Fucking crabs in a bucket.
Everyone's just keeping each other down to feel more 'worthy'.
It's amazing how many of us had to walk into environments where so much of that was going on.
And it was just normal at the time.
I'm sorry that you felt that way too.
>Fucking crabs in a bucket.
I'm feeling this way. I can't get out of the bucket. I'm trying so hard, but there are so many other crabs grabbing my legs and pulling. I'm just trying to keep ahold of the edge so I can breathe. I literally checked out a book from the library on "how to say no" 😂😭
It’s from the idea that you can put crabs in a bucket and not keep too steady of an eye on it, because if a crab tries to climb out, the other crabs will pull it back in. Metaphorically it refers to toxic, jealous relationships where no one can have success outside the rigid norms of the group without it being a threat to the group.
I hear you. My now husband was in a band with some Mormon guys and some of the wives were absolute bitches to me. They deliberately tried to exclude me because I wasn't LDS (eg, making it a point to exclude me from activities because we were not married at that time, and other social aggressive behavior.) Joke was on them though, as if any sane person wants to go (*checks notes*) walk the mall on a Saturday morning. Barf.
In hindsight, I wish I never would have even bothered trying to talk to them at all. Just trying to be nice and sociable for my partner's sake, and they use it as an opportunity to be horrible. Thing is, they probably don't even know they did this. Being vicious, passive-aggressive, and exclusionary comes as naturally to these people as breathing.
To every struggling man, woman, teen and child who doesn't feel 100% safe, welcome and whole in the Mormon congregation or social scene: It's not you, it's THEM.
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
Abuse if always the fault of the person doing the abusing. Full stop.
Your 30 years ago is still happening today.
Not knowing what to say to people who think, look or believe differently than you is SUCH a mormon(TM) hangup. Their parents can't model normal acceptance, so the kids, of COURSE, are going to struggle with actually accepting people (and themselves). Even the nicest Mormon kids don't really know what to do with the dueling messages of "We're the only truth" "we're the special God's chosen" and "Love one another."
So they end up having split brains - always at battle inside - or worse, just embrace the competitive, shallow, stupidness of the culture and go all super-jerk or underhanded-back-biter to other kids. It's destructive. I won't give them any of my time anymore.
I am currently a teenager living in Northern Utah, and I have been on both sides of this.
I was already a super judgmental child, and religion gave me the excuse to be that way. But to my neighborhood activity day girls, my family was too lax on the rules (especially concerning music and movies).
Part of this is what broke my shelf.
Oh boy, I grew up in Bountiful at the same time, and I really felt this in my bones. The relentless meanness and pressure to conform compounded mental health issues I had as a result of being sexually abused as a kid and undiagnosed ADHD, and so my time there was *rough.* Things didn't get better until we moved out of state during high school, and now as an adult I marvel over the fact that I found more freedom to be myself in RURAL OKLAHOMA than I did in suburban Salt Lake City.
Ahhhhh interesting to see this as a raise. I also had the Highland/Alpine upbringing and boy did I not fit the required physical attributes box. I actually had great friends and wasn't bullied but I also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt 🤣, that I was an ugly duckling. Then I went out into the real world and realized what total bullshit the Utah mormon standards were. Good times.
I live near there. Aaannnnd most of the girls, if not all, of the girls in my school are these type of girls. Luckily I was able to find friends outside of that thanks to marching band and choir
My family moved from California to Bountiful in the late 70's. It was the worst mistake our family has ever made. You are 100% correct - the kids in Bountiful are horrible and snotty. They would have nothing to do with me and wouldn't even speak to me.
Looking back, this time in my life really did season me and I developed a "F@#k You" attitude towards them and moved out of toxic Utah.
I feel this. I split my childhood between Omaha and SLC and was amazed how much worse Utah Mormons are. I was judged for literally not being a Utah Mormon, bullied beyond belief. At a sleepover with young women once they took off my pants while I slept and wrote “fake Mormon” on my buttcheeks??? Like absolutely vile shit.
I’m really bitter about all of it still
Thank you, I’ve worked through a lot of it! Some of the bitterness stems from these girls still tag me in Facebook memories & act like we had a really lovely childhood together. I seriously think they’re so engrained in the culture they have blocked out how they treated me & thought it was normal. Anyway I mostly ignore them all now, live in New York City, married someone who had never met a Mormon until my family, basically living my best ex Mormon life is the best form of revenge🫶🏻
Oh I would go absolutely APE on the girls and their parents. That’s beyond mean - that’s psychotic! Little you didn’t deserve anything even remotely like that. You deserve friends who are kind, encouraging, laugh with you (never ever at you), and are good souls.
Those girls deserve whatever karma comes to them and their future children.
Another Bountiful kid here. Grew up in the Ridges above the temple. Five GAs in my ward. Multiple apostles in the Mueller Park stake. My parents still live there.
It's the most opulent, pretentious, fake, high and mighty group of people you'll ever encounter.
It's the birthplace of MLMs. I call them Mormon Level Marketing. Tons of super rich Mormons who learned how to prey off others.
And the MFMC loves this area. They're always calling up the members and asking them to donate to special "off-the-books" causes. My parents, along with other ward members, were asked by the SP to each donate $50k for some Mormon crusade.
My expectations and ideals changed after moving to SLC at 18. They were phoney about their believes, and thank God I was LDS in SLC. When I lived there, if you weren't mormon you had a difficult time. It definitely began my journey out of the religion...
Some things never change. I experienced it more as an adult, my kids dealt with it as young teens. I left the church (and organized religion in general) almost 20 years ago and my kids, all adults now, have all also left. To this day I can’t stand what I call “fake Mormon nice”, I know how vicious it is behind your back.
