At first, I thought it was satire.
TikTok served me a video of women—Mormon, smiling, devout—waiting in line for new sacred underwear. The breathable kind. The kind that says God loves airflow. I waited for the punchline.
It never came.
It wasn’t a joke. Just another day in Utah.
And somehow, that was funnier. And more terrifying.
The video panned across a parking lot lined with modest skirts and down jackets. The women looked joyful. One clutched her updated temple garments like she’d just scored a miracle on clearance. Another beamed into the camera:
“They’re finally more breathable! The Church is so forward-thinking!”
That was the line that cracked me.
I laughed. Not just a chuckle—one of those deep, involuntary laughs that comes when the absurd becomes too sincere to ignore. It was all so perfectly surreal. A major world religion rolling out updated underwear like Apple releasing a new iPhone. Holy garments, now with less swamp crotch.
I imagined the celestial R&D department: angels in lab coats, God sitting on a cloud reviewing airflow metrics. Did they do focus groups? Was there a beta test in Provo?
But even as I mocked it, something in me started to curdle.
Because this wasn’t a parody. It wasn’t a sketch. It was earnest. Real people were genuinely grateful that their religion had updated their underwear. Not because it symbolized progress, but because it reaffirmed the structure. It meant the system was still speaking. Still evolving just enough to feel alive.
And I knew that feeling. Not the fabric, but the longing underneath it. The desperate gratitude for any sign that your beliefs are still breathing. Still divine. Still looking out for you.
I didn’t grow up Mormon, but I was raised Baptist-adjacent, deep in the belly of American fundamentalism. We didn’t wear magic underwear, but we carried the same stitched-in messages: You are not enough on your own. You need God. You need the Church. You need to stay within the walls or be swallowed by hell.
The underwear may differ. The mechanism does not.
What hit me hardest, watching those TikToks, wasn’t the absurdity—it was the innocence. The sheer sincerity. These were grown adults shaped since childhood to believe that God cares deeply about what touches their skin—but only if it’s church-approved. They weren’t just buying underwear. They were renewing a covenant. Buying back into belonging. Re-affirming an identity passed down like a family recipe, wrapped in guilt and love and generational pride.
And here’s the part people outside these systems often miss: it’s not stupidity. It’s not blind obedience. It’s not gullibility.
It’s conditioning.
You’re born into it.
You don’t choose it any more than you choose your language.
You seek meaning as a child, and you seek it within the only world you know.
I was once that child. I memorized scripture before I learned how to spot manipulation. I knew about hell before I knew how babies were made. I was taught to confess sins I didn’t understand, to smile through repression, to believe that questioning was pride, and pride was the first sin.
And so, like them, I grew up obedient. I became a reflection of what was expected. I was praised for conformity, rewarded for silence. It wasn’t until my twenties that the spell began to break—and even then, I didn’t escape with a heroic leap. I leaked out, drop by drop. Until one day I realized I was no longer wearing the costume. But the seam lines were still there, ghosted into my skin.
That’s why I couldn’t just laugh.
Because I saw my old self in their eyes.
Because I remembered what it felt like to believe without irony.
And more painfully, I remembered what it felt like to realize the belief wasn’t mine—that it had been stitched onto me by people who loved me too much to let me think freely.
We call it brainwashing, but that word feels too aggressive. This isn’t waterboarding. It’s lullabies. It’s repetition. It’s community. It’s love weaponized by fear. And that’s what makes it so effective. So enduring. So hard to mock without also mourning.
Because deep down, the garments aren’t the point. The doctrines aren’t the point.
The point is the need—to belong, to feel safe, to be told you are okay if you just do what you’re told.
And the more absurd the ritual, the more powerful the bond.
Sacred underwear. Abstinence pledges. Speaking in tongues.
The stranger the behavior, the harder it is to leave—because now you’re not just abandoning a belief.
You’re abandoning a self. A family. A story.
So I laughed at the underwear. And I still do. But not because I think I’m better.
I laugh because I know how hard it is to stop believing the joke is serious.
Because I remember the years I spent swallowing ideas that made no sense—just so I could keep my seat at the table.
Because I remember what it cost to finally say: “No. This doesn’t fit me anymore.”
And that’s what I hope people see when I mock religion—not cruelty, but a crowbar. A crack in the wall. A reminder that belief should never require obedience to absurdity. That love shouldn’t demand costumes. That truth doesn’t hide in garments made by committees.
So yeah—I laughed. But I also grieved.
Because they deserve better.
We all do.
And until we learn to recognize the garments we were given—be they made of cotton, shame, or scripture—we’re all just standing in some invisible line, waiting to be told we’re finally enough.