Can We Talk About Garments?

The following first appeared on Public Square Magazine. 

If you were to learn about Latter-day Saint garments only from mainstream media coverage, you might assume that women experience them primarily as a burden: physically uncomfortable, medically suspect, sexually inhibiting, or symbolically oppressive. Some women do experience them that way, and their stories should not be dismissed. But the current conversation is incomplete. In recent years, journalists have both given garments increased media attention while giving heavy deference to those who don’t like them. The media has been far less interested in women who experience garments as sacred, comforting, protective, inconvenient but worthwhile, and simply woven into an ordinary life of faith. The result is not exactly a false picture, but an unbalanced one.

To understand the distorted public conversation, it helps to begin with a few basic facts.

The garment, or, more properly, The Garment of the Holy Priesthood, is the two-piece underclothing that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have been through a covenantal temple ceremony called the endowment wear (hence its colloquial name, the temple garment). Many receive the endowment before a mission or temple marriage, though others do so for personal spiritual reasons.

The garment represents the coat of skins given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and serves as a reminder of the promises made in the temple. It provides spiritual protection to its wearer. And it also reminds the wearer of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which symbolically covers our sins and weaknesses and wraps us in mercy.

The garment design, like other components of the temple, has been updated many times since it was first introduced by Joseph Smith. Originally a long-john one piece, the style and material options have expanded over the years, most recently with a sleeveless top option released for both sexes in 2025.

Endowed Latter-day Saints are expected to wear the garment “day and night throughout [their] life.” At the same time, there is variation in practice around exercise, medical issues, postpartum recovery, and other personal matters, and these questions are not dictated in detailed church policy. The church handbook also states that “it is a matter of personal preference” whether a member wears other undergarments over or under the garment.

Historically, the Church has been cautious about publicly discussing the temple garment, but in recent years, it has released several press releases and an informational video about the garment for a non-member audience. In 2014, one such press release indicated that popular pejorative terms such as “magic underwear” were “inaccurate” and “offensive,” and requested that media give Latter-day Saints “the same degree of respect and sensitivity that would be afforded to any other faith by people of goodwill.” In response, The Atlantic published a respectful piece, but headlined it “Mormon Underwear, Revealed.” Indeed, mainstream media coverage of the garment very rarely avoids a wink at the sexual—on the same day of the aforementioned Atlantic headline, The Washington Post published an article titled, “Mormon Church peels back mystery of sacred undergarments.”

The problem, unfortunately, goes beyond headlines. Hanna Grover, 27, a content creator who posts humorous videos about Latter-day Saint life, was interviewed for a 2025 New York Magazine piece entitled “Mormon Women Are Going Sleeveless.” She told me that her interaction with the writer was very respectful, and that the writer took the time to “understand my background and how garments were a part of my life even before I was endowed.” But Grover said she was surprised upon publication to find that she provided the only positive garment commentary included in the final article (the majority of the interviewees identified as ex-Mormon).

Part of what makes the fixation so frustrating is that religious clothing is not actually unusual. Many faiths use clothing, coverings, or other embodied practices to express devotion, modesty, consecration, or separation from the world. Garments are perhaps unique in that they also serve as underwear, but they are also comparatively less restrictive than many other religious vestments.

Amanda Volk, 42, a lifelong member of the Church in Kansas City, Mo., told me that as a girl in central Kansas, she often noticed Mennonite women in long dresses and bonnets and asked her mother why they dressed that way everywhere they went. Her mother used those moments to explain that many religious communities use dress to express devotion, modesty, and religious dedication to God—and that Latter-day Saint garments belonged to that broader pattern. Seen through that lens, garments did not strike her as something extremely foreign.

Any casual observer can easily note that public discourse around garments tends to center around women. Perhaps women’s garments receive disproportionate attention because women’s bodies already receive disproportionate public scrutiny.

