At a time when Trad Wives are on everyone’s minds — from Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman to Nara Smith — Hulu’s latest series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (premiering Sept 6), shows a different type of “stay-at-home” content creator than we’ve become accustomed to seeing. The series follows eight influencers who are part of the popular #MomTok group of Mormon wives as they navigate life as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while “breaking the mold” of the traditional Mormon subculture. To put it simply: “MokTok is a content creator house, but we don’t live together,” cast member Mayci Neeley says in the first episode of the series.
This isn’t the first time #MomTok has made the news. In 2022, Taylor Frankie Paul, the 30-year-old creator behind the TikTok group, imploded the MomTok community by livestreaming a big ol’ truthbomb: she and her husband were getting a divorce after “soft swinging” with other couples in the group. While the scandal — as cast member Whitney Leavitt told E! News — “just gave us more publicity,” Taylor’s arrest for domestic violence against her boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen (shown in the pilot episode) wasn’t well received — for obvious reasons. However, the second episode picks up again 11 months later when we find Taylor pregnant with Dakota’s baby. A reality tv’s producer’s dream.
With recent scrutiny on reality TV shows, from Love Is Blind’s many lawsuits to Selling Sunset’s pushback from the cast, why take the risk of giving up complete control over your content? “I think we can all agree that we thought the show would be a great business opportunity for just our brand and our business,” Mayci tells Betches. “And also just change the culture in the Mormon church and in Utah. And stigma around wives and Mormon wives in general.”
The opening credits of The Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives include a blinking search bar with a recent history of “soaking” and “polygamy.” It’s clear the producers knew what they were doing. “I think this show will fit right in with all of the interest in Mormons and Utah moms,” Mayci continues. “It’s going to fit in perfectly with what people already enjoy to see, but they’re just going to see a more raw, vulnerable, unedited side of it.”
So, where does The Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives fit on the spectrum of the trad wife phenomenon? And were the women successful in shifting the stigma around Mormon culture?
Breadwinners Of The Family
Mayci has over 1.3 million followers on TikTok and launched her prenatal vitamins brand Baby Mama while filming the show. “It’s definitely been an adjustment going from being an influencer and doing all that content creation,” Mayci says. “It is a full-time job, and people don’t realize that, but that’s how we make our money.”
Similar to the illusion provided by #TradWife content, these “stay-at-home moms” are actually working very real jobs that pay pretty damn well. Mayci confirmed to E! News that one year, she got a brand deal that paid $75,000. In addition to Mayci, Taylor and Whitney, the eight-episode series also features TikTok stars Mikayla Matthews, Demi Engemann, Jennifer Affleck, Jessi Ngatikaura, and Layla Wessel — all are the breadwinners of the family.
@whitneyleavitt The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives coming to @hulu 9/6 😜 @secretlivesonhulu ♬ original sound – 💙💟 𝑺𝑷𝑯𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬𝑹4️⃣💟💙
One couple is still clearly struggling with this relatively new dynamic. Jen Affleck (Yes, that Affleck — her husband is Ben Affleck’s second cousin) is the sole provider while her husband Zac goes to medical school leading to tension in their relationship throughout the series.
“I grew up with a single mom, so I mean, she was the only provider in our house,” Jen tells Betches. While her mom encouraged her to pursue independence, Jen says Zac comes from a more traditional family. “When I first got married to Zac, I didn’t really know what I wanted,” she continues. “I got married so young, and it wasn’t until Zac decided to do medical school that I was put in a situation where I was forced to provide. Honestly, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn’t even realize how much I was capable of.”
These moments of “feminist empowerment” do stand out in the show. It’s easy to get swept up in the girl-boss narrative. With Mayci launching her brand in a community where men are often the leaders in business, Jen bringing home the bacon, etc. But it’s clear that there’s still plenty of progress to be made. In one of the final episodes, Zac basically tells Jen that he doesn’t care about her job. And Mayci had to deal with vendors pulling out of her launch event because she was associated with a sex scandal — a source of discomfort for many women in the show.
“The sex is good now.”
Despite a sex scandal being the reason the women got the show, sex is still a taboo topic in their community. Cast member Layla married at 19, admits to never experiencing an orgasm despite having two kids. “Never in my life,” she confirms.
In the second episode, Whitney receives a $20,000 sex toy brand deal. But before accepting it, she seeks advice from her mom — mostly to give her family a heads up so it doesn’t create a jump scare when they see her gripping a dildo on IG. The conversation was as comfortable as a 6th-grade health class.
“Maybe other mother-daughter relationships are close when it comes to talking about sex, but it just wasn’t talked about in my household,” Whitney tells Betches. The mom of three used the opportunity to ask why her mom didn’t ever give her the sex talk, clearly upset that she was left with no answers on her wedding night.
“The sex is good now,” Whitney says to her mom. “You know what made it better? Toys.”
“Misogyny won’t be solved in Chippendales.”
While progressive for their community, the group broke up into two factions pretty early in the series — the self-dubbed saints versus sinners. The former included Whitney, Jen, Mikayla, and Mayci as the “most devout” members of the church, while the latter was made up of the divorcees who occasionally drink and aren’t afraid to cuss a little.
In the first episode, Taylor’s mom is concerned that she’ll be excommunicated if she doesn’t change her behavior — you know, getting pregnant out of wedlock and all that. It’s hard not to watch the show and wonder how the church will react to it. “I hope it can broaden their minds just a little bit,” Jen adds. “And I think what’s great about our show is that it is a new generation, and generations are always changing.” But how much has truly changed?