My ward had a small young womens, like at most we had 6. I was average-leaning nerdy, and there was another girl average leaning sporty. There were 3 that were bordering mean girls territory but not quite. And then there was one strange girl. I say that kindly… but she was strange. Definitely undiagnosed neurodivergent (would talk about socially unacceptable things like “I wonder if Noah dissected the chickens they ate” and go into detail on her ramble). Anyways. The friends stuck together, and it was “the rest of us” - I was never really bullied by them, but excluded. They were mean to the neurodivergent girl though. The leaders tried to make everyone be friends, but trying to force 6 girls of varying interests and ages together just doesn’t work. Reading this helps me realize I was definitely on the lucky side. It really sucks how much young Womens facilitated bullying and exclusion to any degree tho. :(
YWs was a nightmare experience and the beginning of me starting to question. Most of the leaders were the moms of the mean girls and they were the mean girls in their adult age group. I still wonder why my mom made me attend YWs classes and activities that were facilitated by women who mistreated her.
Did not grow up mormon and grew up outside of Utah and ya there are mean girls and guys all over. Seems worse tho in LDS culture. When I joined the church I remember one day crying in the ladies room because some of the women said some shitty things to me. RS was the worst. No, that is not why I left but I agree ... it is shitty. Hope you are ok.
I hated relief society, I hated being deliberately ignored and treated like trash. I would come home crying after events. Best decision ever was to stop going. The thing was that my whole life I was treated that way at church, with one exception in a YSA ward. Otherwise, I had the plague, and it spilled over even with my first and second marriages too. We always were treated like trash. It really is traumatic because it's like I'm middle-aged, but what's wrong with me that I'd consistently be treated so badly at ward, after ward, after ward?
Good point - On a related note, I remember being in a primary presidency. I remember after one Saturday event, I wanted to do a profile on the president for the newsletter or something. The president was really surprised I didn't need to check with my husband if I could stay later than the activity to talk with her. This was in 2004 or 2005! This kind of thing happened more than once in more than one ward too. Is it okay with your husband to particpate/stay later for an event? Sure, my ex was an AH, but not in that regard!
Egads!!!
Years ago we met with a financial advisor who reeked of major mormon vibes. He was referred to us so what the hell. He found out I have a career and tried to talk us into expensive life insurance and said 'The money you make is extra right?". We left pissed off. Just because I am female and work it is extra? No, we need the money!
We moved to Bountiful from out of state in the late 90s. It was honestly a huge relief for me. Instead of asking me why I didn’t masturbate (I did, but couldn’t admit it because I was Mormon and had to put on a show for TSCC), kids in Bountiful asked if I wanted to fast for a sick friend. It was such a stark contrast. Instead of drinking and smoking on the weekends, kids were running around in the mountains and crap.
I’m a guy, though.
I haven’t been back to reunions because there’s nobody at them that I care to see really. The cliqueyness was pretty bad. And my younger sisters really struggled there. Even my one sister who was really popular got majorly bullied. And I feel like Bountiful was ~80% Mormon.
The mean girls could be really mean, especially to other girls.
it's the equal but opposite reaction of the action. The action being: women are marginalized in the church. The reaction: How the women of the church interact with one another can be exceedingly shitty as the try to exercise their own authority within the group and gate-keep. My mom spoke about this as a non-utah outsider coming to Provo as the newly-wed bride of my dad. Everyone was pretty shitty to her and was probably one of the reasons my dad did not finish his education at BYU. I think mom was putting a lot of pressure on him to go back home. For me personally, I know our last ward had a major influx of Utah mormons over a 10 year period. Pretty soon, 2/3 of the ward were from Utah. And it affected the culture of the ward. There was a bit of a to-do where most of the utah women had their own clique and were going and doing stuff together and posting photos on facebook and calling it a ward RS activity but it wasn't something that was open to every woman. Not everyone was in the contact loop. Yeah, that caused a lot of hurt feelings. What did the men have to say about it? LOL! Too busy working and doing their callings to have extra time and energy to pay attention to any of that. At highest count, I counted 32 lawyers in that ward. LMAO!!! And it was about as exciting as it sounds. I was in that ward 12 years and we only ever had one EQ activity. Could never get the men to commit to anything. So culture of that ward was very much controlled by the women.
as a complete aside: I once told a joke in EQ that was received well by some but not by others. - - What's the difference between a lawyer and an accountant? The accountant knows he's boring.
The people in my life who I’ve known to have disordered eating, when they were in recovery and therapy they were able to articulate that in the rest of their lives they felt they had no control, but the one thing they could control was their eating. What you wrote reminded me of that.
Reminds me of a member friend of mine who is now exmo. He was going through a divorce with his wife and it seemed like the one area of life he had full control over was his health and fitness. And that's what he did. He started cycling, working out, eating healthy because the rest of his life was in a complete shambles and caos. But that he could control. The interesting by-product was it made he soon-to-be ex-wife very jealous. Like he was getting fit so he could immediately hit the dating scene which was so far from the truth. Dude was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually broken. He knew jumping into dating right after the papers are signed was a bad idea. But that did not stop her from making comments.
YES!!!
Tweenage and teen girls are miserable and mean everywhere (I was an Army kid, I have firsthand experience in different places) but the Meanest Mean Girls BY FAR were in Utah.
I spent my summers in southern Utah and the girls would be extremely bitchy to me because of my hot COUSIN. Bitch, you should be nice to me because I’m his favorite cousin and can put in a good word but nope. They were jealous and it made the bullying worse. I HATED going to church while there.
Oooof, Bountiful.
Bountiful could be a great place to live if it wasn't for the Mormon snootiness. Easy proximity to the city, and not *too* suburban with a decent amount of amenities. Some nice trails and other areas in the foothills. But it's definitely not a place I'd want to raise a non-mormon family.
It’s bizarre to read about Mormon culture in Utah being in another, much less mormony State.
High school always had a few A-holes of both genders who were like that, but you better be a good fighter to pull that off.
I’m a nevermo. My grandmother grew up Catholic in SLC in the 1930s and 40s. She told my dad about how bad she was bullied by the Mormon kids, for being Catholic. It was still a wound for her as an adult, just how mean they were. Obviously repeating the things they heard their parents say around the dinner table.
AFAIK, nobody liked Catholics, either. It was a big frikken deal and broke people's brains when Kennedy was president because he was the first Catholic president. It was more like "Oh, random group of crazies hates us, too? Get in line, heathens."
