My Mormon Explainer of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Season 2
Heaven or holy girlboss hell—and are we all Mormon Wives now?
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When Season 1 of the The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives came out, I couldn’t resist the Hulu reality series that follows eight young Mormon mom influencers in Utah, who formed a group of TikTokers known as “MomTok.” The show picks up after some fallings-out and a swinging scandal that went viral. Drama ensues.
I was raised Mormon, in Salt Lake City, and I write about patriarchy often through the lens of Mormonism. As I wrote then: A show about Mormon women misbehaving?? YESSSSSS.
Seeing young Mormon women and the subculture I was raised in on TV brought me a measure of joy, honestly. The stunning scenery of my hometown, the Utah hair, and the crazy name spellings of it all!
For Season 1, I wrote a fun explainer of Mormon culture replete with details on Dirty Diet Cokes, cheesy wardrobe aesthetics, trying to explain unexplainable Mormon food restrictions, and fond remembrances of my Utah youth that you can find here.
But Season 2 feels…well, not as fun.
Part of the fun of Season 1 was watching a group of young women wrestle with questioning patriarchy and their prescribed roles in real time.
But in Season 2 the wrestling with patriarchal systems has fallen away. Now, instead of uniting to question and push back on systems and forces that make women subordinate, now the women of MomTok are pitted against each other.
Oof. In other words, it’s just standard fare reality TV that weaponizes misogyny for drama—thus simply reinforcing the misogyny that the show’s characters were ostensibly questioning in the first place!
Season 2 has about all the female-empowerment charm of The Bachelor (which is to say, absolutely zero). Is there any form of entertainment that relies on misogyny, and depicting/exploiting women as “trashy” objects more than reality TV does? Probably not—but still this season of TSLOMW seems to be working overtime.
All of which is to say, the show really is a masterclass in how patriarchal culture works against women—including women who naively think they might be rising above it—to reinforce misogyny and turn women against each other.
I think what is interesting about TSLOMW S2 is that on the surface it’s about how patriarchal cultures like Mormonism subordinate women.
But what it puts on full display is that this isn’t a Mormon phenomenon, it’s a full-blown cultural phenomenon—from capitalistic social media, to reality TV, to family dynamics.
Is this show about “Mormon Wives,” or is it just about the way our culture treats women? Here are just a couple ways that the “Mormon Wives” reflect the reality that we all live in.
Media loves a “catfight”: undermining female solidarity
For starters, the producers have done forensics-level research to dig up every scrap of possible drama that could torment these women—every ex-lover and enemy that could strike chaos and dread in these young women’s lives is scrupulously researched, dug up, and introduced in Season 2.
Every episode is a “party” or gathering that’s staged to force a bunch of people together who clearly don’t want to be in the same room together at all—yet they are contractually obligated by Hulu to do just that. Then, some fire bomb is thrown into the group in the form of some ex-lover, ex-abuser, or revelation of some possible past betrayal or scandal.
Keep in mind that all of the young women of MomTok had children in their teens or early twenties. (One got pregnant at 16!! THREE more of them got pregnant at 19!) They are literally a success story of teen moms who achieved financial independence!
Unfortunately, the show is not interested in celebrating or depicting that in the least. Instead, the show’s largely manufactured drama relies on turning the young women against each other, and replacing sisterhood and solidarity with competition and infighting.
Which! Is one of patriarchy’s oldest tricks.
“Scarcity mindset” is a function of patriarchal capitalism that works against minorities and women by creating the belief that there’s not enough success to go around, and that they will have to fight each other for it. Historically women have been led to believe that there are not enough jobs, or relationships, or resources to go around in a male-dominated society, and only a few of them will be allowed to succeed. These internalized messages serve the status quo by keeping women focused on competing with each other instead of collaborating.
Entire industries are built on this internalized misogyny (see: beauty industry!), and the media weaponizes this for entertainment. A version of this is sometimes called “girlbossing.” History is littered with “powerful” women who turn against each other, or bring down other women in order to consolidate their own power—from Phyllis Schlafly to Sheryl Sandberg.
