so one of my friends back home got this as a tattoo. There are two really funny parts about it. First Mormon is misspelled Morman, and second, there is a cross, which we do not use at all.
there’s definitely more than two really funny parts about this tattoo
this post is for all the current and former LDS folks. if this makes me chuckle I imagine you must be howling with laughter
Angela Ellsworth
Seer Bonnets
constructed of pioneer women’s bonnets and thousands of pearl pins
2009
“Ellsworth’s ‘seer bonnets: a continuing offense’ (2009-2010) refers to her rejected mormon heritage presented through series of antiquated pioneer women’s bonnets, constructed out of thousands of pearl-tipped corsage pins embedded into fabric with their points directed inwards. the small, fetish-like objects not only refer to the tradition of craft work in the home - women’s work - but also stand as disembodied memorials to the lives suffering cruelty, submission and control.”
Ten oldest daughters of Brigham Young and his plural wives
Three prominent early LDS Relief Society Women - Eliza Roxcy Snow (center) was married as a polygamous wife to LDS Church prophet, Joseph Smith and later to Brigham Young. She was also president of the LDS Church Relief Society from 1867-1877 and the sister of LDS Church prophet Lorenzo Snow.
Also pictured: Hannah T. King and Elizabeth Howard
Gottleib Ence (center) with his wives Elizabeth (left) and Caroline (right) and all their children. Ence was a pioneer and early settler of Richfield, Utah
![Louie Felt and May Anderson
[A]t least one Mormon woman went so far as to request that her husband marry polygamously after she fell in love with another woman, so that the two women could openly live together. Sarah Louisa Bouton married Joseph Felt in 1866 as his first wife but according to a 1919 biography, around 1874, Louie (the masculinized nickname she used) met and “fell in love with” a young woman in her local LDS congregation named Alma Elizabeth (Lizzie) Mineer. After discovering her intense passion for Lizzie Mineer, a childless Louie encouraged Joseph to marry the young woman as a plural wife, explaining “that some day they would be privileged to share their happiness with some little ones.” Joseph married Lizzie Mineer in 1876. But Lizzie’s new responsibilities of bearing and raising children evidently proved too great a strain for her and Louie’s relationship. Five years later Louie Felt fell in love with “another beautiful Latter-day Saint girl” named Lizzie Liddell, and again Joseph obligingly married her for Louie’s sake. Thus Louie “opened her home and shared her love” with this second Lizzie.
In 1883, 33 year old Louie Felt met 19 year-old May Anderson, and they also fell in love. This time, however, May did not marry Joseph Felt. In 1889 May moved in with Louie, and Joseph permanently moved out of the house Louie had built and bought on her own. Thus began one of the most intense, stable, and productive love relationships in turn-of-the-century Mormonism. These two women lived together for almost 40 years, and together presided over three of Mormonism’s most significant institutions: the General Primary Association (for Mormon children), the Children’s Friend (a magazine for young Mormons), and founding the Primary Children’s Hospital. Louie and May were fairly open about the romantic and passionate aspects of their relationship, as reported in their biographies published in several early issues of the LDS Children’s Friend. According to their recent biographer, Felt and Anderson’s relationship was a “symbiotic partnership with each compensating for the weaknesses and complementing the strengths of the other”. The 1919 Children’s Friend biography more bluntly declared that “the friendship which had started when Sister Felt and [May Anderson] met…ripened into love. Those who watched their devotion to each other declare that there never were more ardent lovers than these two”. The same biography also calls the beginning of their relationship a “time of love feasting”, and makes it clear that the two women shared the same bed. Twice in the Children’s Friend, Anderson and Felt were referred to as “the David and Jonathan” of the Primary, which, the magazine explained, was a common appellation for the women. For centuries, the biblical characters David and Jonathan have been classic signifiers of male-male desire and homoeroticism, because in the Hebrew scriptures, it was written in 2 Samuel 1:26 that upon Jonathan’s death in battle, David lamented, “very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” That these two women were described as “David and Jonathan” simultaneously masculinizes them and firmly encodes their love for each other in a homoerotic context.
