Jamie Loftus
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You wake up, put on your Ray-Ban Meta glasses. You're living all in. You realize you need coffee, so you say... Hey Meta, how do I make a latte?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After Meta AI gets you caffeinated, you're ready for some beats.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And during Smith's lifetime, the practice was kept fairly quiet. He married as many as 40 women, some of whom were underage. Women were expected to remain in the home, have many children, And to this day, there is an early and intense emphasis on being a wife and mother before all else.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The end of the line came for Joseph Smith in Illinois in 1844, where non-Mormon locals imprisoned and then killed he and his brother. He's been hailed as an eternal prophet in the Mormon church ever since, and is still an extremely prominent figure in the culture to this day.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And if you want this story told from the Mormon perspective, there's a lot of LDS produced movies about it on YouTube that are really well acted.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
All right, save it for the pulpit. After Smith's death, a guy named Brigham Young takes over, and the Mormons leave Nauvoo in 1846, hiking pioneer-style to what is now present-day Utah, where in the next 10-odd years, they ignored the American government and practiced polygamy openly. That is, until this was going to prevent Utah getting statehood.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Polygamy would be an LDS-sanctioned practice until 1890, but it was technically discontinued at that point to avoid clashing with existing laws around bigamy passed in the 1860s and 70s. However, a lot of Mormons continued to practice polygamy quietly. In today's Mormon marriages, more traditional fundamentalist monogamy is certainly the norm.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And there's a long, complicated history with the Mormons, Utah, and indigenous people. Because unlike most accounts of a new American colony being founded, there were Native Americans in Utah when they arrived. And under Brigham Young, LDS members are encouraged to purchase Native children as slaves and raise them in their homes with the hopes of assimilating them to the Mormon faith.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It's not too dissimilar from the residential schools that separated Native families and erased their culture, often killing children all the way into the 1990s. Today, there's still a very high number of Mormons in Utah, hovering somewhere around 40% in 2023. It's where Brigham Young University is, and where some of the religion's most prominent influencers live today.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Ever heard of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Well, there you go. On the other end of that, about a third of people raised in the LDS today end up leaving the religion, as opposed to the 95% retention rate of the late 1980s. So it's important to note the internet age has made a difference in how Mormonism is perceived by its own members. And if you're Mormon or ex-Mormon, you know that I am barely scratching the surface here.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It's an extremely complicated religion that's been around for nearly 200 years. Things I didn't mention include rituals, observances, restrictive religious underwear, and for the very devout, missions, which are 18 to 24-month assignments where LDS officials determine a location for a young person to go, and their job is to recruit people into the church.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
As it pertains to today's episode, it's important to note that Mormonism is a fundamentalist religion that has been historically hostile to women, to queer people, and to anyone who isn't white. What is also important is that the Mormon Church has a shitload of money. A shitload. I had no idea. At present, the Mormon Church's net worth is estimated to be $265 billion dollars.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
For context, Disney is valued at $161 billion. Much of this has to do with mandatory tithing, where church members are required to give 10% of their income back to the LDS. As for pop culture, Mormonism has been portrayed negatively a lot. Think HBO show Big Love and still-running Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which, of course, the LDS condemned.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It has... Wow, I wonder why they didn't like that. But the LDS has also produced its fair share of successful entertainment acts. There's no Scientology, but Mitt Romney, David Archuleta, Donny and Marie Osmond, and Gladys Knight is still a pretty impressive roster. The Aquabats are Mormon. Really think about that. and of course, a ton of currently successful influencers. More when we come back.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The prevalence of Mormon influencers has been an increasing point of speculation in the last few months, mostly in connection to two stories that have broken through to the mainstream. The first story, as I write this, a new Hulu reality show that is about to debut about Mormon wife influencers.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The central characters of this show are existing successful Mormon mommy TikTokers. And if the comments on virtually every video of these women is to be believed, they are very controversial within the Latter-day Saint community. And most would say they do not represent Mormonism. In spite of the fact that they live in Salt Lake City where the LDS is headquartered, most of them grew up Mormon.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And part of why they became so popular on TikTok was because they were referencing the tenets and values of the church.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
This content got really popular under the hashtag MomTalk on TikTok in the early 2020s. And while this content promotes fundamentalist values around gender roles, due to their popularity, the MomTalkers were also becoming primary breadwinners for their family. The women of MomTalk look very modern. They're usually wearing Kardashian-adjacent athleisure.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But the reason they have a TV show, in my opinion, is not because they blew up on TikTok or even really because they're Mormon. It's because they were perceived as being bad at being Mormon. In 2022, MomTalk influencer Taylor Frankie Paul announced that she and her husband would be getting a divorce because of her violation of the terms of their soft swinging within their Mormon friend group.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And soft swinging is not sanctioned by the LDS. In no small part because that might actually be fun for women.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It's a huge source of controversy among very online Mormons, if the comment section is to be believed. And it's not hard to understand why. Add this to the fact that mom talkers were regularly breaking core tenets of the faith. They did things like drink caffeine. They didn't wear their religious garments beneath their clothes all the time.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You head to meet some friends, but can't remember the place.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
