In the seventh episode of the new reality show “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a character makes this observation of a fellow married mom struggling with a controlling husband: “It’s kind of a theme with our church, though, and kind of what the problem is. Everyone is getting married before their brains even develop.”
The show, which is on Hulu, follows eight influencers in Utah who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is being marketed as a docudrama with a religious gloss; a caption for the trailer on TikTok promises “Secrets, scandals and viral handles.” This group of conventionally attractive mostly 20-somethings was cast because, as part of a loose network of friends who call themselves “#momtok,” they already had millions of social media followers. Following their rise to fame over the past few years, they made headlines for a cascade of salacious and embarrassing public moments.
“Mormon Wives” is being sold as regular reality TV dreck — I say this with love. I love garbage. So I was surprised to find that beneath the usual petty squabbles and plastic surgery recovery scenes, there is a much deeper theme of religious conflict.
These women are engaged in an ongoing discussion about, among other subjects, the social conservatism of Mormonism — where chastity is a virtue, homosexuality is a sin and the father is the “is the presiding authority in his family” — and whether they can change the culture of the church and also the broader world, including their own families.
(A similar conversation has also been happening on “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” but it tended to be overshadowed by the criminal behavior of one of the cast members, which played out over multiple seasons. I told you, I love garbage).
The “Mormon Wives” very public grappling with rigid gender roles and working outside the home is also part of a larger trend I wrote about earlier this year — while every demographic group is moving away from organized religion in the United States, young women are leaving “in unprecedented numbers.” They are pushing back against their churches and disaffiliating in part because they feel like second-class citizens in their houses of worship.
While watching “Mormon Wives,” I was reminded of women I interviewed who slowly began to question the values they were raised with as they came of age. Because many of the cast members of the show got married for the first time in their teens or early 20s, they were already wives and mothers when they felt they had the power to question their place in the community.
Taylor Frankie Paul, now 30, who is one of the show’s main dissenters from Mormon tenets, says in the first episode that she was pressured to marry right out of high school by her mother and the church because she was sexually active. “We were raised to be these housewives for the men, serving their every desire,” but forget that, she says. She and the other women used social media as an outlet, both to connect with the wider world, but also, to earn money while staying at home and caring for their kids.
The show divides the women into “saints” who are more observant and “sinners,” like Paul, who flout many of the church’s rules. Jen Affleck is one of the “saints.” Affleck is currently the breadwinner while her husband, Zac, goes to medical school. Her marriage is traditional enough that her job as an influencer creates conflict with her husband. “The male typically being the sole provider within our religion makes our situation a little bit tricky, and so there’s definitely a lot of tension in our relationship,” she explains.
Her husband doesn’t respect her work and lashes out when she attends an event — she meets Chippendale’s dancers in Las Vegas while he goes off to gamble — that he finds unseemly. He threatens to divorce her and take their children away, telling her she has no morals and no values. She concedes to her friends that he has a narcissistic and controlling side. This confession leads the other women to an intervention where they try to convince Affleck that she doesn’t have to live like this, that even though divorce is frowned upon in their religion, it’s not the end of the world. There is genuine emotion in this scene, and it is hard to watch.
The leadership of The Church of Latter-day Saints seems to find something about the show especially threatening. Last month, they put out a commentary called “When Entertainment Media Distorts Faith,” and while they did not mention “Mormon Wives” by name, the statement calls out “a number of recent productions” that “depict lifestyles and practices blatantly inconsistent with the teachings of the Church.”
Peggy Fletcher Stack, writing for The Salt Lake Tribune in August, noted that such church statements are rare, and wondered if the commentary was, in part, a pre-emptive strike against “Mormon Wives.” I agree with a communications professor that Stack quotes in her story, David Scott, who says that the church needs to realize “that attempting to create and control an idealized image of the Latter-day Saint community risks losing members who either cannot or do not wish to aspire to that impossible ideal.” By some outside estimates, The church lost around one million adult members between 2007 and 2022 (The church’s own accounting is much more conservative).
It’s notable that the “Mormon Wives” haven’t left the religion outright. They all still call themselves Mormons, regardless of how closely they adhere to the church’s doctrine. “A lot of the moms love the foundation of our church: love, family, service,” Paul says in the first episode. They just find it “impossible” — they use the same word as Scott does — to be a modern woman and follow all the rules. We might be watching this struggle play out on reality TV, but it’s one that’s playing out for many young women, off screen, too.
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The post Can ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Change a Conservative Religious Culture? appeared first on New York Times.
