Forbidden Fruit #2: Strapless Tops
Thoughts on baring it all.
Welcome to Forbidden Fruit, a series that focuses on pieces of clothing I wasn’t allowed to wear when I was younger and how I style them now.
Recently, I did my usual dance in front of my closet, wondering what to wear for the transition of two events in one day: a meeting with a man I’ve never met and then co-working with a friend down the street. It’s hot here in DC (like no-one-can-stop-talking-about-it type of hot), and so I just tried a new look for me: using a scarf as a strapless top. I folded a mauve-ish square scarf into a triangle, crossed it in the back, and tied it in the front over my chest. After a bit of pulling and arranging, I actually liked the way it looked.
Of course, this meant my shoulders would show. My chest would show. At times, since the scarf needed rearranging all day, cleavage would show. As a youth in the Mormon church, I was taught, sometimes purposefully and sometimes inadvertently, that my shoulders were scary, sexy, private. My chest was sacred. My breasts? Forget about it. So, before leaving Mormonism, I never really saw my shoulders and especially never saw them in fashions like strapless tops.
Not to mention the parentheticals added to all of these worries in my programmed brain: My shoulders were scary and sexy (to men), so I was to keep them private. My chest was sacred (and a temptation for men). My breasts, well, existed (and were reserved only for my future husband). My body wasn’t really mine—it was surveilled by male church leaders, approved or denied by the boys around me, and dressing it was a test I had to continually pass with God.
For a long time, even after leaving the religion, I avoided anything strapless. My shoulder area felt like an editing note I wasn’t sure how to address, and so I left it alone for a future version of myself to deal with. Processing this new availability in getting dressed came in waves. I started with tank tops, wearing them around the apartment, catching glances of myself in mirrors and oscillating between liking what I saw and feeling dizzy, my body stretching and distorting right in front of my dysmorphic eyes. But I persisted, and I started wearing tank tops out of the apartment weeks later.
The strapless top felt like a whole other dilemma: it showed so much more and it required fashion skills and knowledge—like adjusting, taping, and shaping the clothes—that I had never cultivated. I tried on tube tops and other strapless pieces at various stores and felt the fun-house mirror dizziness when I looked at myself. I told myself strapless tops just didn’t look good on me, until now, finally, years later. I reckoned with my appearance by halting my dysmorphic thoughts and just wearing the scarf.
The difference, this time, is that I’m working through dysmorphia in therapy—and it’s actually ~working.~ Looking in the mirror at the tied scarf, I saw my body as a body. It wasn’t distorted. I didn’t attach judgment to my thoughts. They’re shoulders, and that’s all. I took this moment of confidence and ran with it. I wore the scarf-as-a-top out—even though I was meeting up with a man (who, I was raised to believe, has absolutely no control over his thoughts). In the days since, I also cut the sleeves off of a jumpsuit and made it into a strapless piece (I was originally planning on adding straps, but I think I like it without.) And then, I bought a strapless dress for some weddings I have coming up.
The scarf was actually a pain to wear, but I still felt great in it all day. I kept retying the front, cinching everything in. My friend who I co-worked with later reminded me that fashion tape could help with the gaping up top—and assured me that I’m not alone: she also feels like she’s about to flash everyone while wearing tube tops.
I’ve spent so long worrying about how my appearance affects others that the thought of an accidental flash was actually somewhat…empowering? In America, especially Christian/religious America, we’re so afraid of bodies. I grew up, purposefully, inadvertently, believing that I lost power by showing myself. But bodies are just bodies. Mormonism makes bodies feel so forbidden because it sexualizes all body parts instead of allowing for their neutrality. Instead of creating a world where we’re respectful of bodies, this censorship actually does the opposite: it makes us unable to see a body as anything but sexual.
So what if a man is uncomfortable? I’ve spent my whole life being uncomfortable for the sake of men’s comfort. (For the record, the guy I met with was super cool and didn’t seem to even notice what I was wearing. In fact, he even commented on his own physical insecurities randomly—reminding me that we’re all just thinking about our own damn selves.) But this whole dilemma reminds me of a section in my former professor Jennifer Sinor’s essay “Out in the West.” She’s writing about being a non-Mormon in Utah, where almost all of her students are Mormon, and where her neighbors and missionaries and other church members constantly try to teach her about Mormonism. At one point, her Mormon neighbor invites himself into her home, and the following scene ensues:
“Have you read the books I have given you?” he asked, taking the glass from me. I noticed his hands shook, the water sloshing at the rim. “Have you prayed on them?”
Even though I had been the one to invite him in, I realized I wanted him gone. Perhaps by opening the door, I had given something away.
Standing in front of his broken form, my urge was to undress, to throw my clothes off and stand naked in front of him, feel the weak sun shining through the picture window on my bare skin. I wanted to be seen. I wanted him to take notice of who I was, not someone to convert but someone who could refuse his version of salvation and still not be lost.
I’ve always been told that I’m powerful, but Mormonism twisted the way that power manifests. Concealment was power, because I was protecting my body and therefore pleasing God. Concealment meant, however falsely, that I could save myself from predators. Concealment was modesty in my words, too—if I hid how I really felt about problematic teachings and conversations, I was still accepted, still part of the in-group, even though I disagreed with all of it.
The strapless look gets its own metaphor now, just like miniskirts did in Forbidden Fruit #1. Just as I’m showing more of myself physically, I’m starting to believe I actually hold power by baring myself, however that may look. A shoulder, a chest, a train of thought, an opinion, out for all to behold. Scary, sexy, sacred: reframed.
Signing off from Mormon hell,
Abi