This week, Mike convinced Merinda to watch Secret Lives of Mormon Wives! Luckily, docu-soaps offer a neato middle ground between documentaries and reality tv. We talk genre, gender, sexuality, power, audiences, tradwives, the capital of “cute,” and Mormon media. Merinda quotes people she admires. She also describes her Very Strong Feelings about the tendency to reduce/oversimplify complex worlds inhabited by women creating media content. Inasmuch as we should #believewomen, we should also pay serious attention to pop culture by and about women, even (especially?) when it cuts against our comfort zones. We should also, it turns out, make sure to label moving boxes with some degree of nuance. Come hang and follow/subscribe wherever you listen to things. Meanwhile, know this: if you invite us to an important life event, we promise to show up for you. We will also totally tell you if we ever see toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

Links/Notes:

Sadaf Ahsan’s essay, “Inside the Real Housewives’ Feminism”: https://this.org/2021/11/02/inside-the-real-housewives-feminism/

The LDS Church’s low-key rebuke of the show: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/commentary-when-entertainment-media-distorts-faith

You’re Wrong About episode “The Tradwife Rises”: https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/the-tradwife-rises-with-sarah-archer/id1380008439?i=1000657221736

How are these shows produced?: https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2021/05/real-housewives-produced-excerpt-from-housewives-brian-moylan/

Real Houswives lawsuit: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/10/real-housewives-bravo-reckoning

“Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Fame-Work and the Production of Entrepreneurial Sisterhood”, Alice Leppert, in Elana Levine. Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn : Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century. University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Tressie McMillan Cottom on Slate's The Wave podcast: https://slate.com/podcasts/the-waves/2023/09/bama-rush-tok-from-sorority-life-to-trad-wife-how-the-greek-system-is-really-run-by-the-white-male-gaze-with-tressie-mcmillan-cottom

Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure by Amy Kaufman https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549444/bachelor-nation-by-amy-kaufman/

Follow us on all the socials at @cultfavoritepod.

Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.