Whenever I’m feeling low, I like to take a spin through the sprightly virtual world of Mormon Mommy Blogs, which are exactly what they sound like: blogs written by and for chirpy Mormon women.

Today I came upon a most wonderful chain of conversation, instigated by the post below. (LDS shorthand translation: RS=Relief Society (a Mormon women’s organization), Gs=Garments (aka magic underpants).)

The RS Prez just called. It seems I’m a bit controversial since I wear slacks to church. “They” were wondering if it was an economic reason (could I not afford a skirt?). Nope. It had to do with shaving. In the colder “winter” months of California, I don’t shave my legs, I shave my goose bumps. It’s horrid. Now let’s fast-forward to the rest of the year when it’s hotter than blue blazes. Again, with the fat thing, my legs are a bit close together, nigh unseperable when it comes to walking. When wearing a skirt, the G’s roll up and it gets ugly. Painful rashes for days afterwards, so I continued to wear nice slacks to church. To make up for being skirt-less, I wear shirts that I don’t wear during the week and make sure to put on makeup so I look much better than I do on a day-to-day basis, thus putting forth an effort to still have a “Sunday dress” code….

No one likes chafing or nosy phone calls from semi-authority figures, and I have nothing but sympathy for the writer of the above paragraph, which is more than I can say for some of her Mormon-mommy commenters:

You could wear a skirt if it was important enough to you. Whether we agree with it or not, the way we dress does affect others. When we insist on our own dress code, it can be distracting for others. Since our main purpose for attending church is to worship God, we probably should minimize distractions. In my own experience, I’ve noticed that when women begin altering their dress code for Sunday meetings pretty soon other standards get altered. How we dress to worship the Lord is an outward expression of an inward commitment. My guess is that your RS President and bishop are concerned more about you than your dress code.

I know for absolute certainty, from personal experience, that if you’re willing to alter your standards on one thing, it follows as the night the day, you’ll be willing to alter your stance on other things.

I truly do believe that our dress code (and there is one) is an outward expression of our respect for the Lord and His house.

I would put Neosporin on the parts that rub together to keep them from chafing. Also, I would pray considerably for help with it. Tell Him what happens to you and be willing to wear the skirt if He will help you with the problems associated with it. If none of that works, think of a couple of hours spent in a garden where the pain was so great that blood was sweat so we could make choices like this.

Thank you, internet, for being the ever-expanding Louvre of outsider art.

David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

41 replies on “Today in Mormon Chafing”

  1. Those sexy Mormon lady legs are just as much of a threat to our children as gay marriage. I think this sounds like an excellent voter initiative.

  3. Why stop there? Why just think about the agonies of the cross when you can emulate them. You think God’s going to be impressed with your dowdy Mormon skirts? Fuck no! You need to wear a hair shirt at the very least, and fresh out of the shower, either. I want to see you flagellate yourself with some electrical wire so you’ve got some nice bloody welts for that hair to rub against.

    Come on, bitch, quit whining and think about the suffering of the Lord.

  4. If God really wanted you to worship him, he wouldn’t mandate painful chafing. Piss poor marketing, says I. Of course, this just emphasizes the gullibility of the average American consumer. As a people, we are dopes. Not that people in the rest of the world aren’t dopes, too. They are.

  8. Do Catholic women still have to cover their unclean hair? Millions of scarf wearing devout women praying at Mass .. yes?

    Jewish men wear those little silly caps?

    You want dress rigors, go to the larger Black Community Churches, you will never forget the fashion parade, every Sunday….no Seattle slouch at all, bet it is even more dress up on the East coast.

    Don’t want to pick on Catholics, but, come on, what is with all the costumes the priest and other various clergy wear, god oh god, how weird is all that stuff? For real, like Halloween is every Sunday, over and over.

    Let’s not talk of the burka worn right here in Seattle by some Muslim women, is it not their religion?

    Slacks or skirt seems really tame. About once a month I debate with myself about a tie or not, about the same mundane importance.

    It is certainly fair game to kick ass over the politics of the religious right in America, the enemy of queer folk for decades.

    This stuff reads like a fixation of some type…about dress?

  10. Jesus, those commenters sound like a pack of snippy bitches. I bet they were the popular holier-than-though girls in high school.

    Fuck’em, original Mormon mom. Joseph Smith is more concerned with trying to take you as his next wife than whether or not you’re wearing slacks. Chafed thighs are harder to get between!

  12. #10

    Your fantasy into who Joe Smith might have been fucking over 100 years ago is FAR more interesting than this pap.

    More please, and, it is rumored he liked men as well. I have wondered if that might be the real reason they killed him …. history lies about those types of attacks … or is somone going to assert it was cool to be a rumored fag, screwing the men, back in the mid 1800’s …

  13. Considering that in the representations of Jesus in most Christian, Mormon and Catholic churches he is portrayed as wearing a fucking nightgown I would say that God doesn’t get to dictate what his followers wear until he can control his own kid.

    If the fat Mormon lady would like, I’d be happy to go bitch-slap her nosy RS. And then run her over with my car. But only if fat Mormon lady agrees to leave the church and it’s petty, image conscious, brown-nosing, gay-bashing, sex obsessed, crazy ass dogma.

  15. Hey there, Fat Hairy-Legged pant-wearing Mormon Lady, dump those sanctimonious twat-waffles and join us on the dark side. The Lezzies will never judge you!

