The False Facade Of The Trad Wives

‘Bake a sourdough loaf with me’, ‘get ready with me as I spend a day on the farm’, ‘how to sew your own apron’ – these are just some of the videos that pop up these days as soon as I open my TikTok. From Nara Smith to Ballerina Farm, the trad wives are taking over – and they don’t seem to be getting any less popular any time soon. The videos are almost hypnotically soothing, like a new form of ASMR, easy watching while I’m scrolling. They’re a fantasy, but are they harmless?

A trad wife is very different as a concept to a stay at home mother. A stay at home mother is someone who has either chosen or is in a position where it is necessary for them to stay at home raising children. There is no ideology or political beliefs tied to it. A trad wife is rooted in right wing christian ideology and involves women in a very submissive role to men. If a woman is at home making her own chewing gum and sewing her own clothes, she has no time to work or form her own thoughts and opinions – this is the right wing fantasy.

Women trapped at home with their sole focus being looking beautiful and performing for their husband means they can’t be out fighting for our rights. Let’s not forget the original 1950s trad wife was in fact propaganda by the US government to try help declining birth rates following WWII – a time when women were going out in the workforce more than ever before. The idea of the trad wife was coined and aimed to lure women out of the ‘men’s jobs’ and back in the home where they belonged. The ideal is in fact just that – an idea.

 

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A post shared by Hannah Neeleman (@ballerinafarm)

There’s also a link to the economic climate and the rise of the trad wife ideal. As the recession looms, the far right rises and so in turn does the fantasy of the trad wife. Snow White for example, a film about a beautiful woman who stays at home cooking and cleaning for men, was hugely popular in 1930s, a time of deep economic downturn.

In times of economic crisis, right wing politics tend to thrive. People are angry. They need somewhere to channel their anger and the right wing ideology feeds into this perfectly. Of course we can’t blame young people today for yearning for a simpler, undoubtedly privileged life. There are so many anxieties facing us from recession to climate change, the housing crisis to political unrest and the rising cost of living.

It can feel as though we’re working harder than ever for less benefits and it may seem easier to remove all these stresses from life and instead focus on baking a cake with a baby strapped to your chest, but we need to remember that even the life of a trad wife is not as simple as it may seem.

Take Nara Smith for example, often lauded as Queen of the Trad Wives. She does frivolous yet time consuming tasks such as making ice cream from scratch when her children are craving something sweet on a hot day. She supposedly spends hours on these wholesome cooking expeditions creating an idyllic image of a simple woman who provides fresh food for her family daily.

 

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A post shared by Nara Smith (@naraaziza)

However what she leaves out is that she’s absolutely filthy rich. Her videos earn her millions and along with many other trad wife content creators, her videos are her real job, not her trad wife skills. Nara and the majority of trad wives online rarely show themselves doing daily tasks such as cleaning, it’s always more romanticised fun jobs like baking sourdough. What they leave out of their content is the fact that the majority of people simply do not have the time or resources to milk their own cows whenever their kids are craving a milkshake.

They say you can have it all but they leave out the key to this – the money they make from their videos. The majority of women who choose to live this life wouldn’t be making millions from it which is something the trad wife influencers seem to always gloss over when they’re showing their aspirational way of living.

For those of us who don’t create content for millions online, living this life would leave the woman wholly under the financial control of her husband who earns all the money. For so many, this could potentially be an extremely dangerous position to be in – no independence and no time to build a life outside of her husband, kids and the home.

Every woman is entitled to live her life as she pleases, whether that’s working a 9-5 or staying at home and living a more ‘traditional’ life, but it’s important to be aware of the reality of the fetishisation of trad wives on social media and where it comes from. This is not about criticising individual women for their individual choices, it’s about being conscious of the collective impact.

@gubbahomestead1 A “trad wife” is a woman who embraces traditional roles within the household, but believes that doing so does not mean sacrificing her rights or freedoms. I’m all for it. #homestead #homesteader ♬ Beautiful and emotional instrumental music(1044200) – MaxRecStudio

Feminism is of course about women having choices but most importantly it’s about collective liberation. For one woman to be free, we all have to be free. A rich white woman choosing to be a trad wife is very different to a lower class woman of colour being forced to stay at home. Feminism is all about choice and the lack thereof that some women have. Limiting women’s choices in life is a key far right ideology – men are the ones who should be working and earning money, men are the ones with control, men are the ones with power.

Of course, some of the trad wife content is intended to be solely for entertainment – every trad wife influencer is not a far right conspirator trying to trap innocent women into their web of hate, but it would be remiss of us as a society to not recognise the correlation between placing a huge emphasis on ‘traditional’ gender roles and the rise in outspoken hatred against women, such as far-right commentator Candace Owens saying that “every societal ill that we are facing today is because of women.” (Owen’s is a big supporter of the trad wife movement for what it’s worth).

This is not to blame the women who make these videos. This is a much more widespread problem than just some videos on TikTok. But in a society that puts so much emphasis on our online world, it’s good for us to remember that sometimes an online fantasy world is just that, a fantasy.

Words by Ciara Moran