At the time that garments were first introduced, especially in the American West, both men and women wore similarly high-coverage clothing. Since then, secular fashion trends have pushed women into ever skimpier clothing, while most men remain relatively covered. Endowed women often shop at specialty stores to find higher coverage clothing, especially formal attire. Some may view this as an indictment of the secular world, not of a church that expects basically the same standard of modesty for both sexes. But other women, saddened at the prospect of layering up a summer sundress or buying long jeans to cut into knee-length “jorts,” sometimes see this as a manifestation of a patriarchal church.

Still, if public coverage often foregrounds women’s dissatisfaction, my own interviews suggested that women who experience garments positively are rarely as simplistic as outsiders assume. Their experiences differ widely. Some adjusted quickly and easily. Others experienced real frustration, trial and error, or wardrobe overhaul while still coming to see garments as meaningful.

Kenzie Spafford, 22, lived in Las Vegas when she was endowed. Shortly after, she moved to Tokyo, Japan, notorious for its hot and humid summers. Then she received a mission call to Gilbert, Arizona. “I’ve experienced a lot of heat since being endowed,” she told me. She worried that it would be uncomfortable wearing the extra layer of clothing in the heat, but she found “it doesn’t really bother me at all. I hardly notice how hot it is with a super thin extra layer, it feels like nothing.”

Arantza Condie, 35, a convert and mother of three, was endowed three years ago. She told me that preparing to wear garments was nerve-wracking and that she had to replace most of her wardrobe. Initially, she was disheartened in trying to find clothing that worked. It was a lot of trial and error. But over time, she said, she came to enjoy the new style that was emerging. Unexpectedly, she found herself criticizing her body less and feeling more comfortable in her skin. The most profound change in her, she said, did not occur because the garments “forced” her to dress modestly, but because she was confronted with the reminder of Christ, and His love and sacrifice for her, every morning she put them on.

Other women I talked to described a similar transformation of perspective—when they began to see the garment as enabling them to have a greater closeness to and understanding of the Savior, those feelings of restriction began to melt away.

Alli Stoddard, 21, is a returned missionary and student at BYU. She explained, “While garments do help us to stay modest, that is not why we wear them … When my perception of garments (was) that they were for modesty, I had very little desire to wear them, but when I understood that they represent Jesus Christ covering us, my love for my garments grew exponentially, and the struggle of wearing them disappeared.”

How individual members discuss garments varies greatly from family to family. Because Latter-day Saints promise in the temple to not reveal some aspects of the temple ceremony, some members are cautious in general about discussing any aspect of the temple outside its walls. In my experience discussing garments with women for this and previous articles, many said that an overly cautious home culture around the topic led newly endowed women to feel confused and discouraged. By contrast, women who grew up in homes where garments were discussed openly and frankly—and where parents intentionally prepared their children for garment wearing—felt more comfortable and better prepared for the transition when they were endowed.

Several of the women I interviewed reinforced that point. Volk told me that she grew up in a home where her parents were committed to wearing their garments daily, and that her mother was wise in helping her children dress in clothes even at a young age that would help prepare them to wear garments someday. Ellie Lewis, a 21-year-old California native and BYU student, chose to be endowed just after high school graduation. She said that with her mother’s advice, she was quickly able to find materials and fits she liked, and that because she already dressed conservatively, she did not need to make a significant adjustment in clothing style. After only a few days, she said, the additional layer felt normal; within a week, she “no longer felt fully put together without them on.”

I asked Becky Squire, 42, a popular influencer who shares devotional and lifestyle content along with garment-friendly fashion, about the tension between discussing the garment in a way that acknowledges both its sacredness and its impact on the mundane daily life of the wearer. “Every single time I post about them, I always include the purpose and tie them back to Jesus Christ,” she said. “I see so many online posts about them and it’s all about fashion. Period. And it’s okay to share them like that, but (it’s important to acknowledge) the power that comes from wearing them.” In speaking with her own daughter about garments, she told me “my main goal was to teach and prepare her before she went through the temple. It was never about what you could or couldn’t wear. It was about becoming someone who wants to make and keep covenants and live in God’s presence.”

