The cast of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives like to tell us intermittently during the course of their eight episode reality show on Disney+ that their religion forbids them from drinking caffeine, meaning we watch them glug down litre upon litre of ‘dirty soda’ in lieu of a latté (a dirty soda is: Diet Coke, heavy cream, coconut-flavored syrup, and lime. ‘It’s kind of our vice!’ laughs cast member Demi Engemann). Even by the end of episode one it’s clear that a dirty soda is the least of their vices. They don’t bend the Mormon rules as much as kick them off their hinges altogether. 

The show itself was sparked by a viral incident on TikTok. The women, Taylor Paul, Whitney Leavitt, Layla Taylor, Jessi Ngatikaura, Jen Affleck (not that one, but she is married to Ben Affleck’s distant cousin), Mikayla Matthews, Mayci Neeley and Engemann, had risen to fame as ‘MomTok’, a crew of dancing Mormon mothers with identical long, wavy hair and suggestive moves. They were propelled to peak notoriety two years ago when their leader, Paul, let slip in one of her videos that members of the wider group had been indulging in *checks notes* swinging, confessing she had ‘gone all the way’ with someone else’s husband.

You can’t get much more un-Mormon than wife-swapping, but the women on the show give it a good go; in one scene they admit they get Botox done regularly simply so they can make use of the laughing gas machine, we hear an eye-opening sex story involving Fruity Pebbles cereal, and two of the women, Whitney and Demi, let slip that they have taken the Class A drug ketamine together. 

While five years ago Mormonism was something you were probably aware of without really knowing much about, it feels as though you can’t move a muscle in the pop culture sphere without hearing about it right now. Salt Lake City has somehow become a thriving hub of viral reality moments, thanks of course to Taylor Paul and co, but also Salt Lake’s hugely successful Real Housewives franchise which started in 2020 and hit the big time partly thanks to cast member Heather Gay, whose memoir, Bad Mormon, details her break up with the church. 

These groups of women could not be further from the more conventional depiction of Mormonism we’ve watched go viral this year thanks to TikTok ‘Trad Wives’ Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman, aka Ballerina Farm. Smith, a Mormon model who is married to another Mormon model, Lucky Blue Smith, who at 22 already has three children (Rumble Honey, three, Slim Easy, two, and baby Whimsy Lou) has 9.7m followers and mostly shares content from her immaculate kitchen where she makes everything from scratch (she even made Cheetos from scratch last week).  Lucky, who was raised a Mormon in Utah, and Nara, who is thought to have converted after meeting him four years ago, are now a hot commodity, appearing at New York, London and Milan fashion weeks, and shooting magazine covers.

The Trad Wife movement has been criticised for glamourising 1950s gender roles and values, and packaging them in a modern way that encourages women to embrace fundamentalist values. Indeed Neeleman, who has 7.5m followers on TikTok, has caused controversy after a recent profile in The Times suggested she was a victim of misogyny who was duped into marriage, and having eight children in quick succession – and abandoned her own dreams to be a dancer in order to please her well-off, fundamentalist husband Daniel. Hannah replied via a TikTok video, stressing that claims she was oppressed couldn’t be ‘further from the truth’. 

So why are we seeing such a proliferation of high profile Mormon women? It could be down to the freedom an influencer lifestyle offers them. New York magazine writer EJ Dickson noted on X recently, ‘Historically, LDS women have been strongly discouraged from working outside the home. Influencing — and, prior to that, blogging — has been a way for them to generate income and claim power while still serving a domestic role.’

Indeed one of the main themes of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is that these women are challenging the traditional gender norms their religion dictates. Mayci Neeley says, ‘We’re changing the cultural norms in the church. We’re showing women they can do anything they put their minds to. Like, you can make a career out of social media, and you can also be a mom. You can do both.’ All while chugging a dirty soda.