@whitneyleavitt can you tell who really didn’t want to do this #mormonmomtok ♬ SexyBack (feat. Timbaland) – Justin Timberlake
Things come to a head when the group takes a girls’ trip to Las Vegas, with Jen’s husband Zac and Taylor’s boyfriend and baby daddy Dakota tagging along (despite pushback from the other women). Jessi, from the sinner’s faction, surprised the women with a party bus to an undisclosed location as a way to celebrate Layla’s recent divorce. Once they discover it’s VIP tickets to Chippendales, the infamous male striptease show, Jen becomes immediately distraught — apparently for good reason.
Within minutes of settling in, Jen felt the need to confess her whereabouts to Zac. “I didn’t know until I got here,” she says on the phone before sobbing, “Can you stop for a second and just think of me as a person? I’m a human being, I did nothing wrong.” Taylor and Mikayla’s partners reacted similarly, so the three left before the show even began. The rest of the night Zac spends at the casino, refusing to answer Jen’s calls while texting her threats of divorce. At 2 am she leaves the vacation home to try to make peace with him, leaving the rest to wonder if she’s safe.
This is the dark side of the show that is clearly not shown on TikTok. The husbands that act more like strict father figures — if your dad was emotionally abusive. “Yes, he has these narcissistic traits about him, and they come out in situations like this every few months,” Jen says about Zac when the women confront her later about his behavior.
“After the show, Zac and I definitely had to take a hard look in the mirror and a hard look at a relationship and ask ourselves, what do we need to change?” Jen tells Betches. “Since the show, we’ve been doing nonstop therapy, and anyone who’s struggling in their marriage, I definitely recommend therapy. No marriage is perfect.”
As for whether Jessi felt any regrets about the Chippendale’s surprise? “I’m glad I made it a surprise because it was the only way that it was going to happen,” she says. “Regardless. If I had told the girls what we were doing, no one would’ve gone. But I actually think the conversations that came from it needed to happen. So I don’t really regret it. And I keep saying, okay, let’s do it again next season and see how the husbands have learned.” Fingers crossed, the therapy is working.
“Trad wife is kind of how the Mormon church has been for years.”
This show might be the first time TikTok content has successfully bridged the gap between the app and reality TV. After finishing the series, watching the videos they made while filming is uncanny. Videos with top copy like, “I’m a stay-at-home MILF” when they’re actually the breadwinners. Or viewing the choreographed TikTok dance that was made through gritted teeth after they spent the evening tearing into each other. As Whitney likes to point out throughout the show, “Social media isn’t reality.”
TikTok is performative in nature. Despite the glamor that comes with being on camera, there are moments of reality that breakthrough on TSLOMW. Though brief — whether that’s due to editing or not — it’s clear that these women don’t live in a vacuum. Jen’s mom is a cleaning lady in the same hospital where Zac’s dad is a heart surgeon. Layla speaks on race for two seconds: “Being Black in the church, you stick out like a sore thumb.” Their own identities intersect in various ways within the Mormon subculture. A crack in the facade that is typically carefully maintained on platforms like TikTok. There are no cracks when it comes to Nara Smith’s content, for example.
@naraazizasmith veryyyy demure very cutesy #easyrecipes #breakfast #cereal #toddlersoftiktok #homemade #fypツ #momtok ♬ Nice and Easy – Louis Adrien
Nara wearing a ballgown while making Fruit Loops from scratch is not actually domestic labor despite being used to promote the traditional existence of wife, mother, and homemaker. You don’t see crying babies and dirty countertops. That’s all hidden from view on purpose — whether the original intent is exploitive or not. It’s hard to romanticize traditionalism when you’re watching a woman being emotionally abused by her husband on television, like we saw with Jen.
Trad wife content — typically made by Mormon creators — has drawn the attention of millions of people on TikTok. Some are fascinated by the lifestyle, hoping that they can one day achieve the perfect aesthetic of taking care of multiple children, making meals from scratch all while keeping a clean home, while others see it as inherently anti-feminist, a not-subtle-movement towards submissive wives under the guise of simpler times.
“Trad wife is kind of how the Mormon church has been for years,” Jessi says. “You’re a traditional wife; you cook, you clean, you stay home, and now it’s trendy,” Jessi says. “So our show has funny timing because of that. But I think out of all of us on the show, I think Whitney leaned into the trad wife trend a little harder than most of us.”
While the girls’ trip took place in Vegas, Whitney was making animal crackers from scratch and searching for a homestead. “I’m looking for land right now as we speak,” she tells Betches. “We owned a couple of rental properties, and we just sold one of them. So we’re looking for land right now. But I’m very picky, but I know she’s out there somewhere.” By the end of the season, Whitney had officially left MomTok, so we might expect more gingham dresses in Whitney’s future.
As for the rest of the group? “I think most of us are kind of modern women,” Jessi continues. “We’re the breadwinners. We’re working, and we’re being good wives and good mothers, but we’re also hustling and going after our dreams. And I think that’s inspiring.”
At the end of the day, the girlies want everyone is having a good time. “I hope that viewers are just entertained,” Demi says with a smile and a shrug. “That’s the number one goal for a reality TV show — that people are entertained.”
