Mormon Underwear Is Finally Going Sleeveless — It's Actually A Huge Deal, But Not For The Reasons The Mainstream Press Is Saying

I wore the uncomfortable female undergarments growing up in Utah ... but when I left the church and came out as trans, I didn't expect it would be hard for me to get rid of them.

Happy Friday the 13th!

I don't report to you guys here on what I do socially or where I go or who I see, even though I am often interested to read that when I see other people posting about their fun, busy, important social lives.

I have no problem name-dropping when it serves a purpose, like bringing attention to something I deem worthy of it (including selling a Sassy t-shirt, the worthiest cause of all time). But it feels odd to report here about hanging out with old friends or being at “fabulous” scenarios when there's no other purpose for telling you about them. So if you want to hear more about my social life, just for the hell of it, I do in fact, have one and would be happy to share more of it. Just let me know!

Meanwhile, there is a mild purpose in me telling you about the movie premiere party that I rushed back from my high school reunion to go to the other night. And it is this: It's a wonderful documentary about the band Counting Crows called Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately. The filmmakers contacted me a year ago because they had found footage of me hanging out with the band when they were recording during the era that, for me, was just between Sassy magazine and Jane magazine. So they asked if I would be part of this documentary also —and here's where the meaningful part comes in: seeing my face from 30 years ago and today juxtaposed on a nice big screen, I want to say a big thank you to you all for the comfort I felt.

While I know that I look different in the two, I didn't feel any sense of looking worse because of the wrinkles and lines, etc., that I have now. I feel so so so so fortunate that you all heard me when I proclaimed back at Sassy magazine that women who want to support other women could help that by saying no to plastic surgery on themselves, creating a more diverse and realistic model for younger women and other women in general to see themselves in.

Sometimes when I proclaim these kinds of things publicly, I know that I am not only setting up a challenge for other people, but also for myself to live up to. I know that I'm saying them without all of the wisdom and experience that the coming years will bring and I understand people changing their minds about any of that kind of thing. It’s all ok.

But all that is to say thank you all for backing me all these years when I talked about aging, on women in particular, being a beautiful thing and letting me say it enough that I heard it myself and now get to live it and be happy to see the young version and the old version side-by-side and be proud of both. It's hard to just embrace our looks in this society that constantly points out new flaws that we can generally pay to have fixed through a product or surgery or something else that benefits someone else, but to be able to look at oneself and not look for flaws feels free and awesome. Thank you for helping me get there!

So that's my little life. And now onto our wonderful contributor Will’s life. When I read these new stories recently about this revolutionary new Mormon undergarment, I immediately thought of Will. And then, I completely forgot about it. (I know the story should have gone like “so I picked up the phone and reached out to our ex-Mormon contributor Will and he came through with a story…” But no, I just forgot.)

Fortunately, Will thought of me and you when he learned about these undergarments finally changing, because he sent us in the idea of writing about it from his perspective.

I won't give more away. But his perspective is unique and I'm so glad to present it to you here.

xox Jane

Immodest Dress: My first time wearing a sexy black dress, about a year after I stopped wearing the Mormon garments. Connecticut, winter 2006.

By Will Cole

I will admit that I, a 45-year-old man, have watched The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives —but only for the Mormon/Utah hook.

Seeing aerial views of my hometown and explaining the cultural tidbits to my husband has a certain appeal. And one of the first questions he asked me about the show was if the women on it were “real” Mormons. Meaning, faithful ones.

“Nope,” I said within seconds of starting episode one.

“How can you tell?”

“They’re sleeveless,” I said.

Sacred Mormon undergarments (or simply “garments” for us insiders) consist of a cap-sleeved T-shirt and knee-length shorts, which must be covered by regular clothes. These cap-style sleeves of the garments keep (most) faithful Mormon women from ever wearing sleeveless shirts and dresses. The types of dresses that are all over the show.

So when the subcultural hubbub about the new design for Mormon women’s undergarments (specifically the undershirt —It’s now sleeveless! A sacred tank top!) made it all the way to The New York Times (the front page, in fact) I couldn’t resist clicking on the digital headline: The Sacred Undergarment That Has Mormon Women Buzzing.

I was born and raised sixth-generation Mormon, and the internet algorithms feed me plenty of #Mormon (and #exMormon) content, even though I haven’t been to church in 20 years.

The Instagram Reels keep me updated on my religious and cultural heritage. A modern remix of “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree,” a children’s church song I learned as a toddler, and later taught to my son, brought me genuine joy this week.

My son and me on my first hike without the extra undergarment layer, Connecticut, April 2005 (left). My wedding day with my son as Best Man, Maryland, summer 2022 (right).

I groaned at a screencap from a young Mormon couple’s Tinder profile who were on the dating app, not to try out polyamory or find a unicorn, but to recruit neophytes who “might need a little extra Jesus in [their] life.”

It’s also where I first learned about the new, coveted, and hard-to-find sleeveless undergarments.

Before the Page One story, the “sacred tank top” was revealed to me via a reenactment of women showing up to church in sleeveless dresses, all silently eyeing each other while suppressing smiles. The switch to sleeveless is so huge in my world that when I saw it, I shouted out the news to my husband two rooms away.

But even though he grew up Southern Baptist in the Bible Belt, he just doesn’t get it. Just like the NYT article didn’t get it. This is not a quirky thing those peculiar Mormons incorporate into their modest fashion, oh, silly them. As a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I grasp that those garments are, to the people who wear them, not just a weird piece of clothing. They are an insignia of faithfulness, even within the church membership.

For an adult woman to sport a sleeveless top in the Mormon world is nothing short of scandalous.

In high school, I traveled to Disneyland with the orchestra, my first time in California. While waiting in the Space Mountain line, I stared at a woman with her toddler, trying to figure out what was different about her. And not just different—wrong. It finally dawned on me: She was wearing a tank top. In my sheltered life, I had never seen a grown woman—a mother!—without sleeves.

Even though my fellow high schoolers didn’t yet wear garments (these clothes are part of the initiation ceremony in Mormon temples, which only adults participate in) most moms wouldn’t allow their girls to wear sleeveless tops in the late 1990s. Not even for prom.

My little sisters sewed their own prom dresses, unable to find any with sleeves at the local mall by the early 2000s. (The Devil’s influence on the fashion industry!) Girls who wanted to wear spaghetti strap shirts could—if they wore white baby-tees underneath. To us, this looked normal. Cute, even, once you got used to it. (I never adopted the style. To want a spaghetti strap shirt at all was immodesty in my heart.)

Which means the recent redesign of these t-shirts into sleeveless tanks is far more than a Mormon fashion revolution.

I should know. I wore "the temple garments" —a white cap-sleeved shirt and knee-length shorts— day and night under my clothes, as instructed (lest the Devil have control of me), starting at age 19 when I was married.

On my wedding day, three days after my initiation into garment-wearing. Even this dress’s neckline was a bit too wide and I had to pin the garments to it so they wouldn’t show. Utah, July 1999.

I wore them even when I slept and exercised, and made only three exceptions: swimming, showering, and sex.