The Non-Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
  March 26, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, I’m not one for corporal punishment, but I do think the creators of “Age of Attraction” need to be taken to the town square and pilloried for a few days to think on their sins. In today’s newsletter, we unpack the ongoing Taylor Frankie Paul debacle. If you don’t know who or what that is, you have a pure heart and an uncluttered mind. Stay blessed. Plus a terrible new rule from the International Olympic Committee and a hearty slice of women’s history. Bringing tomatoes to the square, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONThe man treatment: Last Sunday, ABC was meant to premiere the latest season of “The Bachelorette” starring the queen of Mormon messiness, Taylor Frankie Paul, the lead of the hit Hulu series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” (SLOMW). Instead, the season was pulled after a disturbing video of Paul was released by TMZ that showed her in an altercation with her ex-boyfriend/babydaddy/co-star, Dakota Mortensen. In the video, which was recorded by Mortensen in 2023, Paul is seen doing a number of things, including throwing three large barstools at Mortensen. At some point, one of those chairs hits Paul’s five-year-old daughter, who was sitting on the couch during the altercation. The response to this video has torn the internet asunder, with some justifying Paul’s actions as a response to whatever happened off-camera, and others equivocating and employing their new favorite term, “reactive abuse.” There’s also been a tendency, particularly among women viewers, to over-empathize with Paul for unleashing her feminine rage on a man whom she says has also abused her. In comment sections everywhere, there are notes that Paul is being punished so harshly because she is a woman, whereas Mortensen has lost nothing for his as-yet-unknown role in the 2023 incident (or for any of his alleged abusive behavior). I hate to be the naysayer in the group, but I have to call balderdash.  THE CAST OF SLOMW LAST YEAR AT THE PREMIERE FOR SEASON FOUR. ON THE HEELS OF THE PAUL/MORTENSEN VIDEO, HULU HAS PAUSED PRODUCTION ON SEASON FIVE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) The reality is that Paul is receiving the kind of treatment a man would in this situation. Let’s examine the facts. ABC knew from the start that Paul had pled guilty to aggravated assault in 2023—it was literally a storyline on SLOMW, and the police bodycam footage of Paul’s arrest was part of an episode. Yet they still chose to cast her in “The Bachelorette.” Hulu still had Paul star in subsequent seasons of SLOMW, where some of the other cast members alluded to Paul and Mortensen being abusive towards each other in front of Paul’s children. And we all watched, just like we watch abusers in the NFL. Compare this to former “Bachelor” Colton Underwood, who was accused of stalking and harassing his girlfriend in 2020. What was his punishment? Some negative online chatter, a 2021 documentary about his life, and appearances on not one, not two, but four reality TV shows. So when folks say, This would never happen to a man, what exactly is the this? Because what does happen to men is a lot of rah-rah about getting canceled and all of us yelling from atop the moral high ground to little effect. Similarly, when the news of Paul’s investigation first dropped, bachelordata reported that she gained 80,000 new followers. TMZ announced yesterday that despite three investigations into domestic violence incidents, Paul will receive her full paycheck for filming “The Bachelorette.” She also still maintains 50/50 custody of the child who was struck. While the two experiences are very different, the same thing that shielded Underwood now shields Paul: whiteness. As many people have been pointing out, the abuse we’re seeing does not occur in a vacuum, which is why Paul and Mortensen being young, white, and allegedly attractive need to be taken into consideration when we talk about their treatment. If Paul weren’t white, she would have immediately lost her job, as we’ve seen with other reality stars who have done less and gotten fired. And far worse can happen after incidents like this to women who are not rich and famous, like permanently losing custody of their children. As for Mortensen, he hasn’t incurred the same scrutiny because he’s positioned himself as the noble victim, a character that only works for white men. Taylor Frankie Paul may be in a freefall, but there is a golden parachute attached to her back—one that does not exist for regular women, especially women of color. The one thing we can agree on in this jambalaya of opinions is that we should all be held to the same standards when it comes to wrongdoing, regardless of race, gender, finances, or follower counts. We cannot allow a warped idea of feminism to trump the fact that harm was done to a completely innocent party—Paul’s daughter. We don’t know how much that child has seen, but what we do know, from watching the footage, is that she was silent until she was struck by the chair—which shows us that she has likely heard this kind of screaming and seen this kind of argument before; it’s been normalized. Children who absorb this behavior grow up to be adults who accept it or, at the very worst, act it out on others. When it comes to children witnessing or experiencing abuse, I am always Team Child. AND:
 SLICE OF WOMEN’S HISTORY 🍕Akasha Gloria Hull, a foundational Black feministBY REBECCA CARROLL Throughout Women’s History Month, we’ll be featuring women (or women’s movements) that aren’t on the typical media lists we see every March.  HULL AT A BOOKSTORE EVENT IN 2015. (FAIR USE) The Combahee River Collective, founded in 1977, looms large in the field of Black feminism, and rightly so: The organization was part of a movement and moment that would change the way we talk about social justice in America. Many people familiar with the group know its bigger names: founding members Demita Frazier and twin sisters Barbara and Beverly Smith, along with Audre Lorde, an icon far beyond her association with CRC. But there’s an unsung heroine who isn’t celebrated as much as she should be: Writer, poet, and spiritual warrior Akasha Gloria Hull, whose life’s work is a love letter to Black feminists. Born Gloria Theresa Thompson in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1944, she changed her name to Akasha Gloria Hull after an illuminating trip to Ghana in 1992. Then, around the same time she was Xeroxing passages from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God for her friends and coworkers—a practice that would lead to a revival of Hurston’s work—Hull, then a professor of women’s studies, was invited to join the newly convened Collective (CRC). The group was formed out of the “absolute necessity for autonomous Black feminist analysis,” wrote Frazier and the Smith sisters in a letter to her. “We think that this chance to meet will be politically stimulating and spiritually regenerating.” She accepted the invitation, and a few years after joining CRC, she co-edited the seminal 1982 work All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave with Patricia Bell-Scott and Barbara Smith. It was the first Black feminist anthology of its kind and widely considered to have laid the groundwork for Black women’s studies. After that, Hull went on to publish a number of scholarly books, but her nonacademic work is where she gave herself the most freedom to explore the depths of her spirituality and imagination, thanks to the spiritual regeneration of CRC’s mission. From her 1989 collection, Healing Heart: Poems 1973-1988, she writes, in an untitled poem: “we love in circles/ touching round / faces in a ritual ring/ echoing blood and color/ nappy girlheads in a summer porch swing/ belligerent decisions to live/ and be ourselves.” And in Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women—which combines narrative storytelling and interviews with Black women writers and friends, including Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, and Toni Cade Bambara—Hull offers a meditation on a wide range of spiritual practices through a Black female lens, while also making a personal statement of becoming. Her work evolved from the undeniably life-changing connection with CRC, as she recalled in a 2004 interview with Monterey County Now: “That was one of the most exciting periods of my life,” Hull said. “United with others, zealous. … We really changed the map, changed the face of things.” Akasha Gloria Hull’s papers and photographs are available to the public at the Schomburg Center for African American Research in Harlem.  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