  18. thanks fnarf – I never thought you to be a mob type person – such a waste of a good brain – mocking this woman and a named health condition is hardly OK

    sad

    course if you die from a flesh eating bacteria in January, we will call it karma, and twitter a small bit

  19. #16

    gold label powder (Gold Bond?)

    and

    yes, good old cornstarch with some warm sunshine – spread eagle naked lady – sleeping and basking for several hours – take a good look straight men

    all your dreams and fantasies finally come true in bold daylight – Mormon cunt or not

  20. She should pray to god about it:

    Dear Jesus,
    Will you please keep my fucking thighs from chafing so I can wear a god-damned skirt to church to please those miserable bitches?
    Amen

  21. @18, I’d be better able to respond to your criticism if I had the slightest idea what you were talking about. Which woman? Which “named condition”? Is Mormonism a medical ailment now? Wait, you may be onto something there.

  22. They do make this special stuff for runners that you can put on your thighs to prevent chafing – you can get it at sporting goods stores. Like astroglide, but for thighs. I’m sure it works for fat people thighs too.

    I am off to look at feministmormonhousewives – @7 has piqued my interest…

  26. Fnarf – I don’t mean to speak for the poster who took you to task, and I don’t know the name of the condition, but it is a condition where for some reason you just grow fat. You distinguish from run of the mill obesity because it’s a ridiculous pattern of dispersal – in this case, all to her bottom and thighs. Her top as you see is relatively normal, and her calves dwindle right down.

    So yeah, it’s akin to finding an albino hilarious because you’ve never seen one before.

  27. from Linda

    Yes indeed, Terry you nailed it. Mocking people with horrible medical conditions is akin to some uneducated teen from the dirt floor school system mocking at a circus freak show. “Ma, look at that there, she has fat elephant legs!”

    fnarf passes himself off as educated, civilized and several cuts above. In this case he plays the arch type ignorant fool of an older man with the 8th grade education.

    Again, sad. And he so wants to be young and oh so hip . Sad.

  28. “blue blazes” made me LOL.

    to properly Please the Lord, I always modestly coat myself in Crisco before running outside naked with a butcher knife, trying to round up supplies for my SquirrelBurger.

  29. Yep, that’s what Jesus is most concerned about – whether or not you women wear a blouse, skirt, pumps and full makeup to church.

    Your pussy might itch with thoughts of sin all during the service, and your breast might heave at the thought of the pastor entering you on the altar, but as long as you’re dressed proper, you’re in good with the Lord.

    And if you aren’t, Satan will fuck you in the ass, roast you over an open pit, and eat your guts out over and over, for all eternity.

    So put on a skirt. And it better be clean and pressed, or it don’t count.

  30. I’m fat because I used to eat meat and starch three times a day when I didn’t have my ass parked on the couch in front of the TV. It’s a bitch at 44 to take the weight off, but thanks to a potentially fatal disease I have lost 105 lbs. in the past year. (I am down to 185).

    I take responsibility for my fattness and have a prob;em who blame obesity on glandular problems or low metabolism. If I ate 8,000 calories three times a day I would have a low metabolism too.

  31. This woman can’t have been Mormon for long. If you’ve spent any time in The Church as a woman, you know that wearing pants to church is almost as bad as murder, maybe worse if the murder wasn’t premeditated (because the wearing of pants is always premeditated).

    You know what’s next for poor Sister Pants? Excommunication. They will hold a Court of Love and they will tell her (if she shows up–they’ll hold it regardless) that she is being exed NOT for wearing (man)pants, but because she didn’t stop wearing the trousers when they told her to. Because not obeying is the greatest sin of all.

  32. I always thought it was utterly, completely bizarre that a modern religion fixed its appearance in 1955 and refuses to concede any change. Mormonism certainly changed a lot from the 19th century to the 20th. So why is it stuck now? Weird.

  35. @26: I can’t be the only one to have noticed that the woman in question is holding a plate on which repose what look like Red Lobster cheese puffs and a Monte Cristo sandwich.

    She looks like a nice lady though. I’d probably like her.

  36. #30

    well, fatty, good luck on your new body

    keep the the better eating habits, less, less, less

    all the fat is just too too too many calories. some folks do have problems, but most just eat too much all the time

    working on 40 extra pounds, eating more salads, more veggies, and tons of water, a cup of soup from the micro is my new snack

    no added sugar of any kind, carb caountin

    good luck

    Another Fatty Who Pigs Out Too Often

  38. @9: Well, the dress/skirt stuff starts basically at the beginning. Even little baby girls are put in fluffy dresses for church. Little girls in saddle shoes and modest dresses for “sunday best”.

    And you have to get new dresses a lot, because if you wear the same dress twice in a row (god forbid!) people will make fun of you and call you poor. For the actual poor people, they give them finanicial assistance, some of which is supposed to be nice clothes for church. And nice shoes.

  39. @35, I’m sure I’ve not the only person to have put myself in the place of the poor person who’s disease literally sucks every calorie she eats to her hips. I think I might still want an occasional treat, especially out at a camping event or what have you.

  40. As a metaphysical oxymormon turned Buddhist, thanks for posting that and reminding me that I SO don’t miss that banal hairsplitting and misogyny.

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