Watching some MomTok women turn against each other for air time, power, for higher-paying contracts or fighting over brand deals runs parallel to the way women have been trained women to fight over men, positions of power, and other scraps of patriarchy, for a long time. (The storyline to fight over Marciano—the absolute model of a mediocre man—feels especially heinous).1
While we’re at it, the producers seem to simultaneously do a grand job of objectifying their subjects—every other episode is an occasion to have the young women appear on camera wearing as little clothing as possible. There’s a Halloween costume party, a lingerie party, a “Saints and Sinners” party, a brand event for a company called “Cowboy Pillows.” (Ugh, yes that means what you think it means—move over, Hooters! These products make a sexy raw milkmaid dress look downright classy.) And in general, the shameless product placement is egregiouuuuus.
A show that’s ostensibly about “women’s empowerment” sure seems to be about the male gaze, guys!
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Holy girlboss hell: gatekeeping women from the workplace
The women in this show keep repeating lines about “bringing down the patriarchy,” and that “MomTok is all about women’s empowerment.”
This is absolutely perplexing because on the show, neither of these things are happening, at least on camera, in the least.
But if I take myself back to when I was a Mormon wife, or even just a girl, I can see it. If you’re raised in a highly patriarchal, high control religion, the odds that you knew any women who had a career outside the home, much less women who are breadwinners, is pretty close to zero.
On the middle-class street where I grew up, the moms that I grew up with (and loved, and still love) all worked very hard (all moms are working moms!), but none of the moms with young children were breadwinners outside the home. There was one woman who had a career for a time before she had her second child, and she was quietly whispered about as a “career girl.” There’s nothing wrong with working in the home, but I mention this to say that having a job—much less being a full-time breadwinner who commands a sizable salary—can still read as an act of rebellion in these circles.
Attitudes about women who work are starting to shift, but working outside the home has cast women as “outsiders” in their communities, as heterodox or nonconforming to norms, making them less righteous as their role is to “nurture children.” The implication is that paid work prevents women from doing that properly. (This message from the LDS Church website, for example, emphasizes that “mothers are to remain at home to care for and nurture their children” and has tips for “women who must enter the workforce,” only under duress.
In that sense, all the women on this show are “sinners” in a way, even those that call themselves “saints” and are still trying to uphold Mormon standards and social norms2. According to church standards, as with all societies that uphold rigid gender roles, women working outside the home is cast as a class and status downgrade. It’s for those that are “widowed or divorced” or otherwise “are required to work out of necessity.”
This helps explain why there are so many Mormon women who work as influencers, or aspiring influencers. It’s a job that allows women to do paid work while outwardly appearing to have no work outside the home, and that allows them to present as though they are maintaining traditional gender roles (so-called tradwife content), while also keeping up appearances that maintain their class status. (“I don’t have a “job,” I just make TikToks of mom life!”). which helps solidify the appearance of class and status.3 (This isn’t to criticize women who make these choices, it’s just to point out the impossible double-standards that women are faced with: “Be a mom, but also have something of your own—but don’t let it impact anyone else!” “Be a devoted mom, but also have a high-income lifestyle!” Woof.)
So, when the Mormon Wives of MomTok cast themselves as “breaking the patriarchy” or “empowering women,” I think in some sense they mean it. They are getting pushback from their families and communities for breaking out of their prescribed roles and being the first in their families to do it, and they see themselves as independent and “pioneering,” and showing other women that it can be done. And they’re not 100% wrong!
And again, lest we think that this is merely a plight of Mormon women, or those in high-control religious communities—think again. What I think is most instructive about TSWOML, and the rise of Mormon mom culture in general is how it helps reveal the discrimination that women face in our patriarchal culture everywhere.
The notion that women don’t belong in the workplace is still fairly ubiquitous. Not only do women in the workplace still face a 20% pay gap, résumé screening studies with gender-coded names found both male and female recruiters are twice as likely to hire a male candidate over an equally qualified females. And women are still punished for being in the workplace in ways that men simply are not. Recent research reveals that women are punished and penalized at work much more frequently, leading to demotions or firings.
The notion that women working outside the home is “heterodox” or nonconforming to norms, making them less “worthy,” still manifests throughout our culture. The notion that women deserve outsized punishment for breaking norms, and don’t belong in the workplace, is by no means a Mormon phenomenon. It’s a well-documented feature of America’s patriarchal culture.
