A good indicator that a friend group won’t and maybe shouldn’t stay together is when they have divided themselves into “saints” and “sinners.” That is, however, an excellent pitch for a reality television show, which is perhaps part of how we ended up with The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which premiered on Hulu on Sept. 6. The show follows eight women who are part of a weird TikTok group they call MomTok, which is basically just them posting videos of themselves dancing in different configurations and maybe also proselytizing?
The three of us have been messaging constantly about the Mormon Mommies. Their hair is so strange. They are always driving in the car. They are so mild for a reality television show, and yet it is that mildness that perhaps makes them so difficult to turn off. It is less like watching any of the Real Housewives franchises than it is like watching a middle school sleepover without any parents around.
We are not the only ones to watch this eight-episode car crash. Upon its release, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives became Hulu’s most-watched unscripted premiere. So at least some other people watched it, and we are here to discuss all of it. As they say on the show, Will MomTok Survive This?
Alex Sujong Laughlin: In 2021, I had what I called my Mormon summer. I watched Under the Banner of Heaven (also on Hulu!), then I read Under the Banner of Heaven, then I listened to a podcast episode about Go Ask Alice and how it’s secretly Mormon, and then I read Go Ask Alice, and then I read Unmask Alice, which is about how Go Ask Alice came to be written and confirmed its surprise Mormon background. Then I got really into the fact that The Hunger Games is maybe Mormon and the Capitol is likely Salt Lake City, and then a Mormon family moved in next door to me. The children were always wearing extremely cute clothes made of natural fibers. This is all to say: I was very excited to watch this show.
Kelsey McKinney: My major exposure to Mormon culture is the Twilight series—which I love very much—and knowing many Mormons in elementary and middle school, who were all very exceedingly nice, and unbelievably blonde.
Rachelle Hampton: Okay, I’m now reeling from the fact that Go Ask Alice and The Hunger Games are secretly Mormon content. They’re everywhere! But, like Kelsey, I loved Twilight as a youth and, if I’m being honest, as an adult. The release of Midnight Sun in August 2020 saved me. I also feel like Mormons have been having a moment online since around that time period? I remember TikTok trends about “ex-mos” and "soaking" and the BYU Virginity Club popping off around 2020-21.
KM: Still, there are so many shows that exist in the world. Why did the two of you decide to watch this one? I dove in because people from very different parts of my life were recommending it, which is always a sign something strange is going on.
ASL: I was excited because of my aforementioned interest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but honestly it was Slacking with the two of you that made me finally start it.
RH: I love watching white people fight. I love reality TV. And I was high with one of my best friends who knows both of these things about me; the moment she said the name of the show, I was in.
ASL: I think we need to start with the burning question that is haunting me and tearing my own household apart: What did that lady do with the Fruity Pebbles?
KM: YES! OK, so a little background first: Demi, who is one of the "sinners," hosts all the girls from MomTok for a little Galentine’s party at her house, and Whitney (who is very much the villain of this season) decides to play a little prank on her.
ASL: (I’m very impressed that Kelsey is naming any of these women because beyond the one girl with a bob and the one Black girl, you can’t tell any of them apart. Crucially, the eight women have sorted themselves into two groups: sinners and saints, because one group is OK with the occasional sip of alcohol and the other isn’t.)
KM: I had to look up their names. They have so few defining characteristics, especially early on. Like halfway through the season, the producers put them in sweatshirts with their names embroidered on them, and this helped me learn maybe four of their names.
RH: This show is secretly a test for blonde woman face blindness, and let me say: I failed.
KM: OK, so Whitney plays a prank on Demi, and the prank is a gift. The gift is a box filled to the brim with Fruity Pebbles. There is some, but not enough, context for this gag gift. While getting ready at her house for the Galentine’s party, Whitney explains very vaguely that this prank gift has something to do with Demi’s sex life with her husband. She says that Demi told all of them some sex act, and no one believed her, and then that she called her husband on speaker phone and he confirmed it.
Whitney is clearly crossing a line here. While perhaps not fully private, in that Demi told her MomTok friends about this sex act, she did not (crucially!) tell the cameras. By bringing this gift to the Galentine's party, Whitney brings the off-screen conversation on-screen. And when she opens it, Demi is clearly—and fairly—pissed.
But it is very unclear what happened with the Fruity Pebbles, and that is what we are here to discuss today.
RH: OK, let’s look at the details we’ve been given. Before we do, can I just say that this was one of the most annoying parts of the show? At one point Whitney whispers to one of the other women what exactly happened, which the mic obviously doesn’t pick up. But thankfully someone finally demands that she demonstrate what exactly they’re all so scandalized by. Whitney makes one of the other girls lie down on the floor and then stands over her face (sans underwear) while everyone shrieks and giggles. Meanwhile I’m sat on my couch, high off my ass, thinking, All these married women are freaking out about … sitting on their husband’s face?
ASL: Was the phrase “coochie juice” used or am I inventing that?
KM: Yes it was lol. Whichever girl was on the floor (Mayci? Mikayla?) was shrieking because Whitney was pretending to sit on her face. There are very few context clues we can use in this scene besides the fact that the words “Fruity Pebbles” are used, and the positioning of the sex act (face sitting). What do we think Fruity Pebbles means here?
