March 2026 was poised to be perhaps the pinnacle of Utah Mormon cultural influence. The fourth season of the Hulu sensation The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was dropping 10 new episodes of soft waves, plump lips, and perky breasts. And just 10 days later, the latest season of The Bachelorette would premiere on ABC with a Mormon woman—Taylor Frankie Paul, a cast member of SLOMW—at its center for the first time. But last week, what may have been cracks in the picture-perfect presentation of this demographic of Utah women became a major fissure when a 2023 video of Paul throwing metal barstools at her ex-partner, Dakota Mortenson, while her child is in the room surfaced online. Just three days before it was set to premiere, The Bachelorette—at a likely cost of tens of millions of dollars—was entirely cancelled. There are reports from cast members that the filming of season five of SLOMW has been paused. (As of press time, Hulu had not replied to a request for comment.)
Over the last decade, the cultural currency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has risen sharply in the United States, as the Mormon lifestyle bloggers of the 2010s laid the groundwork for the reality show influencers of today. Those young content creators—with their long, shiny hair, mostly modest attire, affiliate links, and several children under five—walked so Paul and her #MomTok compatriots could run (perhaps a little too far). Is this month’s turmoil an indication that the Mormon commerce machine may come to its inevitable end? Or will it now morph once again?
A few weeks ago, I flew to Salt Lake City to report on the powerful 2.0 wave of Utahn beauty influence—timed perfectly to this Big Month for Mormons. I sat down with the cast of SLOMW (minus Paul, who pulled out the day before, and Whitney Leavitt, who is currently performing on Broadway as Roxie Hart in Chicago), visited the med spa of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s Heather Gay, got Utah Curls™, and slurped on a “dirty soda.” This is what I found along Interstate 15—and where I think this aesthetic subculture-turned-juggernaut is headed next.
I’ve only been in Jessi Draper’s chair for four minutes when she starts telling me about her labiaplasty. “After having a baby, I was like, it’s not the same down there. It was hard to wear yoga pants. It was just distracting,” the 33-year-old hairstylist says while twirling a lock of my hair into her signature—and, since 2024, trademarked—“Utah Curls” style. The inner (or, in this case, outer) workings of their genitals may be TMI for the average chat with your hairstylist, but for Draper, this is small talk. In fact, she’s told this story before, on the first season of Hulu’s megahit reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. (Hulu doesn’t release its numbers, but there are rumors that ratings 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 beauty culture.
We’re in JZ Styles, a 15,000-square foot beauty behemoth that Draper founded in 2016 alongside her father. The salon is nestled in the Pleasant Grove suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, just down the road from one of the town’s Swig locations, the “dirty soda” shop that skyrocketed to nationwide fame after the show’s premiere. (Mormon doctrine forbids alcohol consumption; it takes no issue, however, with drinking a blend of Diet Coke, flavored syrup, and half-and-half.) This area, which is home to utopian-sounding towns like Thanksgiving Point and American Fork, has more plastic surgeons per capita than Los Angeles, according to a 2017 report published by the Utah Women & Leadership Project. Utah also has more members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) than, well, anywhere else in the United States; approximately 42% of the state’s population identifies as Mormon.
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