Many common critiques of garments center on fashion, comfort, sexuality, and body image, while others raise concerns about breathability or recurrent infections. These concerns should be handled carefully. There does not appear to be published research showing that garments themselves cause UTIs or yeast infections, though gynecologic guidance does suggest that tight, non-breathable, moisture-trapping clothing can contribute to irritation and yeast overgrowth. That makes concerns about fit, fabric, heat, and individual susceptibility more plausible than sweeping claims that garments as such are a proven medical hazard. For many Latter-day Saint women, garment-wearing also begins around marriage. Because many devout members reserve sex for marriage and are endowed shortly beforehand, the onset of wearing garments may overlap with sexual activity, hormone changes, pregnancy, new hygiene patterns, or other bodily changes. That does not make women’s concerns unreal, but it does complicate simple claims of causation. The various fit and fabric options, as well as the recent addition of a full slip garment that does not require a traditional bottom, complicates the claim that the Church is indifferent to the physical needs of women, even if those adaptations do not resolve every difficulty for every woman.

Outsider commentary often frames women’s garments as evidence of oppression, while showing little curiosity about women’s own moral or spiritual interpretations. All of the women I spoke to emphasized that the narrative of oppression was inconsistent with their own sense of agency.

“The world has become so big on living your truth and encouraging us to find our voice, but only if our voice and our truth agrees with everyone else’s,” Spafford explained. “I’m comfortable in my skin and my body, I don’t need everyone else to be comfortable with it too … It feels ridiculous to always have to defend my freedom when I’m choosing it everyday, nobody is forcing me or going to make me feel bad if one day I stop wearing them. I would be the only one affected.”

Larisa Banks, 40, a Utah mother of five, made a similar point: “No one is forcing me to wear my garments … It’s not about control, but covenant.” To her, outsiders may understandably see oppression, but inside the practice she experiences garments as something chosen as part of her relationship with God. “Receiving my endowment healed my soul. I was struggling with a deeply personal trial and the experience I had in the temple taught me that this life is just a blip of eternity. Just a blip. And wearing the garments is the least I can do to show my devotion and appreciation for Jesus Christ. He saved me when he didn’t need to and my garments remind me of that daily.”

Ultimately, garment conversations are so difficult because the garment often serves as a proxy for a woman’s larger experience in the Church. It is hard to separate one’s feelings about garments from one’s feelings about covenants, authority, womanhood, marriage, community, and belonging. Women who feel spiritually fed by the Church and at peace within its moral world are often more likely to experience the garment as meaningful rather than burdensome. Women who feel estranged from the Church or wounded within it may be more likely to experience the garment as a concrete manifestation of that pain. This does not make either experience unreal. It simply means that the garment is rarely just about the garment.

When women struggle with garments, Banks said, the first question should not be whether they simply need more faith. “First, I would ask someone struggling to wear their garments what is making it hard right now? … Are they struggling emotionally or feel like they lost some sense of identity? Are they feeling less feminine or less attractive? Are they dealing with a changing postpartum body or sensory issues? Are they struggling to understand the purpose of the garment? I would tell them garments aren’t meant to erase identity. They’re meant to anchor it. I would tell them, it’s ok that it feels different and that the Lord isn’t surprised by them feeling anything they are feeling.”

Likewise, Spafford said she would advise someone who does not have a good relationship with their garments, “Give it time. Garments are an adjustment, but if you go in with an open mind, an open heart, and a desire to follow God, you’ll figure it out a lot faster than if you fight it.”

That, perhaps, is what much of the current garment conversation lacks: not more exposure or more voyeurism, but more open mindedness. A woman who experiences garments as painful or burdensome should be taken seriously. So should a woman who experiences them as sacred, anchoring, protective, or joyful. And any fair attempt to understand Latter-day Saint women and their garments ought to make room for both.

What are You Really Wearing When You Wear Your Temple Garments?

Cover image via Gospel Media Library.

