January 31, 2024 • 45 mins
The Traditional Wife, or 'Trad Wife', is getting a lot of traction online lately. Bridget Todd breaks down what a Trad Wife is, what they represent, why they may be having a bit of a moment on social media and how it may reflect the not so great situation women are in right now.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome to Stefane never told you a predictive of iHeartRadio,
and we are thrilled to once again be joined for
the first time in twenty twenty four by the well traveled,
the well Rid bridget Todd.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thank you. I mean, not well traveled lately, but maybe
over the course of my lifetime moderately travels. Although I
can't really compete with you, Annie, you really get around.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Here. Your instagrams like took you all over the world.
You were traveling, traveling for the podcast world, So I
think you're that's understated.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Okay, I guess, I guess the entire year of twenty
twenty three. Maybe recently, it feels like in like the
last couple of weeks, I've been traveling from my fridge
time bed to my couch for sure. But that's really
the extent of it. That's about where we've been for
a while. Yes, so what a journey.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's like you say, the last couple of weeks twenty
twenty three, that's been our journey, backyard, couch bed.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Where else do you need to go?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, we haven't gotten to see you in this virtual way.
We are working on some IRL hangouts soon. Heince the
discussion we had about traveling previous tour recording just now.
But how was your your Weirdo Christmas?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Your New Year's bridget Brido. Christmas was fantastic, as always,
Lots of bad movies were watched. We actually did a
special thing to watch horror Christmas movies. I didn't know
there were so many, but like ten out of ten, yes,
I would recommend. New Year's was also fun. I feel
(01:53):
like i'm a little I don't know. January is such
a weird time of year because you kind of start
and you're like, this is gonna be New Year, New Me,
and then but the second becomes January, you're like, oh, well,
turns out it's still came old me, and maybe that's okay.
It just feels like a little bit of a slow start.
It's been really cold in DC, snowing. I'm doing dry January,
(02:16):
so I'm sober. I broke from Christmas. I'm tired. Like
January is just a slug.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
January is the hangover month. I mean essentially, whether it's
from like spending too much money, being around too many people,
all of those things just kind of recuperating, and it
does as any and I talked about earlier. I was like,
I feel like January and February ends up being the
longest months of the year. Like we did an episode
and I was like, it's still January. I really thought
we had topped into at least February, and we're still
(02:43):
nowhere near. And I'm like, why does it feel like
we're in the middle of the year but we just started.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It is dragging. Maybe it's a sobariety.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I don't know about that life.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
So yes, yeah, no, Well, we have done several episodes
about how neither of us are big fans of New
Year's so we're right there with you because I feel
like it's so anti climactic. You're like yes, and then
you're like, ah, this is kind of impressing. Do you
like look back on your past year and be like
I gotta change all this?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
And then you're like, well, like can't really right totally?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That takes money and time, yes.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
And then once the kind of so you have the
holidays and you're kind of like, oh boy, I could
really go for this being over the holidays end, and
then you're like, Okay, now I'm feeling back to the grind,
like holidays are over. There's just a thing that happens
after the holiday wind down kind of wears off. That
just is so, it's just such a slug. It's a
(03:43):
slog of a month, I think for everybody. So for
folks who are listening and maybe feel like they're a
little off, feeling a little weird z's, I think we're
all in the same boat.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's true. It's also dark and again, as you said, cold,
and who likes the cold. It's not me Here in
the South. I prefer gold to hot.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
But it is dreary.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's like a and there's not like anything really coming
to look forward to. I don't look forward to like
Valentine's Day, Like there's no it's just like, okay, I'll
wait a couple months for something sunshine.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Just hold on to St. Patrick's Day day? What is that?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yes, I'm a huge celebrator of Arbor Day. Uh well,
I have to say, you really came in swinging with
this topic, and I have I have been thinking about
this because I'm actually not on social media a lot,
but I have seen I feel like I'm one of
the only people I know and this I'm sure it's
not true, but in my circle that watches a lot
(04:46):
of YouTube and YouTube, there's something going on with YouTube
ads that I've been trying to make into an episode,
but I can't quite nail down what it is. But
they've become so gendered in a way that like isn't new,
but feels like, wow, we've gone this far back. But
it'll be something like, especially around the holidays, like, well,
(05:11):
my wife loves me, so she got me this thing
that she can use to make my life better, or
like it'll be from the wife's perspective and it'll be, oh,
I got this because my husband's been so tired and
I can make his life easier. So it's like gifts
that are all about him, but it's painted as if
she wants it too and she likes it too, And
(05:33):
I'm just confused by the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I don't understand. I feel you. I feel like lately
the Internet and social media has become this weird marriage
of gender roles and gendered expectations and commerce and capitalism
all kind of like blended into one where the only
kind of online experience you could ever really hope to
(05:55):
have around that is like buy this thing for your
husband to be a good wife. It's very weird.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's bizarre, like and I've I've had moments where I'm like,
is this generated by AI? There's like the voices are strange,
it's very strange.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
It might be AI.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
It could be like there's one in particular.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I'm like, I need to look into that.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I've I want to investigate what is going on here?
But yeah, I've just sort of seen it. And so
when I saw this topic, I was like, oh, maybe
Bridget can illuminate something that I'm seeing in my specific space.
But from what you're seeing on social media? So what
are we talking about today?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
So, if you've spent any time at all on social media,
you have probably seen what is called trad wives contact,
right have you? I guess any You're not really on
social media, but it does sound like you're getting a
little of this on YouTube. Sam, have you encountered any
of this in your time on TikTok So?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, So we've had many conversations on the show about
the crunchy oh yes wives movement that quickly kind of
devolves into being a trad wife, as well as talking
about religious trauma and the how that plays into the
tradwife culture as well as the red Pill episode that
we talked about, because that actually jumps into tradwives as well.
