I am absolutely obsessed with Hulu’s new reality show, The Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives. I’m not a Real Housewives girl, mainly because the lore is simply too daunting to ever catch up on at this point, so this feels like my opportunity to finally get in on the ground floor of a show about women fighting. I’ve always had a special interest in Mormons, and have watched quite a few documentaries about the fundamentalist polygamist ones. I’ve had an eye on Trad Wife TikTok and very much read the Ballerina Farms exposé when it came out. For someone who has never been to Utah, this morbid fascination kind of came out of nowhere, but as a sub there’s a degree to which it makes sense. More on that in a minute.
For those who did not mark their calendars for this so they could binge the whole thing over the weekend (so weird of you), the show centers on a group of mormon women who live in Salt Lake City. Their friend group, which is basically a content house except they all live in separate, blindingly white suburban houses that probably cost $200K, is called MomTok and centers around queen bee Taylor Frankie Paul. You may remember her from the scandal back in 2022 when she revealed that she and several members of her married mormon friend group were “soft swinging.”1 The Cut did a refresher on the drama, which you can find here.
These ladies are massively mormon famous. Taylor has her own sub-reddit filled with speculation and cattiness (and it seems reddit is a huge gossip network in their world). And Taylor isn’t the only one who was canceled and shunned, Whitney Leavitt received a tidal wave of (VERY REASONABLE) backlash for the below video where she does a cute little TikTok dance next to her son who was admitted to the infant emergency room for RSV. Jesus fucking christ.
There are a lot of reasons this show is a fun and addictive sugar rush — first and foremost among them is that the girls don’t drink, so the arguments and drama are fueled by literal sugar highs and crashes from the 44 ounce sodas they’re drinking. Another is the glee traipsing across my entire TikTok feed from people who have (imo correctly) identified that Whitney’s husband Connor *might* (that might is doing a lot of heavy lifting) be gay. Fewer people (with whom I also agree) think she’s giving off gay vibes herself. Personally, I think she’s a few patchwork tattoos short of looking like a queer Bushwick barista. I mean, she and her husband often have the same dye job, they do dances on her TikTok in matching outfits… it’s giving queer besties and I live!! Fingers are crossed that they take that journey over the next couple of years. For now, her repressed queerness (my editorial) has caused her to pick so much drama that she’s the villain of the show.
Swinging and secret gays aside, their lives seem pretty normal until you’re jolted back to reality by the soda thing, the babies had at sixteen years old, or mentions of the “garments” that married mormons are expected to always wear under all their clothes.2 Which then gets you thinking about how presumably these people think they’re getting their own planet in the afterlife and that some guy in upstate New York received golden tablets from an angel and that Jesus visited North America.3
Another core tenet of mormonism is that it is extremely patriarchal. “Men carry the priesthood in our religion,” Jen explains in the episode that centers on her baby blessing. At the event, friends and family make informal speeches, then a circle of men stands at the front of the room, supporting the baby with their hands, while the patriarch of her husband Zac’s family leads a prayer. The women sit around on couches with all the children, hands clasped silently. This was my aha moment about all the mean girl behavior amongst the girls. They don’t have an empowered role in their society, therefore they turn on each other to exercise control and agency. Don’t get me wrong, women being socialized to police each other as weapons of the patriarchy is not specific to mormonism, but in purity cultures like these it’s particularly heightened.
Even darker than a woman playing a secondary role to her father-in-law at the blessing of her own fucking baby (puke) is the way this system has also simultaneously infantilized and empowered the shitty husbands. There are plenty of male partners in the group who are seemingly fine (or gay and perfectly friendly). Maycie even says directly to her husband that “controlling men give [her] the ick.” But Jen and Zac are a tragic example of what I opened this word document to talk about, which is non-consensual dominance and submission.
