48 pages • 1 hour read
Heather GayBad Mormon
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 5-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “Bad Ass”
Part 5, Chapter 26 Summary: “All of These Lines Across My Face”
After the divorce, Gay relied on Billy for money, and he was reluctant to give her more than he thought she needed. To afford Botox and other expensive beauty treatments, Gay offered to do social media marketing for a local med spa. She was so successful that the owner offered her the opportunity to buy the company. Along with her friend Andrea “Dre” Robinson, Gay transformed the company into Beauty Lab + Laser, a med spa founded on principles of transparency and self-determination. She helped promote the brand with the help of her friends and future reality TV castmates Lisa Barlow and Meredith Marks. Marks was the one to initiate conversations with producers about a reality show in Salt Lake City, and introduced Gay to them as a potential cast member. Gay suggests that she and Marks pretended not to be friends on camera so as not to upset Barlow, who resented Gay. As Beauty Lab + Laser took off, Gay also pursued boudoir photography, which led her to a friendship with another future co-star, Whitney Rose.
Part 5, Chapter 27 Summary: “Only Girl (In the World)”
At first, Gay dismissed her friend Lisa Barlow’s claims about her connections with TV producers. When a producer named Joey reached out to her, she assumed that it was just to help Lisa, never expecting that she would be cast. Gay and Joey had a series of phone conversations in which she felt free to be honest about her drinking, dating, and lapsed Mormon practices for the first time. She began to fall in love with the version of herself that she was describing, but was terrified for her family and customers to know the truth. As conversations progressed, Joey asked increasingly personal questions about her income, weight, and sex life. Gay introduced him to Whitney Rose, which annoyed Lisa, who thought she was too “trashy” for the show (247). In turn, the producers introduced Gay to Mary M. Cosby, another future co-star. At their first meeting, Gay was shocked by Cosby’s ability to command a room and her frank criticism of others, including Gay.
Part 5, Chapter 28 Summary: “A Diva is a Female Version of a Hustla”
The last woman added to the cast was Jen Shah, a Beauty Lab customer that Gay explicitly claims was hired because the show needed diversity. Gay describes Shah as charismatic and messy. The producers arranged for Gay, Shah, Marks, Barlow, and Rose to film a so-called sizzle real, a teaser episode of television to promote and sell a larger series. Gay was thrilled by the excitement of filming and being authentically herself for the first time in her life. In interviews, she admitted to producers that she was not happy in her life. When the producers flew her to LA to tell her that Bravo had officially bought the show, she finally began to feel validated as a flawed but lovable person.
Back in Utah, Gay ignored her bishop’s suggestion that she turn down the show and decided to live her life as a non-practicing Mormon. To celebrate, she flew to New York City for a raucous night of clubbing with Jen Shah in which she had a one-night stand.
Part 5, Chapter 29 Summary: “Started from the Bottom, Now We’re Here”
Three months after Bravo picked up the pilot, producers called to officially confirm that the show would join the Real Housewives franchise as The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. As a lifelong fan of reality television in general and The Real Housewives in particular, Gay was thrilled by the news. She felt that, if she had failed as a Mormon housewife, she could at least succeed as a Real Housewife. During a visit with producers, the women learned that Whitney Rose had been edited out of the sizzle real and Gay realized that the industry would be more difficult than she initially expected.
Just days before filming was set to begin, Gay’s business partner Dre Robinson learned that her brother Tim had died by suicide. Gay and Robinson established a foundation which provides free beauty treatments for scars related to self-harm or addiction. Tim’s death inspired Gay to continue to live authentically and to speak out against the restrictive expectations of the Mormon church that harmed people like Tim.