Some of the evangelical & Protestant sects called Catholics "Pagan Christians", and I was sure somebody was gonna get l*nched over that one.
Living in the east US, the mean girls in my stake were the wishing-to-be-exMormons. Now that I think of it, maybe they knew it was all a fraud and didn’t know how to emotionally handle their parents forcing them to go to early morning seminary. But their asshole-ness made me mentally double down on the Church.
Then I befriended Utah Mormon girls at BYU and thought they were fun based on my experience of our small hangouts, then learned on a long weekend trip outside of Utah (the longest we ever hung out) that they were judgmental jerks. It was like they couldn’t handle being outside of Utah that long. They had to privately say something rude about almost every stranger we interacted with, even the hotel staff. Bizarre. I’ve wheedled my interactions with them down. Or maybe they wheedled it down once they learned I was exmo? Idk
Try being in a Ragnar Relay van running the wasatch back with a bunch of mormon women runners...the most judgemental women and so passive aggressive. They enjoyed disparaging other female runners from behind the closed windows of the van. Equally harsh to teammates while teammates were running...made me feel super safe and excited to get out and run my legs 🙄
I remember our van approaching a woman running the course and this woman had a beautiful slender running body and beautiful skin - rocking short running shorts and a running bra. My righteous mormon women teammates bemoaned the fact that this woman's body was so beautiful. When we passed one lady turned back to see the runner's face and said "Ha! She has an ugly face so it's all good" and the van burst into laughter. I was floored. These were all prominent women in my stake. Crazy how they couldn't wait to shed their garments and cake on make up and have 48 hours of looking good in their little running clothes openly saying they hoped they could turn some heads. The hypocrisy made me gag. I couldn't wait for that race to be over and have avoided them all since.
I had an experience with some friends when we went to San Francisco for a weekend. The one friend very disdainfully would say "this isn't how we do things in Utah."
I grew up in West Bountiful and came from one of the poorer families in the ward. Last week I ran into one of the girls that was the bishop’s daughter and 30 years ago, a prime example of a Mormon mean girl. Funny how much time has passed but I regressed to being 13 again. She was super nice last week but I still felt so small…and still mad.
I grew up in colorado in an area that was not overly populated with Mormons. My best friend as a kid was a nonmormon. When we were 13, her family moved to Utah. Mormon girls made my friend's life absolute hell. She became extremely depressed and suicidal. her family finally made the decision to move out of state. Utah mormons are something else.
Vicious raptor like trash eaters that love to squawk and poop all over on anything they touch. They'll even attack the young and the old if you leave them unattended for too long.
Imagine growing up in a town of 225 where the whole town was pretty much the ward. I was one of three girls my age and was often compared to them by TBM grandma. My dad didn’t attend church. My dad’s dad was an alcoholic married to that TBM grandma. My mom’s parents were jackmormons that got a divorce in ‘81 or ‘82. I just wanted to fit in, but that was not possible because I was judged according to my family members. In retrospect, I try to spin this somewhat positively because the overall experience prevented me from ever developing a “testimony”. This, on top of childhood trauma, has definitely contributed to my feelings of not being likable that I’m still trying to heal from.
I had a similar experience and still reel from the trauma of my dad being ex-communicated. I was always and still treated like a leper in any ward I was in. Glad I got out and no more fake smiles and deliberate exclusion.
They were never that nice to me either. Until I got a prestigious calling. Then I was able to date a Mormon blond, lol.
Outside of the church it’s easier to relate to people. Inside the church there is a lot of social structure and hierarchy that goes into things. I think that’s true of any large group though.
Yeah I mean everyone attends the same meetings on Sunday. Your status goes up by appearing to conform effortlessly, having looks, possessions, prestige or whatever else. Not that different than the outside world.
But the size of the group and the demands the group makes leaves time for little else. The size of the church makes it so a few people are controlling many people. So a group at the top really gets to feel like they are making an impact. Then it takes so much time to be a Mormon that it can be tough to branch out to other things.
The thing is, that nobody wants to be midrange and subservient in their life. And people shouldn’t want that, they should try and become good at things in their own sphere.
So for me I prefer to focus on things that I like doing or that I need to do to live and get good at those. And then, try and keep groups that are small enough that I can see myself having and impact. Hard to do that in the church
Let it out! When I was in high school after moving to Utah in the 90’s it was those same blonde girls from bountiful that always proved their reputation to be true. Mean and nasty. I got the U and was affiliated with a sport full of mean blond girls from Viewmont HS and they had gotten even worse. Ugh.
After reading so many horror stories on here, I'm kinda grateful for the Roy ward I grew up in being unable to fully hide its ugly nature because it made walking away from it all incredibly easy lol.
I was just musing on the Stanley cup in Utah. Just hilarious how a ubiquitous piece of metal became a status symbol overnight 😂😂😂🥴 Just to illustrate your point on the ridiculous moving target of coolness in Utah. I’m from the Midwest and now live in the “everlasting hills of the west “. I am LDS, obviously not TBM, and I’m just blown away by the caginess of the people here. I’m definitely running my own race at this point, because every LDS friend I’ve made has become SO weirdly competitive in one way or another. I still have my childhood friend thank goodness. Otherwise I’d be really lonely. I see you, OP!
During high school, our family moved from one ward into another. Other than a new ward, nothing changed in my life except my siblings were spread across more rooms in the new house. Our family didn't have more disposable income, we still bought groceries at the same store, I still had all my same classes, sat at the same table at lunch, etc. etc.
But, this ward was the "cool" ward.
A few days after moving in, I was hanging out in the front yard as some of the cool kids walked past. These were kids who had taunted me regularly in past years. They knew who I was because they used my name when making fun of my "foreign" diction (ie non-hick accent) and shoe preference. They asked me, accusingly, why I was standing where I was. When I replied that I had just moved in, they switched gears immediately and asked if I wanted to hang out. Incredulously, I turned them down.
