A Fashion Psychoanalysis of ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has completely overtaken my life. It’s like the platonic ideal behind The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City but twice as tacky and infinitely realer. The hair couldn’t be longer, the dresses none the cheaper and the women? Well, they’ve certainly put on quite the show about the prison of traditional Mormon womanhood on the grand stage of TikTok Live.
This story begins with a woman named Taylor in the hellhole known as Utah, underneath the shadow of the Church of Latter Day Saints. A few years back, she went live on TikTok and revealed that some members of the “MomTok” group she helped found — a gaggle of Mormon moms dancing on the platform together — had been swinging in secret. Their little trysts had blown up a few marriages, and she wanted to set the record straight amid an explosion of hearsay and gossip. The only problem? A whole host of unaffiliated tradwives got roped into the mess.
Producers, ever eager for a reality show breakout, swooped in with cameras soon after. They captured exactly one episode of mess before Taylor, the show’s anti-hero, was arrested and put on probation while creators shopped around the pilot, eventually selling to Hulu with an eight episode order. What ensues is unlike just about anything else I’ve ever seen on television. Between discourse over whether or not to promote vibrators on social media and fights about dancing over a sick baby in the hospital, the women drink one million metric tons of soda, in lieu of alcohol, and wear just as much chemical waste disguised as discount boutique fashion.
More than any of the drama that ensues, however, it’s their clothing that tells the most interesting story. Each, in their own way, expresses their Mormon roots quite differently. Some lean into purity culture and modesty, while others push the limits of what is acceptable to wear in Utah. Like The Real Housewives, as explored through my “So Chic, Very Chic” column, the devil is in the details.
Below is a sampling of that devil and those details, along with my own analysis of the women’s style and broader narratives in the show about womanhood, domestic violence, religious oppression and so much more. Shall we?
Taylor
Taylor is pregnant for the majority of the series and frankly didn’t give much in the arena of fashion to complain about. That said, I am simply fascinated by the visual story told between these two confessionals, filmed a year apart in the wake of her arrest and subsequent pregnancy. In the first, she plays up the damaged party girl persona she clings to in the show’s early moments, red hot with her hair up and half down. Even the producers (messy!) ask about it.
On its face, it’s a simple Shein garment that you can find a dime a dozen at the nearest Buffalo Exchange every time colleges get out for the summer, when online shopping addled marketing majors unload their hauls on the underpaid retail workers. In comparison to the blue fit, however, the story grows much more complex. See, in the time between these two things, Taylor recommitted her relationship to the Church of Latter Day Saints, grasping at traditional womanhood and feminine servility to the powers that be. The dress attempts to be more demure, despite being fully off the shoulder, and even has an added privacy shawl for her breasts, covered unlike before. Her hair is also fully down, signaling comformity. Her nails are also a demure minty green, perhaps the most telling of her change in heart and spirit. I’m quite compelled by the trappings of her Mormon conversion!
Whitney
Whitney, like Jen Affleck later, is the most fashion forward of the bunch. It doesn’t say much by any means, but she tries, however filtered her attempt might be through the TikTok Shop payment portal. There’s a scattered quality to what she wears, vacillating quite often between haunted Victorian doll and poor Whitney Rose impersonator. The first two examples, the green dress and the pink monstrosity, are the most emblematic of this. She might also disagree, but the dichotomy in her appearance makes her quite similar to Taylor.
Like her nemesis, Whitney goes through a noticeable aesthetic transformation after it’s revealed her husband was fooling around on Tinder. (And she was dragged out of Utah for dancing in the hospital room with her sick newborn.) She quickly hops out the fried hair and party dresses and cool girl clothes, jumping right into more traditional peasant dresses and cap sleeve, empire waist monstrosities. They likewise go hand in hand with a brewing conversation over the season she would like to farmstead with her burgeoning family — convenient, as I’m sure there’s no gay guys (or women!) on Tinder for her husband to flirt with deep in the Utah countryside. Well, that’s what they call the Park City suburbs, so maybe there’s hope for him yet.
Of course, it’s not all peasantry in the countryside. I noticed, briefly, that when she’s “on” and away from her husband, she jumps into some jeans and tight tops and more adventurous fits. Look at that last one! It’s like something a Sailor Moon villain would wear, or like a Greyhound bus carpet come to life.
The haunted Victorian doll look is perhaps her best, because it is inherently silly and wrapped up in her star turn as Utah’s prima donna villainess. Step aside Monica, “Reality Von Tease”! There’s a new Mormon witch in town, and she’s simply obsessed with frilled collars and puffy dresses and playing the victim after calling her friends all sorts of hideous names. It’s been a long time since someone as wicked as Whitney Rose, and with the same deficiency in self-awareness, strutted around on television.
Jen
There’s been lots of talk about Taylor and Whitney online, but the real star of the season is Ben Affleck’s second cousin’s new wife, Jen, who proudly announces she was the original “Jen Affleck,” despite being younger than the time between Bennifer’s original relationship and their latest breakup.
