LDS worthiness culture and the sexualization of women's bodies

Adult topics ahead, but not avoiding them is the point.

When I was seventeen, I was perusing a news site one day when a picture loaded up. It was a photo of a famous actress at an awards show, wearing a dress that was sheer on top. Sheer to the extent that you could, ever so faintly, see the outline of her nipples.

I panicked. My teenage boy self could not close the window fast enough. I stepped away from the computer, my heart beating fast. I had fastidiously avoided seeing that sort of thing on the internet… but this time it had come to me.

“A Sinner Like Me,” by Caitlin Connolly (cropped), as found here.

I’m sure that every young man’s experience was different, and I can only speak to mine. I had been warned time and time again about the dangers of the internet; I’d been taught that “the consequences of pornography are catastrophic”, that it would “poison [my] mind,” and that “pornography is as addictive as cocaine or any illegal drug.” And I certainly did not doubt that what I’d seen in my web browser that day was pornography.

The fact that I remember this incident so vividly ought to give you some indication of how impactful it was at the time, in the 1990s-early 2000s heyday for purity culture.

Purity Culture among Latter-day Saints

“Purity culture” is not really a term we use in Latter-day Saint circles. It’s largely used to describe the evangelical movement that started in the early 90s, that emphasized abstinence before marriage and heteronormative marriages with clear, pre-determined roles for men and women. Many of the hallmarks of this movement never entered the LDS mainstream—like wearing purity rings, and the “True Love Waits” campaign of the early 90s—while much of the underlying messaging was similar.

But while we don’t talk about “purity” so much, we do talk about “worthiness,” and we use the term in much the same way.¹ There are a few things we know empirically about how worthiness culture manifested in LDS circles in the past several decades:² 1) Instruction was nearly always targeted to women (and when I say women, I mean young women as well), with dress and modesty guidelines invariably focused on women;³ 2) women carried the blame for “causing men to sin,” by the way they dressed and acted, and 3) a woman’s worth was tied to virginity before marriage, and losing that virginity meant being a piece of gum that had already been chewed, or a cupcake that had been licked. In a phrase, damaged goods.

If you were a young woman in the Church in the 90s-00s and were not taught these things, explicitly or implicitly, then you’re one of a lucky few (at least in the U.S.). Otherwise, it is largely not debated that these ideas have been widely taught at the local levels in the Church.

While young women were being taught that their bodies were bad, young men were being taught that our minds were bad.⁴ As young men in the Church, many of us were led to understand that sexual sin was almost outside of our control.

The seeing is the sinning

The dated, problematic idea that women can lead men to sin by the way they dress is a well-trodden path. But a subtle shift in that message happened somewhere along the way. And what I internalized was that seeing a woman’s body was itself a sin.

I’m going to pause there, because this distinction is critically important. The idea here is not that seeing a woman’s body might cause a man to sin, by having impure thoughts or actions. The change is that here, the actual act of seeing is believed to be inappropriate and sinful.

My experience with the actress and her see-through dress makes this a stark reality. I really believed that I had done something wrong by accidentally seeing a woman’s body.

Generally, this idea wasn’t taught explicitly, but it can be a short, straight line from other things that were. The quote that I hear from women the most, on this topic, comes from the April 2005 General Conference, when then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks famously taught that young women who dress immodestly are “becoming pornography to some of the men who see you.”

I’d already learned that pornography was poison and catastrophic (see a few paragraphs ago). So when I heard things like this, I connected the dots in the only way that made sense: if a woman can be pornography because of how she’s dressed, and if seeing pornography is catastrophic, then seeing her is the catastrophe. That’s what I internalized. I don’t think that’s what he meant, but it’s what I took away.

It’s worth noting here that the things we say and do as members of the Church don’t always reflect the official teachings of the Church. I have to imagine that having Latter-day Saints police each other and shame each other (intentionally or not) in regards to modesty was never on the Brethren’s to-do list. All I can really do is share my own experience. Yours may have been the same or it may have been different; both are real, both are valid.

Still, this shift—from “seeing a woman’s body might cause you to sin” to “seeing a woman’s body is a sin” informs a lot of purity/worthiness culture of the era.

