Garments, while largely connected with modesty, are a different issue altogether. The garment is a symbol of a covenant, and is itself a covenant of sorts; namely, garments wearers covenant to wear the garment throughout their lives except when circumstances prevent it’s intended use; eg swimming, sex, and super-sports (intense physical activity, but that doesn’t start with “S”). Yard work is often sweaty but less often intense, and because it’s a common activity that a few members would doubtless wonder and possibly argue/judge each other about, it would make some sense for a leader to clarify the issue. However, I have no knowledge of yard work being mentioned in temple recommend interviews, and I’ve had access to what I believe is the most recent version of the recommend guidebook. It’s quite possible, then, that the yard work line was a myth or rumor. If it was actually said by a leader, the reason would be to clear up confusion more than to define modesty.

Garments are much more black/white than modesty overall, because they represent specific commitments. They also help remove ambiguity for LDS of modesty during typical living, because if clothing covers garments and isn’t overly tight it is almost always considered modest for typical circumstances.

I’ve gotten far off the original question of whether modest dress is in the wearer or the beholder; of course it is both. I somewhat disagree with the author; the way I see Elder Oak’s statement isn’t as an unintentional framing of the issue as men=subject women=object, but rather advice/teaching to younger sisters that what may be innocent for them can also needlessly worsen circumstances for some weak and or overwhelmingly-visually-stimulated men. If we all saw with the eyes of young women, modesty would hardly need to be taught; many girls have little or no sense of visual lust until male-oriented culture teaches it to them. That’s not making women into objects, it’s warning them that in many men’s minds such an evil has already be done, and girls can contribute to solving the problem by keeping it in mind when choosing clothing.

A friend of a friend (she’s an orthodox LDS expat living in Saudi Arabia) mentioned the restrictions on dress that she is required to live under, and commented on the fact that when she goes out shopping she is surrounded by Saudi women whose faces she never sees. (This is because women only unveil in front of other women or in front of their own husbands/male members of their nuclear family, and only then when they are in private, closed quarters.) She commented that, based on the clothing she sees on sale in the malls, these women dress less modestly underneath their abayas than she does.

I thought that was an interesting comment – the idea that a woman could be viewed by an LDS member as immodest beneath her abaya and niqab, and therefore immodest when she removes them in front of her husband, hadn’t really occurred to me before, and made me curious about the limits of modesty in LDS culture. What are the limits of modesty? Can you be immodest if you are stranded on a desert island? Can you be immodest alone? With your husband/wife?

Especially given the recent clarification in temple recommend interviews that states explicitly that endowed members should not remove the garment for things like yard work, I wonder. Is that a modesty issue? i.e. if there were no people to see you doing your yard work garment-less, would it still be an issue?

I’m sorry I don’t have anything more profound to say than “thanks,” but I feel enriched.

but I’m curious what you think “the primary reason” pornography is bad is.

It’s gracious of you to ask. After considering this for a few days, I think there are two main reasons I can’t respond effectively. First, we use such imprecise language that we’d have to spend a long time making distinctions and defining terms before we could make any progress. Consider, for example, that when we say “pornography” some people think of violent abuse of women to gratify someone’s sadomasochism while someone else is thinking of any media that includes nudity. These things are wrong for different reasons, in my opinion (or if they share reasons, the intersection is small). Lots of other examples arise quickly, such as is found in the word “lust” which we don’t spend any time nailing down even though the meaning is not clear. We can’t even agree on basic stuff like whether the identification of something as pornography is fundamentally objective or subjective.

The second problem is that as a consequentialist, I think things turn out to be wrong for different reasons depending on the person and the situation. This doesn’t, of itself, prevent us from talking about why pornography is bad, but it makes the investigation involved.

For me, I think the main reason pornography is bad is that it makes me want to have sex more than I would otherwise and my wife already wants to have sex less often than I do. To fan the flames of this incongruity is immoral since it negatively impacts my relationship with my wife. But, when I say “pornography” above I have in mind something tame on the pornographic spectrum. If I were attracted to other kinds of pornography, I would likely have additional answers.

Utlimately, I think this is one of the primary problems with all of the rhetoric about pornography in the church, with this example from Oaks being just one minor example. That’s why I don’t think he should have used the word pornography at all.

When I am referring to extremes in my comment, I am specifically talking about modesty such as covering your entire body, compared to barely covering it. I wasn’t referring to alcohol, chastity, etc.. And no, I don’t see what is moral as what can be found at the midpoint between extremes. I see it as what God says it is…..that’s really it.

To me, things are as complicated as you want to make them. You could think this issue into the ground and still not come up with anything that satisfies you. But…to each his (or her) own.

So I hear you offering two rationales for the Church’s current position on modesty: the first is an appeal to authority (which I dealt with in the preceding paragraph), and the second is an appeal to the ideal of a “golden mean,” more or less, yeah? The idea is that what’s moral can be found at the midpoint between extremes. But in general, I don’t think this model fits Mormon standards at all. We propose that appropriate behavior on issues of alcohol, chastity, obedience, what we should sacrifice for the Church, etc., is basically an “extreme.”

I think everything is more complicated than it seems to be.

Is it possible you are making the issue of modesty more complicated than it needs to be? If the Lord has set standards for modesty (and you actually believe it is the Lord’s church and His standards for modesty) shouldn’t EVERYONE adjust their standards to His whether they are covering up too much or not covering up enough? There are extremes on both ends, but I don’t think the Lord works in extremes. We are supposed to adjust our lives to His standard of modesty, not the other way around. It seems pretty simple and straightforward to me and I sincerely struggle to understand what confuses you about this issue.