(07:17):
Of course white supremacists and white feminist culture also goes
into that. There's so much to this, So definitely had
a little bit of research beforehand, and I definitely get it,
of course because of my for you page f yp
any just in case you needed to know, it does
made me the satire of tradwives and or stitching the
(07:39):
problematic things with tradwives. I don't follow any and I
would not recognize any by name necessarily, and I know
you're going to talk a little bit, but like Joe
Piazza actually was on the show and we talked very
briefly with her about some of the things that she
has seen and she is addressed also her because she
was coming around like Halloween after Halloween, and her just
(08:00):
amazing costume of playing tradwife as well. But yeah, there's
definitely a lot of content. I get a lot And
we've talked about the family content stuff, which again aligns
with that when a lot of moms of TikTok used
their family content as moneymakers and to get to get viral,
(08:22):
and then of course the Ruby Frank case, which is,
oh my gosh, Annie, Just so you know, just recently
a woman was convicted for child abuse and so much
more after it was released that she was abusing her
kids and she was using that content with somewhat a
business partner to make money off on TikTok and she
(08:42):
was severely abusing her kids.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So horrible, and she's just I think she might have,
like I know, she was in prison or in jail
for a while and then she was released and I
think flipped on her business partner and was like, oh,
she was the mastermind.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yes, they flipped on each other obviously, but it was intense,
and the whole content is about how she is very
cruel to our children and how she punishes them by
not letting them have dinner. Was the beginning of everything.
But this type of content, which you have talked about before,
using children as moneymakers for content creation, but on that
(09:22):
same line with tradwives that have been popping up so
much totally.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
So it is interesting that I think that you know,
we're talking about this mix of gender and commerce that
is so ubiquitous on social media, and I think You've
really nailed something that the depiction of motherhood and romantic
partnership that were shown as women on social media is
highly commercial, Like, somebody is probably making money from that
(09:49):
depiction in some capacity. So, for folks who don't know,
trad wives is short for traditional wives, and it's these
content creators who make content about ostensibly about the bliss
that they find in doing traditional domestic labor, you know, cooking, cleaning, sewing,
running a household. So I should say right off the
bat that like not all tread wife content it's created equal.
(10:12):
Some tread wife content creators just seem to be sort
of showcasing their lives. We'll talk about some of those,
but others seem to be more directly and explicitly romanticizing
and advocating for like this bygone time when women were
happier primarily in the home. So I did an interview
with Joe Piazza, who I'm so glad that she stopped
(10:32):
over on on y'all's pod too, because she is incredible
and hilarious. She has a podcast called Under the Influence,
all about influencing and women. So Joe actually makes it
very clear that this bygone era where women were so
happy to be staying in the home. Actually kind of
does not exist, right, It's like a throwback and a
(10:53):
romanticization of a time period that like did not actually
really exist for women, because truly, can you really romanticize
the choices made by white women at a time when
they could not even own bank accounts? Right, Like, it's
a little hard to be like, oh, well, our grandmothers
were just choosing to be in the household because that
(11:16):
was what was better. And it's like, well, she couldn't
have her own money legally, so maybe choice isn't the
right word. So I say white women because I'm a
Black woman, and we are explicitly not talking about Black
women like myself. Black women historically pretty much have always
done wage earning work outside of the home. Even if
(11:36):
we wanted to stay in our homes and not do that,
that really wasn't an option for us. Rose M. Krider
and Diana B. Elliott note in their report called Historical
Changes in Stay at Home Mothers nineteen sixty nine to
two thousand and nine that even black mothers with young
children were in the workforce following World War Two, when
many of their white counterparts had withdrawn from a labor force,
(11:57):
and in places like South Carolina, they even had on
the books that were requiring black women to have consistent
employment outside of the home. So I just wanted to
say that because I feel like when we talk about
conversations about who works and who didn't work and what
it's a throwback to you. I just think it's important
to note that we are talking about like one specific
(12:17):
subset of women, not all women. So I should say
I'm not an expert on tradwise. I did do a
lot of reading for this episode. However, I do consider
myself a bit of an expert on the internet and
social media, and I think there are a few key
parts of the conversation around trad wives and that kind
of online content that get a little overlooked that I
(12:40):
just want to make sure that we are all keeping
in mind when we're consuming this content and talking and
thinking about this content.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Okay, for listeners maybe like me who have seen some
weird YouTube ads but maybe don't know what is happening
on social media specifically, what kind of content are we
talking about here?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
So, as I said, it is content that is like
women baking or sewing, you know, sometimes it's just like
a woman demonstrating what her life is like. So it's
like her with her kids making food, Da da da,
But some of that content is a little bit more sinister.
In this kind of treadwive content, women are exublicitly comparing
(13:31):
their lives and their choices to the lives and choices
of other women. I transcribed a TikTok that I think
demonstrates what I am talking about. So this is from
influencer Emily Allison, who describes herself on Instagram as counterculture
thinking child raising. I just want my kids to grow
up in a free country. So I'm going to read
what she says in her TikTok and just kind of
(13:54):
imagine that, like they're sort of cute, smarmy guitar music
playing under this, because that's what the TikTok is like,
and that my narration is synced up to videos of
me wearing prairie dresses and like cooking and playing with
my kids. Okay, here we go. Our culture tells women
that it's honorable to sacrifice everything for your job, but
(14:16):
it's unfair to sacrifice everything for your family. That it's
liberating to be sexually used by men who are not
committed to you. But it's oppressive to love and respect
a man who is that it's somehow empowering to rely
on the system to educate your kids, feed your family,
and keep you alive rather than have the skills to
do it yourself. I say that culture is full of lies.
(14:40):
So that's just me like reading a word for word
transcript of what this person has to say. First of all,
you might think from that transcript that this person does
not do wage earning work because she is too busy
like focusing on her family. However, according to her Instagram bio,
it says that she is a writer for the far
right website Epo Times, so she actually does have a job,
(15:02):
but she just wants to let us know that she
has a job in a way that is like different
and better than everybody else who has a job. Like
I don't know what y'all are doing, but like when
I have a job, it's better. When you have a job,
you are making a mistake and turning your back on
your family. So just so you know I'm doing it right,
y'all are doing it wrong. So I think this content
(15:23):
is a good example of what I'm talking about. Right Like,
if Emily is so content with her with her life,
you know, I don't think that somebody who is super
content would feel the need to really compare their choices
and their life to the choices in life of somebody
that they don't even necessarily know, right Like, there is
something about the content that I think is meant to enrage,
(15:47):
meant to make people feel a certain kind of way.