I’d like to start with the fact that Jen is clearly in an abusive relationship, and I won’t indulge much gossip and idle speculation on it. We have been presented with a rather clear cut narrative about a woman stuck in a cycle of control with a man who is certainly emotionally unstable, even abusive, and it was quite difficult to watch. In conjunction with many of her fashion, like the two above, she was quite the harrowing portrait of the prison of modern, traditional marriage. Her hair was big, her cortisol levels were run ragged from raising kids alone, and her dresses wildly poofy. At times, I found it all quite difficult to watch! I was lucky to get out before children ever entered the picture, but she reminded me of my own marriage, and the many reasons I was lucky to claw myself out of it.
Mostly, I lingered on the harrowing juxtaposition with growing conversations on the internet about the rise of “tradwifery” as disseminated by the same sort of Mormon wives now made famous by this TV show. They play up the home life, the child rearing and the natural “godly” living, leaving out the control, the domestic prison, the unpaid labor of childcare and even more often than any will admit, the abuse. Filtered through the fashions that made “MomTok” so distinct in its heyday, the overall impression Jen left still haunts me!
As the series progresses and she begins to buck the strictures of her controlling marriage, she slowly shows signs of a personality and taste level beyond the big hair and sweaters and overpriced Mejuri accessories. At multiple events that her husband is not present for, and in her later confessional, she wears more revealing, skin-tight outfits. Hell, she even shows cleavage! The pink dress is so specifically 2021 through the prism of suburban boutiques, and the final jumpsuit with the oversized belt is like if Charlotte Russe was resurrected from mall hell.
Mayci
Mayci was just about the only one with sense this season, both in the confessional booth and in her friend group. The fits left much to be desired, but her championing Jen while her marriage crumbled and husband’s behavior worsened was admirable. (It also made me quite sad, for how common abuse and control seems to be amongst these women.) I was hesitant about the fits, understandably, as the girl showed up on camera for the first time in basically a Guess top and black skinny jeans. Her second confessional? A glorified camisole dress in bubblegum pink and stretch cotton. People haven’t pulled stunts like that since Vanderpump Rules season one. (Don’t disprove me or the Bravo bubble I live in, please.)
There is one leather-adjacent jacket she wears towards the end of the season, hair long, center part snatched, hoops in. I quite liked the look! Basic, but this is Utah, and it’s totally utilitarian — perfect for a drama mediator and amateur private detective. Someone should introduce her to Acne Studios, though. I think has the potential to tear a bit in more elevated basics
Jessi
Speaking of basic, Jessi here is most famous for being a Mormon woman with a labiaplasty and a billboard for her hair salon that became a nationally known joke about cum. Kind of a total diva also, if you ask me, even if her tracks were too long and too present on camera. Still, I found her charming in spite of the jersey dresses and pendant necklaces and too-white veneers, constantly with a look of surprise on her face and a bundle of hair prominently cheated out to camera. The first dress is just about all one needs to know about the B-team on this cast. Always in some fuck ass spaghetti strap coral rag with too many sparkles and too much lip gloss.
Demi
Speaking of hair, here’s Demi. If one was to ask me what this girl gives, it’s brown leather outfits. I swear! Remember when it was a big thing circa 2022 and 2023 for the Real Housewives? Well, 2024 Utah is suffering a late-stage invasion effort by the cast-off garments, trickled down from the Marc Jacobs and Coach runways into some boutique called “Raindrops & Honeydew” in a strip mall.
Layla
Layla here was quite the inoffensive addition to the cast, serving as a capable foil to the “saints” on the cast. She drinks sometimes! She has tattoos! She has more teal dresses in her closet than I have Brat merch that I ordered in a delirious haze one night.
Mikayla
Mikayla was another confounding member of the ensemble, as I couldn’t quite pin down her style ever. She’s like the Mormon Leighton Meester: career a mystery, giving chic and effortless style for the average mom of an indeterminable amount of children. She’s also the one with the most harrowing backstory, having met her husband at 16 when he was 21. This fact is passed over quite quickly, and her fashions tell the rest of this story. Unlike her cast, she is perhaps the most traditional onscreen. Never very daring, always in muted colors and neutrals. The peacock feathered dress is her most adventurous fit, even if the rest of the dress offscreen is plainer than I could possibly describe. In conjunction with her marriage origins, she’s an interesting mirror to Jen’s own predicament throughout the season, the clothes telling the story they both won’t say themselves.
And they say clothing is vain, or one dimensional! To me, even drab cottagecore dresses are a rich text on modern womanhood refracted through the prism of Mormonism.
The Girlies
Look at all of them, gathered in Mormon fits of indeterminate origins. Jen’s big ass Goyard bag with the traditional periwinkle coat is sending me in contrast with Layla’s tiny little purse and Acne Studios castoff shearling. Jessi’s frilly frond-y mint dress is also quite funny, as her white Chanel crossbody is about as big as a small child. I’m going to miss them until the next time Hulu graces us with their presence!
Photos via Hulu
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has completely overtaken my life. It’s like the platonic ideal behind The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City but twice as tacky and infinitely realer. The hair couldn’t be longer, the dresses none the cheaper and the women? Well, they’ve certainly put on quite the show about the prison…