This soft-swinging incident might cause a scandal in your average suburban community, but Paul's disclosure that there were multiple Mormon couples involved caused a stir within the community. So, presented with this public scandal and subsequent high-profile influencers' decision to remain within the church, is this bad for the Mormon PR team, or is all press good press?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
They haven't been excommunicated or anything like that, but the Mormon church has issued the rare condemnation of this upcoming Hulu show. And this is rare because the LDS hasn't commented on how Mormons are portrayed in pop culture in a while. But when the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives trailer dropped, the LDS released the following statement.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
There are a lot of Mormon rituals that aren't often referenced in this kind of content, but is addressed a lot in ex-Mormon content. There's rituals like the washing and anointing, there's endowment ceremonies, and aesthetics that are all but directly pulled from Joseph Smith's interactions with the American Freemasons.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But whether the LDS likes it or not, this is the latest step that actively Mormon influencers have made into mainstream culture. Again, I haven't seen an episode of this show yet, but it looks like the wives are going to be centered in the story here, which would have been unheard of in Mormonism at one time.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But what I've learned is that part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other trad wives... Okay, let's define trad wife.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other trad wife influencers of other religions is because the Mormon church has been unusually good at adapting to the internet and always has been. That's not the only reason, but we'll get there.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
if you've managed to make it to fall 2024 without having the word tradwife shoved in your face congratulations and sorry because i am going to tell you what it is tradwife content is a social media trend from about the last half decade where women create lifestyle content and make lifestyle changes to more closely align with traditional gender roles with an emphasis on the beauty of a return to old time values
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So TikTok's about making meals from scratch for five hours, defining oneself primarily as a wife and a mother, rejecting or abandoning a career outside the home, and being generally deferential to the patriarch, whether that's a husband or father or priest. Not all trad wives are Mormons. Hashtag not all trad wives. Not even close.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I'm not going to tackle the topic of trad wife content wholesale in this episode.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
What you need to know is the term trad wife shouldn't be conflated with stay-at-home moms because while trad wife creators are moms and at home with the children, making trad wife content is, for my money, a separate job from the actual parenting because being a stay-at-home parent is a job, although most cultures are not conditioned to view that labor as valid.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Radwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and low on practicality, showing only the aesthetically pleasing parts of the nuclear family and rarely any of the struggle or mess. There's a sense of self-surveillance to this content, an appearance of perfection in the home and family that's projected to the public, and often visual signifiers that harken back to mid-20th century America.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So if this makes sense, tradwives don't look like stay-at-home moms. They look like the advertisements of stay-at-home moms. And so much of what makes their content appealing is that an incredibly difficult lifestyle to achieve is made to seem easy, attractive, and morally correct.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Because if you're making lifestyle content of any kind, whether you personally or morally endorse the lifestyle, you're working in sales. I hate to break it to you. How many hot dogs have I sold by accident? Incalculable.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The trad life space is predominantly white, but possibly more diverse than you might expect.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
There is an active Black trad life community who, according to a Refinery29 piece by Nyla Burton in late 2022, believe that, quote, "...traditional marriage is the key to Black women's liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity, and the stress of trying to survive in a world hostile to our survival and existence."
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Tradwife content is popular across a lot of religions, but what's consistent across these communities is a feeling of performance and this aesthetic of either mid-century housewives or cottagecore.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
In my opinion, there's very little intimacy to these posts in spite of the fact that we're seeing inside of a family's home and usually seeing their children who are, make no mistake, a part of the business model. While I totally get why the content is so appealing, it does feel like a performance. and a very effective one.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I mean, I'm like a militant feminist, and I would be lying if I said I hadn't seen a few tradwife posts that made me feel like I was living my life the wrong way. But neutral statement, these posts are a performance. Think of it like this.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The Donna Reed Show very effectively sold the idea of Donna Reed as a nuclear housewife and mother that lived in this effortless way and in reality was a television show that was produced by its star and that the real Donna Reed was a multi-hyphenate creative and a TV pioneer who was selling the idea of this housewife rather than actually living that life herself.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You wake up, put on your Ray-Ban Meta glasses, classic style, innovative tech. You're living all in. You realize you need coffee, desperately.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