Do you all see this? Or am I way off basier?
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Well, the minute you said that she was for a
writer for the far right news article, I think that
again kind of coming back to what we were talking about
with red pill slash white supremacy. This level of indoctrination
is the Maga world. And I doubt we have any
Maga listeners. But if you're offended, you essentially like if
(16:15):
it sounds offensive, but it's actually true because there's this
whole underlying level of creating more white babies. And I'm
assuming this one woman is a white woman and in
this whole culture of go against the zeit guys, which
now the Zeit guys is too liberal, which is that
you know, in their in their mind of course, in
(16:35):
this conversation, which is again what we were really like
every time I would go down this rabbit hole of
anything tradwives, anything crunchy moms situation, it gets very succinct
to this ideal of moms protecting white children or the
white community in itself. In this level of that has
(16:57):
to be also meaning that we're rebellious against the norm
and those are the devils who you know, this level
of conversation, it's like, yeah, this makes perfect sense, and
that guitar playing is you're supposed to think this is
a Midwestern family out in the cornfields in their dresses,
having the perfect little like dinner at the tables, but
that they have obviously gardened themselves because they don't trust
(17:20):
the government or the fertilizer and you know, wore these
clothes that they have made themselves, as well as the
fact that you know they don't do doctors, none of that.
Like this level of ideal of the perfect life that
kind of also insinuates by the perfect light means you
have to be white.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
A thousand percent. And something that you picked up on
that I really want to pull out is how so
much of this content also sort of has this almost
like faux persecution angle to it, like they don't want
me to be submissive to my husband, who like they
don't want me making homemade meals. It's like, who are
(18:00):
you talking about that is preventing you from doing this?
This is something that I've noticed a lot. It's almost
like these people want to be persecuted or like victimized
in some way, and they really they're so committed to
wanting to feel like they're going against the grain and
challenging norms that they have made that into an identity
and they've kind of like built it up that everything
(18:24):
they do is like being challenged. Everything they do, like
they don't want me to grow my own food, And
it's like who, Like who is preventing you from doing
this if that's what you want to do, right, I've
seen so many people say like make it seem as
though there's some sort of feminist conspiracy to keep women
(18:45):
from staying at home and not doing way durning work.
And I, I mean I would if I could afford
to comfortably do that. I think I would love to
do it, right. I think a lot of people would
love to do that. But like what people are saying
is like, yeah, you should have choice to do what
you do whatever you want to do, and what they're
hearing is like, they're not letting me stay at home.
(19:05):
Where where are these people who are preventing women from
like staying at home with their families. That that's what
they want to do.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
That's called capitalism, babe in it. This sucks for everybody.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, we're all we're all dealing with the same we're
all suffering.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
But you know, I think that's that conversation again, this
whole like they won't let me do this thing, or
they won't let me do that thing. And it's kind
of that conversation you were talking about earlier where black
women were pretty much excluded from the white feminist movement
because they did not listen to the fact that black
women have been working, Women of color have been working
the entirety of their existence from jump because they had
(19:39):
no other choice, that the fact that they want to
go to work and women should be they're not listening
to the other side of what feminism should look like.
And that conversation is that it's the choice right, the
choice to do what you whether it is to be
a stay at home mom and to have whatever balanced
life that you want. If you agreed upon it and
(20:00):
everything is fair for you too, and there's respect, then wonderful.
That's the thing that's the choice to have. That choice
is the feminist ideal. But yeah, the more I see,
like again with the tradwise, they're going to a nineteen
seventies tactic of the fear mongering of feminism, right, they
(20:21):
want to take away men they hate oh man, they
want to kill men.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
A B.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
The fact that they can't wear You can't wear bras
because if you do, you're not a feminist and you
can't wear like who ever said these things? Who said this?
What is happening this fear mongering that has come back,
and that they have not only taken this on, they're
pushing it so hard that those who always hated the
ideal of something absolutely are gripping to this. It's like, yes,
(20:52):
they are trying to take away these things from me
or make me do these things, and I hate the feminists.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yes, it is such a for aw man. Absolutely, And
so this actually is one of the three major points
that I want folks to think about and really know
in terms of coming to this content with a critical
eye and with with a little bit of media literacy,
is that this kind of content is often specifically engineered
to make us have a big reaction. Right, So, in
(21:21):
the example that we were just talking about, you know
that influencer does not have a huge following. She has
like twenty k on Instagram and I think or on
forty k on TikTok, which is pretty small in the
ecosystem of trad wife influencers. And so you know, because
some of these people have like millions and millions of followers.
So I suspect the reason that she has to frame
(21:41):
her video in such a smug way where it's like
my choices are good, other women's choices not good, is
because she is trafficking on our big reaction to get engagement.
If she just said I like to homeschool my kids,
I like to play with my kids, I like to
cook for my husband. I have a relationship where I
(22:03):
rested back to my husband, who would care. Nobody would
care because it's like, oh, good for you. She has
to tweak it to be like I'm doing it in
a good way and everybody else is doing it wrong
intentionally because it gets our blood boiling to get more engagement,
to get more views, and to ultimately boost her profile.
