Bad Habits: Making a Tier List for Religious Clothing

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they explore and rank religious clothing from various faiths around the world. In this engaging discussion, they analyze the practical, cultural, and spiritual aspects of religious garments, from Mormon temple garments to Sikh turbans. The couple offers unique insights into how religious clothing impacts adherents' daily lives, community cohesion, and interactions with the broader society.

This comprehensive review covers:

* The practicality and symbolism of various religious garments

* How clothing reinforces religious identity and commitment

* The balance between tradition and modernity in religious dress

* The role of gender in religious clothing mandates

* The economic impact of religious clothing within communities

* The effectiveness of religious clothing in preserving cultural identity

Whether you're interested in comparative religion, fashion history, or cultural anthropology, this video provides a fascinating look at the intersection of faith and clothing across different religious traditions.

Speaker 3: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone!

I am excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be discussing various types of religious clothing and various rules around religious clothing. And we are going to be ranking them from a utility and fashion. And when I say utility, I don't just mean in their daily, you know, whatever, but in terms of how they frame people of that religion to outsiders, how they keep people in religions, how they push people out of religions.

And discuss more our own sort of beliefs around, you know, religious fashion and stuff like that and what I think, you know, makes sense to mandate, not mandate. And that's where we got the title for the episode, Bad Habits. Because I wanted to make a habit joke, which is a name for one of the Catholic,

Speaker 4: necessary. Yeah. And that's clothing. But I think more importantly. When people look at religious clothing, they often think that's weird or that doesn't look good or whatever. And, and we're not judging this. I mean, we may have comments about the aesthetics, but the most important thing about religious clothing is its function, [00:01:00] and sometimes the function is literally logistical.

It's protective, it's practical, it's durable. Often it, it has a much more Important framing and symbolic function. And so we want to look at that and how, see how effective it is or not. Malcolm and I are going to have plenty of disagreements, I'm sure.

Speaker 3: That's an easy one to start with because you know, you used to live with Mormons, you know a lot about them.

Speaker 4: Right. Mormons are most famous for their garments. These are underwear. They're church sanctioned. They have special, like, patterns on them that are important. But the most important thing is that they are basically shorts and shirts.

That Sort of require you to wear modest clothing because if you don't, they will show. So I'll

Speaker 3: word this a bit differently because I think that you're sort of beating around the bush. They are like an undershirt and underpants. They have special symbols on them and lines on them.

That represent specific religious things to Mormons.

You have to wear them all the time, except when you are swimming [00:02:00] or exercising, which creates a An interesting positive externality for the Mormon community, because everyone, especially women who want to dress more centrally for mainstream society, have a sort of a very strong reason outside of just the exercise itself to exercise regularly, because it's an excuse to not wear your garments.

I would note that this actually makes garments. Fairly loosey goosey from the perspective of most religious wear. So if you contrast garments with something like a Kirpan, you'd be the knife that Sikhs have to carry. Sikhs are not allowed to even take it off in the shower. You know, all the time.

All the time. Yeah, these are very durable

Speaker 4: knives. Like if you want to get a good knife, you should get that kind of knife because you can shower with it. You can wear it everywhere.

Speaker 3: So, yeah. So the cure pants. Yeah. So, so, The Mormons, on the other hand you know, they, they, they're actually pretty because people [00:03:00] always compare their religious fashion with the urban monoculture, where whatever you want, whenever you want.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Instead of with other religious fashion. When they're trying to decide how strict it is one of the more annoying things about garments is the ways that you have to dispose of them. You, I believe, used to need to send them to like a garment disposal facility because they're considered sacred in a way, right?

Like you can't just cut. You

Speaker 4: only wear and you, you don't wear them as a child. You wear them after you are endowed, like sort of after you go through a very special secret initiation ceremony with the church as a young adult that is a major act of commitment. Yeah. So.

Speaker 3: I was just going to say, because I hadn't finished my last point, the way that you dispose of garments has changed recently.

Where now it is actually much easier to dispose of them and you can cut them apart in a certain way. And there's only certain parts of it that needs to be disposed of super carefully and the rest can be burned. But anyway, you were saying Simone,

Speaker 4: you, you only wear garments after you get endowed which is a sort of very, very secret, [00:04:00] important commitment ceremony that young adults go through.

You have to be endowed. For example, to enter the temple and attend a wedding ceremony, including your own. So it's, it is related to ceremonies and I like personally, I think garments are awesome because a big part of the Mormon church is going out and trying to convert people and it's hard to. I, I think build rapport with people and build a lot of commonality with outsiders if you're dressed super strange but garments are a way for you to be approachable and seem normal while still everyday reminding yourself that Self that you're very committed to your religion.

'cause wearing special underwear does remind you of that. Yeah. That

Speaker 3: is worth elevating what you just said, which is a unique aspect of Mormon religious clothing is that it is something that has a few unique functions when contrast with other religious clothing. It allows Mormons to quickly identify other Mormon.

But people who aren't Mormons, or aren't very familiar [00:05:00] with Mormons, may not notice that the person is wearing religious clothing. Yeah, that's a

Speaker 4: really interesting, as you typically can tell someone is wearing garments, or likely wearing garments if you know what to look for. Which is cool. It's like

Speaker 3: a secret handshake.

But it also means that you're not as othered from mainstream society as you would be within other religious communities, which you would see as a

Speaker 4: strict to downside.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I see that as a downside because it causes you to look less like, I think there are ways that you can build religious codes that allow you to interact with mainstream society, but still other yourself.

A great example would be the conservative Jew

The, the yarmulke thing that conservative Jews wear where they can wear a suit but you still immediately know they're Jewish and they know when they're walking into a room and everyone else knows they're Jewish.<