From a social media perspective, the tradwife phenomenon has a lot in common with a pattern that we talk about on this show all the time. A lot of the reason we're still talking about this content is because there's been so much backlash and outrage toward it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Since it became popular in the early 2020s, left-leaning feminists who believe that the tradwife trend harkens a dangerous period of regression as the American people's right to bodily autonomy slowly and surely slips into the very mid-century timeframe that tradwives so often portray. In this outrage, does help to fuel the success of the influencers.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Because yes, they have millions of followers, but the snark Reddit boards and hate comments saying that tradwives are self-hating and glamorizing oppression have engagement in the hundreds of thousands as well. And as far as the algorithm is concerned, Engagement is engagement, whether it's positive or negative.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It reminds me a lot of Friend of the Pod, Max Fisher's book, The Chaos Machine, in which he fully illustrates the ways in which modern algorithms are designed to enrage. That's why we have so many social media stories that are rooted in backlash and then backlash to the backlash.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Tradwife narratives fall neatly into this pattern because for every bit of praise, there's an essay that's written in stark disagreement. So why is this content so popular in the last few years?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
While these accounts have millions upon millions of followers who view the content as soothing or aspirational, there are plenty of modern moms who are completely fucking baffled by it. Because I've engaged with so much of this content that my algorithm will never bounce back, I feel comfortable saying that tradwife content is often a lot about subtext, right?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Projecting a message without explicitly stating it. Maybe the 50s were a great time for women. Maybe we need to bring it back. But there's a sense of encouraging to submit to the status quo. A status quo that existed before a lot of necessary civil rights were fought for. But online now. Whew, trad wives, man. But let's bring it back to the Mormon side of this content specifically.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After Meta AI gets you caffeinated, you start walking to work and you need a soundtrack.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, the next generation of AI glasses. Just say, hey, Meta, to harness the power of Meta AI. Shop now at meta.com slash smart glasses.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Because, as we're trying to get to the bottom of, Mormons have found a lot of success in this space. Momtalkers are far from the only prominent Mormon content creators dominating social media today. The most popular, and so by extension the most embroiled in controversy, is the second major Mormon influencer story of the summer, Ballerina Farm. More when we come back. Welcome back to 16th Minute.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The more I learned about tradwives, the more it became obvious that they developed in response to the capitalism is for girls to actually slay rhetoric of the mid 2010s. But like, is it that different when you're a tradwife entrepreneur? It kind of seems like you're doing the same thing. But the thing that you're selling is that you're not actually doing the thing that I'm watching you doing.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
With the built-in camera, you snap a pic of a dope mural on the side of a building that you think is worth sharing.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And when we left off, we were talking about the most famous Mormon influencer on the scene today. Ballerina Farm, where do we begin? All my male listeners are getting like a nosebleed. Ballerina Farm is the username for a Mormon woman named Hannah Nealman, whose follower count on Instagram currently sits at 10 million.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
She was raised in the LDS and was a tremendously talented ballerina who got into and graduated from Juilliard. And she's cited over and over that she was the first undergrad in modern history to be pregnant while still at Juilliard. Because while there, she got married to fellow Mormon Daniel Nealman in 2011, the year before she graduated.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So both the Nealmans grew up in big, devout Utah Mormon families. Hannah was one of nine, Daniel was one of 10. They got engaged after only three weeks. And while Hannah was still in college, she also started competing in beauty pageants. She started with Miss New York and then re-entered the space after getting married and having kids. Because Hannah does not stay a ballerina.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After graduation, Hannah and Daniel moved to England for a semester at Cambridge, then Utah, so Daniel could finish his degree at Brigham Young University, and then to Brazil, where Daniel worked as the director of his father's security company for a few years. Because it must be said, financially, these are incredibly privileged people. Daniel's father founded JetBlue, dude. They've got money.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And he's so Mormon that he worked on Mitt Romney's failed presidential campaign in 2012. But Daniel's dream is to move back to Utah and live on a farm. And they finally do so in 2017, buying the eponymous Ballerina Farm in 2018. By the time they moved on to the 328-acre farm, they had four kids.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After work, you head to meet some friends.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And when they moved onto the farm, Hannah Nealman's online brand as a Mormon wife was well-established, but significantly less successful. Hannah started her social media journey as a mom influencer on a blog called We Took the Train in early 2013, shortly after the birth of her first child, Henry, and her college graduation.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And it's interesting that she intersects with a completely different era of successful Mormon online influencers. Because in the 2000s into the early 2010s, Mormon mommy blogs were a thing. The Mormon mommy blogger pipeline was popular for as long as blogs were popular. And mommy bloggers in general have always enjoyed massive success and usually adapt to new social media platforms pretty easily.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
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Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I'd recommend Sarah Peterson's book, Momfluenced, for more on this topic. Because mommy blogging was popular from the very dawn of social media, but it was very different than the trad wife content that we see today. There was a lot more emphasis on writing over visuals, and the writing tended to be more confessional. Writer Catherine Gieser Morton has been covering this space for a long time.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I'm quoting here from a New York Times column called Did Moms Exist Before Social Media? from 2020, where she mentions how Mormon women entering the mommy blog space changed it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Early successful Mormon or ex-Mormon mommy bloggers included Heather Armstrong of Doocy, Amber Fillerup Davis, and Love Taza, a.k.a. Naomi Davis. Around this same time, successful family bloggers like Shay Carl and his family become really popular on YouTube in the late aughts into the early 2010s.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