What is the natural outcome of a young man believing that simply seeing a woman’s body is sinful? That same young man grows up, and becomes the kind of man who will create rules that women should keep themselves covered up. Telling a young woman at a mutual activity or a stake dance that she is immodestly dressed becomes a courageous, saving act; it’s the act of saving so many young men from sinning—as well as yourself. And some of the women along the way are taught this so much that they begin to police each other.

The Catholic church has a concept called “concupiscence,” which (at the risk of deeply over-simplifying) is the innate human inclination toward sin. It’s not the sin itself, it’s the pull, the being drawn to it. And that distinction is immensely useful—it recognizes that there is a space between natural, physical inclinations and the committing of sexual sin.

That idea has been missing in Latter-day Saint culture, with regards to modesty. If a man sees a woman and has an inappropriate thought, but doesn’t act on it, is that a win? I’d say yes, but that’s not how I was raised. Instead, we tend to point to Alma for this one, in his back-and-forth with Zeezrom. He says one very important thing (emphasis added):

For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; …and our thoughts will also condemn us;

Assuredly we’ve been taught in the Church that an act that breaks the law of chastity (marital infidelity, etc.) is a sin. Alma isn’t actually talking about sexuality at all in this verse, but we’ve embedded in the Latter-day Saint psyche that a single sexual thought, of any kind, is itself something that condemns us.⁵

And in that, Latter-day Saint worthiness/purity culture found itself unable to even acknowledge natural human sexuality, and that has caused problems.

What was the effect of all this?

There is a narrative that has floated around for years, that being raised in purity culture results in higher rates of pornography use and pornography addiction. In LDS circles, that largely originated with a single paper that suggested that Utah had the highest rate of pornography usage in the United States.⁶ This conclusion is contested, however, and doesn’t actually appear to hold a lot of water.

Pornography use, without a doubt, can be harmful. I’ve seen it tear marriages apart and turn families upside down. This isn’t really disputed in LDS circles, and I won’t spend time defending that assertion here; you can add any level of spiritual harm as you see fit. But the reality is that the shame-based architecture we’ve built in Church culture in recent decades adds another layer of problems on top of that.

Studies show that people with a religious background, LDS or not, are more likely to label themselves as “addicted,” regardless of how often they actually view pornography.⁷ Research shows that overall, among people who are using or have used pornography, those with the purity culture training have higher rates of psychological distress,⁸ anxiety about relationships,⁹ depression,¹⁰ and suicidal thoughts.¹¹

Anybody using pornography sets themselves up for the natural consequences that result from its use. But those who were raised in a religion that adds shame on top of that have this second set of problems, and those without a religious background don’t. The relevant term is “moral incongruence”—it’s the difference between what we believe we should do and what we actually do. Scrupulosity is closely related here, too. If we could reframe our culture to remove the shame from teachings about sexuality, we’d be doing future generations a favor.

We knew all along that something was hurting LDS young men who were using pornography. But we don’t often acknowledge how many problems come from the cultural architecture we’ve built, in which they encounter it.

The closed loop

But this isn’t really about pornography; not all of it, anyway. We’ve established—at least in my mind growing up—that just seeing a woman’s body can be understood as sinful. And we’ve established that any inappropriate thought, however fleeting, can also be seen as sinful. And we’ve layered on the shame that comes from these things. Together, these concepts form a problematic loop.

As a young man in the Church, this is how it worked for me:

1. You see something. You’re perusing the internet, and you see an ad with a woman in a bikini, or in some state of dress that could be considered revealing. Or, for me, an actress in a see-through dress.

2. The body reacts. While a lot of this is probably socialized—society trains men that certain things are “sexy”—there can be a real, physiological response.

3. The teachings kick in. This is where we get Alma teaching us that our thoughts condemn us—except at this point, the thought has already happened and was likely outside of our control in the first place. Shame is the result.

4. There’s no way to resolve this. Even if the young man in this scenario wants to “repent”, what is he repenting of? Has he done something wrong?

5. The shame is already there, when it happens again. It’s going to happen again, it always does. The only criteria to see a woman dressed in such a way in a movie or an ad is to have eyes. And when it happens again, the shame is going to layer on top of what was already there.