There is an unforgettable poignancy in the image of the early saints standing on the banks of the Mississippi river, ready to begin their journey to some unknown destination in the west. I’m certain they couldn’t help but look back one more time at their beloved temple on the hill. It was a temple that had required great sacrifice and ignited such excitement. An editorial in the Times and Seasons published in May 1842 said:

Never since the foundation of the Church was laid, have we seen manifested a greater willingness to comply with the requisitions of Jehovah, a more ardent desire to do the will of God, more strenuous exertions used, or greater sacrifices made than there have been since the Lord said, “Let the Temple be built by the tithing of my people.”

It seemed as though the spirit of enterprise, philanthropy, and obedience rested simultaneously upon old and young, and brethren and sisters, boys and girls, and even strangers, who were not in the Church, united with an unprecedented liberality in the accomplishment of this great work; nor could the widow, in many instances, be prevented, out of her scant pittance from throwing in her two mites. . . .

And now, they would never see it again.

So, why did the Lord ask it of them? Why demand such sacrifice and inspire such anticipation only to have the first company of saints leave even before it was dedicated? (Though the endowment ceremony began to be administered before the temple was complete).

President Dallin H. Oaks shed light on that question in April 2024 general conference when he said, “we have the testimonies of many pioneers that the power they received from being bound to Christ in their endowments in the Nauvoo Temple gave them the strength to make their epic journey and establish themselves in the West.”

They needed to be endowed with power to be able to endure what was ahead. In a way, they didn’t leave the temple behind, they took it with them in the covenants made with the Lord there and the power and protection He promised in return.

We also take our covenants with us from the temple in the form of our temple garments. But how often do we think of our garments and what they symbolize as lending us real-life power and protection like that? Would we be willing to build a temple and sacrifice so much only to leave it behind so quickly, as long as it meant we could have our covenants and wear their symbols upon us from that time forward?

With the work of temple building hastening to an almost unfathomable pace, that’s a question we don’t have to answer, but it does make you stop and wonder how you regard your own garments or the prospect of a future endowment if you haven’t yet been through the temple.

When a singles’ ward bishop first presented the idea to me that I might be in a good place in life to go to the temple and receive my endowment for the first time, I was hesitant. I was 24 at the time, and not dating anybody. I had always assumed I would go to the temple in preparation for marriage, this seemed sort of out of the blue. In addition, it intimidated me to wear garments. I didn’t think it would change my wardrobe very much, but it still felt somehow like I was retaining some level of freedom by not entering that stage yet.

It was easy, with as little understanding as I had, to fixate on the clothing implications rather than understand what my bishop was really inviting me to have.

I put off the decision and was leaning towards a no, when a friend confided in me that she was struggling with a severe pornography issue. It made me livid that the adversary could’ve found such inroads with a person I knew to be so good and bright and desirous for righteousness. As I listened to her confide some more of the details of the issue, I realized that if Satan’s battle advances had made it this far into her life, then I absolutely couldn’t let him have the victory of my hemming and hawing over going to the temple, when my only real reasoning was that I didn’t want it to establish me as eternally single, and I didn’t know if I’d have to toss out a favorite skirt or two.

In that moment, I realized the extent to which my going to the temple truly would be a victory over the adversary and not just a logistical burden for me. Though I hadn’t been yet, and I didn’t fully understand why, it just felt like it was a win that I wanted to take on behalf of a friend who felt like she was losing to him.

When I got off the phone with her, my next call was to the temple to set a date.

That date was almost exactly a decade ago. Though I yet have much to learn about the things that we do in the temple and all that it means, my appreciation for the opportunity to wear garments as a symbol of my continuing determination to be victorious on the Lord’s behalf has only grown.

But what else do our temple garments symbolize and why are we asked to wear them?

The first thing that may come to mind for many is the way that they encourage modest dress. And the way that dressing like that often makes us stand out in a crowd as a way to represent what we believe. Indeed, when I was living in New York City through a sweltering summer, I was asked multiple times whether I was Jewish or Muslim because my dresses and sleeves remained so long despite the persistent heat. It was an invitation to a conversation about my beliefs, which I appreciated. But I don’t think that’s the main reason the Lord gives us the opportunity to wear our garments.