In fact, Carl's child Brock was considered to be the first Truman baby, as in the Truman Show, as in a child whose life was documented from moment one to a massive social media audience. Scary! This hyper-vulnerable mommy blog stuff is considered pretty old school now.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
At the time, Mormon mommy bloggers were a part of the coined blogger knackle community, with personalities like Stephanie Nielsen of the NeNe Dialogues and C. Jane Kendrick of C. Jane Enjoy It serving as early examples for their crossover appeal outside of the religion. There was even an award system developed for successful blogger knuckle publications called the Niblets.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
This went from 2005 to 2017. And bloggers who were particularly good at spreading Mormon values online got a trophy. And I I don't know if you feel the same way, but I was really surprised because I thought of Mormon culture as so conservative in its gender roles that actively encouraging women to speak at all would be a non-starter. But that's not true at all.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
If talks given by Mormon leaders during the early blogging era are to be believed, These blogs, blogs, etc., were viewed to be an extension of the Mormon mission and a way to get the word out. I'm pulling this from an LDS news post from 2007.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
This feels like a skeleton key to a lot of Mormon content, to why Mormons are so online. Whether they are overtly discussing their religion or not, modern Mormon missionaries will very often vlog their experiences. This is from a missionary named Grayson Hardman from last year.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Posting is all but baked into the religion in the modern day, probably in a sourdough that took five hours to make. By the time Mormon tradwives and mommy bloggers become mainstream famous, they're not wearing their religion on their sleeve as much. It's It's more of a soft pitch.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You usually find out they're Mormon, whereas if you scroll all the way down to the beginning of their profile, they often used to be more overt about the values they held. But again, to connect it back to that piece, this heeding to espouse a vision of an ideal Mormon family without defensiveness or belligerence, it kind of makes sense. Okay, back to Ballerina Farm.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Because Hannah Nealman starts in the waning days of mommy blogging, she kind of straddles different eras of social media and Mormons online. She starts mommy blogging on We Took the Train in the 2010s at the end of the mommy blogging trend and then is at the forefront of the Instagram and TikTok Mormon mommy blogs, which are wildly different in tone.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
They're not at all confessional and are far more defined by their aesthetic and this sense of sterile, So to give you an idea of how her narrative voice shifts, here's an example of how Hannah would speak in her early blogging days in 2013.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It's still praising the lifestyle, but even acknowledging her own insecurity or the doubt that people in her life had about her religion is not something you would see today. In these early posts, you can really feel Hannah grappling with, "'I love dance, but I love my husband and motherhood. Am I doing the right thing?' She also talks about going to McDonald's and loving it."
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
something that wildly differs from her current stance as a trad wife slash farm-to-table influencer. In these early days, she's working part-time teaching dance while raising her eldest son, trying to sort of find a balance between traditional values and what her passions are. This is not at all what ballerina farm content sounds like. Here's a post from this year.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So Hannah Starts is a completely different kind of Mormon influencer. When I started looking for an answer to this question, why there are so many Mormon women that are successful online, I was seeing the same answer over and over. Well, it's because Mormon women are taught to journal a lot. The Instagram and TikTok content on the farm is wildly successful.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And Hannah and Daniel continue to grow their family that now consists of eight children. And they quickly expand this success to start a series of businesses. They start a beef farm. They start a lifestyle brand.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And Hannah goes from a middling blogger to a leading TikTok and Instagram creator, racking up millions of views on her videos of making meals from scratch, talking about the advantages of her farm-to-table and family-first lifestyle, and doing it all in full makeup in these cottagecore flowy dresses. There's also quiet advertisements and Ballerina Farm content.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
For most of her videos, you can find affiliate codes on her website for basically anything you saw her use in the course of the video. In 2021, Hannah had 200,000 Instagram followers. Now, she has 10 million. So the days where Hannah was teaching dance part-time are long gone. Now she's a farmer who isn't just running a business and making meals.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And as these responsibilities pile up, viewers began to question how she was doing all of this. Like sure, Surely someone is helping with the kids and the business, right? Because the kids are homeschooled and the meals took hours and Hannah appeared to be making content and co-running multiple businesses while also upholding conservative values. That's a lot of jobs.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But we're not really allowed behind the curtain. Part of the content's appeal is that Hannah made this all look so easy. And as she was doing all of this, she continued to compete in the occasional pageant, winning the title of Mrs. America in 2021 and 2023.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
She's projecting the super mom image, right? It's unclear to viewers how it's attained. And you get the feeling that it either requires a lot of personal sacrifice, a lot of other people working just outside the frame or both. Because the alternative is, well, what the fuck is wrong with me? But this virtuousness.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
This emphasis on disciplining the body, the emphasis that, ball gowns aside, my marriage and family are the most important thing, that's a solid add for Mormonism. And even so, the Ballerina Farm family doesn't often reference the Mormon church online. It's implied they get ready for church on camera.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
