Issue #72: A Mormon wife talks about "Secret Lives"

Our conversation left me deeply conflicted.

Written by

Aja Frost

. Edited by

Aliza Sir

and

Elisabeth Leoni

.

Alex Steele

is clearly nervous, but eager to talk. My conversation with the 34-year-old mother of four, who lives in Manhattan Beach, California and is a several-generation Mormon and self-described feminist, is scheduled for 45 minutes but ends up lasting nearly 70. 

I (Aja) originally reached out to Alex to talk about The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, a show you’ve definitely heard about and probably watched (it broke Hulu streaming records.)¹Alex wrote on her Substack² that she hasn’t seen the show, and I wanted to understand more — plus get her take on some of the more controversial elements of the wives’ lives it depicts. But the interview turned into something more complex: a snapshot of a changing church, a tension between gender roles and realities, and the challenge of forging your own path while staying committed to something greater (and deeply imperfect). 

Note: Religion, and in particular Mormonism, are highly charged topics. I’ve tried to treat my conversation with Alex as thoughtfully and respectfully as possible and ask that commenters do so too. 

I talk to Alex on a Sunday afternoon after she goes to church, as she does every week. Although she considers herself a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,³ she still “grapples with a lot of questions” about her religion.

“My relationship to the Church is… It’s secondary to my relationship with God,” she says.

I ask why she hasn’t watched the show. The answer is two-fold: She knows herself, and after following a few Mormon influencers who got really big,⁴ she learned she has a tendency to judge Mormon women in the public eye: You can’t do that. You shouldn’t do that. She’s learned this judgment makes her meaner, less happy, so now she avoids anything that might trigger it. 

Underneath that, I sense sadness at the caricatured way Mormons are represented in the show.

“To see my religion be braided into the storyline of what is really so much more about these women and how they spend their time and what they value… when all of that is so different from what I value and what I choose for myself,” she says. “I don’t wanna watch something that’s so sacred and personal to me get the reality TV treatment.”

The cast of Mormon Wives (Photo: Fred Hayes/Disney)

We start talking about some of the Mormon Wives’ choices. Like any global religion (more members of the church now live outside of the US than in it, “thanks to people going on foreign missions”), there are niches and sub-niches. Alex has lived in six different cities across the U.S. and says the local communities varied wildly. 

“For example, our ward in Kansas City was very diverse,” she says. “It was very different from the congregation I had grown up in the suburbs in Orange County.”⁵ So while the religion — “which is all about Jesus and the Scriptures” — is a constant, Mormon culture is not a monolith. 

“Utah Mormons are totally a thing,” Alex says. But she pauses when I ask her to describe some of the hallmarks. 

“Botox and plastic surgery feature heavily in the show. Does that sound familiar?” I ask. She laughs and nods.

“I know and love women who get Botox and have had plastic surgery. I’ve never heard a church leader say those things aren’t okay,” she says. 

But the controversial element is less about cosmetic surgery and more about the underlying motivation behind it — largely, it seems, because the procedure allows them to get a little high. In episode three, four women go to a treatment center together. “It’s hitting me,” one of the women says after a healthy inhale of laughing gas. She and her friends crack up. Another woman is asked if she thinks the group comes for the Botox or the gas that accompanies it, and says with a smirk, “Oh, they come for both.”

“It makes me a little sad to see that anyone, but especially women in my faith, feel like they have to find a loophole to enjoy something they want to enjoy,” Alex says. “If you want to get laughing gas, or you want to take an edible, just ask yourself if that’s okay to do. The Botox thing, like, if you wanna get high with your friends, what’s stopping you? Why do you need to get Botox?”

Later, she answers her own question. There are levels of commitment to the faith, she explains. Members who want to attend the “highest forms of worship” — inside the temple, which is shown at the beginning of the show intro — “choose to live by a code of conduct and a level of religious devotion.” As Alex explains it, you first get your “temple recommend” (which comes with a physical card you carry around with you) via an interview with a church elder evaluating your readiness. Members are re-interviewed, or assessed, every two years. 

“One of the questions in that interview process is about abstinence from alcohol, coffee, tobacco, addictive substances, drugs, etc.,” Alex says. “That’s why I think if you are really focused on that list, you would need a loophole.”

Alex is raising her children differently. 

“My daughter wants to wear crop tops. And she’s like, Is this allowed? And I’m like, Well, what do you think? What’s allowed to you? Is it allowed? And she’s like, Yeah, and I’m like, Okay, then there’s your answer,” Alex says. 

“Don’t be looking to an external authority to give you the thumbs up on any question you have, or anything that you want to try,” she adds. “If you get an internal ’no’ for any reason, ask yourself why. That’s coming from somewhere deeper within you, and that’s where God lives, right? In that deep agency.”

“You sound like a great mom,” I tell her. That approach to decision-making doesn’t feel inextricably religious. It’s basically teaching someone internal morality — which is much more nuanced and ambiguous than a printed list of rules.

Alex and her husband, Nate

At first, I think Alex came up with this approach herself. She tells me she grew up with a printed list of rules. When she was a kid, if she’d asked to wear a crop top, the answer would’ve been, That’s not allowed. 

But as we continue to talk, I realize this is a shift the wider Church is making: away from prescriptiveness. And away from ostracism if a Mormon decides not to enter the temple, or leave the faith. 

I ask her why. She takes a deep breath; her eyes start to fill with tears. 

