Clothes make the polyg
Rebecca Walsh does a style review of polygamist clans and finds fashion is a form of mind control, especially in the case of FLDS women whose frumpy pastel dresses have been described as "Victorian" by a shocked foreign media.The compound fence isn't the only cage for the women of polygamy. There is also a prison uniform - yards of pink and blue fabric, inches and inches of hair and ugly orthopedic shoes. ...Far be it from me to criticize Rebecca — lest she open her can of whup-ass on me — but her column omitted a much more familiar example of fashion as control: the walled compound at Salt Lake's Temple Square. Consider mainline Mormonism in general: The "modest" dresses and white, white shirts on men? Even pinstripes are the devil's playground. One General Confernence makes it obvious that for the LDS — dowdiness is next to Godliness.
For the rest of the country, the billowing dresses and poofy French braids must look like a cotton-candy variation on 19th-century fashion or the voluminous folds of a burka.
A case study is the young women missionaries that hunt unwary tourists around the Tabernacle, the wide-eyed innocents that the profane among us have dubbed the "Babes of Temple Square."
(First, what's up with that? Why are only comely young lasses, many from exotic lands, used as bait in the LDS tourist trap? Is there a fear that hayseed Elder LaVarr from Pocatello, say, would be a turn off to potential converts at Mormon ground zero?)
In 2000, the overseers of the Temple Square missionaries apparently thought the maidens were dressing a little too hot. Some were wearing colorful Jezebel-like scarves with their ankle length wool coats — and the coats, sweet Jesus, were sliding toward the pastel end of the spectrum.
An LDS spokesman said the more stringent dress code — white blouses and black or navy dresses and coats — is meant to "make it easier . . . to identify sister missionaries." (As if anyone would confuse them with twosomes of impossibly wholesome hookers plying their trade around the Seagull Miracle Fountain.)
As Carolyn Jessop, a former wife of the bishop of the polygamous Texas compound, told Walsh:
You can modify people's behavior just by putting them in a certain kind of dress. It is a uniform. You have nothing about you that's individual. You're just a part of a whole.
6 Comments:
Glen,
You're really starting to come across as quite bitter toward the LDS Church. You seem to be getting increasingly desperate to turn each of your posts into some rant about the church.
What gives?
So are restaurants using mind control by making their employees wear specific uniforms. Are corporations practicing mind control by requiring specific dress codes. Is the Catholic Church practicing mind control by requiring their official religious representatives to wear cassocks or habits? Organizations have the right to determine a dress code for employees and representatives them. Delta employees are required to wear dress codes when they travel using their free passes. Scandal! I'm sure you have absolutely no complaints with the mind control exercised on Hooters waitresses.
I had to laugh as I read what this columnist had to say about the LDS church. I was a missionary for the church and my choice of clothes were very high heels, sometimes hot pink to match a dress, and wild 80' big hair, huge earrings, and very cute up to date dresses. My mission president was fine with it. I did not even realize it was his business what I wore as long as I was modest. Stop generalizing you idiot.
Lighten up religious-readers. It is a funny comment on how silly Utah looks to the rest of "us." What about wearing special undergarb? That is unique. How about wearing "sheer" white shirts that reveal that sweet neckline of the men's undershirt -- stunning!
The polygs are just funnier (peculiar) because it is lds + Little House on the Prairie.
The lingering question is what type of undergarments to polygs wear?
The article says Jeffs' group is supposed to wear the long stuff. Year-round. But then points out that when Jeffs was arrested, he was wearing shorts.
Hey, let's make fun of the Jews while we're at it (written sarcastically). Ever heard of the Tallit katan? Ha, who ever heard of religious undergarments! Ridiculous! Scandalous!
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