Mormon Hair Isn’t Just Hair. It’s A Symptom Of Something Much Bigger.
Jeff Denlea | Canva As a person who practices both paganism and demonolatry, I can say that I’m an outsider’s outsider. This is especially true when I take a look at the cultural zeitgeist going on with Utahns, the Mormon church, and ex-Mormons coming forth about the abuse that comes with that religion.
Okay, maybe I’ll be blunt: Mormon Utah culture fascinates me.
I watch a lot of Mormon-related content, talking about MormonTok, MomTok, Mormon Housewives, and tons of fundie (read: Christian fundamentalism) snark. One of the things that people often talk about is Mormon hair: the “dent” in short bobs or the obvious hair extensions among celebrity Mormons.
After watching a ton of TikToks, I realized there was something to it. It was almost a uniform among younger women. Almost all of them had waist-length hair, often done up in curls that were very clearly salon-ready. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who noticed the “Utah hair” thing. Others have too.
'Mormon hair' is a major trend on TikTok as well as on YouTube
Mormon hair (or Utah hair) is one of those things that, once you see it, you can spot it a mile away. It’s also known as “conservative hot girl hair,” and it basically has three options:
- Blonde (or blondish brown) with long, long spiraling curls. It also has to be super thick, so you better believe that most women are going to go for those hair extensions.
- Short bobs done in a “dent.” This is so common, it’s known as the “Utah dent.”
- Blonde as blonde can be, paired with a deep suntan. Honestly, as a person who has this hair, I get it. However, I’m the first to admit that most people’s hair doesn’t take to bleach as well as mine, and even mine got burnt badly.
Did you notice how no one really has black or blackish-brown hair in the Mormon world? (Layla Taylor is an exception.) There’s a reason for that. It’s considered to be a faux pas. The Mormon Church was famous for refusing to allow Black members in because they saw melanin as the “Mark of Cain.”
Blonde hair is white hair. White is holy. So the blonder you are, the holier you often appear to be to Mormons.
If you’re as adept with hair styling as I am, you already see the issue here. Surprise: I do my own hair. This is my hair with and without extensions. I have hair that is pretty darn crispy from over 12 years of dyeing. Much of it was either blonde, grey, white, or neon colors that can only happen when you go blonde first.
I know how badly this fries your hair. With that said, I’m not a professional. I just cut and dyed my own hair.
As someone who literally does their own hair as part of the work I do as a model, I can say that hair is a female-presenting person’s crown. It’s our glory. And if you’re not a natural platinum blonde, it’s also a royal mess to upkeep.
While watching videos about Mormon culture, the presenter discussed a disturbing issue among Mormon teens
This video. It was this one. By Alyssa Grenfell, a person who grew up Mormon and later went the apostate route. She noticed that teens and girls in their early 20s were starting to lose their hair, get it burnt out, or even just have it go limp as a result of all the treatments they were doing to it.
Teenagers. And young adults. Think about that. That’s when your hair should be at its most luxurious, naturally. It should not be falling out. To make a typical person’s hair fall out from dye, curling, and taping … that takes an insane amount of work.
Yet, it’s not entirely a new concept: it's something called traction alopecia, which is hair loss from rubbing and pulling.
Photo from Author
Mormon hair is burnt-out hair. That’s why they constantly hit the hair extensions and why their real hair tends to be short. At first glance, it’s easy to talk about how this might just be a matter of teens not knowing how to use dye, but it’s not.
The burnt look of Mormon hair is a perfect metaphor for how unrealistic beauty standards burn women
Though I was never a Mormon, I grew up cult-adjacent and had a lot of friends who were deeply Mormon-like. Marriage and children, together, were the highest duty a woman could do in my best friend’s church.
It was understood that my best friend would be married at 18, in a mass wedding, to a man she had never met before. Then, she was expected to pop out babies.
That’s the way it is in mainstream Mormonism. Your goal as a woman is to get married as soon as possible. That’s how you show that you’re desirable, and that’s how you gain status as a woman.
When you’re like that, you never really have a full camaraderie with other girls while you’re single. It’s almost as if you’re mingling with your competition. You can feel them probe you to find out who you’re with and how you got him. It’s twisted.
One thing I’ve continually heard about Mormon life is how much beauty and youth are emphasized for women. Beautiful girls are the ones who get asked out on dates faster and get married faster. Girls who conform to conservative beauty standards, though, are the ones who marry fast.
And trust me, you want to marry fast in those kinds of cultures. So, you have to pit yourself against all the other girls, just to get a man to ask you out and hopefully propose with a “ring by spring.” Hair in Utah is a big deal, and that means that girls will really, really fight for it to be perfect.
Hair, much like weight, is the basic measuring stick of beauty in these worlds. A Mormon’s hair needs to be long, luxurious, silky, and feminine — much like a Disney princess’s. And yeah, it takes a lot of effort.
Here’s the problem with that, speaking as a model: you might be willing to do the work to get to that perfect hair status, but that doesn’t mean your hair will be willing to do the same.
Mormon hair is burnout hair
Meritt Thomas / Unsplash
Hair is fragile. It has a breaking point. If tugged, dyed, and dipped long enough, it will break and fall out. I ought to know, I have friends who are partly bald over bad dye jobs.
The thing is, there’s never a point where groups like this tell you that you’re okay as-is. So you keep fighting, keep curling, keep dyeing, until eventually, your hair is too brittle to stay long. It starts drying “glued together” like mine did when it got too damaged to fix.
So you cut it to a bob and pray that you can regrow it once more, adding extensions to make it look longer. And that’s how you see the life cycle of Mormon hair go.
What you’re seeing with all that crispy hair is (quite literally) your hair showing off your own burnout at chasing unattainable goals. What you’re seeing with all those extensions is a sign that you’ve gotten burnt out, but still feel the need to fight for perfection.
Mormon hair is cult-ish hair
So let’s talk about the other big gorilla in the room: the way that hair is controlled in Mormon circles. It does seem like it’s a uniform, doesn’t it? Well, there’s a reason for that.
Mormonism has a lot of traits of a standard cult, including the use of the BITE Model. The BITE Model is the go-to model for authoritarian control of others, used by most cult leaders as well as human trafficking circles.
One of the things BITE does is encourage people to control other people’s hair and clothing. And yes, speaking as someone who has experience with cults, having a cult lifestyle will burn you out. In this case, it shows through the hair.
If a group is trying to push you to dye, cut, or wear your hair a certain way, they are not your friends. No “loving” church or “loving God” will ever want you to be someone or something you’re not. That includes pushing you to have the same hairstyle as everyone else who sits in those pews.
No loving deity would ever be okay with their culture being built around making people feel like they are never enough, period. And if your hair is already crispy by 18, it may be time to put down the Bible and pick up a book on feminism. Can I get an amen, hallelujah?
Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.