“Enough of us have had family and friends feel like they just couldn’t stay anymore, and they’ve left. And we’ve realized that we could risk losing our relationships with them altogether. We’ve had to dig deeper and say, What is beneath this list of rules and these commandments? What is the real reason?” she says. “Because if you ask me — and you are asking me — I would so much rather have the opportunity to love and be in relationships with my friends and family. Let them leave the Church rather than lose my connections with them altogether.”

I can’t help but wonder if these are practical decisions on Church leadership’s part. Mormon retention rate used to be pretty good: Three in four Mormons born before 1943 were still Mormon as adults. For Millennials, that’s plunged to 46%. 

Alex tells me she’s struggled with every church topic you can think of: LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion, patriarchy, the treatment of women, a history of racism, and her own polygamous ancestry.

“And so much more,” she says. “These are things I have major issues with and do not take the official church position on — and in fact have considered leaving the church over.”

The more liberal approach to the code of conduct — the inclusion of Mormons who have never entered the Temple, or who have left the faith entirely — feels like a strategic response to a religion in flux. And with this context, it’s not surprising that a show highlighting some of the contradictions and stranger elements of the religion, or culture, whatever you want to call it, would be deeply upsetting. The lines of Mormonism sound like they’re being redrawn — by necessity — but staying open-minded when members step close to, or over, those lines can obviously be challenging. Even for someone like Alex. We agree she’s not ready to watch the show yet. 

Alex and her four kids

Alex and I have been talking for nearly an hour, but we still haven’t touched sexism. I tell her that two of the women in Mormon Wives are in seemingly unhealthy relationships with men who are described as “jealous” and “controlling.” One of these women says she was only able to find her voice in her marriage when she became the breadwinner (via money from influencing) — which her husband hates. 

“These men are sexist and insecure and clearly not ready to be in marriages,” Alex says. “I am sick of seeing women get treated like this. It’s 2024.”

Alex knows six women (from her wards and family) who have left “misogynistic, manipulative, abusive” husbands. And when they left, she says their community, as well as “understanding male leaders,” did everything they could to help. Some of the women are now in new marriages with Latter-day Saint men.

What about gender roles? Alex chooses her next words carefully. 

“Women and men have always been encouraged by the Church, both culturally and doctrinally, to go in specific directions,” she says. “Men are breadwinners, period. Men provide for their families, period. With women, it’s like, we want you to be nurturers. We want you to be stay-at-home moms.”

“I was never told you have to be a stay-at-home mom or you can’t be Mormon,” she continues. “However, I was praised for my dream of falling in love, getting married, having kids and raising them the way my mom did. That was a big thumbs up for me. Nate, my husband, he wasn’t even really given a choice [about becoming the provider.]” 

“And in our faith, we believe that not only [are those roles] important, but they will bless your life, and bless the lives of the people that you love. So it feels like a good thing to trend toward those roles.”

But Alex says they’re just that: roles. 

“The major ways I spend my time are in my home, taking care of my kids,” she says. “For my husband Nate, it’s earning a living. But I also have interests that make me money. And he’s also caring for our kids a lot.”

Alex and Nate treat each other as equals, she explains. 

“He doesn’t control the finances, even though I earn less, and I don’t view him as a secondary parent. We try really hard to understand each other, so that we don’t accidentally fall into these stereotypical tendencies. The stakes feel much higher now that we have daughters. And now that we have sons.”

As we talked, I thought about the roles my fiancé and I have adopted. This year, I’ll out-earn him. When we have kids, he’ll be the primary parent — maybe even a stay-at-home dad. Since I was a teenager, I’ve told myself I’d make just as much as or more than my partner. I’ve seen the way my dad’s preferences — about his career, where my family lived, and more recently, where my parents retire — carry more weight because he is the breadwinner. 

So I can’t relate to the idea of a “divine nature” for women that is inherently nurturing, and one for men that is inherently providing. But I do see myself in Alex and Nate’s attention to their dynamic and their desire not to slip into patterns just because they’re familiar. I strive for the same in my relationship.

We wrap up the call. Alex isn’t nervous anymore, she says — simply grateful for the opportunity to talk. 

Me? I’m conflicted. I found so much wisdom in her answers. I’m deeply impressed by her self-awareness as well as her desire to think critically while participating in, and belonging to, something bigger. But once the conversation ends, my mind returns to the aspects of the LDS Church Alex and I deeply disagree with: the treatment of LGBTQ+ people. The patriarchalism and sexism. The legacy of racism. Can you truly follow your own code in the context of such a powerful wider system? 

I don’t know. I guess these are the questions Alex is grappling with. 

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1. If you haven’t: It’s about a group of Mormon mom influencers, ranging in age and adherence to Mormon beliefs and values, who live in Utah and are dealing with friend drama, toxic relationships (more on that), and the pressures and financial rewards of living a life in public.

2. I love Alex’s newsletter,

Handpicked by Alex Steele

, a weekly dispatch of links and photographs — and occasionally, deep dives like “Why I quit Instagram” and “How to visit a museum with young children.”

3. According to Alex, “church leaders have emphasized that it’s important to call the Church by its proper name.” Technically, saying the “Mormon church” is incorrect.

4. Mormon influencers (also called “Mormon mommy bloggers”) have been popular for more than a decade, starting with Naomi Davis of the now-defunct Love Taza blog/Instagram account.

5. From a 2011 O.C. Register article: “While Orange County as a whole is diverse — 44% white, 34% Hispanic, 18% Asian —  most of its neighborhoods are not. Whites tend to live in white-majority neighborhoods, Hispanics in Hispanic-majority neighborhoods.”