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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has just returned for a second series. Should you care about this? I know what you are thinking: no, obviously not. Five million people watched the season two premiere, but you were not one of them. Fine. But bear with me.
Despite being an offering from Hulu — the network that brought us trash classics of the constructed reality genre such as The Kardashians and Dance Moms: A New Era — Secret Lives is different to your standard reality fare. When the show began, it had a novel premise: its stars were already stars. They were TikTok influencers with cumulatively millions of followers and views, who brought into the world the dubious bundle of joy that is “#momtok”. That’s exactly what it sounds like, by the way. Moms on TikTok who dance around together looking beautiful and happy.
The moms of Utah — the Latter-day Saints’ utopia where the show is largely set — looked to the outside world like perfect specimens of motherhood, sisterhood and womanhood. But all was not well in MomTok. The first season of the show opened as the women were reeling from a “soft swinging” sex scandal that threatened their reputations. The Mormon church may be deeply conservative but, for all their talk of prayer, these women are not. Each episode of the show is named after a yassified book from the Bible (The Book of Retribution, The Book of Betrayals, The Book of Taboo).
Mormon teachings prohibit sex before marriage and alcohol and discourage piercings and tattoos. Mormons wear special undergarments and women are supposed to live submissively, respecting their husbands and fathers. The heroines of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, on the other hand, swear, fight, get divorced, get plastic surgery and dress almost exclusively in denim minis and low-cut tank tops. Just as the show flips the classic reality TV pipeline of character to influencer, so too does it subvert our ideas of what it looks like to be a Mormon woman.
Does this mean that the Church of Latter-day Saints is modernising? That traditional expectations for wives and mothers are finally being deconstructed? Not exactly. Instead, in the gap between the idea of Mormon motherhood and its reality, these women have found a highly lucrative niche. Raised to be domestic, they’ve created profitable careers out of narrow expectations. Pressured into domesticity, they’ve marketed it to millions of others. They’ve created a surprisingly matriarchal society where they can sell anything from hair extensions to prenatal vitamins, MomTok cheese boards to MomTok happy hours. One Mormon wife brightly reveals that she can make her husband’s entire annual salary in a single Instagram post.
Are they actually happy within their world? Watch upwards of 16 hours of Mormon Wife content and you still won’t be sure. The show is not just constructed reality within constructed domesticity — it’s a cautionary tale about the horrors of female friendship (particularly when it’s monetised). These women, reliant on each other for financial independence, seem truly to despise one another. Watch the Mormon wives snipe at each other at their pretty pink product launches. Watch them “conversate” in the cadence of reality stars. Watch them clamber into huge SUVs, manicure their nails, curl their hair, drink sodas mixed with syrups. Watch them for long enough and it becomes impossible to look away.
Streaming now on Disney+ in the UK and Hulu in the US
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