ASL: My first thought was that the pebbles were placed … between the labia? To be eaten like fish flakes? I just can’t imagine that’s pleasant for anyone involved. Also, everyone knows that the pebble variety of cereal sucks once it gets soggy.
RH: I think it’s quite simple: Demi’s pussy tastes like Fruity Pebbles. She’s been eating pineapple. She’s been drinking coconut water.
KM: She’s just like Lana Del Rey. Rachelle, unfortunately, I do have some evidence to present to you.
RH: NO. I just wanted one of these freaks to be normal.
KM: I found a TikTok by romance author Caitlin Moss, where she posits your exact theory, Rachelle. She says, “Am I missing something? [....] She just is taking a seat on her husband’s facial region.” Good theory! But THEN, Mikayla (one of the MomToks) commented on that and said, “Yes you’re missing something.” We can assume Mikayla has heard the full event! So that's a point toward Alex's theories.
ASL: My other hypothesis is that she is going Mr. Softee mode and using the Fruity Pebbles as sprinkles as a way to entice her husband who definitely doesn’t know what or where her clit is.
KM: I have another, grosser theory, which seems less likely to me than dunking herself in cereal, but still possible which is ... peeing.
ASL: Joseph Smith!
RH: None of this sounds appetizing or appealing in any way. If we’re involving cereal, why Fruity Pebbles? Why not Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
KM: It really does not. But no one talks about sex in an appealing way on this show at all. The whole reason these women are famous is that Taylor (a MomTok, a sinner), posted a TikTok about how they were all “soft swinging” with each other’s partners! So it’s kind of hilarious that half of them spend so much time acting like they’re virgins.
ASL: That gets to the mindfuck that is this whole show, because they’re simultaneously like “Ooh, look at us, we’re so bad” while getting absolutely wrecked on 44-ounce sodas every day because they don’t drink alcohol or coffee. Like, I would probably act that way too if I was consuming that much sugar.
RH: When they got Botox just to have a taste of laughing gas?
KM: I was screaming for that whole scene. Getting laughing gas for Botox in general is hilarious! One thing I found pretty appealing about the show is that most of these women (despite having more than half a million TikTok followers each) are kind of normal? In comparison to the Real Housewives—even Salt Lake City—they have much less money. Their trips are just, like, to an Airbnb in Las Vegas. They have nice big suburban houses but not mansions!
RH: Yeah, as the show progresses it becomes clearer and clearer that Mormonism is both their defining trait and the only real reason they’re on our television screens. Otherwise these women are all just long-haired blondes who had children way too early, which is basically half the girls I went to high school with.
KM: Half the girls we all went to high school with. That’s kind of beautiful in a way.
ASL: It is probably not surprising that I had one of my recurring sorority nightmares last night after prepping to write this blog. I do not have the religious trauma that some of my fellow bloggers here have, but the MomTok women remind me a lot of the evangelical girls I knew in college, who considered themselves progressive in the circles they were in, because they listened to rap, occasionally got drunk, and made out with their boyfriends.
KM: Yeah. I found all of the drama near the end of the season with Jen Affleck (her husband is Ben Affleck’s second cousin?) very viscerally upsetting. Here you have this woman who is 24 years old, with a baby and a man who is clearly extremely controlling. All of her friends dislike him and say so both to her and straight to the reality television cameras they know are going to broadcast this opinion widely. And they worry about her. There’s this kind of sense of depressing resignation that I rarely feel anymore that crept back in listening to them. Like at the end of the day, at least half of these women are stuck in a culture that allows their husbands to believe he’s better and more important than them, and their friends can’t really prevent that from ruining their lives.
ASL: Wait, I’m so sorry. I thought Taylor was the one having the baby with the controlling man?
KM: Lol that’s another plot line. Jen is the one whose bleached blonde husband gambles!
ASL: Another point for white lady face blindness.
RH: There are many controlling husbands/not-quite-husbands to pick from on this program. There really is a sort of profound dissonance between the fact that these women are signaling progressiveness by shilling for vibrator companies while the politics of their marriages are as traditional as ever. I can’t even really tell how optimistic I feel about the fact that some of them recognize the cage they’re in.
KM: Knowing you're inside a cage is not the same as working to leave it, I guess. As a show, one complaint I have is that they never tie up any plot lines. Did Whitney shill for the vibrator company? Why exactly did they run away to Hawaii? Who exactly was her husband cheating with when he was on Tinder for their entire marriage?
RH: We never found out who was soft swinging with each other!
ASL: Between the sheer number of indistinguishable people in the cast and the amount of plot that happened in a short season, I finished the series feeling bewildered, exhausted, and empty. Not unlike the comedown from a sugar high.
RH: The production for this show was high on laughing gas or soda, or some combination of the two. The unmentioned time jump between Episode 1 and 2? The fact that they let Whitney change her hair THREE times in the first episode? The lack of backstory on the only black woman in this group? Unfortunately, this all only makes me want another season.
KM: I truly hope MomTok survives this, because I am seated. I am ready for another garbage season.
RH: Hook me up to the laughing gas and let’s go.
