Unless you have been off grid running a homestead (more of which later), you can’t have escaped the Trad Wife movement. This is the name given to the rise of North American women on social media glamorising traditional values of homemaking, child-raising and husband-serving.
A recent speech to graduates by American footballer Harrison Butker, a colleague of Taylor Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce, went viral because of his unorthodox career advice: ‘I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world’. Butker was suitably trolledas a consequence, yet the internet can’t get enough of the permanently barefoot-and-pregnant life he was promulgating for women.
Two of the trend’s biggest hitters, Hannah Neeleman and Nara Smith, have 17.6 million and 11 million followers respectively, across all their platforms.
The difference between these women and the mommy vloggers of old, or even Nigella Lawson and Marie Kondo, is the openly submissive ethos they extol – often with Christian fundamentalist undertones. The other difference is a kind of fetishisation of inconvenience. These women have no interest in sharing sisterly, time-saving domestic tips. Making any recipe or task as laborious as possible is the whole point of the video; this is domesticity taken to a performative extreme.
Hi, honey, I’m homely, from far left: Nara Smith, Hannah Neeleman, Alexia Delarosa, Estee Williams
Beyond this, Trad Wives fall into two distinct camps. The first subscribes to a kind of Stepford Wife, Southern belle aesthetic – heavy on pastels, perfect lipstick and bouffant hair – and will explicitly talk about the ideal of women ‘staying home’.
The other tribe, perhaps more disingenuous, is all about ‘living off the land’ on the aforementioned wildly photogenic homesteads. This Trad Wife is always barefoot, and appears to spend her life baking sourdough, home-schooling, wielding home-grown flowers or milking something (maybe herself). It’s basically Little House on the Prairie in lockdown.
Naturally, the whole thing has caused an outcry. Much of this comes from fellow young YouTubers, who have dubbed the movement ‘lobotomy-core’. It’s true, all the Trad Wives speak in a special drab monotone, though this appears to be part of the unhurried, patience-is-a-virtue vibe. The rest comes from older women imploring Gen Z not to fall for the idea that husband-subsidised-housework is a charming, permanent holiday.
Whether these wives – or anybody else – really are making cheese from scratch when the camera stops is hard to say. And whether a generation of girls is going to be damaged by seeing adult women playing Mummies and Daddies online is still to be seen. But should you find videos of mixing bowls soothing, or if you wish to feel dumbfounded with irritation, here are the movement’s queen bees.
Hannah Neeleman, 33, 17.6 million followers
The high priestess of the Homestead Wives, Neeleman is a Juilliard-trained ballerina who now runs a ranch in Utah with her husband (handily heir to the JetBlue airline fortune). She has eight children, happens to be a former Mrs American and earlier this year took part in Mrs World two weeks after giving birth. How’s that for one-upwomanship? She also makes her own ravioli and rarely wears make-up in her videos. @ballerinafarm
Estee Williams, 26, 375k followers
One of the first exponents of Trad Wifery online, and the most prominent of the Southern belle Stepford Wife bunch, Williams is a perky Marilyn Monroe lookalike who talks openly about her delight in serving her husband and receiving an allowance from him to keep house. Despite having only a modest 311k followers, she has come in for plenty of criticism, with her posts dismissed as ‘cosplay’. @esteecwilliams
Nara Smith, 22, 11 million followers
Somehow combining Stepford Wife gloss with Homestead Wife wholesomeness, Smith is one half of a power couple – her husband being the Mormon supermodel Lucky Blue Smith. Best known for her slinky cooking outfits (see her boiling bagels and straining cream cheese in a feather-cuffed negligee), Smith’s love-to-hate videos are some of the most satirised on TikTok. @naraaziza
Alexia Delarosa, 30, 941k followers
The most baffling Trad Wife of all is surely Delarosa, whose videos include making paper out of egg boxes because she was ‘too lazy to go to the store’. The puzzle is whether she’s serious. In interviews, her real life sounds as conservative as all the other Trad Wives, but on camera she wears prom dresses to make the beds, smiles ecstatically at all times, and once pretended to milk a chicken. Confusing, but perhaps that’s the point. @lex.delarosa
Trad wife with edge: Tyler Bender sends up the trend
Tyler Bender, 21, 746k followers
One upside of the Trad Wife movement, for other content creators anyway, is the wealth of material to mock. There are now nearly as many parody Trad Wives on YouTube and TikTok as real ones – Tyler Bender as a raging Disney Princess being the best loved (@tylerbenderr). See also TikToker @geemcgwee’s videos of a captive SAHGF (stay at home girlfriend).
How trad wife are you?
What is your leg-hair removal routine?
a) You got everything lasered years back, to ‘liberate’ yourself from depilation. Now you feel gaslit and regret it.
b) Shaving. In principle you disagree. In practice you wouldn’t go out with hairy legs.
c) You like to make your own sugar treatment out of molasses and yank it off with strips of your babies’ old muslins. Fun!
What’s your go-to cleaning look?
a) You always leave before the cleaner arrives, on principle. You can’t handle another woman cleaning your kitchen around you, while you stare at a laptop. On the plus side, you don’t need a ‘go-to cleaning look’.
b) Pandemic joggers – your go-to at-home look anyway. Cleaning is required so incessantly that you lack the energy to don a special outfit.
c) An ochre pinafore from Toast, worn over a prairie dress and cowboy boots. Or a cute pink T-shirt dress from Shein, bought with the leftover housekeeping money.
It’s your husband’s birthday. What happens?
a) You break the 50/50 rule to pay the bill, because it’s his birthday.
b) You put a candle in a Waitrose croissant and try to get a nice photo for Instagram.
c) You get up at 5am to pretend to make Crunchy Nut corn flakes (his fave, y’all) from scratch, wearing a gingham nightie. Your husband has to film the process, instead of having a lie-in, because it’s really important to you that your content is authentic.
What’s your definition of feminism?
a) The collective liberation of women from patriarchal oppression.
b) Equality. Except, somehow, you’re the only one who remembers when the children need a packed lunch.
c)Choice. Yours being to make and document your husband’s packed lunch.
What’s the bane of your life?
a) Trad Wives or any other vacuous content on TikTok.
b) The one hair on your chin that suddenly shows in certain lights.
c) Keeping phone chargers out of shot when you’re filming videos about weaving your own scrunchies.
The results
Mostly As Anti Trad Wife
You aren’t remotely Trad Wife, though this may be because you’ve not yet had kids. See how gender equality works out when you do.
Mostly Bs Conflicted Trad Wife
You feel a constant sense of inadequacy about your own home and mothering skills, and also a permanent sense of indignation that every chore should fall to you. Not a peaceful combination.
Mostly Cs Aspiring Trad Wife
You have definite Trad Wife influencer potential. Go full hypocrite and monetise your ‘women should stay home’ life now, while there’s a market for it.