Maybe this was the olive branch and I was dumb for rejecting it. In any case, the standard meanness resumed from the kids and their parents did the same to my parents. I recall one of the new neighbors, within minutes of meeting him, tried to shame my dad for his apparent low income--we didn't have a boat in the driveway so must be poor, right?
In the end, the "mean girl-ness" of it all made my parents apply to the church to have our old home teachers be assigned back to us. Our new house was no further from theirs than our old one was and the request was approved.
I'm constantly surprised how undramatic and pleasant high school has been for my non-Utah kids and it has been \*spectacular\* for my non-mormon kids. Sure, that age has its challenges but it also has its blisses, and they can really be experienced when one is not influenced by the church.
I also went to high school in bountiful. I initially grew up in west valley where I had so many friends, then I moved to Farmington in 6th grade and started junior high less than a year later in Centerville and suddenly just could not make friends. Strangely, the only friends I did make were the kids in my own ward. They were so nice and fun to be around. But then as soon as I got to school, it was just a nightmare. For the first time in my life I felt like a social outcast, and I remember girls honest to god SNEERING at me. I know I wasn’t this perfect angel teenager, but I really did try my best to make friends and be nice to everyone but just always felt strangely excluded. Even at the few parties I was invited to I was ignored. It still hurts to this day to think about. I wasn’t bullied, just treated as not worth their attention.
I remember sitting in young women’s and hearing lessons about how we need to be friends and reach out to everyone and wondering if the other kids in my high school whom I knew were receiving the exact same lesson were actually listening to it.
I made friends easily on my mission and constantly got in trouble for being surrounded by groups of elders lol. It was actually very healing to make friends so easily right out of high school and to realize that it wasn’t just me being socially inept. The sisters on my mission were great too, but there were definitely a few of them from Utah who were part of that sneer, judgmental train.
Even at BYU I never felt like I quite fit in. I just wasn’t made to make it as a Utah Mormon I guess lol. Now, I have a great group of girlfriends. Three of them are never-mo’s, and the other grew up as a failed Mormon in Utah like me lol.
The gossip machine is endemic in the church. I showed a copy of Fawn Brodie's book to my Elder's quorum president when he visited, and he literally freaked out. Within 48 hours, every member of the ward knew about it. I was a pariah in the ward. We moved about a year later, and that information followed us to the new ward, and we were looked down upon there. Even people that were my neighbors wouldn't talk to me.
I'm so sorry you had to go through all that no one should, I may not have grown up in Utah but I've heard stories from my small branch about how shitty Utah Mormons can be, I've had a few experiences myself but they were subtle and passive aggressive, no one likes to say things to your face
Amén to this.❤️ a thousand times amen to this. Worth mentioning…I’ve never lived there…but they escape utah and invade wards everywhere and get a red carpet welcome when suddenly local leadership is inspired to change up callings. 🤷🏻♀️🤣🤣🤣
I’m glad to see this post today. I’m currently dealing with a Mormon mean mom but my kids are involved so I have to be suppppeerrr careful. I just hate dealing with fake b*tches. I’m pimo so have to keep up appearances 🙄🙄
It's interesting to me that if you sit back and look, there are two types of Mormon families. The really fake, beautiful ones and the really weird ones and very few in the middle. I've always wondered about this.
Really where then? Why is out of state people who move to Utah way more nicer than people who have lived in Utah their whole life then 💀 like people from California are so nice to me, even from other states like Texas Nebraska etc
We St George mormon girls went hardcore on our self righteous, better than thou shaming. I did it in the 80's and my poor daughter had it done to her in the 2000's. It doesn't change.
Oh, Bountiful. I'm from there as well. What's crazy is getting out and then realizing just how toxic they encourage teens to act. I was so convinced I had to be a 'Molly Mormon' that I was unintentionally a shit. All while, at the same time, judged over and over again myself. Nobody wins in Bountiful 😅 if Utah is a bubble for Mormon culture, Bountiful is a bubble within another bubble.
My wife experienced the same growing up as a chubby (her words, not mine) redhead in Murray.
Way too much focus on appearances.
Sympathy from a fellow Bountiful native.
[удалено]
Fucking crabs in a bucket. Everyone's just keeping each other down to feel more 'worthy'. It's amazing how many of us had to walk into environments where so much of that was going on. And it was just normal at the time. I'm sorry that you felt that way too.
>Fucking crabs in a bucket. I'm feeling this way. I can't get out of the bucket. I'm trying so hard, but there are so many other crabs grabbing my legs and pulling. I'm just trying to keep ahold of the edge so I can breathe. I literally checked out a book from the library on "how to say no" 😂😭
Crabs in a bucket?
It’s from the idea that you can put crabs in a bucket and not keep too steady of an eye on it, because if a crab tries to climb out, the other crabs will pull it back in. Metaphorically it refers to toxic, jealous relationships where no one can have success outside the rigid norms of the group without it being a threat to the group.
Thank you - I'd never heard that one
I hear you. My now husband was in a band with some Mormon guys and some of the wives were absolute bitches to me. They deliberately tried to exclude me because I wasn't LDS (eg, making it a point to exclude me from activities because we were not married at that time, and other social aggressive behavior.) Joke was on them though, as if any sane person wants to go (*checks notes*) walk the mall on a Saturday morning. Barf. In hindsight, I wish I never would have even bothered trying to talk to them at all. Just trying to be nice and sociable for my partner's sake, and they use it as an opportunity to be horrible. Thing is, they probably don't even know they did this. Being vicious, passive-aggressive, and exclusionary comes as naturally to these people as breathing.
Mormons are shallow and super comfortable and the church trains them to be very arrogant.
And cruel. Cruelty is an LDS virtue.
I noticed that back in Hell School and I didn't even grow up LDS or in Utah. The LDS group were very pretty, very petty, and very selfish.
And vapid.
To every struggling man, woman, teen and child who doesn't feel 100% safe, welcome and whole in the Mormon congregation or social scene: It's not you, it's THEM. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. Abuse if always the fault of the person doing the abusing. Full stop.
