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Live from the YFZ Ranch: Fashion Week
The
moms of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints started an online clothing store to provide their
confiscated children with acceptable clothes. Now that they have
been reunited with their kids, they're considering turning the
website into a money-making
venture:
"We don't know what to expect on demand but we have had a flood of interest," said Maggie Jessop, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. "Our motive is not to flaunt ourselves or our religion before the world. We have to make a living the same as everyone does."
The sect is offering dresses, overalls, shirts, pants, nightgowns, sleepers, onesies for babies and, yes, ankle-to-wrist underwear. There are denim jeans for boys and "teen princess" dresses in plain, jacket and vest styles in pastel shades of pink, peach, yellow, green, aqua, blue, lavender and lilac.
The FLDS has gotten a rough rap during the last few months, and I'm on the fence about how much of it was deserved, but the group's openness to economic adaptation is refreshing:
"They accuse us of [relying] on welfare, but that's untrue," [Jessop] said. "We like to be busy and learn to meet our needs—out of ashes growing lilies."
Editor Jacob Sullum wrote here about Texas' abuse of children in pursuit of protecting them from the very same.
Randi|6.30.08 @ 5:03PM|#
Well at least they won't be selling baggy, sagging pants. In my
city, the youths have revived the old 1990's saggy pants, but with
a new twist. The sag 'em in the front now too. Just today I saw a
youth sagging in front. His limp cock flopped around in his boxers
like a fish out of water. I say, if these youths really had any
balls , they'd sag their pants (both front and back) sans
boxers.
What a bunch of clowns.
|6.30.08 @ 5:15PM|#
His limp cock flopped around in his boxers like a fish out of water.
I laughed so hard at this sentence that I damn near had a psychotic break.
Anonymo the Anonymous|6.30.08 @ 5:45PM|#
Over/under on what percentage of their sales will be ironic?
|6.30.08 @ 5:56PM|#
Is that the magic underwear??? I thought outsiders were forbidden from seeing it.
|6.30.08 @ 6:05PM|#
I think this is great. I'm not a potential customer, but I bet there are plenty out there. The FLDS took the lemons the state of Texas gave them and are making lemonade.
Paul|6.30.08 @ 6:19PM|#
I checked out the website...why do all the kids have so much
product in their hair?
It strikes me that FLDS boys are all "Dapper Dan" men.
jtuf|6.30.08 @ 6:51PM|#
I wish the FLDS the best of luck with their enterprise. The last report I heard said that all the press coverage made many Americans interested in prairie style clothes. A slow economy also tends to bring on modest styles. They might end up developing a thriving garment business.
|6.30.08 @ 7:16PM|#
The idea that they are working and on welfare is not
contradictory. The FLDS church set up numerous little games to sap
money out of the government. And each additional wife is considered
a "single mother" often with "dependent children" who qualifies for
state payments. Then the church runs its own towns and gets federal
and state funds for their schools, road, police, etc. They qualify
for a lots because the "poverty rate" is considered very high --
all those single moms.
Who owns this clothing factory? Would it be surprising if the
church did and the women "contributed" their time to the church
enterprise? They wouldn't get paid, could still collect welfare and
still be working. The church can then "give charity" which is tax
free. This also cements the control of the prophet and the elders
who run everything. But the idea that they keep busy working in a
non-paying job would not necessarily exclude them from welfare. And
those communities take in the tens of millions in various
government payments every year.
|6.30.08 @ 8:00PM|#
Is that the magic underwear??? I thought outsiders were
forbidden from seeing it.
Non-members are forbidden from * buying * it. Seeing it, if you're
married to a non-member, is OK, though when I was an active member
of the Church my wife used to insist, rather emphatically, that it
all come off if I wanted sex. And regular LDS often have bits of
the garment peeking out from clothing, often as a subtle signaling
device, or if you're kinda risque by LDS standards, lots of it
peeking out from clothes that, in the absence of the undergarment,
would be immodest.
|6.30.08 @ 8:23PM|#
Still no charges of child abuse or statutory rape have been
filed by the authorities in Texas.
I think FLDS is a whackjob cult.
