What to Wear

[Ian]

most women look like they're walking the streets in their underwear, but they call it "exercise" clothing.

[Angela]

I hate what used to be called leggings or yoga pants that are now being called exercise tights. Honestly people, just stop it. More often than not I see women and sometimes men wearing these grocery shopping or in the mall or any place that is not designated for exercise. Even in an exercise place, put some basketball shorts over them!!!

[Steve]

Our young elders are models of young manhood. When they come home, some are criticized as being self-righteous for maintaining a decent appearance and keeping their hair trimmed neatly. I cannot understand why a returned missionary is considered self-righteous if he tries to live the standards and principles he has taught as a representative of the Lord to the people where he has served. Of course returned missionaries are not expected to wear white shirts and ties all of the time. But wearing sloppy clothes and weird hairstyles to supposedly look trendy is not proper for one who holds the divine commission of the priesthood. Returned missionaries are an example to the young men of the Aaronic Priesthood, who will be the future missionaries. Often that which is seen by the Aaronic Priesthood is more powerful and persuasive than what is said.

(James E. Faust, The Power of Self-Mastery)

[Steve]

Don’t deliberately look less than your best, or grubby or unclean, physically or morally.

(Richard L. Evans, Should the Commandments Be Rewritten?)

[Steve]

Some young people have prided themselves in wearing the most tattered, soiled, and grubby attire. If we dress in a shabby or sloppy manner, we tend to think and act the same way. I am positive that personal grooming and cleanliness, as well as the clothes we wear, can be tremendous factors in the standards we set and follow on the pathway to immortality and eternal life.

It is my understanding that each student who enrolls in this great institution and its sister Church institutions understands before coming here what the rules and regulations are, and he or she signs the enrollment sheet with a firm promise to obey those rules and regulations. For a young woman to wear short skirts or other immodest wear when she has covenanted otherwise would not be a matter of cleverness in escaping detection but a definite blot on her character. Should any young man promise to observe certain standards of dress or hair length or behavior and then evade those restrictions, certainly his error is deep-seated and is not just a difference of opinion. It is nothing to joke about, but a black mark on his character.

’He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’

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Obviously, what we say to you here applies to Latter-day Saint students wherever they are, at home and abroad, as well as to our faculty, staff, and administrators.

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As the Lord said of the Word of Wisdom, these regulations, too, are “adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints” (D&C 89:3). We believe everyone can live them without anxiety or hardship.

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Each person bears a great eternal spirit as well as a God-given body, and the two unite to form the soul of an eternal man or woman. The appearance of that eternal soul with all of its outward manifestations surely takes precedence with us over the important matter of newly painted homes and barns and carefully repaired fences.

As important as they are and as clean as we must keep them, those homes and fences will someday be gone. But you will never be gone. You will always matter; and how you appear, what you represent, and with what integrity you keep your covenants will always matter. For all that we believe about gardens and grassland, about painting and barns and cleaning ditches, we say anew and more vigorously to all of you: Trim your hair appropriately. Wear modest, clean clothing. Your clothes do not need to be new and in the latest fashion, but they should be clean, modest, and neat. Be dignified in your outward appearance and in your manners and in your inward morality.

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Let me confess one of the sad disappointments I sometimes feel. I want you to know that it is hard for me to be disappointed, and I rejoice in the blessings of the Lord daily. But a few things disappoint me occasionally and one of them is the returned missionary who, after two years of taking great pride in how he looks and what he represents, returns to this campus or some similar place to see how quickly he can let his hair grow, how fully he can develop a mustache and long side-burns and push to the very margins of appropriate grooming, how clumsy his shoes can get, how tattered his clothes can be, how close to being grubby he can get without being refused admittance to school. That, my young returned missionary brethren, is one of the great disappointments in my life.

(Spencer W. Kimball, On My Honor, September 1978)

[Angela]

aw, don't be a disappointment to President Kimball!!

[James]

http://youtu.be/gsVEm9X8gEE