Arts and Entertainment
By Rieley McDonnell, Newswire Intern
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has taken the internet by storm, looming in the wreckage of the MomTok drama. The series follows a group of eight Mormon influencers dubbed Momtok. The show follows their ups and downs throughout several months, including pregnancies, divorce and a plethora of drama.
The main points of drama in each episode revolve around Whitney and Taylor. In episode two, for example, Whitney decided to not attend Taylor’s rainbow baby shower, which further split Taylor and Whitney from each other and began to fracture the group.
The divide is based upon Mormonness with Whitney, Jen, Mayci, and Mikalya Matthews as the “saints” and Taylor, Jessi, Layla and Demi as the “sinners”. This is shown when Jen decides to uninvite the “sinners” from her baby’s blessing.
The drama started before the series started filming when one of the founding members of MomTok, Taylor Frankie Paul, said that all the members of the group were participating in soft swinging. Soft swinging refers to the practice of trading partners and doing intimate things short of sex.
The series opened with Whitney, who previously moved to Hawaii to supposedly get away from the wreckage of Taylor’s soft swinging confession, moving her family back to Utah. Whitney blew up on TikTok due to a video of her dancing in her baby’s hospital room while discussing the baby’s RSV diagnosis.
Whitney brought MomTok together to discuss why she actually moved to Hawaii: Her husband had been talking to other people on Tinder, and she was trying to cover for him.
After this bombshell, Taylor decides to drop one of her own: She has a boyfriend after she and her husband divorced amid the swinging scandal. She was pregnant with her new boyfriend’s baby but had a miscarriage four weeks into the pregnancy. Taylor and her boyfriend got into an altercation that ended with Taylor being arrested for domestic violence.
Whitney saw this announcement as stealing her thunder and this started a rift between the two perceived “queen bees” of MomTok.
The women are all based out of Utah and live in the Salt Lake City/Provo area. This is a Mormon temple in the Salt Lake area.
The divide between the group was heightened at Jen Afleck’s husband Zac’s graduation party, where another MomTok member, Jessi, and her husband, Jordan, pulled out a flask of alcohol. Jen and her husband do not drink, as alcohol is against doctrine in the Mormon church.
Because of all the drama and Whitney’s self-victimization, Whitney left the MomTok group chat and then got upset when almost no one decided to be her friend anymore.
More drama ensued on a Vegas trip where Taylor’s boyfriend and Jen’s husband get upset with their partners for seeing a Magic Mike-esque performance.
The season ends with Whitney being an outcast trying to weasel her way back into the group, Taylor having her kid and Mayci investigating whether Dakota has cheated on Taylor. It seems drama is inescapable if one is a member of MomTok.
