{"id":61402,"date":"2026-03-20T11:08:36","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/?p=61402"},"modified":"2026-03-22T20:50:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:50:05","slug":"the-unraveling-of-momtok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/media-education\/pop-culture\/the-unraveling-of-momtok\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unraveling of #MomTok"},"content":{"rendered":"

What began as \u201cMormon aesthetics without Latter-day Saint values\u201d has become something uglier: a public demonstration of what happens when self-fulfillment, sexual autonomy, and internet fame are pursued at the expense of covenants, chastity, marriage, and children.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday, production of <\/span>The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives<\/span><\/i> season 5 was halted, and <\/span>The Bachelorette<\/span><\/i>\u2019s 22nd season\u2014slated to be led by <\/span>Secret Lives<\/span><\/i> star Taylor Frankie Paul\u2014was canceled. These decisions followed after entertainment website TMZ leaked a <\/span>video<\/span><\/a> of a domestic altercation involving Paul in 2023. In the footage, Paul is seen in her home throwing three metal barstools at Dakota Mortensen, her then-boyfriend and the father of her youngest child. Paul\u2019s daughter, who was six years old at the time, is also seen lying nearby on the couch\u2014apparently sleeping at the beginning, then awakened by the chaos\u2014and cried out for her mother to stop. A subsequent criminal indictment <\/span>indicated<\/span><\/a> that the child was struck in the head by one of the stools, resulting in a painful goose egg.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

TMZ also <\/span>reported<\/span><\/a> that earlier this week, both Mortensen and Paul\u2019s ex-husband (and father of her two older children), Tate Paul, allegedly filed new orders of protection against Paul, with Mortensen requesting sole custody of their two-year-old son.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most Latter-day Saint commentary on <\/span>Secret Lives of Mormon Wives<\/span><\/i>, which chronicles the dramatic lives of a Utah-based social media group of influencers self-dubbed \u201c#MomTok,\u201d tends to focus on how these women are not devout and do not represent the values or teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/span><\/p>\n

What stands out even more is how protective Latter-day Saint teachings are.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>
\nBut <\/span>as I have written previously<\/span><\/a>, what stands out even more is how protective Latter-day Saint teachings are\u2014not only against the harmful effects of the sexual revolution, but against a digital culture that rewards the public monetization of its fallout. The women of <\/span>Secret Lives<\/span><\/i> are not simply casting off Latter-day Saint expectations around sex, marriage, and family. They are doing so in front of cameras for followers, brand deals, ratings, and relevance. The newest seasons only make that clearer. Disney\u2019s own framing of season 4 emphasizes the stars\u2019 virality, \u201creal-world opportunities,\u201d fractures, and mounting instability.<\/span><\/p>\n