Where it's very clear she wants to have a big one, right,
And so in some ways this is just a good
(22:25):
old fashioned engagement grift where you say things in a
way that is intentionally said to be a little bit
inflammatory to get more engagement. Right.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Gosh, that took me on a rabbit hole of like
a dark time in her company where that was like
you should make people mad, they'll engage with you.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Like, please don't do that. This is a bit of
a side note, but this is my new media literacy
battle cry, which is that we should understand how many
places on the Internet and how many places and influencers
and people and content creators that make up our internet
discourse are doing that They are trying to get one
(23:05):
over on us because it is effective. We already know
that social media platforms intentionally boost content that gets a
lot of engagement that makes us angry or gets our
hearts racing because it is better for their platforms. And
so the dynamic where anybody who says something that is
inflammatory that gets people upset that they are rewarded with engagement,
that is a bad system and we need to be
(23:26):
looking at it like I can't tell you how many
stupid TikTok skits. I have gotten sucked into where I'm like,
wait a minute, why do I care? Like what this
fake scenario says. It's happening like the story time of
a woman doing her makeup telling me a made up
story about a friend that doesn't exist. Like why am
I giving this my attention? And we need to put
(23:47):
a wrench in that entire system, that entire machine that
continues to crank out content like that, because it's not
good for us.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
No, and I think a lot of it is so
And I know you're going to talk about this a
little bit, but it's so dishonest and the time it
takes and perhaps the production it takes to just make
these videos. I always kind of laugh when I see
like ring lights in their eyes and it's clearly supposed
to be like, oh I just woke up.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I'm like, no, you did it.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
But you do have another example of somebody who has
a lot of engagement, yes.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yes, and that is Ballerina Farms. So if you don't
know who Ballerina Farms is, her name is Hannah Neeliman
and she is a follower of the Church of Latter
day Saints Akaam ormon. She married into the family that
owns the airline that Jet Blue, So girl married very well.
She is probably not living like a rule kind of
(24:43):
dependent on the land lifestyle. However, if you looked at
her content, you might think like, oh, she's living a
very humble rule existence, because that's what she wants you
to think. She spends a lot of time on TikTok,
cooking with her eight kids on her farm, and when
she's not doing that, she is competing in a beauty
passiont She has almost ten million followers, so a huge,
(25:04):
huge footprint in the landscape. I would say Ballerina Farms,
I would describe her as like a source of a
lot of skepticism and frustration. Like she competed in a
beauty pageant just I think a few days after she
gave birth, for instance, and people were like, you know, like,
you're probably not in your best shape when you just
(25:26):
have given birth. What it like. People felt some kind
of way about the fact that she was, you know,
competing in a beauty pageant. But as a recent piece
in Glamour points out, you really would never know that
her content is like controversial or is a source of
frustration or skepticism for people. The piece reads, neely Man
has never wavered. She doesn't publicly address her haters, she
(25:49):
doesn't engage with the discourse, and she doesn't try to
clear the air on, for instance, whether her wealthy father
in law bought her ranch for her family. She just
continues to make bread, post videos of her dancing, and
lift her life. She seems to be, at least online,
completely unbothered and content, which of course is its own
kind of privilege when you have eight kids. But on
the other hand, we have no idea what her reality
(26:10):
really looks like, do we, And so she does not
have to engage in the kind of rage baiting that
somebody who might be a less successful Tradwives influencer might
have to write, like her thing is like I just
make my bread and like smile weird and like pretend
to be living a rural, rustic life even though I'm
(26:32):
very wealthy, right right.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
And there's a lot of romanticizing of like that kind
of work and that kind of life that I think
I see happen a lot in general conservative movements, where
like let's get back to the land of like do
you know how to get back to.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
The life yeah, I was talking to So my partner
grew up on a farm in rural upstate New York.
When I say a farm, I don't know, Like I'm
not a country girl. So when he was like, oh,
I grew up on a farm. My parents will on
a farm. The first time I went to visit his parents,
who still live on that farm, I was like, oh,
(27:10):
I don't know what I had been envisioning, but like
it is a farm farm, like a real farm. And
so he grew up like tending to animals as part
of his chores, and they would, you know, butcher and
package steaks, you know, for to eat and to sell,
so like a real farm. And it's always so funny
to him and his family. How people online have convinced
(27:32):
themselves that farm life is this like route to a soft,
slow life. That is only true for people who are wealthy,
who are not actually farming as a source of their existence,
as a source of sustenance, as a source of their
financial security. Anybody who actually lives on a farm, a
real farm, where that farm where like you live or die,
(27:53):
or you eat or don't eat based on how that
farm is doing, will tell you that it is a
ton of work. People who have farms are always tired.
Their schedules are wild. Like this idea that that oh,
you know, we're just gonna buy a land and start
a farm, and that that's gonna be an easy, slow life.
Absolutely not. That is just a fiction, a fantasy. Talk
(28:14):
to anybody who's ever done farming. That's not true.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Have they not seen a little house on the prairie.
They're waking up at four am and going to bed
at nine and they're I know, that's that's my reference,
But no like to know that they actually have to
wake up at the crack of dawn to make sure
whether it's snowing or raining and all of that, to
make sure they have to take care and tend to
(28:37):
all the things, the living things that are on there,
including any crops, and if they have like workers on there.
And I'm assuming, because I don't know anything about this
Ballerina farmer, that if they're that wealthy and they do
actually own a farm, that they do hire workers, and
how the little she's active on that farm. Maybe I'm
(29:00):
just static, you know, speaking up too much, but just
like that doesn't seem like a thing that she would
be doing. Now she's also posting pretty little pictures of
herself dancing with our kids.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I can confirm that they have like a pretty big staff,
like a paid employees to work for them. I should
also say, like, side note, I have heard some horror
stories about what is actually like going down on that farm.