The harshest part of this is that the harder the young man tries, and the more pious and righteous he strives to be, the greater the shame… and the spiral continues. He holds himself guilty for something he cannot control. And while scrupulosity itself is a disorder with a clinical definition (and is something else entirely), our culture created a greenhouse for scrupulous symptoms that can be achieved simply by trying to live a righteous life.

There’s an uncomfortable truth here

The pornography industry espouses a key premise, which is that a woman’s body is inherently sexual. And the uncomfortable truth is that in the 1990s-2000s, in our hurry and ferocity to fight against it, we adopted the same premise. The difference was what that pornography said to look, and we said to look away.

Teaching youth that a woman’s shoulders should be covered up is teaching them that a woman’s shoulders are intended to be seen as sexual. Or her thighs, or her cleavage.

In the early 1900s, floor-length skirts for women eventually gave way to shorter, knee-length hemlines—nothing that would even raise eyebrows now.¹² But at the time, it was taught that women’s legs should be entirely covered up, and sure enough, they were viewed as sexual and scandalous.¹³

Teaching youth that a woman’s body is inherently sexual, even in a non-sexual context, is problematic. This is why people get weird about women breastfeeding in public, for example—the context is decidedly non-sexual, but we culturally sexualize the situation because a woman’s body is involved. Wearing a swimsuit is intended for swimming (or tanning, or any number of non-sexual things), but that has also been sexualized.

Our best-intentioned selves and the pornography industry both view women’s bodies as sexual by default. And the reality is that sometimes a body is just a body.

A body is just a body

A while back I read a great book called “More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament,” by Lexie and Lindsay Kite (twin sisters, Latter-day Saints, and PhDs in their field). Admittedly the book is targeted to women, but I learned a lot from it—both about what women go through, and about my own body as well. It draws attention to “self-objectification,” which is the habit of always trying to see yourself from an imagined outside viewer’s perspective. That’s not healthy, of course, and the takeaway is that each of us is “more than a body,” more than just something for other people to look at.

And while I liked the book, as a man, the message that has resonated even more strongly with me is almost the opposite. It’s that a body is “just a body.” We all have one. It’s an assemblage of arms and legs and heads and butts, and they’re all roughly the same. It doesn’t have to be burdened with sexual implications and religious/cultural baggage. I have one, you have one, we all have one. It’s just a body.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here, because the last thing I’d want to do is reduce a woman down to being just a body. I’m not talking here about personality, or the individual worth and divine nature inherent in each daughter of Heavenly Parents. Each human being is more than a body… but the part that is a body, well, that’s just a body.

The antidote to viewing a woman’s body as sexually charged isn’t actually avoidance—that actually reinforces the sexualized framing. Instead, the antidote is being able to see a body as just that, a body. It’s neutral.

What we do with seeing a body, well, that’s up to each of us, and that’s better fodder for spiritual discussion because it’s something we can control. I think that’s what Jesus is really getting at in the Sermon on the Mount when He calls out “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her” in Matthew 5. He’s not calling out “whoever saw a woman’s body by accident” (or even on purpose, for that matter). He’s talking about what we do with it.

Even with that context, it’s weird for me to see a woman’s cleavage in an Instagram Reel and not flinch, or cover it up with my thumb. It’s still something I’m working on. But trying desperately to avoid seeing it is still treating a woman’s body as inherently sexual. The thing to overcome is not whether you see something, but whether seeing something registers as a verdict on your worthiness. If seeing a body doesn’t change how you see your own worthiness, that’s a certain level of success—it’s turning a woman’s body from being seen as a sexual object, which we’ve assuredly been taught that it is, into just a body. Again, we all have one.

That’s where the idea of concupiscence—the concept that there is a state between the “seeing” and the “sinning”, even if the seeing is powered by hormones and natural human attraction—comes in, and may be the only way to break the closed shame loop. There’s no way to entirely sanitize your viewing; you’ll always see something that can be deemed inappropriate. But what I can do, myself, is understand that those moments don’t have to have shame attached. If a body is just a body, then seeing a body is just seeing a body.

And to be clear, it’s not a permission slip for men to look, and keep looking, and ogle without guilt. I won’t make any attempt to excuse male behavior toward women, now or in the past. But we also can’t move forward by doubling-down on the rules that caused the problem in the first place.