Part 5, Chapter 30 Summary: “I Think Life Chose Me After All”
Although being cast on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City changed Gay’s life for the better, she notes that it also necessitated a hard break with her former life. Drinking on camera and visibly flouting the expectations that she wear Mormon garments made it clear to her friends, family, and community that she was no longer a practicing Mormon. Because her success on the show was built on her rejection of the church, her family and Mormon friends could not celebrate with her. However, Gay did receive innumerable messages from viewers of the show with similar stories, validating her decision. These messages gave Gay the courage to publicly admit that she was leaving the church in an on-camera conversation with her daughters. She knew that this choice might alienate her from her daughters if they remained in the church, prohibiting her from attending their marriages or the baptisms of their children. However, her daughters supported her whole-heartedly. The success of the first season reinforced Gay’s sense of herself as a survivor.
Epilogue Summary
Gay was shocked by the overwhelmingly positive response to the show and to her participation in particular. Although she worried the show would cause her to lose friends, it introduced her to a wide community of Real Housewives and stars of other Bravo shows who intentionally sought her out because of her story, not despite it. This community helped her to survive the rejection and criticism that came with publicly leaving the church. Gay frames the Real Housewives community as her new religion: they support her, celebrate with her, mourn with her, and accept her as she is in a way the Mormon church never did.
Part 5-Epilogue Analysis
In the final section of Bad Mormon, Gay introduces the world of reality television, framing the Real Housewives community as a chosen family that provides her with the support, purpose, and personal growth she once found in the Mormon church. She suggests that being cast on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City allowed her to live a life free from The Strictly Prescribed Roles for Women and Girls in the Mormon Faith, and to be honest about both her achievements and her flaws. Gay argues that the community she developed on the show serves her in the same way as the church.
The process of auditioning for RHOSLC empowered Gay to speak honestly about her relationship to the church. When a producer named Joey asked her about Mormonism, she “answered every single one of his questions authentically from the heart rather than from a script [she’d] been given” (241). In contrasting this honesty and freedom with the scripted, practiced words she used during her mission, Gay highlights The Importance of Self-determination in her life outside the Mormon faith. During these interviews, Gay realized that she “could be [herself], unequivocally, without obligation to represent the church, [her] family, or [her] dwindling faith” (256). The use of the terms “script” and “obligation” in these passages evidence Gay’s evolving relationship to and perspective on the Mormon faith . She suggests that the process of interviewing and auditioning for the show made her realize that her attachment to the church was not as significant as she once believed.
Releasing her attachment to the church allowed Gay to reclaim her self-love and pride in her achievements. In her interviews with Joey, Gay “didn’t hold back, [she] didn’t play small, [she] didn’t act like it was all an accident” that she was a successful businesswoman and single mother (243). Whereas the church expected her to define herself as a helpmate to her husband, Joey and the other producers celebrated her achievements and skills in their own right. Gay writes that she “had been absent in [her] life for so long” that she forgot who she was at her core, and “fell in love with [herself] as the girl [she] was introducing [Joey] to” in the interviews (244). These passages highlight Gay’s perspective on Expectation Versus Reality in Mormon Marriage—specifically the ways in which she believes she was expected to subjugate herself in her relationship with Billy. Because of the expectations for Mormon wives, Gay feels that she disappeared entirely in her marriage. She presents her experience interviewing with Joey as a kind of rebirth and rediscovery of herself outside of the Mormon church. Gay emphasizes that the community of fans drawn to RHOSLC helped to replace the church community she lost. Although she initially feared rejection, Gay felt “lifted up by thousands of people” who had similarly left the church and appreciated her honesty (279).
Having embraced her self-determination and independence, Gay imbues her med spa business with that same ethos. Beauty Lab + Laser, was founded on the belief that customers have “the ability to determine their own outcomes” (229). Gay explains that, although the business follows medical guidelines, Beauty Lab + Laser employees are expected to provide aesthetic services without judgment: “if an eighteen-year-old [comes] in and [says], ‘I want lips the size of two small pillows,’ who [are they] to say no?” (229). Although Gay may not agree with all the decisions her customers make regarding their beauty treatments, she celebrates their right to make their own choices about their appearance, which she calls “the most sacred part of your identity” (230). Gay frames her firm belief in the right to self-determination is the result of years of oppression within the Mormon church.