If you were interested, there are Reddit rabbit holes, but like,
I cannot confirm any of that myself, so like, don't
have anything to say about it. But that is out
(29:32):
there about some of the allegations of how the animals
are treated on that farm, but like, do your own
research there because I don't know either way. But yes,
she definitely has paid staff to do the actual labor,
and again there's something wrong with that. That's like, if
that's how you're going to do it, but then don't
go on TikTok and make it seem like you are
(29:55):
doing this work yourself and it's actually not that hard
and you actually have a slow life, soft life, because
that's not true, right, And so I think that's sort
of like my biggest point is that I think that
some of these creators are just not being totally honest
in the way that we understand that most online content
is probably not honest in some way. But there's something
(30:16):
about the like trad wife, slow life, rustic vibes content
creators that I think makes it harder to see when
someone is basically lying to you on the Internet about
what their life actually looks like. And so Ballerina Farms
might not have to like Engagement Farm the way that
the other influencer does, but that doesn't mean that she's
(30:36):
being totally honest about what is going down in her life,
or that we're getting an honest view of it, because
you know, what do you call somebody who makes content
to make their life look a certain way, maybe not
totally accurately to sell commercial products a marketer? Right? Like
that is marketing. Ballerina Farms, i would argue, is a business,
(31:00):
and her social media stick is just part of the
marketing arm of this business. Like their farm is a
farm where you can buy boxes of meats from it online,
like it is a it is a corporate entity, and
so she is just a like marketing her consumer goods
to try to get us to buy not just the product,
but into the whole lifestyle that her that her product
(31:22):
is kind of revolves around. And what's also kind of
interesting is there's this creator, Carol Claire Burkie on TikTok,
who is really made a thing out of doing some
media analysis around Ballerina Farms as a brand, and she
basically is like, we don't actually know or see the
actual real person behind Ballerina Farms, Hannah. We don't really
(31:45):
see a real view of her life. What we're seeing
is the way that her corporation or her company wants
us to see her for marketing purposes. She compares it
to the Kardashians, who you know, we know have become
literal billionaires from leveraging a highly curated peace into their
personal lives to get us to buy into them as
a brand. But the difference is, she says that the
(32:05):
Kardashians are maybe even more upfront about this dynamic than
these trad wife influencers. I don't think anybody would be like, oh,
the Kardashians are just trying to give us an honest
look into the lives of billionaires and like they're just
being so authentic. I don't think anybody would say that.
Anybody would know like, oh, they want you to buy
the makeup, the lip kit, the skims, the whatever, this that,
and they're leveraging showing a curated look at their lives
(32:28):
to do that. I think with these trad wife influencers,
they're just not being honest about what the dynamic is.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
It feels like it's going backwards, gonna because for a
long while, there was a lot of parents who are
truly honest, like this is what it looks like to
get to our videos here where they're doing the video
and doing it behind the scene, and they're being more
open and transparent. It feels like it's going back to
again where Instagram started and everything was so pretty. Now
(33:04):
all the pictures were so perfect and they had to
show the perfect life in order to get the more
ads and more views. So it feels like it's going
backwards again, just like our society in how they are
trying to romanticize, as you were saying, a lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I think that's a really good point, and I do
think that that this has something to do with that.
I think for a while, what popped on social media
when it came to making content about motherhood was authenticity, like, oh,
I'm a mess just like you, Like my kids are filthy,
and I'm exhausted and i haven't washed my hair just
(33:44):
like you. And I think that that authenticity maybe became
leveraged where like that it almost felt like a curated authenticity.
And so I almost wonder if this trad wives kind
of perfection is a response to this authenticity that kind
of typified motherhood content on the Internet of a certain era.
(34:08):
Like if it was cool to be authentic, then now
what's cool is like being being like, isn't my life perfect?
Like we're just coming back around.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Coming back in that circle. And just as a reminder,
with her having that many followers and that many views,
she's making lots of money just off of her tiktoks.
Lots of money.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yes, like that is my thing, there's no shame in it,
but like this is a business. And in my interview
with Joe, she puts it really well that if you're
somebody who is setting up a tripod, setting up lighting,
putting on a face of makeup, putting on a particular outfit,
to film content that you then edit published to millions
of your followers, and have built up a social media
platform that might involve navigating like brand deals or sponsored posts,
(34:49):
you have a job that is employment, that is labor.
So you have a situation where some of these women
are making content about how they do not do wage
earning work, but the strategy that in which they are
doing that is work. It's like a mind.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Like I feel like they forgot the mom blogs, which
was the beginning honestly of all of this and the
way that it was created. It was stay at home
moms trying to figure out how to make money to
help assist and figuring out this is this is profitable
and has now ventured into this and as where the
blogs were curated in a way that it was written
(35:26):
and entertaining. This is an entertainment on a different level,
which is a show? Is a show pretty much?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, Like in some ways this is just like entertainment,
Like it's like using curating a version of your life
for entertainment value, right. And I've actually even heard the
theory that at least some of this content is fetish content,
like sexual fetish content that are not actually meant to
be speaking to women at all or saying anything or
(35:53):
making any kind of comment about women and what we
should be doing with our lives or not doing with
our lives. That it's meant to appeal to horny men
and their submissive wife, sexual fantasies, and that these creators
have just sort of found a way to make fetish
content in a way that does not trigger you know,
TikTok or whatever is not safe for work content sensors,
(36:13):
and so like, if that's what's going on, like, more
power to you, you know, do your thing, But we
need to come at this content with a little bit
of like media literacy and criticism, because people would then
take that content and then use it to make some
kind of a point or a statement or turn it
into a way to understand our own lives. And it's like, well,
why would you be doing that with fetish content, Like
(36:34):
I don't think it's I don't think it's meant to
help you understand how you should be living your life
or making your choices.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, it's gonna be accidentally fetish, right, Well, there's a
we passed over it.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
But there was a note you had in your outline
that I was I thought was interesting. Was the sort
of like cause playing a certain type of life. Right
after the insurrection happened on January sixth, I wrote this
really long article about like a lot of people there
were couse playing, like the idea of Okay, I'm going
to take back our country, and then they get into
(37:06):
trouble and all of a sudden they're in court and
they're like, oh God, well, like the consequence has come
and it just falls apart. So it does have these
sort of implications that I don't think people think about
when people watch that and it gets in their head
and they get this idea of like, oh, I can
live that life, I can live off the land, or
(37:26):
I can do all these things, but the reality is
not there, and it can become a really toxic soup
that infects all of us. And it sounds like, based
on my experience and what you're saying, that we're getting
a lot more of this content right now.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That is such a good way to put it, and
something that I didn't have. But I just want to
say is that I want to make it clear that
I think that everybody should be able to do what
they want to do. Like my feminism is about letting
people make choices for themselves. If that choice is to
like rage bait other women online for their choices, I
(38:04):
don't love that, but you know, in terms of if
you want to stay at home or work, that should
be your choice. However, one thing I will say is
that I have definitely seen an uptick in people giving
younger women the advice that they should just marry and
start having kids really young. And I don't generally get
down for one size fits all advice, but for someone
(38:27):
really young to tell them that they should not know
anything about having their own money or managing their own money,
that they should not try to have any kind of
employment history, should this marriage fall apart, should there something
happen to their partner, whatever, I think that is really
dangerous advice. Even if you're somebody who wants to get
married young, wants to have kids young, wants to have
(38:49):
a submissive traditional marriage, do all of those things, but
make sure that you know how to take care of
yourself and live your own life, because nothing in life
is guaranteed, Like you could be happily married forever and
get married very young and then have your partner die
unexpectedly or something right. And so I think that we're
giving young women advice based on a fantasy that does
(39:11):
not come to fruition in reality. And I think you're right, Annie,
that we are seeing more and more of this kind
of content. And I just don't think we can talk
about the rise of this kind of online treadwife content
without looking at where we are as women right now,
which is not great. You know, we've experienced this major
rollback of our rights. The Journal of the American Medical
(39:33):
Association actually put out a report just this week that
found that since Roe fell, rape has led to an
estimated fifty eight, nine hundred and seventy nine pregnancies in
states that ban abortion without exception for rape. That is staggering.