The show is packed with parties, events, and a heavy focus on sexual freedom. The women openly posture against traditional <\/span>norms around sex<\/span><\/a> and gender while continuing to borrow the visual language of a faith they seem increasingly uninterested in living. This is no surprise, considering MomTok only rose to fame after a scandal involving some of the married members swinging with each other\u2019s spouses \u2014 and most of those marriages are now over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the show\u2019s cast continues to blame the majority of their dysfunction on \u201cchurch culture\u201d and \u201cMormon expectations.\u201d The show\u2019s on-again, off-again villain, Zac Affleck (who certainly has his issues), is often vilified for offering seemingly sensible, family-oriented commentary such as \u201cHollywood isn\u2019t conducive to a healthy marriage\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t want you to feel mom guilt, but our kids do miss you\u2026and it\u2019s hard for me to fill that void with them even though I try.\u201d This is the same Zac who deferred medical school to be a stay-at-home dad so his wife could appear on <\/span>Dancing with the Stars<\/span><\/i> and further pursue an entertainment career. Jen insists that \u201che had his turn\u201d to pursue his career, and now it\u2019s her turn, \u201cand he knows that and should support that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The women frequently say that their religious upbringing taught them to be subjugated to their husbands\u2019 whims. This is an obvious misunderstanding of <\/span>The Family: A Proclamation to the World<\/span><\/i>, which teaches that fathers are \u201cresponsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.\u201d The clear distinction is that doctrine teaches that career is a means of protecting and providing for the needs of the family, not the desires of the individual. While some sense of meaning and personal fulfillment can be found in many careers, <\/span>research<\/span><\/a> consistently finds that people derive their greatest sense of meaning from relationships\u2014particularly family relationships. Unfortunately, the husbands and boyfriends in the show are often painted as adversaries or competitors of the women, rather than as partners they love and care for. Even stranger, the women seem to believe the proper correction to what they see as oppressive gender roles is simply to reverse them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the show has progressed, the so-called liberation of these women appears to have yielded very little joy or true freedom. Newer seasons are no longer just about \u201cMormon women behaving badly.\u201d They are increasingly a portrait of emotional <\/span>affairs<\/span><\/a>, fractured marriages, public humiliation, <\/span>eating disorders<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>body-image<\/span><\/a> collapse, postpartum distress, and relationships strained to the breaking point, with nearly all of the cast members in personal and couples therapy. What is being sold as liberation looks, more and more, like despair.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Seasons 3 and 4 did not reveal a cruelty of traditional sexual morality; instead, they revealed the inability of self-centered sexual ethics to build anything stable in its place. Unfortunately, far too many viewers have bought into a worldview that claims women in the West are still largely oppressed, and thus feel they are doing their part to smash the patriarchy as they cheer on the ladies in their quest for so-called liberation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem with broadcasting this drama is that the content does not merely document disorder. It rewards it. Reality television and social media incentivize family breakdown. Betrayal, sexual chaos, emotional oversharing, and the performance of self-liberation are highly marketable. Once <\/span>marriage trouble<\/span><\/a> becomes a storyline, sexual impropriety becomes brand identity, and personal instability becomes a platform, the incentives tilt in a very dark direction. The women of <\/span>Secret Lives<\/span><\/i> are not just reaping the consequences of rejecting clear moral norms. They are doing so inside a machine that profits from the damage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The so-called liberation of these women appears to have yielded very little joy.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>
\nFans of the show ignore the clear signs of dysfunction and abuse and the stars\u2019 obvious abandonment of their children (until the children can be used as an excuse to throw a party). Whatever adults choose for themselves, children do not choose the instability, exposure, and humiliation that come with having family breakdown turned into content. That Paul was arrested for assault and domestic violence against Mortensen in front of one of her children has been a matter of public record for over three years, and the frequent subject of hushed conversations on Reddit, but Disney continued on with both <\/span>Secret Lives<\/span><\/i> and then <\/span>The Bachelorette<\/span><\/i> because, well, the women are hot, and far too many viewers are comfortable consuming the meltdowns of mentally unwell celebrities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the cast members themselves have frequently expressed concern about Paul\u2019s erratic behavior. <\/span>NBC News reported<\/span><\/a> yesterday that cast members met with ABC executives earlier this month to express concerns about continuing the show if Paul remained involved. In the meeting, one of the cast members reportedly asked Rob Mills, the executive vice president of unscripted and alternative entertainment at Walt Disney Television, if he\u2019s “aware she\u2019s hurt a child?” Mills’ alleged reply? “I don\u2019t know a lot, nor do I want to know too much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We have, of course, seen the exploitation of unwell but \u201csexually liberated\u201d women before\u2014it\u2019s a familiar pattern to those paying attention. In <\/span>The Case Against the Sexual Revolution<\/span><\/i>, journalist Louise Perry argues that Western sexual culture in the twenty-first century \u201cpromotes the interests of the Hugh Hefners of the world at the expense of the Marilyn Monroes. And the influence of liberal feminism means that too many women don\u2019t recognize this truth, blithely accepting Hefner’s claim that all of the downsides of the new sexual culture are just \u2018a small price to pay for personal freedom.\u2019\u201d Indeed, the commodified lives of women like Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Amanda Bynes, Britney Spears, and others have much in common with Paul\u2019s, and one can only hope that she gets help before reaching the same breaking point these women did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever sympathy one rightly feels for Taylor Frankie Paul as a human being, it is difficult to watch the public trajectory of her life without concluding that it has the shape of a spiral: relational chaos, legal trouble, domestic conflict, children caught in the blast radius, and a complicit fanbase eager to turn every bit of it into entertainment.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most revealing moments on the show are often the accidental ones.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>
\nThe most revealing moments on the show are often the accidental ones. In a rare moment of clarity, Paul reflected in season 2 on her relationship with Mortensen: \u201cIn our faith we were taught to wait (to have sex) for the person we want to marry and end up with, and I feel like … if I hadn\u2019t been sleeping with (Dakota) early on, I don\u2019t think that I would have been as hurt. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s a guideline \u2014 to prevent these types of things from happening.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That line is haunting in light of everything that followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul, through representatives, has said the newly leaked video omits context and that she has suffered abuse as well. But even allowing for dispute over context, the broader picture is grim: this is not empowerment. It is family breakdown, made public and then repackaged as content. What the show unintentionally reveals is that discarded moral boundaries do not disappear without cost. Someone always pays.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is always hope. Though the MomTok ladies often display only elementary knowledge of Latter-day Saint doctrine, I pray they remember the most important doctrine\u2014that of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The same gospel that teaches chastity, fidelity, and sacrifice also teaches mercy. It teaches that through Christ broken things can be mended, and that people who have wandered very far can still come home.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discarded boundaries do not produce freedom when children, marriage, and human dignity are treated as content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":61403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[495],"tags":[1308,1129,21,217,141,653,999,607,601,1044,10,943,766,210,590],"coauthors":[436],"class_list":["post-61402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-accountability","tag-chastity","tag-children","tag-covenants","tag-divorce","tag-domestic-violence","tag-entertainment","tag-media","tag-mormon","tag-polyamory","tag-sensationalism","tag-sexual-revolution","tag-society","tag-television","tag-women"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSecret Lives of Mormon Wives and Moral Chaos - Public Square Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Secret Lives of Mormon Wives reveals how fame, sexual autonomy, and family breakdown turn private wounds into profitable public spectacle and shame.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/media-education\/pop-culture\/the-unraveling-of-momtok\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Moral Chaos - 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