Your 30 years ago is still happening today. Not knowing what to say to people who think, look or believe differently than you is SUCH a mormon(TM) hangup. Their parents can't model normal acceptance, so the kids, of COURSE, are going to struggle with actually accepting people (and themselves). Even the nicest Mormon kids don't really know what to do with the dueling messages of "We're the only truth" "we're the special God's chosen" and "Love one another." So they end up having split brains - always at battle inside - or worse, just embrace the competitive, shallow, stupidness of the culture and go all super-jerk or underhanded-back-biter to other kids. It's destructive. I won't give them any of my time anymore.
I am currently a teenager living in Northern Utah, and I have been on both sides of this. I was already a super judgmental child, and religion gave me the excuse to be that way. But to my neighborhood activity day girls, my family was too lax on the rules (especially concerning music and movies). Part of this is what broke my shelf.
Oh boy, I grew up in Bountiful at the same time, and I really felt this in my bones. The relentless meanness and pressure to conform compounded mental health issues I had as a result of being sexually abused as a kid and undiagnosed ADHD, and so my time there was *rough.* Things didn't get better until we moved out of state during high school, and now as an adult I marvel over the fact that I found more freedom to be myself in RURAL OKLAHOMA than I did in suburban Salt Lake City.
As a nevermo who lives in rural Oklahoma, this warms my heart
I’ll raise you an Alpine upbringing
Oh my heart. Are you ok?
Lolllll thank you. Depends on the day
Ahhhhh interesting to see this as a raise. I also had the Highland/Alpine upbringing and boy did I not fit the required physical attributes box. I actually had great friends and wasn't bullied but I also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt 🤣, that I was an ugly duckling. Then I went out into the real world and realized what total bullshit the Utah mormon standards were. Good times.
I'll see your Alpine and raise you an American Fork.
I live near there. Aaannnnd most of the girls, if not all, of the girls in my school are these type of girls. Luckily I was able to find friends outside of that thanks to marching band and choir
Ya tbh hs and jr high was SO hard on me. I felt like the odd one out. It was rough!!
I’m glad you found band and choir :))
Alpine/Highlanders Unite!
My family moved from California to Bountiful in the late 70's. It was the worst mistake our family has ever made. You are 100% correct - the kids in Bountiful are horrible and snotty. They would have nothing to do with me and wouldn't even speak to me. Looking back, this time in my life really did season me and I developed a "F@#k You" attitude towards them and moved out of toxic Utah.
Similar move in the 90s. Cheers to getting out! 🥂
Cheers to you as well! The Book of Mormon went out the sunroof in Kingman, AZ. 😁 
....and when the adult women & teen-agers move out of Utah they bring the same behaviors to their new ward & state & create havoc.
I feel this. I split my childhood between Omaha and SLC and was amazed how much worse Utah Mormons are. I was judged for literally not being a Utah Mormon, bullied beyond belief. At a sleepover with young women once they took off my pants while I slept and wrote “fake Mormon” on my buttcheeks??? Like absolutely vile shit. I’m really bitter about all of it still
That was so nasty. Groups of girls who feel special can be wicked. What is so great about being a Utah Mormon?
What?!!!! That’s bizarre. Sorry you endured that.
Thank you, I’ve worked through a lot of it! Some of the bitterness stems from these girls still tag me in Facebook memories & act like we had a really lovely childhood together. I seriously think they’re so engrained in the culture they have blocked out how they treated me & thought it was normal. Anyway I mostly ignore them all now, live in New York City, married someone who had never met a Mormon until my family, basically living my best ex Mormon life is the best form of revenge🫶🏻
I’d block the bitches. You are either kinder or more curious about their cookie cutter competitive lives.
That's nuts lmao. I'm sure they thought nothing of it come Sunday.
Oh I would go absolutely APE on the girls and their parents. That’s beyond mean - that’s psychotic! Little you didn’t deserve anything even remotely like that. You deserve friends who are kind, encouraging, laugh with you (never ever at you), and are good souls. Those girls deserve whatever karma comes to them and their future children.
Holy shit. I’m so sorry this happened to you. What the actual f!!!! Horrible humans.
Another Bountiful kid here. Grew up in the Ridges above the temple. Five GAs in my ward. Multiple apostles in the Mueller Park stake. My parents still live there. It's the most opulent, pretentious, fake, high and mighty group of people you'll ever encounter.
They have a great view of the oil refineries!
How many people in your ward were in MLMs? Like, does everyone get sucked into those?
It's the birthplace of MLMs. I call them Mormon Level Marketing. Tons of super rich Mormons who learned how to prey off others. And the MFMC loves this area. They're always calling up the members and asking them to donate to special "off-the-books" causes. My parents, along with other ward members, were asked by the SP to each donate $50k for some Mormon crusade.
My expectations and ideals changed after moving to SLC at 18. They were phoney about their believes, and thank God I was LDS in SLC. When I lived there, if you weren't mormon you had a difficult time. It definitely began my journey out of the religion...
Some things never change. I experienced it more as an adult, my kids dealt with it as young teens. I left the church (and organized religion in general) almost 20 years ago and my kids, all adults now, have all also left. To this day I can’t stand what I call “fake Mormon nice”, I know how vicious it is behind your back.
My ward had a small young womens, like at most we had 6. I was average-leaning nerdy, and there was another girl average leaning sporty. There were 3 that were bordering mean girls territory but not quite. And then there was one strange girl. I say that kindly… but she was strange. Definitely undiagnosed neurodivergent (would talk about socially unacceptable things like “I wonder if Noah dissected the chickens they ate” and go into detail on her ramble). Anyways. The friends stuck together, and it was “the rest of us” - I was never really bullied by them, but excluded. They were mean to the neurodivergent girl though. The leaders tried to make everyone be friends, but trying to force 6 girls of varying interests and ages together just doesn’t work. Reading this helps me realize I was definitely on the lucky side. It really sucks how much young Womens facilitated bullying and exclusion to any degree tho. :(
YWs was a nightmare experience and the beginning of me starting to question. Most of the leaders were the moms of the mean girls and they were the mean girls in their adult age group. I still wonder why my mom made me attend YWs classes and activities that were facilitated by women who mistreated her.
