Body Policing in High-Demand Religions
In many high-demand religions, people (usually starting with childhood) are taught their body must reflect the values of the faith, purity, and obedience. Because of these teachings around bodies, many hold deeply internalized messages about their physical appearance. These messages were not just casual guidelines, they were rules, enforced through cultural pressure, religious doctrine, and sometimes outright punishment.
What Is Body Policing?
Body policing is the control or surveillance of people’s bodies, appearances, and physical behaviors, often in the name of morality, modesty, or righteousness. In high-demand religious groups, this can look like:
Strict modesty codes that dictate what is “appropriate” to wear, often targeting women and AFAB individuals.
Diet culture wrapped in spiritual language, such as fasting to show worthiness or using body size as a reflection of faithfulness.
Pressure to remain “sexually pure”, which is often equated with how you dress or carry yourself.
Constant self-monitoring, paired with fear of disappointing God, family, or the community.
The “Holy” Body Standard
In many high-demand faiths, there is a very specific aesthetic tied to being “righteous”: thin, modest, heterosexual, able-bodied, gender-conforming. If you deviate from that ideal, if your body is too curvy, too loud, too different, you may be seen as a threat to the spiritual order.
Women and AFAB people often bear the brunt of this. Told to cover up to avoid tempting men, to stay small in every sense of the word, and to see their bodies as dangerous. The messaging is that your body is not your own, it belongs to your community, your God, your spouse (or future spouse), or your eternal reward.
Surveillance Culture Starts Early
Many clients describe a childhood steeped in hypervigilance. They were taught to monitor their own behavior, and everyone else’s. This can include:
Watching other people to see who is “breaking modesty rules.”
Being told to report friends or peers who were “dressing inappropriately.”
Feeling constant guilt for normal developmental changes like puberty, weight gain, or attraction.
This level of monitoring creates deep anxiety. It is not just external control, it becomes internalized. Many survivors of high-demand religions struggle with:
Body dysmorphia and shame
Disordered eating or chronic dieting
Hypervigilance and anxiety
Fear of being seen or judged
Modesty and the Policing of Bodies
In many high-demand religions, modesty is not just a personal value, and often becomes a community-enforced rule.
Clothing becomes a public symbol: garments (like those in Mormonism), or specified dress by the group often signal worthiness or obedience.
Members silently monitor each other, noting who follows dress codes, who deviates, and what that might “mean” about someone’s spiritual standing.
Stricter scrutiny, with clothing often linked to assumptions about purity, sexuality, or submission.
Wearing “immodest” clothes can trigger gossip, judgment, or even formal consequences in some religious communities.
Even body movement is policed: whether you are "too confident," "too feminine," or "too visible," your body language can be labeled as inappropriate or rebellious.
This communal surveillance fosters anxiety, self-consciousness, and disconnection from one’s own body.
Your Body Is Not a Sin Waiting to Happen
One of the most harmful teachings in body-policing cultures is the belief that your body is a source of temptation, that its mere existence causes harm. This ideology shifts responsibility away from those who harm or objectify, and places it squarely on the person just trying to exist in their skin.
The truth is, your body is not a moral failure. It is not too much. It is not shameful. Healing often begins when you begin to reclaim your body as yours, not your religion’s, not your community’s, not your family’s.
Deconstructing Body Control
Deconstructing high-demand religion does not automatically undo years of body shame and fear. But here are a few practices that can help:
Somatic therapy to reconnect with your body without fear or judgment.
Health at Every Size (HAES) frameworks that reject body hierarchies.
Narrative therapy to rewrite the story of who you are and who you were told to be.
Unfollowing toxic influencers or modesty-pushing accounts that trigger shame.
Wearing clothes that feel good
Reclaiming your body is sacred work. And it is possible.
If you were taught to believe your body was dangerous, broken, or sinful, you are not imagining the toll that took. Therapy can help you rebuild trust with your body, your choices, and your voice.
