Any insomniac who has tried to convince herself that “just a few minutes” on Instagram will beckon back sleep has landed, circa 3 a.m., on the feed of a Mormon lifestyle blogger. Although she probably has no idea that’s where she is. The blogger’s faith is never foregrounded. It’s obvious, though — once you know what to look for. She’s white and under 30 and married. Fit and given to flattering dresses that hit the knee and cover the shoulder, she has multiple children and Lady Godiva hair. She knows her way around a braid. She is wholesome but not dowdy; her posts are relentlessly positive but never pious. Until you Google her name and see that she was married at the Salt Lake Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), you might not know that she routinely asks herself, while shopping or applying eye shadow, Would I feel comfortable with my appearance if I were in the Lord’s presence?

Amber Fillerup Clark, aka the Barefoot Blonde, is 27 years old and lives in Arizona with her husband, their two young children, and a golden retriever. They all appear on her blog, alongside pictures of Fillerup Clark herself, who is breathtakingly pretty. She offers up beauty and fitness tips and bubbly accounts of her balmy days, as well as a line of clip-in hair extensions, which are for sale on her site for roughly $200 and given names that sound like nail polish shades (“Melt My Heart,” “Platinum Status”).

Like most Mormon girls, Fillerup Clark was encouraged to keep journals and scrapbooks growing up, and she thinks this early education in archiving one’s own life is what leads so many Mormon women to take up lifestyle blogging. Today, Fillerup Clark, who has 1.3 million Instagram followers, just about perfectly embodies LDS church doctrine: She married young, had children soon afterward, has a job that keeps her at home, and — perhaps most importantly — makes Mormonism look not just normal but enviable. She’s not wearing gunnysack dresses and praying beneath a high desert sun. She’s eating shaved ice with her kids and prancing around in a bikini, which, while technically in defiance of Mormon scripture (“Thou shalt not be proud in thy heart; let all thy garments be plain”), is overshadowed by the fact that she continuously promotes an idealized vision of domestic Mormon life.

When Mormons first came to Utah in 1847, Brigham Young, the second president of the LDS church, instructed his followers, “Beautify your gardens, your houses, your farms; beautify the city. This will make us happy, and produce plenty.” The direction was an early example of an animating Mormon sentiment that still plays out today: Outward appearances matter. “Your dress and grooming influence the way you and others act,” reads “For the Strength of Youth,” a widely distributed Mormon pamphlet. Tattoos are discouraged, as are multiple piercings. The LDS church’s website has an entire section devoted to grooming and dress, complete with makeup tutorials. “You are not required to wear makeup; however, wearing makeup can help you look your best,” it reads. “To minimize the appearance of dark circles under your eyes, use a yellow- or pink-toned concealer lighter than your skin tone. Use your fingers to gently apply and blend the color under your eyes, along the lash line.” Celebrity hairstylist and Kardashian inner-circler Jen Atkin, who was raised in the LDS church, describes the Mormon look as “pretty, relatable beauty, with nothing too out of reach...though they really know how to put on a face of makeup!”

Mormonism “is and has always been very gender-organized,” says Megan Sanborn Jones, a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. The system “promotes a kind of biological determinism. If you’re a boy, you must want to be strong, play a sport, and then go on a mission. If you’re a girl, you must love makeup. Mormon girls, early on, are introduced to makeup and hairstyling and fashion.”

It’s a fact that flies in the face of Young’s warning to women to “spend more time in moral, mental and spiritual cultivation, and less upon fashion and the vanities of the world,” which he gave just 20 years after offering up his arguably contradictory domestic instructions. “There’s been a tension throughout church history,” says Kate Holbrook, a specialist in women’s history in the church-history department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “On the one hand, you’re taught that your appearance represents the church. But on the other, we’re taught to be modest and not to put too much time and resources into superficial things.”