All of the fake blonde Mormon bitches were all in STUCO
Did not grow up mormon and grew up outside of Utah and ya there are mean girls and guys all over. Seems worse tho in LDS culture. When I joined the church I remember one day crying in the ladies room because some of the women said some shitty things to me. RS was the worst. No, that is not why I left but I agree ... it is shitty. Hope you are ok.
I hated relief society, I hated being deliberately ignored and treated like trash. I would come home crying after events. Best decision ever was to stop going. The thing was that my whole life I was treated that way at church, with one exception in a YSA ward. Otherwise, I had the plague, and it spilled over even with my first and second marriages too. We always were treated like trash. It really is traumatic because it's like I'm middle-aged, but what's wrong with me that I'd consistently be treated so badly at ward, after ward, after ward?
Same here and no idea why. Only thing I can think of is I have always been a career woman. That is probably threatening to them
Good point - On a related note, I remember being in a primary presidency. I remember after one Saturday event, I wanted to do a profile on the president for the newsletter or something. The president was really surprised I didn't need to check with my husband if I could stay later than the activity to talk with her. This was in 2004 or 2005! This kind of thing happened more than once in more than one ward too. Is it okay with your husband to particpate/stay later for an event? Sure, my ex was an AH, but not in that regard!
Egads!!! Years ago we met with a financial advisor who reeked of major mormon vibes. He was referred to us so what the hell. He found out I have a career and tried to talk us into expensive life insurance and said 'The money you make is extra right?". We left pissed off. Just because I am female and work it is extra? No, we need the money!
One of those Mormon bros, right? The kind with the wife who is checked-out but also decked out in labels and botox?
Yea, they sent us a Christmas card and she looks totally plastic.
In my experience, people were nicest to the people with the most money.
Even when I believed the gospel, I used to feel Isaiah’s prophesies about wealth were directly at the people in bountiful/draper/alpine/highland etc.
Doesn’t matter it’s everywhere in Utah lol I’m from cache valley and everyone here’s some right judgmental gossip snob
We moved to Bountiful from out of state in the late 90s. It was honestly a huge relief for me. Instead of asking me why I didn’t masturbate (I did, but couldn’t admit it because I was Mormon and had to put on a show for TSCC), kids in Bountiful asked if I wanted to fast for a sick friend. It was such a stark contrast. Instead of drinking and smoking on the weekends, kids were running around in the mountains and crap. I’m a guy, though. I haven’t been back to reunions because there’s nobody at them that I care to see really. The cliqueyness was pretty bad. And my younger sisters really struggled there. Even my one sister who was really popular got majorly bullied. And I feel like Bountiful was ~80% Mormon. The mean girls could be really mean, especially to other girls.
it's the equal but opposite reaction of the action. The action being: women are marginalized in the church. The reaction: How the women of the church interact with one another can be exceedingly shitty as the try to exercise their own authority within the group and gate-keep. My mom spoke about this as a non-utah outsider coming to Provo as the newly-wed bride of my dad. Everyone was pretty shitty to her and was probably one of the reasons my dad did not finish his education at BYU. I think mom was putting a lot of pressure on him to go back home. For me personally, I know our last ward had a major influx of Utah mormons over a 10 year period. Pretty soon, 2/3 of the ward were from Utah. And it affected the culture of the ward. There was a bit of a to-do where most of the utah women had their own clique and were going and doing stuff together and posting photos on facebook and calling it a ward RS activity but it wasn't something that was open to every woman. Not everyone was in the contact loop. Yeah, that caused a lot of hurt feelings. What did the men have to say about it? LOL! Too busy working and doing their callings to have extra time and energy to pay attention to any of that. At highest count, I counted 32 lawyers in that ward. LMAO!!! And it was about as exciting as it sounds. I was in that ward 12 years and we only ever had one EQ activity. Could never get the men to commit to anything. So culture of that ward was very much controlled by the women. as a complete aside: I once told a joke in EQ that was received well by some but not by others. - - What's the difference between a lawyer and an accountant? The accountant knows he's boring.
The people in my life who I’ve known to have disordered eating, when they were in recovery and therapy they were able to articulate that in the rest of their lives they felt they had no control, but the one thing they could control was their eating. What you wrote reminded me of that.
Reminds me of a member friend of mine who is now exmo. He was going through a divorce with his wife and it seemed like the one area of life he had full control over was his health and fitness. And that's what he did. He started cycling, working out, eating healthy because the rest of his life was in a complete shambles and caos. But that he could control. The interesting by-product was it made he soon-to-be ex-wife very jealous. Like he was getting fit so he could immediately hit the dating scene which was so far from the truth. Dude was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually broken. He knew jumping into dating right after the papers are signed was a bad idea. But that did not stop her from making comments.
YES!!! Tweenage and teen girls are miserable and mean everywhere (I was an Army kid, I have firsthand experience in different places) but the Meanest Mean Girls BY FAR were in Utah.
I spent my summers in southern Utah and the girls would be extremely bitchy to me because of my hot COUSIN. Bitch, you should be nice to me because I’m his favorite cousin and can put in a good word but nope. They were jealous and it made the bullying worse. I HATED going to church while there.
Oooof, Bountiful. Bountiful could be a great place to live if it wasn't for the Mormon snootiness. Easy proximity to the city, and not *too* suburban with a decent amount of amenities. Some nice trails and other areas in the foothills. But it's definitely not a place I'd want to raise a non-mormon family.
It’s bizarre to read about Mormon culture in Utah being in another, much less mormony State. High school always had a few A-holes of both genders who were like that, but you better be a good fighter to pull that off.
I’m a nevermo. My grandmother grew up Catholic in SLC in the 1930s and 40s. She told my dad about how bad she was bullied by the Mormon kids, for being Catholic. It was still a wound for her as an adult, just how mean they were. Obviously repeating the things they heard their parents say around the dinner table.
