It’s late afternoon, the light is glinting off the snow and beaming directly into my eyes. Irritated, I spin around in my chair, turning my back to the window, hunched over my laptop. Instead of doing the 10+ tasks I need to be doing today, I am deep in the r/tradwives subreddit.
User WildMaineBlueberry87 comments:
My biggest rule is that I need to be home before dark for my safety. As it stays light later, I can stay out later. I can be with my husband, either of my teen sons, or anyone he trusts. During the day I can come and go as I please. I need to ask to spend money on anything out of the ordinary. Not groceries or necessities or anything like that. My pizza oven or Adirondack chairs. He doesn’t need to ask permission. Those are the big two. I understand and respect his reasons and I follow them. It’s been like this for the entire 19 years we’ve been together and I’m fine with them. If they work, they work.
I scroll past this comment and then scroll back up to it 30 minutes later. I’m baffled, confused, even frustrated. “My biggest rule is that I need to be home before dark for my safety. As it stays light later, I can stay out later.” “During the day I can come and go as I please.” For people not associated with the tradwife movement, such a statement to describe a marriage might immediately invoke a reaction of disbelief, and even revulsion. Why does an adult woman need to be governed under the rule of her husband to come home before it gets dark out? It’s controlling; reminiscent of how our parents used to tell us as children to be home before the streetlights turn on. “During the day I can come and go as I please.” It seems, well, obvious? Why would it even need to be clarified or discussed that a grown woman can come and go as she pleases?
After diving into tradwife/mom subreddits, influencer accounts, “The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife,” by Sophie Elmhirst for The New Yorker, Pink Pilled by Lois Shearing, and several other fascinating (and terrifying) sources, I would argue this domestic subjugation is caused by a desire for the comfort that comes from clearly defined roles. If you still don’t know what the tradwife phenomenon is, you might have encountered it already. Instagram accounts like ballerinafarm, touting 10.1 million followers, feature Hannah Neelman, a former Julliard ballerina turned farmer/ influencer, embodying the archetype of the current tradwife.
She’s white, thin, and Mormon, with long blonde hair hanging below her shoulders or pulled back in twin braids. Her videos feature her in the kitchen, wearing flowy prairie dresses and hand-making organic Rice Krispy treats. The tradwife movement often and mostly, but not exclusively, involves some degree of conflation with conservative values and politics. The tradwife ideology centers around, well, tradition. A way of living and operating a household that is reminiscent of the nuclear family. Only now instead of Betty Crocker cookbooks and Jello salads, modern tradwives have switched to sourdough starters and kombucha cultures. They cook with herbs from their own gardens, grind their own whole-wheat flour. When they need eggs, they pop out to the chicken coop in the backyard, not a supermarket. This sounds ideal, but you know what they say: things that seem to be too good to be true, probably are.
If you’re anything like me, queer and admittedly a bit judgmental, I think it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that someone like WildMaineBlueberry87 is being manipulated and infantilized. That adhering to such “rules” from her husband, reflects some kind of inward-turned misogyny and disempowerment. However, we have to consider that the tradwife is an adult woman consenting to this arrangement. Even though our inward feminists may bristle, we are dismissing her autonomy by believing she is being coerced, manipulated, or even abused. I think for me, the biggest question still, is why? Why would this domestic relationship be appealing when women have spent years in resistance against this narrative?
I’m immediately reminded of BDSM. Particularly the Dominant/submissive dynamic. Cynthia Slater, a sex educator, activist, and leader of the early BDSM community, defines a dom-sub relationship as “a consensual, eroticized exchange of power.” The appeal of trad-wifery seems to be the relinquishing of power. Bestowing so much faith in your partner that you trust them to tie you up to the point of total immobilization and hit you with a paddle. (The paddle of the patriarchy!)
Or, if you’re a tradwife, allowing your husband total control of your spending and finances. In either scenario, the foundation is a total, unyielding trust in your partner that they have your best interest in mind and will protect and guide you, through methods of unequal control. Is it fair to speculate that the consent of a woman entering into this tradwife arrangement is heavily influenced by societal conditioning from a young age? This fundamental belief that the house is a woman’s domain, as is child-rearing, emotional labor, and peacekeeping in relationships. That men are controlling, emotionally aloof, and dangerous, but are also powerful providers and leaders.
My issue is not with people who choose to engage in a “traditional,” heteronormative relationship dynamic, it’s with the underlying ideology of the tradwife as a movement. At its core, there lies the unspoken or blatant philosophy that women are inherently created both biologically and cosmically to be subservient to men. An ideology that is not new; an ideology that has historically wreaked havoc on women.
This not only conflates genitalia and biological sex with the psycho/social concept of “gender,” but ignores its deeply ingrained and conditioned influence on how men and women interact with the world, experience relationships, and conceptualize themselves. It is stereotypically assumed that women are more emotionally sensitive; are better listeners and caretakers. Men are goal-oriented and aggressive; better providers and decision-makers. There are small truths in every stereotype, but it has been culturally perpetuated to a degree so stringent that only now are we seeing women and men break out of these stifling identities. Women have struggled to show their strength, and men have had a hard time allowing themselves to be vulnerable.
What’s different in the modern tradwives’ moment is that these women are supporting their households from social media royalties, gained by influencing others to adhere to their traditional lifestyle. The original patriarchal dynamic did not give women agency for their own financial earnings, but they are now doubling down on the same system that oppressed them. While misogyny and sexism are still alive and well, this is just no longer the entire reality of how women are supposed to exist. The modern woman is expected to have her own career, ambitions, and money, but still to marry, birth, and raise children. Best of both worlds, huh?
Modern heterosexual relationships, and perhaps relationships in general, seem to be moving towards a more fluid dynamic. The husband can work from home and watch the kids while mom is in the office. Husband and wife split the bills, step up when needed, and fill in the gaps. There aren’t so many set role-based expectations around gender as in the past. If mom has to stay late at the office, dad can take the kids to soccer, even if that is usually mom’s responsibility, and vice-versa.
The tradwife philosophy is based on these stereotypical notions of what a woman “should” be, yet in a modern context, the idea of a woman wanting to stay home with the kids, cook for her husband and depend on him financially and not work, seems almost strangely transgressive? Or taboo? Is there too much pressure on the modern woman to “have it all,” career, kids, family, finances, and a “Girl Boss” mentality?
In our world of Tinder hookups and every friend of a friend you know making an OnlyFans, it’s understandable why some women feel overwhelmed, pressured, and even disgusted with the current narrative around womanhood, sexuality, and partnership, leading them to run into the arms of trad-wifery. What’s that quote about trading one cage for another? Will we, as a society, stop finding ways to rebrand and ever move past this idea that a woman’s sex, sexuality, attractiveness, and child-bearing ability are her largest, if not only social capital and power? •
Illustration: Maddy Bormes @maddy__makes
