SALT LAKE CITY — In a bold move to align Utah’s branding with its most culturally accurate representation, Governor Spencer Cox announced Monday that a formerly scenic and sparsely visited stretch of land around the Great Salt Lake will be officially renamed “Jersey Shore.”
The decision comes in the wake of the hit reality series Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, a show that critics have described as “a high-octane blend of hair extensions, alcohol hiding in soda bottles, and vague spiritual gaslighting,” and which Governor Cox admits is “about as Mormon as a Long Island iced tea at a Vegas bachelorette party.”
“After watching three minutes of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, I turned to my wife and said, ‘We need to rename the lake area immediately,’” said Governor Cox during the press conference, held inside the Hot Topic store at the Gateway Mall. “These women are not only redefining Utah’s public image, they’re redefining biology. One of them referred to her collagen injections as ‘a revelation from the Lord.’ I don’t think Joseph Smith saw that one coming.”
The show, which is marketed as an intimate look into the lives of Mormon housewives, features women with names like Brittanynn, Kaycee-Lynn, and Valtrexia, none of whom appear to have ever been within a ten-mile radius of a Relief Society meeting, but somehow know Mormon culture extremely well. The cast spends most episodes tanning by being unrighteous, inventing new forms of spiritual snake oils, and fighting over whose “celestial man” is “the most alpha during CrossFit.”
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Utahns are divided about the shoreline’s new name. Some worry it sends the wrong message, while others are just confused. Proponents of saving the Great Salt Lake from collapse don’t see how adding more trash to the lake could help. The LDS community however is wondering why these women do not follow the commandments.
“I thought it was going to be a show about quilting and quiet judgment,” said local Relief Society President Janice H. Benson, who says she watched the pilot with her husband and hasn’t taken the sacrament ever since. “Instead, I saw a woman in a rhinestone bikini desecrate the sacred calling of blending in.”
Nevertheless, tourism officials are thrilled by the rebranding. “Let’s be honest, no one was swimming in the Great Salt Lake anyway,” said Kevin Moore of the Utah Office of Tourism. “Now we’ve got a chance to turn it into a full-on cultural destination. We’re already building a boardwalk, adding artificial tanning stations, and changing the name of Antelope Island to Little Staten Island.
In a gesture of commitment to the rebrand, Governor Cox says he’s personally overseeing the launch of the new state-sponsored event: Fistfight Family Home Evening, where cast members of Secret Lives will resolve disputes over protein shakes and Instagram follower counts in a roped-off portion of the lakebed.
When asked for comment, producers of the show maintained that the series is “a deeply authentic portrayal of Mormon values, if you ignore doctrine, modesty, scripture, community standards, and most forms of recognizable human empathy, and make tailor it to the male gaze… wait maybe they really are Mormon.”
