Tradwives

By the way even the 1950s housewife only stayed home until the children went to school. Once they went to school they either got a job, cared for elderly family, or became active in the church or with voluntary work. When I was a child housewives ran lots of local voluntary groups and activities. Very few women really stayed at home doing housework for the rest of their life.

There have been women since the 1970s who have worked making money out of telling other women to be a housewife like them. It's nothing new.
This trad wife is not a trad wife. She works as an influencer and will be making money so is not at all dependent on her husband.
The fact she makes up rules for herself shows even more she is playing with it.

I haven’t said that they aren’t, of course society is still inherently misogynistic and we have a really really long way to go to escape that. But I still believe that women should be allowed to make their own choices in life. As I say, no one is attacking working class men’s choices. And the idea that you have to tell other women how to live and abide by your view of feminism isn’t actually giving them any kind of freedom. If a woman chooses to do Only Fans because it gives her the freedom to work her own hours and make her own money then I will always support her choice and freedom to do so. That doesn’t mean that I support the oppression of women, the general sexualisation of women and the ongoing issues that women around the world suffer from.

It’s not about ‘patting women on the back and validating every decision they make’. You don’t need to be patronising to make your point.

Nothing Christian about this movement - on the contrary, it's a sort of fetish I think.

I know quite a few young Christian women who are SAHM's (at least until their youngest child starts school) and they don't fetishise their lifestyle in this way.

They certainly don't consider themselves to be part of any movement. They are just going what they consider best for their family at that point in their lives (while wearing normal clothes, not 50's housewife costumes!)

And how does it matter if your husband taught you how to cook and clean? I learned many things from my husband and he has learned stuff from me.

You could be cooking and cleaning half the time, your husband half the time and both of you could have had jobs.

You are saying you become a SAHM to prove some point to your mother who didn’t teach you how to cook and clean? So you are trying to be the very best housewife you can be?!

@vimtogirl Why did your daughter assume that when she was an adult YOU would babysit her kids allowing her to work? Why not her dad who would presumably also be retired by then?

You think she hasn’t internalised these roles but she clearly has.

It annoys me that these weirdos are embracing 1950s style vintage dresses. I've been wearing that style of dress for ages and now ppl are going to think I'm a tradwife 😫

This.

Good post, @LolaSmiles.

Surely the point of feminism is to allow women the freedom to make their own choices in life? The same as men have choices in life?
The point of feminism is to dismantle female oppression, not to pay individual women on the back and validate every decision they make.

Part of being feminist is, or should be, a willingness to be open to the fact that most of your choices aren't made in a vacuum and that you yourself have been socialised in a world that views women as the second class sex.

The individualistic 'you do you' style of feminism does women a huge amount of harm because it conveniently steers the conversation away from the systemic issues and awkward questions.

Surely if they’re making money on social media then that is their job and they aren’t solely dependent on their husbands? It just isn’t real.

I was indoctrinated into a religion from birth and raised to be a submissive, stay at home parent. No importance was placed on my education as it was expected I would never work. “Career women” were sneered at by the religious community and portrayed as unattractive. Fortunately, I “escaped” in my twenties (having had two children at this point) and it wasn’t too late to get an education and employment. It has been much harder and I’m much poorer than I would have been had I not been forced into that lifestyle. I’m now a single parent and it feels so easy in comparison.

People raised in that sort of community generally don’t know much about social media and are controlled. The ones posting this fantasy life are not being forced into it.

Surely the point of feminism is to allow women the freedom to make their own choices in life? The same as men have choices in life? Some men don’t vote but I don’t see anyone ever shouting at them about how long it was fought for all men to be equal enough to vote. Yet women are always clobbered with the argument that the suffragettes fought and died for their right to vote (even though Emmeline Pankhurst actually didn’t want working class women to get the vote but that’s an argument for another day). Yes those women fought and died for us to have the right to bite, but it’s up to us if we choose to exercise that right. That’s what feminism should be. If a woman wants to wear heels, sell her body to men, or be a tradwife that should be her right, her right to choose, without being told that she doesn’t support other women. If that women is being forced into it or if she is trying to force others into it, that’s different. But as women we should ensure that other women have the right to choose. What’s going on with women in the world who are forced into this way of life is disgusting, but that’s an issue with men, not with other women who choose to live a subservient life. Is it a truly subservient life? No probably not, but they aren’t going around saying ‘I love it when my husband beats me into doing the cooking’ they’re saying ‘I love doing the cooking for my husband, it’s a relationship that we both feels works for us’.

Stepford. This is a male fantasy that she is both accommodating and monetising. It's massively unhealthy for women. Don't indulge it.

@vimtogirl I didn't really learn to clean either. My mother was a stay at home mum but she never taught me how to cook nor clean because she just did it all. Guess what? It's not that hard to do. I didn't feel hard done by. I now follow an app that tells me how to do it in half an hour a day! Luckily I have a job to fill in the rest of the time. You say you want your daughter to know how to clean and are teaching your sons to clean so that they know how hard women work. So, no matter what you say, you are limiting your children in their roles and expectations. You are expecting your sons to have a stay at home wife who they ' appreciate,' which I'm sure will be just as helpful as being a husband that pulls his weight round the house and your daughter to make sure she knows how to clean a house well. What happens if your children can't afford the lifestyle? You need a lot of money to sustain it. There is a reason that the most traditional religious co.munities are often the poorest. Its because they struggle on with half their populations undereducated and under utilised.

I think the other issue with it being role play, is that they are hoping to be influencers and influence young women into aspiring to live that way.

Marrying a man who goes along with role playing on instagram is very different to man who genuinely wants a trad wife. The latter is far more likely to be co trolling cunt.

It’s more like role playing an abusive marriage. Which is also a hugely dangerous kink that’s becoming more and more popular on social media. With grown women editing the photos to look younger. Then taking videos or photos of them in situations where it looks like they are being abused, force fed, in a dingy room looking nervous.

Or the ‘let’s pack my husbands lunch together’ videos where the voice over drops hints that the husband is seriously abusing them. All for attention. Role playing abuse isn’t ok

So it’s not really just a case of ‘what they want to do is their business’.

Absolutely! They are play acting ' Tradwives' while women are being stoned to death for minor indiscretions when they are forced to live their lives like that.

If you think the point of feminism was to allow some women to cosplay submission to patriarchy, you really need to do some reading.

And whose tradition is is anyway? 50s American traditional housewife was largely an advertising campaign dreamed up by ‘Madmen’. Women looking glam and smiley in floral dresses and greeting husbands at the door with slippers? This wasn’t the reality for most women, even white ones.

Yes I was going to say that this is a far right subculture. Push back against feminism and part of great replacement theory. Miriam Cates fantasy world.

The man I knew who wound up marrying someone (within a few weeks of meeting her…) who used “hashtag tradwife” and went all in with the pink, frilly aprons and shit was a VERY abusive and controlling man. And they were living off her father’s money, so him being a “provider” was a crock- he was a cocklodger who put on an act and shilled bitcoin.

I cheered when she wised up and divorced his sorry ass. He has moved on to yet more get rich quick schemes, still claiming to be this Christian “protector and provider.”

I hope their marriage vows included “until debt do we part”

I wish we had a like button - I hadn’t thought of this but for some people yes, it could be a factor.

Yes, I think it could be a factor for some of these women. But not knowing much about it, I find it hard to reconcile that too many woman would find this life a thrill given that women have been living a less glamorous version of it all through history. I just don’t know much about this stuff, but it did occur to me.

Good post!

@starshin that's really sad he's like that. I guess he doesn't get allot of attention in life

Lol you should really check out the fetishes people have