The Salt Lake Trib’s letters to the editor often contain some interesting insights into life in Utah; I haven’t lived there for more than 30 years, and I feel I know the place because I can read the opinions of the cranks and the apologists and the activists and the completely whacked-out religious nutcases. This time, it’s a teenage girl’s perspective on the Texas FLDS polygamy case. She starts well, but I don’t think she can really imagine what it’s like to be raised in that society – no “modern girl” could, because essentially these are girls who are living…
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Say what you like about the religion, it’s not natural for women’s faces to be this lean. Even for nursing mothers, these women look like they’re not getting enough to eat. The one in the middle is becoming famous on Flickr for that monobrow, by the way. Their body language is weirdly out of synch with modern life, too. It’s as if they’ve adopted some kind of backwards-engineered emulation of the way women hold their bodies in old, old photographs from the pioneer days. They also remind me of the faces of hardscrabble farmers’ wives from the 30’s Dustbowl photographs…
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One thing to remember: the FLDS compounds are as self-sufficient as possible. Medical care is handled “inhouse.” State mandated reporter laws for suspected abuse cases and records keeping: forget about it. More Clarity About Abuse, Intermarriage, Child Breeders, and the Fundamentalist Church of Later Day Saints | PEEK | AlterNet