By all appearances, Hulu’s upcoming series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” is clichéd, lowbrow entertainment. A recent trailer features petty dramas, displays of wealth, sex and more sex.
But for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the series hits a little too close to home. The trailer opens with the female co-stars holding hands in front of the faith’s Provo Temple, all perfectly manicured to Utah beauty standards. Any one of them could be your bishop’s wife, or a medical spa advertisement on Interstate 15. They’re just a group of made-up girlfriends having a photo shoot outside the temple.
Except, as we come to find out in the trailer, these women are swingers — a lifestyle that sharply contrasts with Mormonism’s strict sexual ethic. Their very presence on temple grounds is suddenly blasphemy — or at least it is for hundreds of people who have voiced their concerns in the trailer’s comment section and on social media. The amount of disgust that people feel toward these women is overwhelming.
Some have expressed contempt that promiscuous women self-identify with Mormonism. One woman replied to a promotional post on Instagram saying, “If this was really about ‘Mormon’ wives it would be the sweetest, most boring show in the world. No drama at all.” The comment echoes others that spell out traditional expectations for the character of Latter-day Saint wives: kind, devout and self-sacrificing.
Others have engaged in slut-shaming by calling the women “harlots” or self-righteously pitying their behavior. A commenter on the trailer sorrowed, “These ladies have led themselves into misery.”
Still, a good portion of practicing members attempt to respectfully distance themselves from how the women represent the church. The church itself released a rare “commentary”— which didn’t name the show — indirectly responding to the series and other entertainment media, saying that they often “rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and fully reflect the lives of our church members or the sacred beliefs that they hold dear.”
There’s even a petition to have the show canceled before it airs.
Unsurprisingly, the husbands are largely left alone even though they are involved in the swinging. The trailer shows them chastising and blaming their wives, excusing themselves of all responsibility. Even though they’re equally guilty, Hulu knows that no one would care. Men’s promiscuity is expected, commonplace, boring.
Overlooking the sexual sins of men while we make women’s sins a spectacle is an age-old story. But, in theory, Latter-day Saint men are held to the same sexual standard as women. They’re just as susceptible to church discipline for misbehaving. Church leaders openly disapprove of men’s and women’s sexual misconduct. However, the extent to which the women in the show have been defamed and ostracized indicates that, at least socially, women are still held to a different standard.
This isn’t too surprising, given what church leaders have said about the significance of morally upstanding women. Addressing the whole church in 2013, apostle D. Todd Christofferson said “promiscuity simply robs women of their moral influence and degrades all of society.”
Similarly, in a recent devotional geared toward Latter-day Saint women, church President Russell M. Nelson stated, “If the world should ever lose the moral rectitude of its women, the world would never recover.”
Church leaders have placed the reputation and fate of society squarely on women’s shoulders. Particularly, by implication, Latter-day Saint women’s shoulders. Latter-day Saint women need to remain sexually pure in case the rest of the world becomes depraved and nonfunctional. Otherwise, everyone is doomed.
Against the backdrop of how church leaders and members understand women’s moral influence, the onslaught of fearful and defensive comments makes more sense. To a lot of church members, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” isn’t your average hollow, sensational, reality television show. There are real, drastic stakes when Latter-day Saint women fall out of line.
(Emily Richael) Emily Richael is a recent graduate of Brigham Young University.
Emily Richael is a recent graduate of Brigham Young University and prospective graduate student at Northwestern University studying philosophy.
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