Zions, and Mormons, and Polygs, Oh My!
photo by Stephanie Sinclair for the New York Times Magazine
There seems to be Mormonism and polygamy in the air lately (at least for us), so we wanted to spread the love to you and you and you and…:
- Escape — Just finished this crazy page-turner of a memoir from Carolyn Jessop, one of the few women to escape The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS (of Warren Jeffs infamy) with her 8 kids (and 8 is a low number for this radical polygamist sect). She recounts how the cult basically imprisons women as sex/baby-making slaves — you’ll boggle over how something like this could exist in America in the 21st century. Katherine Heigl is slated to make the movie version of the book (which, we hate to admit, we’re morbidly excited about).
- Sister Wives — This TLC TV series is in the middle of its second season. With only 4 sister wives (who seem allowed to express their opinion) and their mere 16 kids, the Browns look like the Cleavers compared to the FLDS clans. Still, we really wish the show would delve a little deeper into the religious justification for the double standard of multiple wives but not multiple husbands (in Season 1, when his first wife of 20 years asked him to imagine her taking another husband, husband Kody admitted the thought sickened him — hmmm, funny how that works).
- The Book of Mormon — Everyone’s raving about this new Broadway musical by the dudes behind South Park, including Jon Stewart, who said it’s “so fucking good it makes me angry.” Think Urinetown and Jerry Springer: The Musical rather than Wicked or Brigadoon.
The other thing that bothers me about the Sister Wives show is that it doesn’t look at the patriarchal aspect of their marriage. I don’t think the women really had the option of telling him not to take another wife. I suspect they are supposed to obey him at some level.