There's extreme emphasis placed on the gender roles in nuclear families, but for someone who comes across their content by chance, there's nothing that screams, these are Mormons. unless you know what to look for in terms of home decor. And this feels by design.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You don't build an empire with the ninth most popular religion in the U.S., according to Pew Research, behind dominant Protestant and Catholic practices, behind Judaism, and behind other subcategories like atheist, agnostic, and quote, nothing in particular, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
If you're six places behind, nothing in particular, and want to keep growing your business, it makes sense that they avoid endorsing their often controversial religion. So in most places, I've seen Ballerina Farm classified as a soft advertisement for the church. And for feminists with careers who openly advocate on issues like queer and trans rights and open abortion access,
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I understand why Ballerina Farm's success is triggering. And for people who work on farms that are not bankrolled by JetBlue, the account scans as even more of a performance. And then this past summer, Ballerina Farm has been a popular point of discussion for years with evangelizing followers and snark blogs with readership in the six figures.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But she comes to widespread mainstream attention this past summer when a Times profile written by Megan Agnew suggested that beneath this content was a very disturbing dynamic. Main takeaways from the article include... Hannah and Daniel said they met on a plane.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It turns out this was a plane that Daniel's father owned, and he specifically requested to be sat on said plane beside Hannah, making it the most expensive predatory meet-cute I've ever heard of. Hannah wanted to date for a year in order to maintain her education at Juilliard, but was overruled by Daniel.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
She was engaged a month later and was married and pregnant soon after that, all before graduation. There are, of course, people working on Ballerina Farm and for their company. They were just never acknowledged as existing in the content. However, Hannah is not allowed to have nannies to help her at home. And the article implies that this is Daniel's choice.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And he describes Hannah as becoming so exhausted by caring for the eight children that she will sometimes collapse for a week at a time, which plays into the Mormon and just generally fundamentalist belief that women's suffering is virtuous. But to a modern audience, hearing this dynamic within such a wealthy family felt fucked up.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Hannah and Daniel did not believe in voluntary abortion, something their content suggested but never stated, and that Hannah's identity prior to their marriage, and especially her relationship with dance, had been slowly choked out by ballerina farm and the Mormon lifestyle.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And this story had reach, not only because it was upsetting, but because it seemed to vindicate and sadden a lot of the people who had been asking how Ballerina Farm, quote unquote, did it all. The article suggests that the answer is by sacrificing parts of herself and being exhausted to the point of not being able to function.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Something I thought was interesting while examining the reaction to this story was that non-Mormons tended to find Daniel Nealman as the villain of this story, because it's him who is constantly correcting, negging, and suppressing Hannah throughout the profile as written. But ex-Mormon influencers are careful to add a little bit of nuance to this.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Their suggestion is more, does Daniel come off as an entitled asshole? Yes. But both Daniel and Hannah are playing their role here. It doesn't excuse the behavior, but ex-Mormon YouTubers like Jordan and McKay note that Daniel was playing the part of the devout Mormon husband to the hilt here.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And what I'll say in Ballerina Farm's defense, while I find the details of this story really dark, I do believe Hannah Nealman when she says that she believes this is the correct way to live. And the rest of us can make of it what we will. Hannah has, of course, condemned this piece in a recent post,
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
and her audience has only continued to grow. Honestly, I think this article might've helped her in the long run. But all this, while fascinating, does not answer my question. Why is this a 10 million follower account? Hannah Nealman has not been acknowledged by the LDS as a remarkable asset, and she doesn't emphasize her religion as she once did. So is she an asset to the Mormon church?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The answer becomes clearer if you start to follow the money. It's impossible to get meaningful insight into this issue without talking to people who have been Mormons themselves, who intimately understand the culture. There is a thriving corner of the internet that is built around ex-Mormon content, primarily on YouTube and TikTok as I'm writing this.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
There are plenty of creators who have left the church explaining their personal experience with the various indoctrinations, cultural stigmas, and oppression experience within the LDS, often accounts of their childhood and their mission and why they ultimately left.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Like pro-Mormon content, ex-Mormon creators appear to be very successful, and I've watched quite a bit of it in preparation for this episode. Some resources I've used are the long-running Mormon Stories podcast, which has been going since 2005, and a number of YouTubers, especially Alyssa Grenfell, who I'll be talking to in the next part of this episode. Here's what I'll leave you with.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
If Mormonism is nowhere near the country's most popular religion, but is disproportionately represented on our social media, then what is there left to look to than money and the algorithm? Alyssa Grenfell explains in part two. See you then. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer, Anderson, my cats, Flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird, who will outlive us all. Bye!
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You wake up, put on your Ray-Ban Meta glasses, classic style, innovative tech. You're living all in. You realize you need coffee, desperately.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After Meta AI gets you caffeinated, you start walking to work and you need a soundtrack.
