March 2026 was poised to be maybe the top of Utah Mormon cultural affect. The fourth season of the Hulu sensation The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was dropping 10 new episodes of sentimental waves, plump lips, and perky breasts. And simply 10 days later, the newest season of The Bachelorette would premiere on ABC with a Mormon lady—Taylor Frankie Paul, a forged member of SLOMW—at its middle for the primary time. However final week, what could have been cracks within the picture-perfect presentation of this demographic of Utah girls turned a serious fissure when a 2023 video of Paul throwing metallic barstools at her ex-partner, Dakota Mortenson, whereas her baby is within the room surfaced on-line. Simply three days earlier than it was set to premiere, The Bachelorette—at a possible value of tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}—was completely cancelled. There are studies from forged members that the filming of season 5 of SLOMW has been paused. (As of press time, Hulu had not replied to a request for remark.)
Over the past decade, the cultural foreign money of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has risen sharply in the USA, because the Mormon way of life bloggers of the 2010s laid the groundwork for the truth present influencers of at the moment. These younger content material creators—with their lengthy, shiny hair, largely modest apparel, affiliate hyperlinks, and a number of other kids underneath 5—walked so Paul and her #MomTok compatriots might run (maybe a little bit too far). Is that this month’s turmoil a sign that the Mormon commerce machine could come to its inevitable finish? Or will it now morph as soon as once more?
A couple of weeks in the past, I flew to Salt Lake Metropolis to report on the highly effective 2.0 wave of Utahn magnificence affect—timed completely to this Large Month for Mormons. I sat down with the forged of SLOMW (minus Paul, who pulled out the day earlier than, and Whitney Leavitt, who’s at present acting on Broadway as Roxie Hart in Chicago), visited the med spa of The Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis’s Heather Homosexual, bought Utah Curls™, and slurped on a “soiled soda.” That is what I discovered alongside Interstate 15—and the place I believe this aesthetic subculture-turned-juggernaut is headed subsequent.
I’ve solely been in Jessi Draper’s chair for 4 minutes when she begins telling me about her labiaplasty. “After having a child, I used to be like, it isn’t the identical down there. It was exhausting to put on yoga pants. It was simply distracting,” the 33-year-old hairstylist says whereas twirling a lock of my hair into her signature—and, since 2024, trademarked—“Utah Curls” model. The inside (or, on this case, outer) workings of their genitals could also be TMI for the common chat along with your hairstylist, however for Draper, that is small discuss. Actually, she’s instructed this story earlier than, on the primary season of Hulu’s megahit actuality present The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. (Hulu doesn’t launch its numbers, however there are rumors that rankings have topped that of The Kardashians.) Getting a labiaplasty—or breast implants, Botox injections, spray tans, or lash extensions—is par for the course in Utah Mormon magnificence tradition.
We’re in JZ Types, a 15,000-square foot magnificence behemoth that Draper based in 2016 alongside her father. The salon is nestled within the Nice Grove suburb of Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah, simply down the highway from one of many city’s Swig places, the “soiled soda” store that skyrocketed to nationwide fame after the present’s premiere. (Mormon doctrine forbids alcohol consumption; it takes no challenge, nevertheless, with consuming a mix of Eating regimen Coke, flavored syrup, and half-and-half.) This space, which is dwelling to utopian-sounding cities like Thanksgiving Level and American Fork, has extra plastic surgeons per capita than Los Angeles, based on a 2017 report printed by the Utah Girls & Management Venture. Utah additionally has extra members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) than, effectively, wherever else in the USA; roughly 42% of the state’s inhabitants identifies as Mormon.
