News: The tradwife fantasy hides a backbreaking reality

Sunday, May 19, 2024

The tradwife fantasy hides a backbreaking reality

An illustration of a person in a purple lake

Thanks to tradwife influencers like Hannah Neeleman, the popularity of the "traditional" way of life, commonly referred to as being a "tradwife," is only continuing to grow. After months of sharing tweets within the Eater newsroom and privately discussing the trend's implications, I decided to get more directly involved, so I tried to live like a tradwife for just two days. And I failed — miserably. (Not as miserably as football player Harrison Butker failed in trying to inspire young college graduates to follow the same path, but close.)

The tradwife trend is based upon the idea that two married people agree to each formally own certain responsibilities in the home sphere. It's a trend that takes socially conservative values and repackages them into an illusion that assures viewers they don't need money, status, extensive childcare, or other professional or familial support to have this peaceful life; they just need elbow grease and an unflinchingly calm exterior. Ideally, the woman is praised for being a "worthy" wife who stops at nothing to provide her family with a life of wholesome, scratch-made foods, and a sparkling clean home. In the course of those 48 hours I spent emulating the tradwife lifestyle, what was once straightforward cooking became needlessly complex, and the labor more time-intensive and grueling. As for my fulfillment from this onslaught of tasks? Laughably non-existent.

A darker side of tradwifery is starting to emerge. Lauren Southern, a woman who rose to fame in Canada for her right-wing, pro-tradwife content, recently detailed the abusive nature of the arrangement with her husband in an interview with UnHerd. Southern described her experience in a "traditional" marriage as a "living hell," one in which she experienced domestic abuse and was responsible for every element of domestic labor, from cutting the lawns to cooking meals, and even doing her husband's homework.

Previously in her social media career, Southern was decidedly more of a firebrand than an influencer like Neeleman. Where Southern was making YouTube videos openly repudiating feminism, Neeleman serenely makes bread and tends to her animals on Ballerina Farm, which she runs with her husband. The two women represent both ends of the tradwife spectrum, one that seems to actively seek to subjugate women and lock them into relationships they cannot escape. And while I certainly don't think the YouTube videos from Southern's extreme right-wing era are harmless, I think we're underestimating the harm that can be caused by even the most seemingly innocent tradwife content.

The premise of a "simpler life" is seductive, especially if you've only seen short snippets and highlight reels on TikTok. Everything feels so hard right now, and who among us feels fulfilled with working 40 hours per week to pay for a life that is increasingly unaffordable? So, the trend seems hand-picked for the weary who daydream of greener pastures: the labor it portrays appears to be immediately productive and offers the illusion of self-determination. (Spending hours making cereal from scratch is never a waste of time if you're the sole person deciding how your time will be spent, I suppose.) The idea of being able to ignore the horrors of the nightly news as you raise cute baby cows and bake bread in a flowy dress is uniquely alluring in this moment. I imagine that is especially true for young women looking at a future that gets scarier by the day.

But none of these videos show what actually lurks beneath the surface. There is, of course, no acknowledgment of a husband's obligation to his wife, or mention of where the necessary additional domestic support might come from while a woman trudges through an unending to-do list — only hers to him. At the very best, that means a life of quiet subservience filled with a whole lot of work, and much of it — as I discovered for myself — is thankless and unfulfilling. At worst, it means overt abuse and a crushing sense of isolation and duty that a 3-minute TikTok video can never fully capture. —Amy McCarthy, Eater.com reporter

An illustration of a exhausted workers operating a restaurant kitchen while holding children.

Illustration by Adriana Sanchez

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That's that me... Expresso?

At Eater, we take copy editing seriously. You're probably wondering, Sure, but how seriously? Since we're believers in showing, rather than telling, we're offering a glimpse into the Eater Slack channel, where our copy editors led a conversation about the proper way to refer to the beloved brew (as well as pop musician Sabrina Carpenter's viral song of the summer). The conversation began innocently enough when they shared Merriam-Webster's recent exploration of the subject as an article of interest. More than 110 comments later, the Eater crew explored the many nuances of why, and how, our readers might use each variation, all while making a few jokes along the way.

The takeaway? We're word nerds to our cores, even if we didn't drastically change our style guide for this particular semantic antic, and we will continue singing, "That's that me expresso" to ourselves. We are, however, unanimously confused why Carpenter never actually consumes espresso in the music video — but that's an investigation for another day.