Taylor Frankie Paul and the Story Behind ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’
She Needed an Influencer. He Said, ‘You Could Be That Girl.’
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September 6, 2024This post was originally published on this site
A new Hulu series will explore a cheating scandal — and its aftermath — that rocked the world of Mormon social media influencers.
In the summer of 2022, the world of Mormon influencers was rocked by a scandal that even their most dedicated followers did not see coming. Taylor Frankie Paul, a married TikTok influencer and mother of two, announced in a TikTok livestream that she and her husband had decided to get a divorce after “soft swinging” with other Mormon couples in their Salt Lake City-area friend group.
The public admission prompted denials from Ms. Paul’s friend group, cheating accusations and even more shocking revelations, all of which have followed the so-called #MomTok influencers ever since.
Now, the scandal and its aftermath have been documented for a new reality series for Hulu — the aptly titled “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” — which premieres on Friday. Here’s what you need to know about the women, and the scandal, at the heart of the series.
OK, what is #MomTok?
“I created MomTok,” Ms. Paul, 30, declares in the trailer for the show.
MomTok is a nickname for a loose collection of popular young Mormon influencers who post TikTok videos of themselves dancing, lip syncing and behaving in ways you wouldn’t necessarily expect religious women to behave. But that’s part of the point: Ms. Paul and her friends, including Mayci Neeley, Mikayla Mathews and Whitney Leavitt, say that MomTok is about subverting expectations of how Mormon wives and mothers should act.
“We are trying to change the stigma of the gender roles in the Mormon culture,” Ms. Neeley says in the trailer.
