By Patricia Johnson and Sophie Kilbride
Elm Staff Writer and Opinion Editor
#MomTok has over 5.3 million posts on TikTok and has been circulating regularly since 2022. The popular hashtag is used by young mothers to promote their glamorized lives as traditional housewives.
MomTokers are known for their affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Their content, which romanticizes the conservative, religious values shared by the Mormon church, teaches female viewers harmful and unattainable goals about their femininity.
On Sept. 6, Hulu released an eight-episode series, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” that follows a group of Mormon mom influencers as they deal with several sex-related scandals in their community. The show reflects a wider curiosity about conservative women and underscores the unobtainable lifestyle MomTok tries so desperately to promote.
To retain the internet’s fascination MomTokers have mastered the art of walking a fine line between the devout Mormon and the promiscuous TikTok dancer. This diversion from the traditional mom influencer trend, in which the wife creates videos of her stay-at-home lifestyle, challenges modern values of feminism by placing added quotas on who can constitute as the perfect Morman wife.
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” shows audiences that cooking and cleaning for your husband and kids all day is no longer enough to get views; now MomTokers are expected to incorporate a sexy promiscuity to their already impossibly perfect feminine facade.
Popular TikTok stars featured on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” include Taylor Frankie Paul, Whitney Leavitt, Mikayla Matthews, Mayci Neeley, and Laya Taylor, who are faces of the trending “tradwife” structure. Tradwives are modern women whose lifestyles are inspired by the stay-at-home mother and wife who does the cooking, cleaning and keeping up with the household.
Tradwives hide their sexist and oppressive ideologies in their embrasure of their own femininity and self-confidence. While it has accepted certain aspects of contemporary womanhood, MomTok is a juggling act of both identities that creates an exhausting ideal of womanhood — a mom who knows how to show off her curves and a girl who always puts God first.
According to The New Yorker, the MomTok trend shows “the cracks marring the upbeat façade of a certain strain of contemporary pop feminism.” These videos propagate an unattainable image of a perfect woman — the caring wife, the attentive mother, the hardworking housewife — to create a picture that looks pretty on the surface but is flawed on its interior.
For example, in the first episode of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” Leavitt gathers the rest of the group to tell them that the rumors of her husband, Connor, having a Tinder account were true. In the time leading up to this, she was denying these allegations to uphold the flawless picture of her family she had created online.
The incident highlights the hypocrisy within MomTok culture. While their social media presence revolves around Mormon values and presents them as devoted followers of God, MomTokers are just regular people with their secrets and imperfections. Leavitt’s confession on the show exposes the flawed reality of her life, shattering the illusion of a perfect family structure that she had portrayed to her followers.
According to a podcast with Leavitt, she says, “Every decision I made whether I felt like it was expected of me, I still made it.” Her personal decisions were made based on the exhausting expectations of feminism fueled by MomTok projects.
An article from The Times talks with Hannan Needleman, known to her 9.8 TikTok followers as “Ballerina Farm,” who shares her experiences as a modern tradwife. For example, Needleman details giving birth without pain relief and alludes to her toxic marriage.
According to The Times article, “By day nine she was trying on outfits, zipping herself into a pair of leather trousers and skin-tight white ballgown. Day ten: spray tan. Day eleven: a two-hour flight with a newborn to Las Vegas, her husband and seven children following behind, along with other members of her family. And by day twelve she was on stage. Luckily, she says, she had stopped bleeding.”
Not even a month after giving birth, Needleman was up on stage for a pageant hoping the bleeding had stopped from her previous pregnancy. Needleman’s experiences shed light on the harm MomTok trends are causing beneath its surface.
Needleman goes on to discuss how “becoming a mother is a crucial part of being a woman, but erasing any mark of that event is just as important.” Her quote represents the inaccessible standards MomTokers encourage women to reach for. Needleman wants women to have at least as many children as her eight but appear unaltered and perfect in the aftermath.The MomToker trend threatens the current standing of feminism.
The values that tradwives and mom influencers uphold on their platforms suggest to young viewers that hiding the realities of womanhood is normal and okay. The ability to differentiate feminism and twisting the authentic experiences of women is something that MomTokers seem to struggle with.
Photo by Ella Humphreys.
Photo Caption: Mormon mom influencers have become internet-famous for their traditional representations of womanhood.