Mormon #MomTok & Hulu Secret Lives

In the brand-new Hulu series, we all might learn a little more than we want to about the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. It seems there is swinging, and layers of hypocrisy happening in what we all assumed by now was a strict monogamous society.

#MomTok

If you don’t know it yet, there is a TikTok community called #MomTok, made up of Mormon-influencer ladies who live in Utah. These “cool moms,” as they call themselves, are all young mothers and either follow or used to follow the Mormon Church. The ladies, Taylor Frankie Paul, Whitney Leavitt, Layla Taylor, Demi Engemann, Mayci Neeley, Jessi Ngatikaura, and Jenn Affleck look uncannily alike and dress rather Reality TV Star fabulous; full makeup, the latest clothes, and hair extensions. They have amassed fans across their online community who pay their bills, making the ladies, more or less their family’s breadwinner.

But cracks began to show across the community, rumors released and the whole sordid mess played out on the aforementioned HULU series that just started, as well as before. The skinny? Early on, one of the ladies revealed that not only was her husband having an affair but that she, as well as many others in the group, were involved in what they called soft swinging.

Surely, when it comes to reality TV and a group like the Mormons, extramarital shenanigans are a delicious spice for viewers.

The consistent history of religious hypocrisy and sex

The morass of the U.S. Catholic church clergy sex abuse scandal runs so deep it could never even be scratched in one article. That sickening hypocrisy and abuse is best left to factual reports and magazine exposes. But beyond this, the many instances of a seeming stalwart religious leader being caught in a sex scandal, or some money grabbing are numerous.

There was the PTL/Jim Bakker scandal, where the preacher was as much accused of sexual misconduct with his church’s secretary Jessica Han, (Han would enjoy further public attention), as came under investigation by the FCC for supposedly misusing funds he raised for his church on the air.

And there is the now classic on-air “I have sinned,” confession Swaggart gave to his congregation when the news of his penchant for prostitutes was outed.

Swaggart would continue his paid sex interests, as well as working for his church.

As Dorothy Woodend makes plain in this TheTyee.ca piece, “The list of evangelists and Christian leaders who have been caught with their pants down is, how shall I put this indelicately, as long as porn star John Holme’s famous wiener.”

The old double standard

As author Leslie Dorrough Smith makes clear in her book Compromising Positions: Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity, Americans react to sex scandals often through the prism of their political views…especially when it might be politicians who get caught or outed.

And, surely, the old Puritan double standard rears its head.

Men who appear as the ‘big daddy’ in their chosen field, are often given a wide berth or even elected back into their jobs, Smith points out, while women are castigated, even when they did not begin the affair.

And even in the case of a woman pursuing an affair, she doesn’t usually survive the public thrumming. When it was revealed that openly bisexual congresswoman Katie Hill was having a lesbian affair with a staff member, she was forced to resign.

One could say, hypocrisy has been around as long as religion.