Mormon Women Are Going Sleeveless

The new garments are the talk of TikTok.

On a cold October Tuesday, 40-year-old Joni Bonnemort was driving through her home state of Utah when she hit a traffic jam near a Latter-day Saints distribution center, where practicing Mormons buy religious books, knickknacks, and clothing. She wasn’t sure what the holdup was until she started scrolling through TikTok. Her feed was full of videos of women lined up around the outside of the store, eager to purchase the church’s newly released sleeveless temple garments, the two-piece white underwear worn by adult members of the LDS church as a sacred reminder of the wearer’s covenants with God. For Bonnemort — an ex-Mormon who left the church ten years ago — the news brought back memories of members chastising girls for wearing tank tops or showing any skin at all. “Growing up, a big part of my experience was being shamed,” she said. “And one day, it just changed.”

Since the late ’70s, temple garments have featured shirts with cap sleeves and shorts cut just above the knee. The garments — which cost anywhere from around 65 cents to $6 apiece (sometimes more for speciality items) and must be purchased at stores owned by the church — are meant to be worn day and night and removed only when necessary, like for sex and swimming. (“Can you DoorDash garments?” a friend asks Jen Affleck in a 2024 episode of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, after she forgets to pack hers on a trip.)

Fabrics and styles have evolved throughout the church’s 200-year history, but the latest redesign, made from a quick-drying polyester-and-spandex blend, marks the first time the garments have been sleeveless. For many church members and former members, the major change came with minimal explanation: “Devout Latter-day Saints cherish the privilege of wearing the temple garment. Some of those members live in hot and humid areas,” church spokesman Doug Andersen said in a statement announcing the rollout last fall, adding that the First Presidency — the highest governing body in the LDS church — had authorized the changes in the garment to bless members in those areas as well as anyone else “who might benefit” from them. “Beyond this, the Church does not comment on temple matters considered to be sacred.”

The redesigned garments first rolled out in countries with warm temperatures, like the Philippines and South Africa, last year. In the months before they hit Utah distribution centers on October 28, Bonnemort saw Mormon influencers on TikTok smuggling them in from family members serving on international missions to model for their followers. Now that they’re Stateside, demand is booming. “Waited in line for 1 ½ hours for this!!” one Mormon woman said in a video after buying her garments and kissing her Deseret Book shopping bag. “Couldn’t be bothered waiting in line in Utah for the new garments so we simply flew to New Zealand to get them,” wrote another, burying her face in three unopened packages of the underwear.

For some women in the church, the new garments are a welcome change, easing the sometimes tricky transition of incorporating them into their everyday wardrobe. Hanna G., a 27-year-old Mormon influencer who lives in Utah and posts about garment-friendly fashion, got her sleeveless garments earlier this year from her parents, who live in South Africa. “I cheated a little,” she says. Less fabric and a lower neckline was an adjustment that “almost felt a little wrong” at first — she’s been wearing the old style since her late teens — “but then, when I turned around, I remembered this is the exact same covenant, the garments mean the exact same thing.” She’s excited to finally wear shirts with square necklines, even if men leave comments like “My wife is a queen. She would never mess with the rules of modesty” in her comments. Hanna doesn’t engage: “Like, oh, you’re calling me a slut, but it’s totally fine.”

For others, the alteration feels destabilizing, an about-face to the don’t-show-shoulders modesty they’d been indoctrinated into before. “It’s not that I have a problem with people wearing tank tops. It’s that you’ve changed the rules on us. You’re telling us everything you told us means nothing: You guys are free to break the rules now, but it’s got to be under our terms. You still have to buy our tank tops,” says a 33-year-old practicing member in Colorado who asked to speak anonymously to avoid judgment from fellow churchgoers. She plans to stick to her old garments; if she wanted tank tops, she’d rather buy them from Walmart and draw the sacred markings on herself.

Ex-Mormon women are also feeling the whiplash of the church sanctioning the very cuts and necklines they used to get punished for wearing. (“Young women, please understand that if you dress immodestly, you are magnifying this problem by becoming pornography to some of the men who see you,” current church president Dallin H. Oaks said in a 2005 General Conference speech that still haunts many of the women I spoke to.) “Going sleeveless is a gut punch to all the women who were shamed for ‘tucking’ the garment sleeves up to wear shorter tops. Now, old men are lauded as ‘inspired’ to allow women to feel a little more comfortable wearing mandated undergarments,” an ex-Mormon who has been with the church for over 55 years told me. “It’s just the same Mormon women who slut-shamed me for wearing a tank-top now lined up excited to wear one,” an  “ex-Mo” wrote in a TikTok.

Several ex-Mormons told me the shift feels more opportunistic than progressive, a means of attracting young members to a church that’s losing numbers. “The church needs positive PR, and talking about the change makes it seem progressive, but it’s not. It’s taking away three inches of fabric. That’s not revolution,” says Amanda, a 33-year-old ex-Mormon based in Virginia. One summer, while wearing traditional garments at her office job, she ended up with a yeast infection in her armpits. Before the sleeveless garments became available Stateside, she watched women buying them at higher prices from other regions. “Which is crazy, because these same women would have bullied me ten years ago for showing an ounce of shoulder,” she adds.

Even after leaving the church, the learned shame lingers: A 36-year-old spa owner and ex-Mormon in Idaho told me that, after experiencing discomfort with her garments during her first pregnancy, she stopped wearing any but spent seven years dressing as if she had them on, so as to avoid suspicion in the congregation, where she says members looked for the telltale lines in your clothing. This past summer, her sister-in-law, who is still a member, bought sleeveless garments in Africa. Seeing her sister-in-law in a tank top for the first time, the woman wondered if she’d stopped wearing her garments: “I was excited for her for half a second, but also disappointed in myself, to realize that was still a part of my thinking.”

Caitlin Cahoon, an ex-Mormon and 32-year-old mother of two living in Salt Lake City, used to be scolded by a young women’s leader at a church camp for wearing a bikini as an adolescent; later, by a boyfriend for wearing tank tops. “I remember him telling me, if you want to marry me, you need to become good,” she says. The shame and loss of control she felt around her body led her to develop a ten-year eating disorder. After getting married at 21, she started to wear garments and struggled to find clothing that felt cute and also covered them. “At the same time, I was like, that’s okay. At least I’m going to be good and worthy enough,” she recalls. During a family photo shoot with her in-laws, a dress she wore rode up slightly, exposing the white hem of her garment. Her father-in-law made a scene about it: “He said, ‘Caitlin, you need to pull that down.’” Family members rolled her eyes at her, as if to say, Why couldn’t she just wear something that would fully cover it? The whole incident humiliated Cahoon. She remembers thinking: I’m so shameful. 

The day the lines formed at the Utah distribution centers, Cahoon was overcome with sadness. A practicing acquaintance of hers got up at 4 a.m. to get her hands on the new garments; another livestreamed her long wait for one on Instagram. “I used to be one of these women. I know exactly how they’re thinking, exactly what they’re feeling,” she says. To them, she notes, it feels like progress and freedom, but “to me, the freedom they’re celebrating is still conditional, with someone else’s permission slip.” After the damage she endured, every effort to be “good” and worthy, the directives to cover up, the prayers of repentance when she fell short — all of it rings hollow now: “It makes me feel like, okay, so what was that all for?”

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