For folks raised in Christian purity cultures, the word “submission” is rightfully triggering. In their context, women are expected to be submissive to their husbands. The oft-quoted scripture for this is Ephesians 5:22-244:
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
This verse is often cherry-picked out of context to police women’s behavior and not men’s. If we were going by the phrasing of the Bible, people would include the proceeding verses, Ephesians 5:25-30:
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
Yes, this is still putting women in a subservient role, but nobody ever uses this part of Ephesians to put men in their place in this system.5 Instead, a man is only a man if he controls and subjugates his wife using the weapons of the patriarchy — misogyny, slut shame, isolating them from friends and family, controlling their money, all the greatest hits. And due to the dark side of the suburban nuclear family, these men get to separate their wives off from the pack and conduct their coercion and control behind closed doors. Add to this the fact that these couples are often getting married before they’re twenty years old, and we get these man-child dictators running their households around their own insecurities.
That’s why the abusive husbands on this show are so threatened by their wives’ success. What they could formerly do in isolation is now not only laid out for the wives’ female friends, but for the whole world. And while the girls’ idea of feminism (look hot, make money, dance sexy) is a little stunted, they’ve still received the idea that they deserve to be empowered and happy. A radical notion that greatly upsets the mormon patriarchy. It’s giving Women Talking (2022).
I could go into a million reasons Jen and Zac’s marriage is sus — his family’s low- to high-key racism against her mother who is a cleaning lady in the same hospital that Zac’s father is a heart surgeon in was my first red flag. His hair is another. But for the sake of not making this essay a billion words long, I’m going to focus my attention on the girls’ trip to Vegas and the Chippendale’s incident.
For those who didn’t watch, the girls went to Vegas on a trip planned by Jessi who is probably the most normal one of the bunch. She drinks, isn’t scared of having fun, and seemingly has a supportive husband. When the women are reticent about going out for a surprise she’s planned in Vegas, she kind of shrugs and just says “well my God is chill.” It turns out the surprise is Jessi has gotten them VIP access to the Chippendale’s show, where they’ll do a meet and greet with the guys and have the opportunity to apply baby oil to their pecs. Family friendly fun!
Jen completely shuts down when their destination is revealed. She begins frantically texting Zac asking for his permission to attend the show. Once backstage when the baby oil is whipped out, we cut to her talking head: “I really don’t know what to do with myself. Let’s try not to make any eye contact, let’s look at the floor, and let’s just get through this. I feel like this is absolutely brutal. This is crossing the line.”
Even though she’s doing her best to ‘honor her husband,’ she begins to receive a barrage of texts from Zac that continue nonstop through the rest of the night. He’s calling her names, threatening to divorce her, saying he’s going to take their kids and move into his parents’ house. She wasn’t even oiling up these dudes and woo-ing like the other girls, but so what if she was? That’s the thing, it doesn’t matter whether these women are adhering perfectly to the laws of their religion, they’re one husband’s bad mood away from being flamed, divorced, and having their children taken away. There is no free will under this kind of system, only a limited selection of bad and disempowering options.
The blood-boiling irony here is that Jen is the family’s sole breadwinner while this man-baby is in medical school. She reveals that his parents gave them some money to help out, and he gambled all of it away. When he heard she was going to Vegas, he told her he wasn’t comfortable with his wife going to Sin City without him, so he would be coming to make sure she didn’t get herself into trouble. Concurrent to this, he asked her for an allowance so he could gamble while they were there, and she gives him $2500. It’s revealed later in the episode that his paragraphs of text about her bad morals and what an awful wife she was were sent FROM THE CASINO where he was gambling until one in the morning. Once again, the hypocrisy! I don’t think their religion would be thrilled about her accidentally being in the same room as half-naked men, but I can’t imagine gambling away all your family’s money while threatening to divorce your wife would fall under the heading of “loving your wife as Christ loves the church.”
Demi, my favorite, puts it best in her talking head:
[Mormon men] think that their women owe them doing things in a specific way to prove that they are only that man’s wife. And it’s so strange to me because it’s like, you can have fun with your girls and go out and wear what you wanna wear and be completely loyal to your husband. . . Here we have a perfect example of the misogyny that goes on in the Mormon Church and I don’t know if that’s going to be solved by them not going to Chippendale’s.
Amen, girl.
