The great irony about Hulu’s most popular unscripted drama — which claims to peel back the curtain on Latter-day Saint womanhood — is how little connection the show has to Latter-day Saint faith.
Of course, much has already been written about how Secret Lives doesn’t actually reflect the lives of Latter-day Saint women, secret or otherwise. There are at least as many cocktails as diet cokes, as many curse words as prayers. Instead, the show centers on women — and to a lesser extent, their boyfriends and husbands — rejecting their religious upbringings while preserving a few of the aesthetics.
Washington Post reviewer Ashley Fetters Maloy observes, “It’s striking how infrequently they question what God might think about any of it.” Most Latter-day Saints won’t find the show consistent with their values.
But what stands out even more is how much of a cautionary tale the entire spectacle offers for how faith commitments protect women, children and families (including the men), from the withering effects of the sexual revolution.
The show, which I don’t recommend, is packed with parties, events, and a heavy focus on sexual freedom. The women openly say their goal is to push the church toward more liberal norms around sex and gender.
In “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution,” Louise Perry calls this shift “sexual disenchantment,” where sex becomes just another leisure activity, stripped of deeper meaning unless assigned by the participants. She writes, “Sexual disenchantment is a natural consequence of the liberal privileging of freedom over all other values ... particularly the belief that sex has some unique, intangible value.”
We’ve already seen the effects of this mindset. The women featured in the show want to ditch gender roles, dress how they want and have as much sex as they want — goals not unlike those of 1960s revolutionaries like Helen Gurley Brown, longtime “Cosmopolitan” editor and author of “Sex and the Single Girl.” Brown, who encouraged women to delay motherhood to “avoid those tiresome years as an unpaid babysitter,” and described men as “often cheaper emotionally and a lot more fun by the dozen,” promised autonomy and happiness.
But the revolution delivered neither. Since then, divorce rates have nearly doubled, 40% of children are born out of wedlock, and over a quarter of Americans consume pornography monthly. A quarter of single mothers live below the poverty line. Up to 30% of women report painful intimate relationships — and repeatedly, a culture of casual hook-ups with multiple people has been shown to correlate with higher levels of sexual assault.
There have been serious trade-offs. But it’s hard to shake a sense that these women (and social media influencers like them) have been so deeply sheltered from the negative aspects of the sexual revolution by virtue of growing up in the church, that they are seeking for the same liberation that women in the ’60s did, without taking a look around and realizing the havoc it’s wreaked.
Perry goes on to argue that modern sexual ethics — built solely on consent — disempower women, often leading them into experiences they eventually, inevitably regret.
And the influence ripples out in all directions. The more women are expected to be sexually liberated, the more pressure others feel to follow suit just to stay in the dating game.
We see this dynamic play out on Secret Lives when two of the women stage a Halloween stunt to “liberate” their friend Jen from her “uptight” husband, Zac. Recalling his reaction to a previous girls’ night at a Chippendales show, the women enlist their own husbands to dance half-naked around Jen at the party. Though Jen nervously agrees when her friends present the idea to her, she later expresses deep regret and says she felt violated.
However clear these downstream consequences follow from a rejection of clear sexual norms, the show’s cast frequently blames their emotional pain on “Mormon expectations.” Mikayla shares that she was sexually abused as a child and blames the church for her mother’s disbelief. Zac blames the church for his emotionally abusive behavior. But they overlook the protective role the church has long played in their families and communities.
Latter-day Saints are far less likely to divorce, more likely to report happy marriages and consistently rank among the highest in overall well-being. Utah has the third-highest educational attainment, the third-lowest poverty rate and half the national rate of out-of-wedlock births.
Those who save sex for marriage have the highest sexual satisfaction, the highest relationship satisfaction, the best stability and the highest level of emotional closeness between spouses. The values taught in The Family: A Proclamation to the World have contributed to strong families, social stability and individual fulfillment.
In a rare moment of clarity, Taylor — the show’s central figure and the creator of #MomTok — reflects on her relationship with the father of her third child: “In our faith we were taught to wait (to have sex) for the person we want to marry and end up with, and I feel like ... if I hadn’t been sleeping with (Dakota) early on, I don’t think that I would have been as hurt. And that’s why it’s a guideline — to prevent these types of things from happening.”
And this is the not-so-secret theme of the show evident to onlookers who are paying attention: These women are reaping the consequences of rejecting their religious upbringings.
Some Latter-day Saints may find the show offensive. Yet I’m sure my non-Latter-day Saint friends don’t see it as any more representative than “Jersey Shore” is of Italian-American Catholics.
Mostly, I just felt sad — sad for these beautiful women (who almost certainly have amazing talents they could be sharing with the world), who spend more time scheming, gossiping, crying and fighting than experiencing joy. Sad for their children, who seem to be accessories in photo ops before being shuffled off to play with designer dollhouses. Sad for viewers who aspire to this kind of lifestyle.
In the end, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” isn’t really about Latter-day Saint wives at all. It’s about what happens when you try to keep the aesthetics of a faith — matching Christmas pajamas, temple wedding photos, Sunday dresses — while discarding its substance.
Like so many other reality shows, the show’s theme is familiar: the fallout of a culture chasing liberation at the expense of lasting peace. The only new revelation is that even some Latter-day Saint women, though I seriously doubt very many, are falling prey to this dominant societal trend.
The result isn’t empowerment. It’s confusion, loneliness and often regret. Latter-day Saint teachings, especially around sex, marriage and family, are not outdated shackles but scaffolding for something far more radical: joy through commitment, strength through self-restraint and healing through divine grace.
That story might not trend on TikTok or ever get a feature show on Hulu. But it’s still worth telling.