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Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
With the built-in camera, you snap a pic of a dope mural on the side of a building that you think is worth sharing.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After work, you head to meet some friends.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, the next generation of AI glasses. Just say, hey, Meta, to harness the power of Meta AI. Listen to music, make hands-free calls with open-ear audio and built-in microphones, and so much more, all while staying present to the world around you. Shop Ray-Ban Meta Glasses at meta.com slash smartglasses.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the internet's characters of the day to see how their moment affected them and what it says about the internet and us. My name's Jamie Loftus, and this is part two of a series trying to answer a question that I honestly thought would be easier to answer. Why is the internet so dominated by Mormon mommy influencers?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So if you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend you do, because this is a frustratingly complicated question. Last time, we talked about the origins of the Mormon church, its stance on race, gender, and sexuality. Cliff notes, not great. And its history of intersecting with conservative-leaning social media trends among women. So think mommy blogs of the 2000s.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Mormon women were at the top of that boom and were more open about their religion than many influencers are today. Think about another ongoing trend that's a whole subject unto itself, one I'd like to dedicate more time to in the future. Mormon women's intersection with major multi-level marketing schemes.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Schemes that rely on salespeople spending a lot of their own money with usually diminishing returns if you don't get in on the ground floor. Utah has the highest concentration of MLMs in the country, and the door-to-door element isn't that unlike the missionary spirit that the devout embark on on behalf of the Church of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS, when they're young adults. Sales as a mission.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Actually, if you're into obscure documentaries as much as I am, one of the most famous contemporary failed MLM schemes was actually founded by a Mormon couple, that being LuLaRoe, the ugly leggings company that was busted in a massive legal scandal in the 2010s. You tell the people you love they're in a pyramid scheme and they go, no, I'm not.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And when it comes to recruiting for MLMs, Mormon women tend to be excellent marks. Because of the rigid gender roles of the religion that encourage many women to stay at home, things like LuLaRoe might be the only opportunity for them to make a living on their own, not to mention the close-knit Mormon communities offering a ton of customers.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It's not quite that simple, but you see where I'm going with this. And of course, there is significant crossover with Mormon women in the current, if somewhat dwindling, tradwife content that's become extremely popular on Instagram and TikTok. We talk about this quite a bit in the first part of the series, specifically about users from MomTalk.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
the stars of the new show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Ballerina Farm, a 10 million follower influencer who presents stay-at-homestead lifestyle while, say it with me, selling that idea to her followers as a part of what is very much a job unto itself.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The more I think about it, tradwives are actually not straying from the similarly flawed girl boss archetypes the way that they think they are. But that's for another day, because now we're going to forge into part two, shall we? Even with the context I've given you, I was still confused. Because yes, white hetero-conservatism sells online, we know that. But why this religion specifically?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
What about Mormon content is bringing them to the top of your feed? Ex-Mormon influencer Alyssa Grenfell has been asking this question too. She was raised an extremely devout Utah Mormon, went on a mission, got married at an LDS temple, the whole nine yards.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Eventually, like one in three young Mormons today, she left the church in her 20s with her husband after they both found themselves questioning the values they'd grown up with. For Alyssa's husband, the radicalizing issue was the church's stance on gay marriage. And for Alyssa, it was a series of crises of faith.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Over and over, what Alyssa felt God wanted for her was directly contradicted by priests and her father. She was called to do a mission 2,000 miles away from where she expected. She was told by her father that God needed her to be a teacher when she had no interest in teaching and didn't feel she had the natural skill set to do it.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So eventually, the two leave the Mormon church, they start drinking coffee and cocktails, and Alyssa was motivated to join YouTube after self-publishing her first book. And while she's been on YouTube for less than a year, she already has nearly a quarter million subscribers. And my favorite video of hers presents a pretty compelling theory.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Alyssa suggests that, sure, Mormon tradwife content does play into the algorithm as far as aesthetics, but it's very possible that the Church of Latter-day Saints itself is bankrolling these Mormon mommy influencers without the influencers being able to say for sure that it's them. Here's a clip from that video.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Alyssa only started investigating this search term question when she was getting repeated feedback that her viewers were getting ads for the Mormon church on her videos, which is weird because Alyssa's content is doing the opposite of encouraging people to join the church.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And what's more, when she looked into the amount that she was making on YouTube and the amount of algorithmic preference she was getting less than a year into her time versus other creators, she was getting a lot more engagement and making a lot more money. Why? She explains more in the video.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So this theory isn't and can't be proven without the LDS being straightforward about their finances, which will never happen. So I'll let Alyssa take it from here. Without any further ado, here is my interview with the fantastic Alyssa Grenfell.
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Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up like I didn't know anything about Mormon culture outside of what was in pop culture when I was growing up. Growing up in the Mormon church, I know that you've made a significant amount of content about this. How are women specifically treated and sort of how are you conditioned to view yourself?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
As I was sort of learning more about you as you were coming of age, all of these gut feelings, thinking that I'm being guided by God towards this person, towards this mission location, towards this job, receiving different answers that weren't in your gut. What is it like to process that doubt?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
How do you move forward with so much of what your life has been structured around being removed?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You're coming of age alongside the internet and you're growing up with these very rigid beliefs. What was your relationship with the internet as you were coming of age into your early adulthood?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So you grow up alongside the internet and then you start to see this influx of influencers who I first just saw labeled as trad wives, the like Mormon aspect and not, you know, whatever, hashtag, not all trad wives are Mormon, but many of them are many of the most successful influencers are either Utah Mormon based or create content that really a appeals.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So when did you start noticing this content? And yeah, what did you make of it?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we talk to the internet's characters of the day and see how their 15 minutes of fame affected them and what it says about the internet and us. But this week, we're taking a bit of a side quest to answer a question I've been asked quite a bit lately and I didn't know how to answer.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It seems also because of how the algorithm works at any given point in time. There have been times where I have gotten content pipes to me from a Mormon influencer, but the content that I get, it's not immediately clear. Where a lot of TradWave accounts that have ended up in my feed, it takes me a little while to catch on that there is a specific religious reason element.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Is that something you've also noticed? Do you feel that there's sort of any reasoning behind that? Because you're saying, you know, the church wants you to talk about your religion as much as possible, but it feels like with some influencers to what end was not always clear to me right away.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Why are there so many Mormon women at the top of the social media influencing pile? After a recent episode, I saw this question in the comments everywhere. I saw it on the 16th Minute Reddit board, which, by the way, someone made if you're interested or have thoughts after episodes.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
We'll be right back with more with Alyssa Grenfell. Welcome back to 16th Minute. I sort of had to wear something like temple garments in my youth, but it was these shoulder-to-knee stinky cotton shirts I wore underneath my back brace. And unfortunately, there's no question about my personality that can't be answered with the sentence, I wore a back brace for my entire adolescence.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And now we continue our conversation with ex-Mormon influencer and great theory haver, Alyssa Grenfell. As I was sort of learning more about a recent subject I was covering, I found out that the family was Mormon, but didn't really talk about it. And a lot of people were saying like, oh, you should do an episode about like, why are there so many successful Mormon women in the influencing space?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And I was like, oh, I have no idea. And you mentioned sort of the most popular answer given, which is what I was encountering a lot, which was that young Mormon women are taught to journal a lot. So that's probably why they're successful at influencing. It doesn't not make sense, but felt just like a very incomplete answer. Could you take me through what made you start journaling?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
asking this question, because people were telling you that they were getting ads for the Mormon church on your content. That was how that started, right?