After Jen disappears to spend the entire night “talking it out” with Zac (clock the sleep deprivation, a key ingredient in brainwashing), the situation finally circumvents the traditional mormon playbook when the other girls stage an intervention for Jen in the following episode. Demi, once again voice of reason6, says right to Jen’s face, “he has no right to be saying those things and threatening your marriage. That’s really weird to me. Someone who carried two of your freaking children and has been nothing but supportive and bending over backwards to try to support him through medical school and everything? That’s gross. Sorry, there’s no other way to put it. That’s gross. He’s judging you on something you didn’t even do. And that’s not ok.”
So here's the thing, as you know if you read this substack, there is a massive gulf between consensual dominance and submission and what’s going on here. They don’t even belong in the same thought. But in case anyone was wondering, consensual D/s happens between consenting equals who treat each other with respect, and have the free will to choose their relationship. These women, sadly, didn’t choose any of this. So catch me watching any future seasons gleefully hoping Jen divorces Zac, Whitney and Conner become LGBTQ+ advocates, and they all start swinging with each other. Why not!
Ask A Sub News~~~
Leaving the mormons aside, I have a really exciting announcement! Sign ups are now open for my Conscious Kink 2 incubator for D/s couples to refresh and recommit to their dynamics. We’ll gather once a week for six weeks in October and November to strengthen, support, and sustain your D/s dynamic.
Conscious Kink 2 is for couples who:
Feel they’re caught in the gap between kink education, self-help, therapy, and community support and need guidance to bring it all together.
Are cohabitating and feel the romance has been impinged upon by the never-ending cycle of laundry, dishes, and taking out the trash.
Have gone through a life disruption or grief and don’t know how to rediscover the fun and frenzy of the early days of their dynamic.
Are looking to restructure their dynamic in some way but don’t know where to start.
Or just want to shore up their relationship foundation to support them for years to come.
Learn more here, and make sure to sign up soon! Space is limited and we’ve already got couples signing up as we speak!! Sign ups close on 9/27.
I hope to see you there and can’t wait to hang out with you all! <3
Apparently there was swapping involving blow jobs and hand stuff but no sex. Frankly I think this is a very reasonable response to being raised in a purity culture that forced you to get married at a disturbingly young age, but LDS social media heavily disagrees. Also every other woman on the show claims to have not been a part of it. Insert eye roll here.
I’m obsessed with the moment on their girls trip where Jen forgets her garments and someone asks whether you can “DoorDash garments.” I also learned there are special breastfeeding garments that are more low-cut than the standard ones. The more you know 💫
Not to mention their undoubtedly terrible opinions about gay rights, reproductive freedoms, and everything else I hold dear but that’s not a rock I’m going to look under at the moment.
This is from the King James Version, which mormons use.
Sorry for the Bible quotation I just love to pull out receipts proving how hypocritical these fucks are. If your little book is so important how about read it?? Just spitballing here!!
Here I have to insert Mr. Dune’s conspiracy theory that Demi and her husband are in some kind of power exchange relationship. His evidence: they’re in an age gap relationship where they’re having a lot of sex, she has a highlight on her TikTok called “DADDYYYY” with a video of him, and, most importantly, she has a very healthy approach to conflict and is calling out everybody’s bullshit. I’m not exactly a Demi D/s truther but I do like these vibes to exemplify what real D/s dynamics are like as opposed to Jen’s imprisonment in the funhouse of Zac’s insecurity. And crispy bleached tresses.
I was raised Mormon, served a 2-year mission and tried very hard to be a "good Mormon boy" until all my doubts, criticisms, and discomfort finally caught up to me in my mid 20's and I graduated to ex-Mormon almost a decade ago. I haven't watched this show, but probably unsurprisingly you can draw a direct line from the messaging I received in the church around relationships, sexuality, and gender to how/why my interest in kink and BDSM manifests, and I'm always intrigued by non-Mormons' perceptions of Mormonism, so this article was a real delight to read!
If you would like some more fuel for your Mormon fascination fire, poke around /r/exmormon or check out some of the ex-Mormon podcasts and YouTube channels to get more of an unfiltered take on Mormonism. Mormon Stories is maybe the most prominent and has a huge backlog of interviews, you can search by episode theme on their website (https://www.mormonstories.org/our-top-episodes/), and they've got recent episodes discussing "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives"! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I0-8AGBnLE)
This is fantastic. I also scheduled it in my calendar to watch when it dropped