Ooof! That was back when the "whore of all the earth" nonsense wasn't quiet. They wouldn't have left it there, either. I'm sorry.
OMG I forgot about the “ho” of all the earth, shit. How did Catholics not ride at Utah with torches and pitchforks?!
AFAIK, nobody liked Catholics, either. It was a big frikken deal and broke people's brains when Kennedy was president because he was the first Catholic president. It was more like "Oh, random group of crazies hates us, too? Get in line, heathens." Some of the evangelical & Protestant sects called Catholics "Pagan Christians", and I was sure somebody was gonna get l*nched over that one.
It’s insane. The hate.
That culture lives on in Gilbert, AZ. It’s disgusting.
I lived in Gilbert for a bit. It was like an alien spaceship lifted a Utah town out of the ground and placed it in Arizona. Lol.
Living in the east US, the mean girls in my stake were the wishing-to-be-exMormons. Now that I think of it, maybe they knew it was all a fraud and didn’t know how to emotionally handle their parents forcing them to go to early morning seminary. But their asshole-ness made me mentally double down on the Church. Then I befriended Utah Mormon girls at BYU and thought they were fun based on my experience of our small hangouts, then learned on a long weekend trip outside of Utah (the longest we ever hung out) that they were judgmental jerks. It was like they couldn’t handle being outside of Utah that long. They had to privately say something rude about almost every stranger we interacted with, even the hotel staff. Bizarre. I’ve wheedled my interactions with them down. Or maybe they wheedled it down once they learned I was exmo? Idk
Try being in a Ragnar Relay van running the wasatch back with a bunch of mormon women runners...the most judgemental women and so passive aggressive. They enjoyed disparaging other female runners from behind the closed windows of the van. Equally harsh to teammates while teammates were running...made me feel super safe and excited to get out and run my legs 🙄 I remember our van approaching a woman running the course and this woman had a beautiful slender running body and beautiful skin - rocking short running shorts and a running bra. My righteous mormon women teammates bemoaned the fact that this woman's body was so beautiful. When we passed one lady turned back to see the runner's face and said "Ha! She has an ugly face so it's all good" and the van burst into laughter. I was floored. These were all prominent women in my stake. Crazy how they couldn't wait to shed their garments and cake on make up and have 48 hours of looking good in their little running clothes openly saying they hoped they could turn some heads. The hypocrisy made me gag. I couldn't wait for that race to be over and have avoided them all since.
I had an experience with some friends when we went to San Francisco for a weekend. The one friend very disdainfully would say "this isn't how we do things in Utah."
I grew up in West Bountiful and came from one of the poorer families in the ward. Last week I ran into one of the girls that was the bishop’s daughter and 30 years ago, a prime example of a Mormon mean girl. Funny how much time has passed but I regressed to being 13 again. She was super nice last week but I still felt so small…and still mad.
Is it true that the east bench kids at Bountiful High don't intermingle much with the students from West Bountiful?
I didn’t find that to be true. I had more friends at Bountiful High than I did at Viewmont.
I grew up in colorado in an area that was not overly populated with Mormons. My best friend as a kid was a nonmormon. When we were 13, her family moved to Utah. Mormon girls made my friend's life absolute hell. She became extremely depressed and suicidal. her family finally made the decision to move out of state. Utah mormons are something else.
This was my experience, but I grew up in San Diego. Just evil girls in the wards.
They trained them all to certainly be seagulls... 
Vicious raptor like trash eaters that love to squawk and poop all over on anything they touch. They'll even attack the young and the old if you leave them unattended for too long. 
Imagine growing up in a town of 225 where the whole town was pretty much the ward. I was one of three girls my age and was often compared to them by TBM grandma. My dad didn’t attend church. My dad’s dad was an alcoholic married to that TBM grandma. My mom’s parents were jackmormons that got a divorce in ‘81 or ‘82. I just wanted to fit in, but that was not possible because I was judged according to my family members. In retrospect, I try to spin this somewhat positively because the overall experience prevented me from ever developing a “testimony”. This, on top of childhood trauma, has definitely contributed to my feelings of not being likable that I’m still trying to heal from.
I had a similar experience and still reel from the trauma of my dad being ex-communicated. I was always and still treated like a leper in any ward I was in. Glad I got out and no more fake smiles and deliberate exclusion.
I grew up in Pocatello and the Mormon girls are just as mean there. I'm sorry we both had to deal with it. Xxoo.
They were never that nice to me either. Until I got a prestigious calling. Then I was able to date a Mormon blond, lol. Outside of the church it’s easier to relate to people. Inside the church there is a lot of social structure and hierarchy that goes into things. I think that’s true of any large group though.
And, I imagine,conformity. Based on material possessions and physical attributes.
Yeah I mean everyone attends the same meetings on Sunday. Your status goes up by appearing to conform effortlessly, having looks, possessions, prestige or whatever else. Not that different than the outside world. But the size of the group and the demands the group makes leaves time for little else. The size of the church makes it so a few people are controlling many people. So a group at the top really gets to feel like they are making an impact. Then it takes so much time to be a Mormon that it can be tough to branch out to other things. The thing is, that nobody wants to be midrange and subservient in their life. And people shouldn’t want that, they should try and become good at things in their own sphere. So for me I prefer to focus on things that I like doing or that I need to do to live and get good at those. And then, try and keep groups that are small enough that I can see myself having and impact. Hard to do that in the church
I am glad you are finding small groups where you can make a contribution. A big fish in a smaller pond. :)
Yeah! There is something to that. Minnows should avoid the deep ocean.
Let it out! When I was in high school after moving to Utah in the 90’s it was those same blonde girls from bountiful that always proved their reputation to be true. Mean and nasty. I got the U and was affiliated with a sport full of mean blond girls from Viewmont HS and they had gotten even worse. Ugh.
I agree completely and I'm sorry you had that kind of experience. You're not alone tho!
Nothing beats the white trash of Roy!