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And while it did resonate with me that the subject of the episode had been raised Mormon, I didn't want to touch that within the episode for a couple reasons. First, because they never talk about Mormonism in their content and have generally avoided questions about it. And second, I didn't have a fucking clue what the answer to this question was, even though I understand why it was being asked.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
As someone raised Catholic, I was like, wow, Catholics found dead in a ditch, like not a profitable YouTube career. I was truly blown away with how many times higher those keywords were scanning.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So this week, we're going to attempt to answer that question in a two-part deep dive series, the second of which will release on Thursday. Because to understand the root of why Mormonism and present-day Mormon mommy influencers are so successful, you've got to understand where the overlaps in their interests are and how the values of both of these communities line up.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
I had no idea how much money the Mormon church has. As you explained in the video, the church is welcome to pour as much money into these keywords as they like, but they can't control whether the keywords are being talked about favorably. So it seems like there's a world where the Mormon church is accidentally cutting you checks for... for talking about why you left the church in detail.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
trad wife influencers that started by talking about mormonism quite a bit and probably don't talk about it as much now they are also sort of getting uh cuts of this even if they're not explicitly talking about the mormon church anymore do you think even if an influencer who started talking about mormonism isn't anymore does this still help the church
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Final thing, I mean, I just wanted to mention and talk a little bit as far as your theory goes, is that this is a way to sort of have these poster board influencers kind of representing, if not the church explicitly, the gender roles and the ideals of the church in the day-to-day context.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Without having it be traced back to supposing Ballerina Farm, you know, wakes up tomorrow and is like, I'm done with the Mormon church. It's not like she can say, and the church has been paying me this much for this long to create this content. It creates this middleman.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So this week, we're going to get all up to speed on that. And on Thursday, Alyssa Grenfell will unpack how Mormon moms have stayed on top of internet influencing for the last 20 years. All right, let's jump in and take a brief, God, I really hope actually brief, look into the history of the Mormon church in America. And I'll link to some additional resources in the description of the episode.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
We'll be right back with more with Alyssa Grenfell. Welcome back to 16th Minute. And now we continue our conversation with Alyssa Grenfell.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
There's no one answer that's going to completely unlock why are there so many successful trad wife accounts at this specific moment. That answer ranges far beyond Mormonism, but I think your content has just helped me have a better sense of not just you and the culture that you had to leave behind, but also who is shaping Mormonism. the internet.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And it seems like the Mormon church has no small part in doing that.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Okay, let's learn about Mormons. Mormonism is a 19th century religion formally founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. He was born squarely in the middle of the Second Great Religious Awakening in the U.S., a religious revival that would strengthen movements like Methodism, Presbyterianism, and the Baptist Church, and would birth a lot more. And Joseph Smith was a kid of this era.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
People should be allowed to live their lives comfortably however they choose to. And so it's just like, let's not go after a specific woman. Let's go after maybe the system that you can trace it back up to, which seems like a lot of what your work is trying to do is interrogate the system that creates and not, you know, bully the byproducts of the system.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
He grew up without a firm religion, but was curious to try things. The Mormon faith, often called the LDS or Latter-day Saints, came up shortly after the Shakers movement. The LDS came to prominence around the same time as a number of black church movements like the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The LDS shares a little bit of DNA with spiritualism.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
begin with thanks so much again to alissa for her time and patience i really recommend her youtube channel if you have any further questions about what it's like to grow up in the mormon faith what it's like to decondition oneself from a cult-like upbringing as well as some interesting interviews with fellow ex-mormons you can also check out her book at the link in the description so listeners to conclude why are there so many successful mormon wives in the influencing space today the answer is
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Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
money. Okay, see you next week. In all seriousness, thank you so much again for listening. Please remember to subscribe to the show if you like it, leave a friendly review, tell your friends, it all helps. I had a lot of fun making this episode. I learned a lot and it was really hard. So please let me know your thoughts.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And for your moment of fun, or I guess more of a moment of reflection this week, here is former American Idol contestant David Archuleta talking about why he left the Mormon church. See you next week.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And pet shout-outs to our dog producer, Anderson, my cats Flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird, who will outlive us all. Bye!
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You wake up, put on your Ray-Ban Meta glasses. You're living all in. You realize you need coffee, so you say... Hey Meta, how do I make a latte?