You know, we also are facing rising costs of things
like groceries and housing. Bloomberg found that on average, US
(39:55):
households want to spend an extra five two hundred dollars
this year just to be able to enjoy the exact
same standard of living that they did last year. Add
to that, things like climate instability, political instability, all things
that historically women have really for the burden of. And
so I just can't help but think that we're seeing
this rise in content that romanticizes and glorifies times when
(40:16):
women had even less rights than we do right now
is related to what's happening currently, which brings me to
the last thing that I want people to really keep
in mind when they encounter this content online. Is that
I believe that tradwife content is responding, albeit oftentimes in
a very distorted way, to very very real issues that
(40:38):
we're facing as women. You know, we're kind of being
served a crap sandwich right now from being honest with you, Like,
we don't have paid leave, we don't have affordable childcare,
we don't have any real social safety net. Women are
burdened with more and more of the labor that it
takes to keep a family stable with very little social
or institutional help. And it just doesn't surprise me that
we're seeing this online glorification of stay at home parenthood
(41:02):
in a particular kind of way right now as a
reaction to it. And I think that something that gets
left out of the discourse is that the reasons that
women are staying home are not necessarily like to deprogram
their kids from government instruction or whatever. The A lot
of times it's because childcare is so being expensive that
(41:22):
it does not make financial sense to work outside of
the home anymore. Or maybe on the flip side, both
parents are working and they're just like figuring it out
and just squeezing by a lot of people are just
doing what they have to do based on financial circumstances
that are not great, and so that is a very
different thing from choosing to work because feminism and like
(41:43):
woke society says that you have to. It is like
some of these creators are creating a straw man for
why women either work outside of the home or don't,
and that's actually not a reflection of the reality that
most parents are facing right now.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, I mean, especially during the beginning of the pandemic,
there were so many articles about that of like women
were being forced out of the workforce, like all of
the scientific papers from women decreased. And I think it's
interesting a lot of content like this immediately out the
gate feels defensive for whatever lifestyle. And I could see
it being defensive from like women judging you, But I
(42:17):
can also see it being maybe trying to find like
a reason that it's okay that you didn't have the choice,
and so let me make this look prettier. And I no,
I definitely like it, and this is definitely what I want,
so I can. I think that totally makes sense, Bridget.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
And I think people are picking up on it because
women are tired. I would just love someone to do it, like, yes,
you go out and work and let me just chill here,
which is not the truth at all, but the way
they make it look like, while I sit here with
these pretty little kids and tell them to go take
a nap like would if you've been any childcare, you
know that's not the thing. And everything's a mess and
(42:54):
everything's a disaster, and cooking is hard, and being a
stay at home mom is a time job in itself
and deserves pay, which is the other conversation that they
don't want to have chidwise, is that a lot of
those stay at home moms who love it also are like,
but we should be paid. Yeah, absolutely should.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
It's labor. I mean absolutely exactly. So I think you're right.
I think a lot of these influencers can really oversimplify
and glamorize what is ultimately a dynamic that does not
allow for women to make the choices they want to make,
Because being a stay at home mom because you cannot
afford daycare is not the same thing as choosing it
for yourself because it's what you want to do, and
(43:32):
it's because you can't afford to do it. And I
think that ultimately women deserve to have choices. You deserve
to have better choices to be able to do what
we want to do with our lives.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yep, women do women Yes, women, Yes, agreed, agreed one
thousand percent. Well, thanks as always, Bridget. Again, I feel
like we could go on and on and on, but
we will let you go for now.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Well? You can listen to my podcast. There are no
girls on the internet. If you want to hear my
full conversation with Joe Piazza, we put it out as recently.
She's hilarious. Definitely recommend. Can find me on Instagram at
Bridget Marie in DC, or on TikTok at Bridget max Pods.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yes, and hopefully we'll be able to do some irl
things and maybe we can see some.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Of you all there. Listeners. Let's hope. So TVD stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yes, stay tuned well, Thanks as always Bridget and listeners.
If you would like to contact us, you can our
email Stephania mom stuff atiheartmea dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at most of the podcast, or on TikTok,
which we don't post very often, but we might start
posting more. It's Stia Graham at Stuff Mom Never Told You.
We have a tea public store, and we have a
(44:49):
book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
as always to our super producer Christina, executive producer Maya, and.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Stuff I Never Told You is production by Her Radio,
More Podcast or my Heart Radio. You can check out
the art radio app Apuple Podcasts, where you listen to
your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome to Stefane never told you a predictive of iHeartRadio,
and we are thrilled to once again be joined for
the first time in twenty twenty four by the well traveled,
the well Rid bridget Todd.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Thank you. I mean, not well traveled lately, but maybe
over the course of my lifetime moderately travels. Although I
can't really compete with you, Annie, you really get around.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Here. Your instagrams like took you all over the world.
