“Maybe it was fun, maybe it was weird. I’m not sure.” That was Meri Brown’s own verdict, delivered mid-shopping-trip, on the dress code Kody Brown set for his four wives. It came on Sister Wives season 21, episode 6, “Therapy by Fire,” which aired Sunday, November 8. Shopping with best friend Jenn Sullivan, Meri laughed off the idea of buying ’90s overalls — “Kody tried to get me to buy overalls like in the ’90s when we first got married and I’m like, ‘No way’” — then admitted, in the same breath, “These are kind of cute.”
The overalls were the joke. The hoodies were the confession. “He had a lot of suggestions of how I should dress,” Meri said. “He liked to choose the clothes that I wore.” Kody, she said, disliked the outfit she wore on their first meet-up — and his taste did not stop with her. “He had certain sweatshirts or hoodies or whatever that he liked to have all of this wear so we could all match.” More than 30 years of “suggestions” later, she sees it differently: “I didn’t think it was weird at the time. When I think about it now, I think it’s, like, really weird and very controlling.” That scene — the white floral overalls she held up in the shop — is only half the story.
Team “Controlling. It Was Controlling.”
When TLC shared a clip of the moment, the first camp did not hesitate. One viewer wrote, simply, “Controlling. It was Controlling.” For this side, the hoodies are just the receipt for three decades of “suggestions” that started on day one. Christine handed this camp a second exhibit last year, saying Kody gave extra attention to wives who wore their makeup the way he liked it. “He liked makeup. It was like, you had to always, always look nice,” she said. Robyn, Christine said, made herself the way Kody liked — and he compared the other wives to her. That comparison lands differently now that the trust between Meri and Robyn is already gone.
Team “The Weird Part Was the Four Wives”
The other camp watched the same clip and landed somewhere else entirely. “The weird part was the four wives, more so than the matching hoodies,” another viewer wrote — the matching was the least strange part of a plural marriage. Their star witness is Meri herself, who still will not call it one thing or the other. There is also the version Meri told in the same episode, where a young Kody took her out and bought her outfits because, as she put it, he wanted her to look good. Care, in that memory, not control. And the man handing out the fashion rules is famous for a visor and a pair of ever-present work gloves.
Meri and Janelle in matching tank tops in an early Sister Wives season — the matching-outfits era Meri is now looking back on. (Photo: TLC via The Ashley’s Reality Roundup)
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The one thing nobody is arguing about is the ending. Meri has said she hopes a future partner will share her taste in clothing — and this time, the final say on her wardrobe belongs to her. Meri, Janelle and Christine melted down the rings Kody had given them, the rings going into the fire as the last piece of the old uniform came off. Kody has not publicly responded, according to reports, and he and Robyn left the series before season 21 — so no rebuttal is coming to break the tie. The hoodies are history. The argument about them is not.
Robyn Brown in a Sister Wives confessional. (Photo: TLC via The Ashley’s Reality Roundup)
So where do you land on Meri’s matching hoodies — a control tell she could not name for 30 years, or a quirky husband habit the internet is over-reading now that the marriage is over? Both camps quote the same woman, who quotes herself in two directions at once. Meri is still somewhere in the middle, and until she picks a side, the fans will keep picking one for her.