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Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After Meta AI gets you caffeinated, you're ready for some beats.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
You head to meet some friends, but can't remember the place.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, the next generation of AI glasses. Just say, hey, Meta, to harness the power of Meta AI. Shop now at meta.com slash smart glasses.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And you can listen to my limited series, Ghost Church, for more about the history of that. The mid-19th century was a big time of religious change and upheaval in the U.S. And after Mormonism took off, new religions continued to pop up. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian scientists weren't far behind Mormonism.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
But very few specific movements from this time still have the cultural hold on America that Mormonism does. Though Joseph Smith releases the Book of Mormon and the religion is formalized in 1830, but the religion's origin story connects to two incidents from the previous 10 years.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
One was from 1820 when Joseph was 14 and asked both Jesus and God which religion to follow and was told by them, follow none of them. It is your job to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
The other incident was in 1823, when a 17-year-old Smith is said to have been visited by the angel Moroni to repeat this calling, and was also told that there was an ancient record regarding God's dealings with the quote-unquote American continent that he needed to translate with a series of tools when he was a little older.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
After the angel Moroni's visit, Joseph Smith says that he retrieved and divinely translated the text of the Book of Mormon, which was inscribed on thin gold plates. There is a bit of a Wizard of Oz-y quality to the way that this translation is dictated. There's magic stones, he's going behind curtains, and sometimes he wouldn't even use the gold plates.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
He would instead put a special stone in a hat, then bury his face in said hat. But if you're a prophet, he explained, the stone lights up within the hat, and then you just dictate from there. This whole mystical plates thing also comes up in modern Scientology, where members in Florida are engraving the words of L. Ron Hubbard onto titanium plates as we speak.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
It also harkens back to Helena Blavatsky's notion of the Akashic Records of the late 19th century, which were said to be indestructible tablets of the astral light. So there's that. A lot of this reminds me of spiritualism, which in its early days was composed of a lot of practical magic. Great movie.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And if you're not familiar with the origins of the Book of Mormon, to be fair, most religious origin stories are not significantly wilder than this. Spiritualism has a similarly mystical origin story. As for its contents, the Book of Mormon details the plight of a group of Jewish people in Jerusalem who escaped the city before it's destroyed in 600 BC.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
They built a boat, sail it to the Americas, and soon become embroiled in a conflict within the group between two groups called the Neophytes and the Lamanites. One of the big changes made to the Book of Mormon later on is that the Lamanites were ancestors of all indigenous Americans. This language would later be softened to say that they were among the ancestors of some indigenous people.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
So a group of Jewish people migrate to the Americas and become Lamanites. indigenous Americans. Okay, Jesus is a huge part of Mormonism and the Book of Mormon details that after Jesus is resurrected in 33 AD, he goes to visit the Americas where he is hailed as the pale prophet because yes, Mormon Jesus is white.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Some of their other beliefs as expressed through Joseph Smith are that God is a flesh and blood being who has a flesh and blood wife, his wife. who lives far away near a distant star. And God tells Joseph Smith that we earthlings were brought into being to create these nuclear families, to be closer to God so that one day we can live with God out of town on the star where he lives.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And to create these families, you hear a lot of the classic signifiers of fundamentalist religions. There is an emphasis on sacrifice, discipline, and suffering. There are rigid gender roles. There's canonical homophobia. There's absurd racism that was later scaled back in order to accommodate growth and membership.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Until a few decades ago, the Book of Mormon described members as, quote, a white and delightsome people, unquote. To this day, there is still a tacit don't ask, don't tell policy within the church about queerness. And that's an improvement from the mid 2010s when the children of queer parents were still not allowed to be baptized in the LDS.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
Anyways, in his time, Joseph Smith was, per his account, declared a prophet by Jesus and genuinely did face a great deal of persecution.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
In the early days where he was gathering followers in New York, he was arrested and ejected from the state and took his believers to Ohio to prepare for the second coming of Jesus in Zion, a location TBD paradise where Smith envisioned communities that would be governed by celestial laws as determined by him. As it progresses, Mormonism grows further away from traditional Christianity.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And before you know it, the Mormons are ousted from Ohio. Smith is tar and feathered before this. The group then moves to Missouri, which is great because the Lord just so happens to have told Joseph Smith that that's actually where Zion is, but also where the Garden of Eden was. So the Mormons start buying up land in Missouri.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And to remind you of the era of history we're in, this happened in 1831, just a year after the Indian Removal Act was passed and brought about 20 years of brutal genocide of the indigenous people. But once in Missouri, the Mormons are driven out again, this time with increasing violence.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And over the next few years, they head with Smith all over the Midwest, where they're treated with similar hostility most places they go. At one point, the governor of Missouri passed an extermination act. Eventually, they moved to Illinois, where they're permitted to set up a city of their own called Nauvoo, basically Zion 2.0.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
And it's here where Smith lightly militarizes the group and increasingly sends out missionaries to continue to grow the faith. And at the same time, Smith is told by an angel to introduce one of the LDS's most controversial policies, polygamy. And polygamy wasn't something that was allowed to everyone in the faith at first, just the powerful in the church.