The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives took the world by storm in 2024. The show stars seven young women living in Utah and working as social media momfluencers. The women are collectively known as “#MomTok” and create dancing, lifestyle, and humorous videos on TikTok. The show’s success is partly driven by a viral swinging scandal in which some of the cast actively engaged in “soft swinging.”

While the series is raunchy and entertaining, we also observed some complex negotiations between faith and femininity. We wanted to find out how the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives cast members resist, reinforce, or reinterpret Mormon teachings, especially those related to gender, femininity, and sexuality. After analyzing transcripts from the first two seasons using qualitative data coding software, we found data rich with ways that the cast bend Mormon rules while not explicitly breaking them.

The series makes clear that traditional gender roles are prevalent in Mormon doctrine and culture, while the women purport to be actively trying to change them. The stars actively push back against patriarchal norms, critiquing submission, perfection standards, and unequal power imbalances. 

One of the ways that the women in #MomTok challenge traditional gender expectations is through subversion of the breadwinner/homemaker model. All seven women report being the primary breadwinners in their families. One states that she is providing for her family while her husband attends medical school. Another reports that her husband is in his “stay-at-home dad era” because the amount of money she earns doing brand deals on social media exceeds “his entire yearly salary.”

#MomTok describes themselves as “a new generation of Mormon women,” even referring to themselves as “progressive” or “modern” Mormons. The cast openly subverts traditional Mormon behavioral expectations through drinking alcohol, drug use, gambling, and non-monogamous sexual relationships. They frame their actions as normalizing taboo topics, especially around sex and gender roles. 

Despite attempting to challenge gender roles and Mormon cultural expectations, the stars also reinforce them other ways. They share a hyper-feminine aesthetic characterized by long curled hair, tan skin, natural makeup, and an emphasis on youthfulness. This aesthetic is influenced by trends within Utah or Mormon culture. They even recognize that they have a shared look, despite two of them identifying as biracial. The women also openly discuss cosmetic procedures. One MomTok member happily discusses her “mommy makeover” in which she had undergone three breast enhancements and a labiaplasty.

The LDS church celebrates divine femininity, or the idea that “feminine” qualities like nurturing, intuition, sensuality, and relational strength are not just socially constructed traits, but inherently powerful and sacred. Rather than emphasizing modesty and submission, the cast frames femininity as something internal and empowering. They emphasize boundary setting, feminine sensuality, and women-centered community. At the same time, this framework still reflects gender essentialism. While it feels empowering, it maintains thinking that women are naturally more emotional, sensual, and nurturing. Rather than dismantling gender binaries, divine femininity repackages them in a more positive and agentic way.

More interesting are their attempts to justify their behavior, a pattern we recognized as bending, not breaking, Mormon rules. We see an example in season one when the women get nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, while getting Botox injections. While the LDS Word of Wisdom prohibits recreational drug use, this moment is framed as beauty maintenance and becomes permissible by #MomTok. The women themselves note that nitrous oxide is not needed for Botox injections, yet they permit themselves to get the drugs in the name of cosmetic upkeep. This allows them to bend the rules, using drugs for cosmetic, not recreational, reasons, without breaking them. Other similar examples include the cast members’ use of ketamine. In both seasons, various cast members discuss their use of ketamine for therapeutic reasons, with one member describing it as being in a “gray area” regarding the church. Both examples illustrate how the cast are willing to bend, not break, the rules when it comes to drug use, citing bodily health, mental well-being, and beauty as rationale.

Another “gray area” in the Mormon church is sexual behavior. In season one, a #MomTok member is describing a scenario in which she was asked to promote a sex toy on her social media page in exchange for hefty compensation. She ultimately decides to take the deal but frames her choice in a way that allows her to promote the sex toy to married couples experiencing intimacy issues. This allows her to portray sex toys as empowering only for partners who are married, not single people, therefore bending the LDS law of chastity. Other ‘bent’ laws include those related to monogamy. Although historically the LDS church openly practiced polygamy, or plural marriage, the Book of Mormon today teaches that monogamy is the standard for marriage. During a viral scandal, a Mormon momfluencer publicly disclosed that some #MomTok members were engaging in “soft swinging.” Soft swinging is described by the cast as “everything but sex,” including consensual intimate activities like kissing, touching, swapping partners, and sexual activities between couples in the same room. Stopping short of sexual intercourse allows for members to bend Mormon monogamy rules without explicitly breaking them.

Our research highlights that the cast of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives are actively negotiating traditional teachings rather than simply reinforcing or outright rejecting them. What we’ve observed is not a clear break from LDS teachings, but a more complex process akin to gender maneuvering, which helps us to explain how the cast manipulates rules and traditional gender performances to navigate social hierarchies. These strategies act as a form of resistance against rigid, socially prescribed gender roles and strict Mormon expectations, but by not fully breaking away from tradition, the women are still granted a degree of autonomy and power.

Marissa Morey is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her academic research focuses on feminism, politics, and identity, with recent work exploring media portrayals of Mormon femininity and gender performance.

Kristin Johnston is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Wayne State University studying sociology, specifically race and gender. She is interested in how both race and gender are performed and perceived in the media.