You were traveling, traveling for the podcast world, So I
think you're that's understated.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Okay, I guess, I guess the entire year of twenty
twenty three. Maybe recently, it feels like in like the
last couple of weeks, I've been traveling from my fridge
time bed to my couch for sure. But that's really
the extent of it. That's about where we've been for
a while. Yes, so what a journey.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's like you say, the last couple of weeks twenty
twenty three, that's been our journey, backyard, couch bed.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Where else do you need to go?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, we haven't gotten to see you in this virtual way.
We are working on some IRL hangouts soon. Heince the
discussion we had about traveling previous tour recording just now.
But how was your your Weirdo Christmas?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Your New Year's bridget Brido. Christmas was fantastic, as always,
Lots of bad movies were watched. We actually did a
special thing to watch horror Christmas movies. I didn't know
there were so many, but like ten out of ten, yes,
I would recommend. New Year's was also fun. I feel
(01:53):
like i'm a little I don't know. January is such
a weird time of year because you kind of start
and you're like, this is gonna be New Year, New Me,
and then but the second becomes January, you're like, oh, well,
turns out it's still came old me, and maybe that's okay.
It just feels like a little bit of a slow start.
It's been really cold in DC, snowing. I'm doing dry January,
(02:16):
so I'm sober. I broke from Christmas. I'm tired. Like
January is just a slug.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
January is the hangover month. I mean essentially, whether it's
from like spending too much money, being around too many people,
all of those things just kind of recuperating, and it
does as any and I talked about earlier. I was like,
I feel like January and February ends up being the
longest months of the year. Like we did an episode
and I was like, it's still January. I really thought
we had topped into at least February, and we're still
(02:43):
nowhere near. And I'm like, why does it feel like
we're in the middle of the year but we just started.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It is dragging. Maybe it's a sobariety.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I don't know about that life.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
So yes, yeah, no, Well, we have done several episodes
about how neither of us are big fans of New
Year's so we're right there with you because I feel
like it's so anti climactic. You're like yes, and then
you're like, ah, this is kind of impressing. Do you
like look back on your past year and be like
I gotta change all this?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
And then you're like, well, like can't really right totally?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That takes money and time, yes.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
And then once the kind of so you have the
holidays and you're kind of like, oh boy, I could
really go for this being over the holidays end, and
then you're like, Okay, now I'm feeling back to the grind,
like holidays are over. There's just a thing that happens
after the holiday wind down kind of wears off. That
just is so, it's just such a slug. It's a
(03:43):
slog of a month, I think for everybody. So for
folks who are listening and maybe feel like they're a
little off, feeling a little weird z's, I think we're
all in the same boat.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's true. It's also dark and again, as you said, cold,
and who likes the cold. It's not me Here in
the South. I prefer gold to hot.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
But it is dreary.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's like a and there's not like anything really coming
to look forward to. I don't look forward to like
Valentine's Day, Like there's no it's just like, okay, I'll
wait a couple months for something sunshine.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Just hold on to St. Patrick's Day day? What is that?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yes, I'm a huge celebrator of Arbor Day. Uh well,
I have to say, you really came in swinging with
this topic, and I have I have been thinking about
this because I'm actually not on social media a lot,
but I have seen I feel like I'm one of
the only people I know and this I'm sure it's
not true, but in my circle that watches a lot
(04:46):
of YouTube and YouTube, there's something going on with YouTube
ads that I've been trying to make into an episode,
but I can't quite nail down what it is. But
they've become so gendered in a way that like isn't new,
but feels like, wow, we've gone this far back. But
it'll be something like, especially around the holidays, like, well,
(05:11):
my wife loves me, so she got me this thing
that she can use to make my life better, or
like it'll be from the wife's perspective and it'll be, oh,
I got this because my husband's been so tired and
I can make his life easier. So it's like gifts
that are all about him, but it's painted as if
she wants it too and she likes it too, And
(05:33):
I'm just confused by the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I don't understand. I feel you. I feel like lately
the Internet and social media has become this weird marriage
of gender roles and gendered expectations and commerce and capitalism
all kind of like blended into one where the only
kind of online experience you could ever really hope to
(05:55):
have around that is like buy this thing for your
husband to be a good wife. It's very weird.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's bizarre, like and I've I've had moments where I'm like,
is this generated by AI? There's like the voices are strange,
it's very strange.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
It might be AI.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
It could be like there's one in particular.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I'm like, I need to look into that.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I've I want to investigate what is going on here?
But yeah, I've just sort of seen it. And so
when I saw this topic, I was like, oh, maybe
Bridget can illuminate something that I'm seeing in my specific space.
But from what you're seeing on social media? So what
are we talking about today?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
So, if you've spent any time at all on social media,
you have probably seen what is called trad wives contact,
right have you? I guess any You're not really on
social media, but it does sound like you're getting a
little of this on YouTube. Sam, have you encountered any
of this in your time on TikTok So?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, So we've had many conversations on the show about
the crunchy oh yes wives movement that quickly kind of
devolves into being a trad wife, as well as talking
about religious trauma and the how that plays into the
tradwife culture as well as the red Pill episode that
we talked about, because that actually jumps into tradwives as well.
(07:17):
Of course white supremacists and white feminist culture also goes
into that. There's so much to this, So definitely had
a little bit of research beforehand, and I definitely get it,
of course because of my for you page f yp
any just in case you needed to know, it does
made me the satire of tradwives and or stitching the
(07:39):
problematic things with tradwives. I don't follow any and I
would not recognize any by name necessarily, and I know
you're going to talk a little bit, but like Joe
Piazza actually was on the show and we talked very
briefly with her about some of the things that she
has seen and she is addressed also her because she
was coming around like Halloween after Halloween, and her just
(08:00):
amazing costume of playing tradwife as well. But yeah, there's
definitely a lot of content. I get a lot And
we've talked about the family content stuff, which again aligns
with that when a lot of moms of TikTok used
their family content as moneymakers and to get to get viral,
(08:22):
and then of course the Ruby Frank case, which is,
oh my gosh, Annie, Just so you know, just recently
a woman was convicted for child abuse and so much
more after it was released that she was abusing her
kids and she was using that content with somewhat a
business partner to make money off on TikTok and she
(08:42):
was severely abusing her kids.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So horrible, and she's just I think she might have,
like I know, she was in prison or in jail
for a while and then she was released and I
think flipped on her business partner and was like, oh,
she was the mastermind.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yes, they flipped on each other obviously, but it was intense,
and the whole content is about how she is very
cruel to our children and how she punishes them by
not letting them have dinner. Was the beginning of everything.
