(RNS) — Nancy Ross was a graduate student at the University of Cambridge when she got engaged to her now-husband, also a student there. They had met in their ward, or congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and planned to be wed in an LDS temple for eternity rather than merely having a civil marriage that would be binding for this life only.

To do that, they went to the temple some weeks before the planned marriage ceremony to undergo certain preparatory rites for adults of their religion. Ross felt excited to get married and was wondering about how to wear the Mormon temple garments she would receive to use as underwear afterward.

Years earlier, her mother had been instructed to wear her garment top underneath her bra, so the garment would be next to the skin. But Ross was hearing from younger women that the rules had shifted, and it was now permissible to put on the bra first, then the garment over the top of it. She was “a very rule-following kind of person,” she said, so she took advantage of a moment in the temple when the woman instructing other women on garment wear and care asked if there were any questions.

“I asked the temple matron in the London Temple, ‘What’s appropriate here? What’s not appropriate here?’ I was told that it was a very rude question,” Ross said. “And that was kind of gutting because all I needed was an answer, and I was fully prepared to do whatever the answer was.”

Ross said she left the temple confused and with “deep feelings of shame,” unsure why her earnest question had brought recrimination but no guidance.

“I learned from that point that I was going to have to figure it out,” she said. “In Mormonism, there are a lot of rules, but there were also these strange ambiguities, and I was going to have to resolve them on my own without anyone giving permission or flexibility.”

She’d have to resolve those gray areas in silence because of the secrecy that surrounds many aspects of the LDS temple.

Today, Ross is a professor at Utah Tech University, formerly Dixie College, and has converted to the Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, another Christian denomination that traces its heritage to Joseph Smith. Last month, she and two other scholars, Jessica Finnigan and Larissa Kanno Kindred, published “Mormon Garments: Sacred and Secret.” Released by the University of Illinois Press, the book uses survey findings and delves into the authors’ own experiences to better understand the meanings and functions behind Mormon garments. 

Like Ross, Finnigan and Kindred also used to be members of the Utah-based LDS Church. Like her, they also eventually left it.

“I think Nancy’s story perfectly illustrates how much silence there is around this topic,” Finnigan said in a group Zoom interview with RNS. “The church comes out with statements like, ‘This is a practice between you and the Lord,’ but that’s a really nice idea that breaks down very quickly in practice. You’re not getting any places to talk about it. Your bishop’s not talking about it, really. The Relief Society (LDS women’s organization) is not talking about it. And even in the temple, it’s roulette, right?”

Ross and Finnigan thought Mormons might be more willing to talk about garments through an anonymous online survey, so they recruited respondents using social media. They hoped to receive 500 responses and were swamped with over 4,500 — a giant number for a niche population.

The data they gathered is not statistically representative of Mormons, but it does represent a wide range of experiences and patterns.

“I think the reason we have this huge number of responses is that it needs to be witnessed,” said Kindred, a psychology doctoral student at Tennessee State University, who came to the project after the survey was fielded. “One of the basic human needs is to have our experiences validated, and one of the sources of trauma is when that can never happen. Damage happens when we don’t talk about it.”

Among people who answered the survey, women in particular had a lot to say about garments.

For “conforming” women — or those who were active in the church and felt very positive about their involvement — the survey indicated they liked the meaning of the garments, but not necessarily how they served as underwear, Ross said.

Meanwhile, “non-conforming” women and men alike objected to the social pressure of garments, and especially when other members would check whether they were wearing them. Garment lines are visible to fellow members who know what to look for, which results in a kind of informal group surveillance. There’s also formal surveillance, since bishops and stake presidents ask about garment compliance in temple recommend interviews. “They (non-conforming members) don’t like feeling controlled, and that by not wearing your garments, you lose belonging,” Finnigan explained.

Women were also 200 times more likely than men to name medical problems as an obstacle to wearing garments. Ross said that in an open-ended question about how people felt about wearing garments, 200 women “referenced all of these sources of physical pain and physical discomfort stemming from common issues, gynecological issues like UTIs and yeast infections. But they also ran through many other different kinds of complications, like MS, different skin conditions and changes in the body from pregnancy. There were so many difficult physical issues that garment design and the rules around garments don’t adequately address.”

Only one man wrote about a medical problem that made wearing garments difficult. He’d had testicular cancer and had to wear a pad, and he said garments made that very hard to do.

The survey also asked respondents to comment on how they feel when other people complain about their garments. Ross said that conforming men — the fully believing, practicing men who are often called to leadership positions in the church — were the most judgmental about other people’s complaints.

“Their starting point was that it’s really easy to wear garments, right? Like, if you can’t wear garments, you’re not a very good church member and there’s something morally suspect. You’re not right with God,” Ross said. “That was painful to read alongside people who were pouring their hearts out and had clearly been in distress for a long time. They have been trying to navigate this demanding religious practice largely in silence, taking on all of the burdens of trying to meet the needs of their bodies and their religious requirements.”

Finnigan noted that the church’s rules about garment wearing have not traditionally made exceptions for health, a departure from the church’s longstanding exceptions to its expected church-wide fast on the first Sunday of each month. Pregnant women, nursing mothers, the elderly and the infirm have long been exempted from fasting but not from wearing garments.

However, the issue was addressed in August 2024, when an addition to the church’s handbook clarified that sometimes, medical conditions or devices “may make it difficult for members to wear one or both parts of the garment.” The new policy stated that in such cases, the member’s “religious status is not affected” if they do not wear the garments, “as long as the member remains worthy.” 

The church also made headlines two months later when it announced new garment options for women, including a sleeveless tank top and an open skirt.

Kindred said the changes likely came about because of increased online discussions about, and media scrutiny surrounding, garments, including conversations about this survey’s findings. Mormons in general are getting more comfortable talking about garments — though some holdouts prefer the old days of silence and secrecy.

“There are always some people who say, ‘I don’t think this should be talked about. You guys are all inappropriate, and maybe if you would stop talking about this, then you would maybe understand the meaning of your garments better,’” Kindred said, adding there’s still “intense invalidation” happening within the community, especially because the church hasn’t admitted it may have been insensitive about garments in the past.

“The church never says, ‘Hey, yes, maybe we were being too rigid. That wasn’t necessary — we apologize and now we’ve learned a new way to do this,’” Kindred said. “The church believes in continuing revelation, so I feel like they could do that, but somehow they don’t do that.”