pc28����

But the show’s other defining cultural takeaway is the almost universally homogenous hairstyle these women sport, dubbed “Utah hair.” It’s spawned a raft of Utah hair or Utah curls videos on social media. Some satirically reference the show, like the young woman who captioned her blond loose waves with the signature straightened ends hitting mid-thigh “Me after watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives all week.” Others are sincere how-to tutorials from Utah hairstylists showing how they achieve the look that has found an audience beyond state lines.

Esthetically, the “Utah curl” is descended from mainstream but there are a few elements that distinguish it. For one thing, the very long length, for which extensions are typically used. Then there’s the texture.

“The key difference for me between beachy wave and this kind of wave is that beachy waves would be achieved by wrapping hair around the curling iron, which gives it a messier, more textured finish,” says Hayden, whose recent celebrity clients include Nicola Coughlan, Sandra Oh and Sarah Polley. “With this, you use the clip on the iron as well to smooth out the hair as you’re curling it, and then drag the curling iron through at the end so it gives that really polished look.”

But the main thing that sets “Utah hair” apart is its cultural context and close association with the Mormon community.

Alyssa Grenfell first encountered “Utah curls” in the early 2010s when she started at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, the higher-education flagship for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Grenfell had grown up outside Utah and straightened her hair with a flat iron all through high school. “Going to college at BYU was the beginning of curling my hair in that specific way,” says Grenfell. “It’s funny to look at this picture of me in Kentucky [at my high school graduation] with straight hair, and then I have this other picture of me when I’m at BYU: I’m dressed in this very 1950s-style dress, and my hair is curled. For whatever reason, whether or not it was conscious, I just started dressing like everyone else.” 

Grenfell has since left the church and now creates . “I remember when a friend left the church and moved out to New York, she redid almost everything about her appearance because she felt it was such a ‘Utah look,’” says Grenfell. Similarly, she’s gotten tattoos and a nose piercing (though she says the smooth curls are still the only hairstyle she really knows how to do). “It’s a really specific look, and it’s a very homogenous look. Everybody is aspiring to the same version of face, hair, makeup.”

What Grenfell says they’re aspiring to emulate is a beauty standard exemplified by in her country era, who, with her long blond curls and blue eyes, most Mormon men would describe as their “dream girl.”

Conformity is key to the ubiquity of Utah curls, which you’ll see when you’re watching almost any content by Mormon women, be it the trad wife influencer Hannah Neelemen of Ballerina Farm or Netflix Dream Home Makeover’s Shea McGee.

“It’s copycat culture. It’s a very community-based culture, where everybody is aspiring to be the same,” says Grenfell. She refers to a teaching from the Book of Mormon about the “straight and narrow path”; the notion that there is one specific way to live a good life.

For men, this trajectory would likely include going on a mission (a voluntary period where Mormons travel to proselytize and do community service), then finding a wife as soon as he returns home. “Brigham Young literally said, ‘If you’re 24 and unmarried as a man, you’re a menace to society,’” Grenfell says.

For women, she says, the prescribed path is to get married as soon as you can and have as many children as possible — or nowadays, “at least have two to three kids to be ‘righteous.’”

This expectation that there is a right way to live encompasses self-presentation, for both genders. Grenfell says that at BYU, there’s a guide for men that details the correct way to cut sideburns. “It creates a culture that is striving towards a very specific version of perfection,” she says.

What makes “Utah curls” interesting in this context is the contradiction between what the look telegraphs to the wider world — it’s very much sexy bombshell hair circa 2016 Victoria’s Secret angels — and the Mormon church’s standards of modesty.

“We’re definitely told to be ‘in the world but not of the world,’” says Grenfell. She points to the “I’m A Mormon” campaign of the past decade, which featured people who look “really cool, really normal, mainstream but better, aspirational but not weird and cult-y.”

“Sometimes, people are told and believe that by being beautiful or rich or worldly in morally OK ways, you’re actually being a missionary for the church,” says Grenfell. “You’re showing people what Christ’s church can bring into your life. Beauty is a form of missionary work.”

And it’s work that involves labour. “I had roommates in college, and one girl had hair down to her butt. Every night she would meticulously braid her hair so it would be healthy and long. It would probably take her an hour. She said, ‘My greatest beauty is my hair,’” says Grenfell. “Another one would wake up at four in the morning to do about two hours’ worth of a beauty routine.”

Hayden confirms that the “Utah hair” look requires a significant investment. “It could take an hour and 15, an hour and a half, depending on how much hair you’ve got,” he says. “It definitely is work, that’s for sure.”

If you do want to try it, Hayden says you’ll need a curling iron with a clip or clamp; he recommends a 1 ¼ inch barrel. Prep hair with a heat protectant first and “start with a good blow out,” and have hair spray on hand for setting afterwards. If you want the full effect and don’t have naturally long, thick hair, you’ll need to add extensions.

When you’re ready to curl, wrap an entire lock of hair around the barrel, starting close to the root, and then using a similar technique to waving your hair with a flatiron, pull the iron through the hair from root to tip to get that smooth finish.

Grenfell points out that this particular “Utah esthetic” is not representative of how all Mormon women look — it’s associated with wealth, for one thing — or how they all aspire to look. Some consider it very vain. Grenfell’s mom, for example, proudly says that the only time she’s had her nails done was on her wedding day.

Of course, beauty standards have often been used as tools for oppression, in a multitude of cultural contexts. “One [Mormon leader] said, ‘Even an old barn should be painted,’ and another one said, basically, part of being a good mother is wearing makeup and looking beautiful for your husband,” says Grenfell. “The church is obviously based in a patriarchy, and as a woman in a patriarchy, your highest value is your beauty.”