In fact, modesty and how that modesty represents the Church is so often the hill on which the conversation about garments lives and dies. In particular, with the rise of social media and influencers who are members of the Church, but may not present themselves in a way that you would expect a member of the Church to, there are those who are quick to comment that they should wear something else or others that begin to think, “well, if she can wear that, why shouldn’t I?”

But we are living in the fulness of times and getting stuck on judging each other’s clothing choices on social media is one of the emptier of conversations. Joseph Smith said in his history, “God has begun to make manifest and set in order in His Church those things which have been, and those things which the ancient prophets and wise men desired to see but died without beholding them.” He was talking about the restoration of the temple ordinances. It astounds me to think that I take for granted something the ancients would’ve loved to see, but died without getting to. Our unprecedented access to temples isn’t about having the tools to tell someone by exactly how much their outfit isn’t garment appropriate, it’s about becoming a covenant people and inviting others to be closer to Jesus Christ on both sides of the veil.

In her April 2024 general conference address, Sister J. Anette Dennis said:

The garment of the holy priesthood is deeply symbolic and also points to the Savior. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and had to leave the Garden of Eden, they were given coats of skins as a covering for them. It is likely that an animal was sacrificed to make those coats of skins—symbolic of the Savior’s own sacrifice for us. Kaphar is the basic Hebrew word for atonement, and one of its meanings is “to cover.” Our temple garment reminds us that the Savior and the blessings of His Atonement cover us throughout our lives. As we put on the garment of the holy priesthood each day, that beautiful symbol becomes a part of us.

Sister Dennis added, “There is deep and beautiful symbolic meaning in the garment of the holy priesthood and its relationship to Christ. I believe that my willingness to wear the holy garment becomes my symbol to Him. It is my own personal sign to God, not a sign to others.”

We are wearing the atonement and are able to draw constantly from its power when we choose to wear our temple garments. Our choice to wear that symbol and embrace its promise that we can try again even when we’ve made the same old mistake and have Christ’s power to draw from when we are at our weakest, isn’t really about anybody else.

But that also means we are giving up more than we realize when we give others the power to influence us not to wear them, particularly to please the world. In the recent documentary, TikTok Boom, a young girl commented that though she had started her TikTok account as a place for political activism, she couldn’t help but notice that the content she posted where she had more skin showing got more likes and more engagement. That inevitably led to a change in her fashion choices and some evolution of her content, even though she originally joined the platform to discuss ideas that were important to her.

Though she was not a member of the Church, her story provides a compelling example of the ways that we can slowly begin to trade the promise of having the atonement always with us through the persistent choice to wear our garments in all possible circumstances, for “likes”—be they proverbial or literal.

As noted in a memorable passage from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, (a correspondence between two devils):

…doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy [God]. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…

We could, perhaps, replace “Hell” with disconnection from the Divine. The road to finding ourselves painfully distanced from God is more often filled with casual distractions and passing preoccupations than with a passionately expressed argument in favor of a life of evil.

When we become increasingly casual about our garments, we lose out on all that is promised by embracing them. As Sister J. Anette Dennis says, “Our Father wants a deeper relationship with all His sons and daughters, but it is our choice. As we choose to draw nearer to Him through a covenant relationship. It allows Him to draw nearer to us and more fully bless us…Through honoring our covenants, we enable God to pour out the multitude of promised blessings associated with those covenants, including increased power to change and become more like our Savior.”

I can’t imagine anything I want more in life right now than increased power to change. And that is a promise quietly lying in wait as we faithfully increase our engagement with the work of the temple, keep our covenants, and wear our garments.

We are choosing to put on the atonement every day as we choose to put on our garments, inviting Jesus to cover us with His redemption. When you think of it in those terms, the question of how often to wear them or not wear them becomes very simple.

For there is never a day when we don’t need His atonement. What a privilege we have to be able to show Him again and again symbolically that we will continue to embrace and utilize that greatest gift He gave to us.