I think that about a lot of churches.
Texas had enough evidence(?) to rain the town and breakup the
famalies, yet can't get a indictment?
|6.30.08 @ 9:23PM|#
what I admire about reason the most is it's
ability to have enough righteous outrage at the State of Texas
while simultaneously mocking these creepy quasi-pedos and
Svengali-like child abusers.
"authoritarianism, whether wearing a Che beret or a bishop's mitre,
leaves us as cold as Lenin's corpse" - Nick Gillespie
keep rockin' on, kiddos.
Syd|7.1.08 @ 4:26AM|#
Eh, Ayn_Randian, the reason Reason is outraged on their behalf is because these people are innocent of all charges against them? Except for polygamy, which is the excuse Texas used for raiding them.
JMR|7.1.08 @ 8:16AM|#
I'm curious about the extent to which this particular sect
relied on welfare to support their lifestyle, and so far I've seen
nothing specific. They get the accusation because other, very
similar, groups have used welfare to support their lifestyle. I
have no problem with the nutty lifestyle if consenting adults want
to live it on their own, but I have severe problems financing it on
April 15th. If they want to claim something like "nobody at that
ranch was on welfare at the time of the raid" I'll be happy to
listen, but so far that claim hasn't been made AFAIK.
JMR
ed|7.1.08 @ 8:47AM|#
righteous outrage at the State of Texas
while simultaneously mocking these creepy quasi-pedos
I believe it's called, "Having your cake and eating it, too."
|7.1.08 @ 9:01AM|#
That woman in the slimming swimwear looks like John
Travolta.
Yeah. "Looks like."
|7.1.08 @ 9:42AM|#
They get the accusation because other, very similar, groups
have used welfare to support their lifestyle.
No, they get the accusation because other members of their group
living on other settlements do it too, and because their Prophets
have been recorded advocating the practice. There's no evidence
whatsoever that they don't practice it themselves, and plenty
that's circumstantial to assume that they do.
JMR|7.1.08 @ 10:19AM|#
Are you sure the groups in other states qualify as "their
group"? If so, you're right, and if not, you're wrong. I know there
are welfare recipient privacy issues intertwined in this whole
thing, but it would be nice to know for sure, in a general way,
something like the number of them or percentage of them on welfare.
So far, the media has given us nothing specific.
JMR
miche|7.1.08 @ 10:46AM|#
Don't know if it's been said yet but those are some pricey children's clothes.
|7.1.08 @ 11:09AM|#
"Texas had enough evidence(?) to rain the town and breakup the
famalies, yet can't get a indictment?"
Give Texas a break. If the FLDS members were black, they'd all be
on death row by now.
|7.1.08 @ 11:10AM|#
"I checked out the website...why do all the kids have so much
product in their hair? "
That's not product, if you know what I mean.
|7.1.08 @ 2:24PM|#
Is that the magic underwear??? I thought outsiders were forbidden from seeing it.
Warren, it is not the style that makes the underwear magic, it's
the symbols embroidered on it. Though I don't know that the fundies
use those.
Years ago the son of a temple president told me that a lot of his
father's staff's time was spent checking people coming to the
temple against the list of fundamentalists and other excommunicants
that was sent out every month. It's apparently a long list, though
I don't know how many are fundies and how many are adulterers or
just people who wanted out.
Apparently even though they reject the establishment church as
corrupt and apostate many of the fundie groups still try to get in
for temple endowments.
|7.1.08 @ 2:30PM|#
Oh, and as prolefeed notes above, allowing temple garments to
show (as in the outline through a white shirt) for example is used
as code to identify fellow saints by those who feel they need
to.
However, I believe one is not supposed to let gentiles see the
magic symbols although it does happen in places like public change
rooms at swimming pools etc.
|7.1.08 @ 10:39PM|#
Are you sure the groups in other states qualify as "their
group"? If so, you're right, and if not, you're wrong.
They have the same prophet, so yes, they're members of the same
group. They were also hiding Warren Jeffs for a period of time
while he was on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.
Wish I could give you better than Wikipedia, but that's what there
is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YFZ_Ranch
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