts with about a 3 or 4 inch inseam. Appropriate dress for the prescribed activity, I suppose. Those of us who had to walk a mile or so to school or wait at frigid bus stops sincerely wished that policy extended to regular school clothes.
I had a lovely, stylish coat-and-sleeveless-dress ensemble. The coat was a nubby, loose-weave, cream linen fabric with a narrow navy and yellow windowpane check. The navy linen A-line dress had its neckline and armholes accented by a bias binding of the coat material. Oh! How very sophisticated and beautiful I felt in that outfit!
After I married in ’73, of course, I could no longer wear sleeveless clothes. I passed it on to another girl. The next time I saw it, I was horrified to learn that they had attached the sleeves to the dress and turned the coat into a vest! it was awful! But it was Modest.
I would also like to note that dressing very small children in scanty clothing, such as just a diaper, is usually done to avoid excess laundry when they spit all over it, to keep them cool since some of them are chubby with rolls and creases that hold the heat, and because naked babies are so darn cute.
The Deseret Costume is great! Uncomfortable on hot days, and twice as much material as a skirt or pants. That Eliza R. Snow sure knew how to curb waste.
The rural liturgical year is an interesting thing to consider. Summer is pretty boring in the traditional liturgical year, too. I don’t know whether that’s to accommodate rural workloads, or if it’s just because all the high-church finery is too hot to wear summer, though.
“Ugly knees” was an unexpected approach to a dress code. Surprising, too, that “Of course, if you’ve been to the temple, wear appropriate clothing” was an afterthought. Dress advice when I was pre-temple age seemed to reflect more advance preparation — anything that might expose a temple garment is frowned upon, even if you haven’t been.
The general idea that standards should be the same for kids and parents continues to drive me nuts. (“For the Strength of YOU”) and all that. Leads to infantilization of adults and particularly singles — it’s probably a great idea to chaperone youth dances, but it’s just insulting to do the same for mature adults.