Making a tradwife from scratch: Should women stay in the kitchen?
… or do we have bigger problems to unpack? What role does internalized misogyny play and why do women belong in the kitchen after all?
Cooking, baking, cleaning: Traditional role models are currently trending among young women on TikTok. Where does the longing for a life as a housewife come from?
A life for the home, children and husband: more and more women on TikTok seem to be yearning for traditional role models. The hashtag ‘tradwife’ is currently going viral on the video platform. In short clips, young women show themselves cooking and cleaning, explaining that they want to submit to a man as they did in the 1950s. Why glorify a time when women were oppressed?
According to a report by the news platform Buzzfeed, the ‘tradwifes’ on TikTok live by a strictly conservative idea. They are explicitly opposed to feminist perspectives on independence. The label ‘tradwife’ used to be associated with the right-wing populist scene of the alt-right movement in the US. Now the trend is spreading. The hashtag now has 96.6 million views on TikTok.
The woman stays home and does the housework’ 24-year-old Estee Williams is one of the most popular ‘tradwife’ influencers on the video platform. In a video, Williams explains what she thinks the term means: “It’s a woman who has chosen to live a more traditional life with ultra-traditional gender roles. So the man goes out and works and takes care of the family. The woman stays at home and takes care of the household and the children, if there are any.
Carolina Tolstik, known as ‘Malischka’, is one of the tradwives causing a stir on social media. She insists that although her posts are exaggerated, she sees herself as a feminist who supports the right of every woman to choose her own path – even if it leads back to a domestic role. Unlike others, she describes herself as a ‘stay at home girl’.
But the problem is far-reaching and partly linked to political movements: There is a worrying overlap between the Tradwife movement and the ‘alt-right’ in the US. White supremacists in particular use this platform to promote the idea that white women should be subservient to men and focus on having white children.
Not every woman who sees herself as a trad wife identifies with right-wing ideologies. However, even without direct affiliation or conscious intention, fulfilling these role models can indirectly contribute to the spread of the ideas associated with them. Julia Stüve, an expert in communication studies, explained on Deutschlandfunk radio that the white right in particular uses this attractively packaged role model to recruit young women for its misogynistic ideologies. Even if this is still a marginal phenomenon, it is important to take such developments seriously and to question them critically.
Perhaps the most famous of all the tradwives is Nara Smith. Based in LA, Smith is a 22-year-old mother of three, content creator, model and housewife who has become known for her elaborate and dreamy recipe videos. Soft piano music plays as the model, dressed in chic outfits, says in an airy, hushed voice that she’s going to make a grilled cheese sandwich or cereal for her toddlers and model husband, Lucky Blue Smith. She then proceeds to make it all from scratch (as in, she literally makes the cheese from curds and whey – who has the time?!). Nara Smith’s social media presence is a masterclass in aesthetic allure, and paints a picture of a life that is both serene and purposeful – one that prioritises slow homemaking over the capitalist grind (though she’s certainly earning an income from social media). She’s a beautiful, young, mixed-race black woman who loves and is loved. Smith’s 6.9 million TikTok followers are captivated.
As a young mother and housewife, Nara Smith’s content falls (somewhat awkwardly) within the ever-growing and controversial “trad wife” movement on social media – although she’s never explicitly claimed to be one. “I always wanted to be a young mum because growing up, my dad always told us that he regretted having kids later in life,” she said in a clarification video on TikTok. “So I took that advice and it’s one of the best decisions I could have made and I know it’s not for everyone.” I have nothing against Smith or her content. But I’d be naive to think that the life she represents is attainable or without its setbacks. Being a “trad wife” content creator with millions of followers and access to an income outside of your partner is not the same as being a traditional wife at home with no income or financial protection outside of a husband. Staying at home to work, clean and raise children is work. We do housewives a disservice when we position their contributions to their households as anything but. And the biggest myth of all is that it can’t be hard.
Nara Smith might be a tradwife influencer but she definitely does not fall in the category of pushing a certain agenda. Let’s elaborate: The main source of criticism is coming from users based in America, stating the influencer is using her platform to glamorize the “traditional domestic gender roles” on videos where Smith is making bread, pasta, gum and even soda from scratch. But is she really pushing gender norms or are (american) users just disconnected from their food? People in Guatemala are grinding their own corn to make tortillas, people in China are making their own dumplings from scratch, people in Germany are making their own bread, people in Italy are making their own pasta and cheese. It’s not more normal to eat a dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget that’s only 25% chicken made by someone enslaved by the prison industrial complex, and it is definitely not more feminist.
Many people work full time and still make their own yogurt, bread, desserts, pastries, if they want hummus they start soaking chickpeas, and when they wake up wanting Belgian waffles, they would take out flour and vanilla, not a box and a microwave.
Focusing on the statement Smith would be pushing gender roles there is one thing to say: Not only is her husband frequently in the videos, not only cooking with her but sometimes cooking for her, she frequently talks about working on her page. The only reason that people don’t perceive it as her working, is because the field that she works in, modeling and social media, are female-dominated fields, hence considered more feminine, and therefore people perceive don’t it as a real job, respectable labor.
Because for so many people, feminism isn’t about equality, equity, and liberation, it is about conforming to a man’s world. It is about looking down on feminine perceived tasks and outsourcing them to less privileged women.
There is plenty of toxic content and even more harmful tradwive content on the internet (see the examples above) but let’s be clear: Women choosing to stay at home and doing most of the labor work is not that!