From the essay “The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature”: A Revised History of Homosexuality & Mormonism, 1840-1980 by Connell O’Donovan](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwii8r4GSl1qdxm2to1_400.jpg)
Louie Felt and May Anderson
[A]t least one Mormon woman went so far as to request that her husband marry polygamously after she fell in love with another woman, so that the two women could openly live together. Sarah Louisa Bouton married Joseph Felt in 1866 as his first wife but according to a 1919 biography, around 1874, Louie (the masculinized nickname she used) met and “fell in love with” a young woman in her local LDS congregation named Alma Elizabeth (Lizzie) Mineer. After discovering her intense passion for Lizzie Mineer, a childless Louie encouraged Joseph to marry the young woman as a plural wife, explaining “that some day they would be privileged to share their happiness with some little ones.” Joseph married Lizzie Mineer in 1876. But Lizzie’s new responsibilities of bearing and raising children evidently proved too great a strain for her and Louie’s relationship. Five years later Louie Felt fell in love with “another beautiful Latter-day Saint girl” named Lizzie Liddell, and again Joseph obligingly married her for Louie’s sake. Thus Louie “opened her home and shared her love” with this second Lizzie.
In 1883, 33 year old Louie Felt met 19 year-old May Anderson, and they also fell in love. This time, however, May did not marry Joseph Felt. In 1889 May moved in with Louie, and Joseph permanently moved out of the house Louie had built and bought on her own. Thus began one of the most intense, stable, and productive love relationships in turn-of-the-century Mormonism. These two women lived together for almost 40 years, and together presided over three of Mormonism’s most significant institutions: the General Primary Association (for Mormon children), the Children’s Friend (a magazine for young Mormons), and founding the Primary Children’s Hospital. Louie and May were fairly open about the romantic and passionate aspects of their relationship, as reported in their biographies published in several early issues of the LDS Children’s Friend. According to their recent biographer, Felt and Anderson’s relationship was a “symbiotic partnership with each compensating for the weaknesses and complementing the strengths of the other”. The 1919 Children’s Friend biography more bluntly declared that “the friendship which had started when Sister Felt and [May Anderson] met…ripened into love. Those who watched their devotion to each other declare that there never were more ardent lovers than these two”. The same biography also calls the beginning of their relationship a “time of love feasting”, and makes it clear that the two women shared the same bed. Twice in the Children’s Friend, Anderson and Felt were referred to as “the David and Jonathan” of the Primary, which, the magazine explained, was a common appellation for the women. For centuries, the biblical characters David and Jonathan have been classic signifiers of male-male desire and homoeroticism, because in the Hebrew scriptures, it was written in 2 Samuel 1:26 that upon Jonathan’s death in battle, David lamented, “very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” That these two women were described as “David and Jonathan” simultaneously masculinizes them and firmly encodes their love for each other in a homoerotic context.
From the essay “The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature”: A Revised History of Homosexuality & Mormonism, 1840-1980 by Connell O’Donovan
The girl next door wakes up, runs a brush through her matted hair, ties it up in a sloppily made ponytail and flips up her hood for good measure. Three minutes later she’s out the door.
Shalese Kofoed, on the other hand, would cringe at such a routine. Her morning involves four necessities: a blow dryer, a straightener, a bottle of hair spray and a whole lot of teasing.
“I like big hair,” said Kofoed, freshman at BYU from Eagle, Idaho. “For me, it’s all about volume. And I have really workable hair, so I like it as big as I can get it.”
Yes, Kofoed is a die-hard “poofer,” one of many who have caught on to the big hair trend that has become a defining fashion of Utah women in the past decade.
But the trend is not bound by Utah state lines — it has popped up in surrounding Mormon hot spots in the West, which leads some to believe that big hair has ties to the Mormon culture. Even though big hair made its debut decades ago, it has re-emerged and is without signs of de-volumizing.
