"If Everyone is Willing to Conform to Patriarchy Again"
The Sister Wives have pulled off something The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was trying to do
There are minimal spoilers for Sister Wives and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives below.
When Sister Wives debuted, it was meant to be a look at the perfect mormon plural family. Over the series, the family expanded from three wives to four and with that came more kids and grandchildren. They bought a giant parcel of land where each family was meant to build a home and live along the faith, but that all fell apart. Now, Kody is down to one wife and his first three wives are each on independent journeys to examine their lives and faith.
I only got back into Sister Wives when the family started falling apart. The show never depicted some tradwife Mormon fantasy, but even in its peak family era, the series was just kind of boring. Like most shows about big families, it starts to follow a pattern. When Christine finally broke free, it opened the show up to a new level of intimacy. By the time Janelle decided to leave, it was clear these women didn’t care about keeping Kody happy or his idea of their faith.
Kody’s response to losing three wives? “If everyone is willing to conform to patriarchy again, we could be a family.” Janelle points out that this was never part of their original wedding vows. This is Kody grasping at some concept of masculinity because he’s the reason his family has fallen apart. Christine and Janelle have maintained close bonds between their family and pretty much raise their kids together. Christine has become a sort of matriarch and it pisses Kody off. He may want Janelle back. He stopped caring about Meri a long time ago. But Christine? She genuinely makes that man angry. I bet Christine would move Meri onto her subdivision just to piss Kody off and she’d be so right to do that.
Janelle is getting a lawyer to get her land back from Kody. Meri is filing for a Mormon divorce in the church (even though, again, Kody says he does not care about her and has not considered himself married to her for years…I just love her tenacity). Janelle is becoming an advocate for wives in plural marriages and speaking out on the protections they need! She even says she’d do plural marriage again.
Janelle, Christine and, yes, even Meri, have become the most shocking white women associated with Mormonism on reality TV, if you ask me. They’re defiant, outspoken and building the lives they want while causing a blonde manbaby to constantly cry. I watched Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and the women of #MomTok don’t come close to my Sister Wives. In fact, I found SLoMW to be disappointing for all the reasons people have discussed ad nauseum (sure, I am late to this conversation, but obviously I needed Sister Wives to get me into it.)
SLoMW starts with a bang: someone gets arrested, a husband is cheating, a possible post-divorce baby, but by episode 3, you realize you’re watching a very different show. Production had to take a year off from filming while legal matters were handled and this slows all momentum. These women want to be seen at their best and we were never going to get more than manufactured divorce party drama and quotes on MomTok’s ability to survive this.
The most interesting parts of the show focused on the women’s restrictions within their marriages and religion. Some of them (the Saints) abide by most of the rules of the church (don’t worry, they still use laughing gas to get botox), the rest (the Sinners, obvs) sort of pick and choose what they care to follow. All of these women are the breadwinners in their family, so don’t worry, their husbands are open to that level of progressive thinking. However, they draw the line at going to Chippendales or wearing a low cut hoodie.
Like Kody, the men in SLoMW are largely big children who feel powerful when they can tell women what to do. They just want these women to conform to their narrow idea of patriarchy and family, even though nothing about their lives are traditional. One guy forces himself on the girls’ trip to Vegas. He has a gambling problem, but won’t allow her to go to the city alone. Oh, and also he needs money from her to go there to gamble. She obliges, but he still punishes and insults her when she ends up at a male strip club as a surprise. Another girl’s boyfriend also loses it at the idea of his incredibly pregnant girlfriend watching a guy without a shirt on stage. Insecurity is what drives some men to patriarchal religions and SLoMW is at its best when it puts that on display.
At the same time, the women don’t have much of a desire to defy these ideas. They do question some of the husbands and present themselves as progressives in the church, but they also turn around and shame each other for doing progressive things. There is only one woman on this show who seems to have a healthy sex life (Demi, my girl, true queen bee) and the group uses this to play a prank on her while turning her very normal sex story into some salacious gossip (her husband goes down on her, shocking). The Sister Wives would never do this!!! Christine might make a demure “fruity pebbles” mention over mock mimosas, but she’d never embarrass someone at their own party like Whitney!
The Sister Wives have reached a level of femininomenon that the women of SLoMW only dream of. Whitney might think she’s progressive doing a brand deal with a vibrator brand and putting her pee-covered pregnancy stick in a cake, but Christine and Janelle are out here tearing shit down! Christine is single and dating for love! Meri is running her own business or something! Whitney would shame the women on her show for doing the same things.
We’re still waiting for a season two of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to be announced, but I would watch it. The first season felt manufactured, but they might have a good show if they can catch these women in actual crisis. Sister Wives, meanwhile, will probably run even after Kody is in the ground.
Thanks for this one! I also love SW and was not a fan of Secret Lives. The sex toy example from Secret Lives-- a straight woman with babies talking about her sex life within her marriage is actually not subversive at all, it upholds the values of the Mormon church while acknowledging that women should experience some pleasure from (procreative, straight, married) sex. Whereas, SW is a rich text on how fucked over women get in these situations and how they rebuild by leaning on each other. One feels very real and the other.. not so much.