Wrapping it up

This is one of those things where it feels like we need to change things, and simultaneously it feels like we can’t, because it’s so embedded in our culture. But our way out of this kind of thing is not by focusing on the culture. The gospel of Jesus Christ is much larger than the cultural rules we impose on ourselves.

I think we can safely assert that the law of chastity matters, while also asserting that the way we’ve addressed it has hurt people. Shame should never be part of the equation.

The “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood” bit in D&C 121 specifically decries the “lead others by controlling them” culture we’ve sometimes walked backward into as well-meaning individuals. We’ve shamed young women for what they wore to girls camp, taught young men they’re a failure if they use pornography, and taught many, many lessons to both young men and young women that set a unrealistic, shame-based frame around sexuality. While we can’t change the worthiness culture that still persists in many wards and branches, we can at least stop doing these things ourselves.

My 17-year-old self was so afraid of the rules—or, what I thought were the rules—that an innocent moment still lingers in the back of my brain somewhere. Layered on top of that are the countless other times I’ve accidentally seen things that were “inappropriate” or even downright “pornographic” in the media or on the internet. I tried so hard to control it, white-knuckling my way into going on a mission and getting married in the temple. I’m trying to shake the shame, now that I’m in my 40s and I can see it for what it is.

17-year-old me only spoke that language—rules, fear, and shame. But that’s not the gospel. If I could talk to him, I might tell him that the cultural rules aren’t nearly as important as he thinks. But I think mostly, I’d tell him that God loves him, no matter what. I’m not sure he knew that.

1. The equivalence of LDS “worthiness” culture with Evangelical “purity” culture is asserted by Evangelical author Linda Kay Klein, in an older version of a page on her website, found here, and cited in the literature here: Madison Natarajan et al., “Decolonizing Purity Culture: Gendered Racism and White Idealization in Evangelical Christianity,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 46, no. 3 (2022): 316–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843221091116.

2. While it’s not talked about in this essay, heterosexuality and a strict gender binary were also part of this recipe.

3. The For the Strength of Youth pamphlet in 2001 gave specific instruction to young women (“Young women should wear clothing that covers the shoulder and avoid clothing that is low-cut in the front or the back or revealing in any other manner”), and only a cursory mention for young men (“Young men should also maintain modesty in their appearance”).

There was also direction in this version of FTSOY that didn’t specify which gender it was intended for: “Immodest clothing includes short shorts and skirts, tight clothing, shirts that do not cover the stomach, and other revealing attire.” This was always understood then, and should be now, as also directed to young women.

4. Also a Lindy Kay Klein concept, from the same link above. She was able to capture this much more succinctly than I could.

5. A fair counterpoint here is Matthew 5:28, where Jesus taught “…whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her” has already sinned, also suggesting that our thoughts will condemn us. But I’d draw a line between this and the verse in Alma; the idea of “lusting” suggests (to me) dwelling on the thought, whereas I don’t think a loving, merciful God is interested in condemning us for a single fleeting thought.

6. “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?,” accessed June 16, 2026, https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=35239.

7. “Moral Incongruence and Pornography Use: A Critical Review and Integration,” accessed June 16, 2026, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29412013/.

8. “Internet Pornography Use: Perceived Addiction, Psychological Distress, and the Validation of a Brief Measure,” accessed June 16, 2026, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24341869/.

9. Nathan Leonhardt et al., “Damaged Goods: Perception of Pornography Addiction as a Mediator Between Religiosity and Relationship Anxiety Surrounding Pornography Use,” Faculty Publications, ahead of print, March 13, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1295013.

10. “Investigating Correlates of Hypersexual Behavior in Religious Patients: Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: Vol 23, No 2-3,” accessed June 16, 2026, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10720162.2015.1130002.

11. Engelhardt R et al., “Problematic Pornography Use and Psychological Distress: A Longitudinal Study in a Large US Sample,” PubMed, n.d., accessed June 16, 2026, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40483829/.

12. The idea that a woman showing her ankles was scandalous is usually what comes up here. This is largely a myth (see explanations like this) but the vibe is right.

13. We’re seeing this in real-time right now, as the new sleeveless garments have brought bare women’s shoulders into the LDS mainstream. Those who felt that covering shoulders was close to doctrine are having to re-evaluate.