The drama to know before watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
What have you been doing with your life in the last week? Well, we've spending ours dedicating an *unhealthy* amount of time going on TikTok rabbit holes and deep dives about Mormon MomTok, and learning more about the women who make up the cast of Hulu's latest reality series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
The eight-part series dropped last week (6th September) and focusses on the real lives of a group of Mormon women who are friends and, most importantly TikTok creators based in Utah. Their lives and careers imploded after one of the members Taylor Frankie Paul exposed a "soft swinging" scandal she was part of in 2022, which subsequently broke down her marriage and impacted her relationship with the rest of the women.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives follows Taylor's attempt to rebuild her relationship with the women, and shows an ongoing feud she has with the new leader of the group Whitney Leavitt.
But before you binge-watch the series (trust us you will be obsessed), there's actually a lot of backstory you need to know before watching.
So consider this your essential 101 on all things MomTok, soft-swinging scandal and Taylor Frankie Paul.
What is MomTok?
It's likely you'll have seen a #MomTok video before on your TikTok FYP, without even realising it as the community is big.
Back in 2020 when TikTok was taking off in the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of Mormon women began making TikToks together. These women are all usually under 30 years old, and as per Mormon tradition got married in their late teens, early 20s and have a few children. They'd often do dance videos together and memeable content, while all decked out in athleisure wear, the same stretched curls hairstyle and parading around their identical beige homes.
Unlike other TikTok groups (e.g. Hype House) these women don't have one shared profile, but instead their own individual accounts. They'll share group videos on their own accounts, and also make solo content, sometimes with their kids and husbands.
By 2022 they all had millions of followers and some of the biggest names in the community were Taylor Frankie Paul, Camille Munday and Miranda McWhorter, a trio who regularly posted together and even joked they were "sister wives".
Also big names, who are now part of the series are Whitney Leavitt, Mikayla Matthews, Layla Taylor, Jen Affleck, Mayci Neeley, Demi Engemann, and Jessi Ngatikaura.
What is the soft-swinging scandal?
Things could not have been going better for the group in 2022, they were getting millions of views, and bringing in brand deals.
However, in May 2022, Taylor posted a TikTok revealing she was separating from her husband Tate Paul. She posted a TikTok to Miley Cyrus’ ‘Mailbu’ and added the text: “In my twenties, getting divorced, started therapy, living on my own for the first time ever along with two little kids” over the video.
This obviously led to everyone questioning what had caused a breakdown in the marriage. Taylor then made things even more suspicious, when she posted a video with moving boxes and text overlaid which read “My life falling apart. And I can’t even speak on why … without bringing them all down with me.”
And then it all came out. On 25th May 2022, Taylor went on a livestream where she revealed she and her husband were in an open relationship, and they had an agreement with other couples in their friendship group. She never revealed the names of these couples and then went onto explain the couples in this group engaged in “soft swinging” whereby they weren’t permitted to go “all the way” with another individual unless their spouse was in the room.
However, Taylor violated the group’s policy and revealed she had gone “all the way” with one of the group members, confessing the pair “had feelings for each other” but that it only happened once. The incident was the “the tip of the iceberg” she said for the breakdown of her relationship with Tate, and revealed there were many other things that contributed to their divorce.
Since then she revealed she had been “shunned” from that friendship group but insisted that the “majority” of MomTok wasn’t involved.
So who was involved in the swinging group?
Well, right now it appears we won’t be getting any answers to that, as the majority of the group have all denied their involvement.
Taylor’s closest friends at the time (though they now don’t appear to be close) were Miranda and Camille. Taylor revealed Camille was not part of the swinging group because Camille and her husband brought “too much drama”. And Miranda and her husband Chase denied being part of the group.
The other big MomTokers Mayci Neeley, Whitney Leavitt, and Victoria Zalic also all posted videos denying any involvement in the swinging group.
Caught up now? Good, because it’s time to get bingeing.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is available on Disney+, sign up for a Disney+ account here
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