Researchers describe this phenomenon as women and minorities (and especially women minorities) living in “tighter worlds,” meaning they’re subject to much stronger punishments for the same norm violations.
And if anything, the current administration seems just as regressive as Utah if not more so—in trying to send women back into the home and out of the workplace, and generally making accusations that women—and people who are gay or trans, or people of color—have overtaken men’s spaces and are “pushing them out.”
Purity culture purgatory: shaming independent women
One way that patriarchal standards pit against each other is through purity culture, which puts a strong emphasis on sexuality only within traditional hetero marriage and reinforces the idea of sexual purity as a measure of a person’s worth. (Typically women are punished for perceived “impurity” in patriarchal cultures, while a double standard allows men to skirt these rules or even be rewarded for sexual conquest). The rules of purity culture work to create internalized and externalized oppression and shame that are used to police women in particular.
We see this in action in Season 2, when Demi attacks Taylor for being involved in swinging, accusing her of having kids by different dads, and not being married. Meanwhile, Demi works overtime to portray her own marriage as perfect, and even goes so far as to levy a cease-and-desist order against someone who claims that it’s not. The entire case for her superiority boils down to slut shaming and claiming: I AM A “GOOD WIFE” AND YOU’RE NOT.
Which is a textbook example of a woman using tools used to control and denigrate women against other women—in order to gain an advantage by appealing to patriarchal hierarchies (married woman=”good” and worthy, woman untethered from men and sexually independent=garbage.)
Likewise, the Hulu franchise has dipped into the old phenomenon chronicled by Susan Faludi in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women – the demonization of independent women, career women, and any woman stepping outside patriarchal roles as lonely, unhappy, crazy, or treacherous.
In her 1993 classic, Faludi argued that media and popular culture actively work to undermine feminist gains and portray women's increasing independence negatively, creating a backlash against women's rights. This backlash used various strategies, including portraying independent women as problematic, and often depicting working mothers negatively, while reinforcing positive images of women in traditional roles.
Professional and feminist women were “humiliated, turned into harpies, or hit by nervous breakdowns.”
Sound familiar?
Whether it’s deliberate or not, sounds a lot like the story arc of the Mormon Wives. I don’t love it! Especially in this political climate.
And in this way we as viewers we are all invited into this game of old-fashioned misogynistic spectatorship, too—we look down on the Mormon Wives as “trashy” because women deserve success only if they also come off as good, kind, nurturing people who put everyone else first.
But somehow men on TV are never trashy, only women. As long as women are held to ridiculous double-standards they will always risk being treated in the culture as garbage, even when infighting men are turning the country into a dumpster fire.
What did you think—did Season 2 of TSLOMW disappoint, or was it still binge-worthy? Did it seem like typical reality TV drama, or something more? Would be curious how it compares to RHWOSLC, for example, because I don’t watch!
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Does anyone else feel like Lisa Vanderpump is the real mastermind behind all of this? It seems cast members are contractually obligated to mention her show and/or her restaurants min. 5 times per episode.
On one hand this is changing, on the other I have been in women’s meetings at church where women weep over their mom guilt for working outside the home—one that really stayed with me was a woman who worked on a TV show that won Emmy’s. So, the internalized messaging is deep!
The LulaRoe documentary “Lula Rich” documents this phenomenon well—similarly, multi-level marketing companies prey on stay-at-home moms who need income and are led to believe that they can do this job somehow without childcare (no job can be done without childcare), while also allowing them to maintain a “stay at home” mom appearance that allows them to keep their class status and gender roles intact. (And to be clear—this isn’t to criticize women who make these choices, it’s to point out the ways that women are put into impossible and ridiculous double-binds by societal standards.)
I love how you connect the analysis of this show to the bigger trends around patriarchy that we are seeing right now (and really never stopped seeing). This is such a careful deconstruction of all the ways patriarchy is operating in the show — and our lives! This also really shined light on the trends toward putting women back in the home (and erasing queer people entirely) — both on this show and in our culture and politics widely.
The show is cosplay empowerment. These women, and so many of us, are still trapped catering to the patriarchy, through one of the few tools of power in our possession- appearance. It’s even more disappointing to hear the show has already become more fodder for critiquing, dehumanizing and infantilizing women.