On September 6, 2024, the first season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was released on Hulu. The reality show follows nine Mormon mothers who are social media influencers in a group called MomTok. It aired after months of rumors, speculation, and internet drama about the “soft swinging scandal,” a scandal where one of the main cast members, Taylor Frankie Paul, exposed some of MomTok for “soft swinging”. Soft swinging is a type of swinging that involves more boundaries, where couples will perform sexual acts that involve everything but actual intercourse.
The show aimed to explore the complexities of the lives of these Mormon influencers and how they manage the drama, their families, and their faith following the scandal. While this was effective, as it painted people like Paul as a flawed human who struggles with her mental health and relationships and doesn’t have bad intentions, it opened up a new stream of conversation where consumers could pick apart their relationships with their husbands, each other, and their church.
Mormonism is a religion where individuals follow the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was founded by Joseph Smith in the 1830s and is characterized by its belief that Jesus is endless and eternal. While Mormonism and Christianity are often compared, Mormons follow a much more rigid set of rules than Christians. This includes wearing special garments that demonstrate their dedication to God. There are roughly 613 other rules for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which include, not drinking coffee or alcoholic beverages, not swearing, becoming well educated, not partaking in premarital sex, having as many children as possible, and upholding the belief that LGBTQ+ sexual relationships or marriages are unacceptable and will result in excommunication, which means being removed from the church and its community.
From the beginning of the show, the cast was divided into two groups, the saints and the sinners. The saints are the traditional Mormons who still associate with the church and its traditions, and who would never touch alcohol. The sinners are the cast members who break out of these taboos, drink, and are less associated with the church. While I think this was engaging, it set them up for failure as they were pitted against each other and forced to pick sides, when the whole point of the show was to explore what the range of Mormonism can look like.
Despite these rigid and outdated rules, most of the Mormon wives in the show indulge in all of these prohibited practices aside from engaging in LGBTQ+ sexual relations or marriages. The idea of the show was to investigate the lives of social media-famous Mormons who are navigating their faith while disputing traditional gender roles, as they are the breadwinners of the family. Despite them achieving this goal, I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that some topics were glossed over, which perpetuated the toxic societal expectations of both women and men. For example, each cast member had their fair share of mental health struggles (some more than others), but the way that their struggles were addressed was dismissive.
The production team missed out on a great opportunity to de-stigmatize mental health by including their struggles without fully acknowledging them. For example, Jennifer Affleck struggled with suicidal ideation in season 2, and while they included a disclaimer at the end of the episode, there was no follow-up or consideration from the other cast members. It was swept under the rug like most of the other issues on the show. While I assume they took care of her off-camera, the lack of concern from the other members of the cast was disappointing.
Another huge issue for me was how forgiving each mother was towards their partner’s abusive behaviour. In season one, Affleck’s husband Zac Affleck displayed narcissistic and abusive behaviour towards her after she was dragged to a Chippendales show. She felt so guilty that she immediately called her husband to confess. Rather than responding in a calm, mature way, he yelled at her, threatened divorce, and called her disgusting and a horrible mother.
Despite this horrible behaviour, Jennifer was determined to protect his image, and when asked in an interview about his gambling problems, she replied, “Um… yeah, we can talk about it as long as we don’t make him out to sound like an addict.”
In a show where a group of mothers are supposed to be pillars of support for each other, there wasn’t much of it that was shown. The episodes consisted mostly of them tearing each other down. Although this might have been close to their reality, I think they missed the chance to emphasize the importance of friendships outside of marriages, especially in a culture that can be so toxic like Mormonism. Each cast member has high expectations placed on them, and rather than leaning on each other for support or having grown-up conversations with each other, they talked about one another behind closed doors, picked sides, and ultimately ruined a lot of relationships.
It seems to me like all the sugary soda has rotted some of the cast members’ brains. They fixate on such minute details and get angry over complete misunderstandings. Simultaneously, they will forgive their husbands for (allegedly) downloading Grindr during their marriage, talking to other girls, displaying abusive behaviour, and overall being complete jerks. The whole time I was watching, I kept wondering where the sisterhood was. And yes, some of the girls had great relationships with each other, like Mikayla Matthews and Mayci Neeley; however, when it came to the group, they didn’t care to maintain a healthy dynamic. Matthews bullied and excluded Whitney Leavitt, who was consistently nice towards the other girls.
In the end, I never cared about their scandals or the freaky stuff they did in bed; I was left wondering if they kept their empathy and compassion a secret. Maybe in season 4, they will all come back after intense therapy and self-reflection and be able to be civil about their relationships. But in the meantime, this example of “sisterhood” is extremely discouraging, and it’s not like we can use their husbands’ attractiveness as an excuse for their behaviour.