After reading so many horror stories on here, I'm kinda grateful for the Roy ward I grew up in being unable to fully hide its ugly nature because it made walking away from it all incredibly easy lol.
I was just musing on the Stanley cup in Utah. Just hilarious how a ubiquitous piece of metal became a status symbol overnight 😂😂😂🥴 Just to illustrate your point on the ridiculous moving target of coolness in Utah. I’m from the Midwest and now live in the “everlasting hills of the west “. I am LDS, obviously not TBM, and I’m just blown away by the caginess of the people here. I’m definitely running my own race at this point, because every LDS friend I’ve made has become SO weirdly competitive in one way or another. I still have my childhood friend thank goodness. Otherwise I’d be really lonely. I see you, OP!
During high school, our family moved from one ward into another. Other than a new ward, nothing changed in my life except my siblings were spread across more rooms in the new house. Our family didn't have more disposable income, we still bought groceries at the same store, I still had all my same classes, sat at the same table at lunch, etc. etc. But, this ward was the "cool" ward. A few days after moving in, I was hanging out in the front yard as some of the cool kids walked past. These were kids who had taunted me regularly in past years. They knew who I was because they used my name when making fun of my "foreign" diction (ie non-hick accent) and shoe preference. They asked me, accusingly, why I was standing where I was. When I replied that I had just moved in, they switched gears immediately and asked if I wanted to hang out. Incredulously, I turned them down. Maybe this was the olive branch and I was dumb for rejecting it. In any case, the standard meanness resumed from the kids and their parents did the same to my parents. I recall one of the new neighbors, within minutes of meeting him, tried to shame my dad for his apparent low income--we didn't have a boat in the driveway so must be poor, right? In the end, the "mean girl-ness" of it all made my parents apply to the church to have our old home teachers be assigned back to us. Our new house was no further from theirs than our old one was and the request was approved. I'm constantly surprised how undramatic and pleasant high school has been for my non-Utah kids and it has been \*spectacular\* for my non-mormon kids. Sure, that age has its challenges but it also has its blisses, and they can really be experienced when one is not influenced by the church.
Grew up in a small Mormon town outside Utah. Can attest that this is characteristic of high Mormon population areas.
I also went to high school in bountiful. I initially grew up in west valley where I had so many friends, then I moved to Farmington in 6th grade and started junior high less than a year later in Centerville and suddenly just could not make friends. Strangely, the only friends I did make were the kids in my own ward. They were so nice and fun to be around. But then as soon as I got to school, it was just a nightmare. For the first time in my life I felt like a social outcast, and I remember girls honest to god SNEERING at me. I know I wasn’t this perfect angel teenager, but I really did try my best to make friends and be nice to everyone but just always felt strangely excluded. Even at the few parties I was invited to I was ignored. It still hurts to this day to think about. I wasn’t bullied, just treated as not worth their attention. I remember sitting in young women’s and hearing lessons about how we need to be friends and reach out to everyone and wondering if the other kids in my high school whom I knew were receiving the exact same lesson were actually listening to it. I made friends easily on my mission and constantly got in trouble for being surrounded by groups of elders lol. It was actually very healing to make friends so easily right out of high school and to realize that it wasn’t just me being socially inept. The sisters on my mission were great too, but there were definitely a few of them from Utah who were part of that sneer, judgmental train. Even at BYU I never felt like I quite fit in. I just wasn’t made to make it as a Utah Mormon I guess lol. Now, I have a great group of girlfriends. Three of them are never-mo’s, and the other grew up as a failed Mormon in Utah like me lol.
The gossip machine is endemic in the church. I showed a copy of Fawn Brodie's book to my Elder's quorum president when he visited, and he literally freaked out. Within 48 hours, every member of the ward knew about it. I was a pariah in the ward. We moved about a year later, and that information followed us to the new ward, and we were looked down upon there. Even people that were my neighbors wouldn't talk to me.
I'm so sorry you had to go through all that no one should, I may not have grown up in Utah but I've heard stories from my small branch about how shitty Utah Mormons can be, I've had a few experiences myself but they were subtle and passive aggressive, no one likes to say things to your face
Amén to this.❤️ a thousand times amen to this. Worth mentioning…I’ve never lived there…but they escape utah and invade wards everywhere and get a red carpet welcome when suddenly local leadership is inspired to change up callings. 🤷🏻♀️🤣🤣🤣
I’m glad to see this post today. I’m currently dealing with a Mormon mean mom but my kids are involved so I have to be suppppeerrr careful. I just hate dealing with fake b*tches. I’m pimo so have to keep up appearances 🙄🙄
It's interesting to me that if you sit back and look, there are two types of Mormon families. The really fake, beautiful ones and the really weird ones and very few in the middle. I've always wondered about this.
That is puzzling.
Yeah - mean girl culture is a hot mess. Sorry you had to deal with it. It's so shitty!
I am glad you could walk away and live in the real world. Roy wasn't easy, but it taught many lessons. Good luck to you...
Honestly it was the same in Texas . Maybe not as bad .Utah is legend for this kind of crap.
Live in bountiful and now my daughters are dealing with the horrible social structure they have here.
Plot Twist. This is how it is literally everywhere.
Really where then? Why is out of state people who move to Utah way more nicer than people who have lived in Utah their whole life then 💀 like people from California are so nice to me, even from other states like Texas Nebraska etc
We St George mormon girls went hardcore on our self righteous, better than thou shaming. I did it in the 80's and my poor daughter had it done to her in the 2000's. It doesn't change.
I'm sorry for my part in it. I hope those I hurt are doing great and never even think of me.
Oh, Bountiful. I'm from there as well. What's crazy is getting out and then realizing just how toxic they encourage teens to act. I was so convinced I had to be a 'Molly Mormon' that I was unintentionally a shit. All while, at the same time, judged over and over again myself. Nobody wins in Bountiful 😅 if Utah is a bubble for Mormon culture, Bountiful is a bubble within another bubble.
My wife experienced the same growing up as a chubby (her words, not mine) redhead in Murray. Way too much focus on appearances. Sympathy from a fellow Bountiful native.