“All my friends [from Colorado] have massive hair,” said Kasey Mortensen, a freshman at BYU, a mild participant of the trend. “Big hair is the style; I actually had the least extreme hair back home. I noticed coming into Utah that everyone has really big, teased hair too.”
Big hair has been seen time and time again; the ’80s brought about the huge hair revolution, which reappeared in the ’90s, influenced by James Bond and Austin Powers, said Lyndsey McClure, a learning leader at the Paul Mitchell School in Provo.
“I think that all trends recreate and we see things coming back more and more,” McClure said. “We started seeing [big hair] again because it was a fun style to try to recreate. It has been influenced by time periods, but now it is taken out of context a little too far.”
Many dissenters are not so modest in their criticisms of the big hair trend. The draw to the bouffanting, the bleaching, the teasing, the ratting, is mind-boggling to non-poofers, who find the style unreasonable showy.
“I feel like it’s the cookie-cutter Barbie look,” said Mandy Bitnoff, a junior at BYU. “It looks like you try too hard. Your hair doesn’t go that way; don’t try to make it go that way. But I feel like that’s the vibe in Utah, to look like a little Barbie.”
Bitnoff, from northern California, said she never saw such voluminous hair back home. Drew Harris, a freshman at UVU from Utah, has seen it for years, and is not a big fan either.
“I think that it’s girls trying to get a reaction out of guys,” he said. “And it’s not necessarily a good reaction that they usually get. Guys usually judge them as not very morally clean girls.”
Making immediate judgments based on appearance is a habit many people innately possess, but some men don’t care about the extremity of a girl’s style, as long as they like what they see.
“If I’m attracted to the girl, it doesn’t matter what her hair looks like,” said Logan Nelson, a 21-year-old from UVU. “If she can pull it off, I’m down for it. But if she’s using it to get attention, to go all out and be really weird, then I don’t like it.”
After considering reasons for participation in such a vamped-up style, third-party observers draw a blank. Yet surprisingly, there are unexpected perks and motives for piling the inches up on the hair, and it is not simply from the desire to be “bigger” and more voluptuous than the girl next door.
“I think the biggest thing about big hair is it makes the body look smaller,” said Veronica Vanderholm, a student at Paul Mitchell in Provo. “Poofing your hair helps to frame your face and makes you look more feminine by making you look smaller.”
Another reason is strictly geographical. Young girls in western states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado and Arizona, grow up seeing the big hair trend — they like the way it looks, especially when older girls they admire are doing it. Thus, the style is most popular with high school students, many of whom tone down the “beehive” as they get older.
“My cousin lived in Utah and I came and visited her at the start of high school and her hair was so pretty; I wanted to look just like her,” said Alyssa Cardon, a freshman at BYU from Jefferson City, Mo., who practices the art of vertically-altered hair.
The insatiable draw is there — yet the sheer enormity of the hair poses a distraction, and causes damage, which leads some to believe it should not be overdone.
“All things in moderation,” said Josh Thatcher, a 21-year-old student at UVU. “I think you can go too crazy with it, because if you go too big, you’re trying to be showy, and we’re supposed to be humble people. It’s OK to want to be different, but I think there are limits.”
Right in line with Thatcher’s train of thought, Cardon admitted she went too far with her hair before she came to BYU.
“I think the more natural your hair looks the better, actually,” she said. “I think the bigger my hair was, the more distracting it was from who I was as a person. I think if people are focusing on your hair and not you, that’s a really bad thing.”
The trend makes its debut in high school, and oftentimes dies down in college, as it has done for Cardon. But for others, the trend is a part of them and their style, and they don’t anticipate calling it quits soon.
“It’s a big, metaphorically also speaking, hair style,” said Kofoed. “It’s kind of a loud hair style and so maybe people think that it’s eccentric or that we’re trying to get attention. But I think if you can work it, work it. Because it’s a fun a hair style and it’s different, and it works for me.”
My mother as an FLDS woman (A.Bagley)
gouache
made a little box version of brigham young.
I’ve got some for sale if you’re interested. Ten bones.
evanjed is an artist living in salt lake city. he also made this brigham young screen print that i love