But this type of content, which you have talked about before,
using children as moneymakers for content creation, but on that
(09:22):
same line with tradwives that have been popping up so
much totally.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
So it is interesting that I think that you know,
we're talking about this mix of gender and commerce that
is so ubiquitous on social media, and I think You've
really nailed something that the depiction of motherhood and romantic
partnership that were shown as women on social media is
highly commercial, Like, somebody is probably making money from that
(09:49):
depiction in some capacity. So, for folks who don't know,
trad wives is short for traditional wives, and it's these
content creators who make content about ostensibly about the bliss
that they find in doing traditional domestic labor, you know, cooking, cleaning, sewing,
running a household. So I should say right off the
bat that like not all tread wife content it's created equal.
(10:12):
Some tread wife content creators just seem to be sort
of showcasing their lives. We'll talk about some of those,
but others seem to be more directly and explicitly romanticizing
and advocating for like this bygone time when women were
happier primarily in the home. So I did an interview
with Joe Piazza, who I'm so glad that she stopped
(10:32):
over on on y'all's pod too, because she is incredible
and hilarious. She has a podcast called Under the Influence,
all about influencing and women. So Joe actually makes it
very clear that this bygone era where women were so
happy to be staying in the home. Actually kind of
does not exist, right, It's like a throwback and a
(10:53):
romanticization of a time period that like did not actually
really exist for women, because truly, can you really romanticize
the choices made by white women at a time when
they could not even own bank accounts? Right, Like, it's
a little hard to be like, oh, well, our grandmothers
were just choosing to be in the household because that
(11:16):
was what was better. And it's like, well, she couldn't
have her own money legally, so maybe choice isn't the
right word. So I say white women because I'm a
Black woman, and we are explicitly not talking about Black
women like myself. Black women historically pretty much have always
done wage earning work outside of the home. Even if
(11:36):
we wanted to stay in our homes and not do that,
that really wasn't an option for us. Rose M. Krider
and Diana B. Elliott note in their report called Historical
Changes in Stay at Home Mothers nineteen sixty nine to
two thousand and nine that even black mothers with young
children were in the workforce following World War Two, when
many of their white counterparts had withdrawn from a labor force,
(11:57):
and in places like South Carolina, they even had on
the books that were requiring black women to have consistent
employment outside of the home. So I just wanted to
say that because I feel like when we talk about
conversations about who works and who didn't work and what
it's a throwback to you. I just think it's important
to note that we are talking about like one specific
(12:17):
subset of women, not all women. So I should say
I'm not an expert on tradwise. I did do a
lot of reading for this episode. However, I do consider
myself a bit of an expert on the internet and
social media, and I think there are a few key
parts of the conversation around trad wives and that kind
of online content that get a little overlooked that I
(12:40):
just want to make sure that we are all keeping
in mind when we're consuming this content and talking and
thinking about this content.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Okay, for listeners maybe like me who have seen some
weird YouTube ads but maybe don't know what is happening
on social media specifically, what kind of content are we
talking about here?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
So, as I said, it is content that is like
women baking or sewing, you know, sometimes it's just like
a woman demonstrating what her life is like. So it's
like her with her kids making food, Da da da,
But some of that content is a little bit more sinister.
In this kind of treadwive content, women are exublicitly comparing
(13:31):
their lives and their choices to the lives and choices
of other women. I transcribed a TikTok that I think
demonstrates what I am talking about. So this is from
influencer Emily Allison, who describes herself on Instagram as counterculture
thinking child raising. I just want my kids to grow
up in a free country. So I'm going to read
what she says in her TikTok and just kind of
(13:54):
imagine that, like they're sort of cute, smarmy guitar music
playing under this, because that's what the TikTok is like,
and that my narration is synced up to videos of
me wearing prairie dresses and like cooking and playing with
my kids. Okay, here we go. Our culture tells women
that it's honorable to sacrifice everything for your job, but
(14:16):
it's unfair to sacrifice everything for your family. That it's
liberating to be sexually used by men who are not
committed to you. But it's oppressive to love and respect
a man who is that it's somehow empowering to rely
on the system to educate your kids, feed your family,
and keep you alive rather than have the skills to
do it yourself. I say that culture is full of lies.
(14:40):
So that's just me like reading a word for word
transcript of what this person has to say. First of all,
you might think from that transcript that this person does
not do wage earning work because she is too busy
like focusing on her family. However, according to her Instagram bio,
it says that she is a writer for the far
right website Epo Times, so she actually does have a job,
(15:02):
but she just wants to let us know that she
has a job in a way that is like different
and better than everybody else who has a job. Like
I don't know what y'all are doing, but like when
I have a job, it's better. When you have a job,
you are making a mistake and turning your back on
your family. So just so you know I'm doing it right,
y'all are doing it wrong. So I think this content
(15:23):
is a good example of what I'm talking about. Right Like,
if Emily is so content with her with her life,
you know, I don't think that somebody who is super
content would feel the need to really compare their choices
and their life to the choices in life of somebody
that they don't even necessarily know, right Like, there is
something about the content that I think is meant to enrage,
(15:47):
meant to make people feel a certain kind of way.
Do you all see this? Or am I way off basier?
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Well, the minute you said that she was for a
writer for the far right news article, I think that
again kind of coming back to what we were talking about
with red pill slash white supremacy. This level of indoctrination
is the Maga world. And I doubt we have any
Maga listeners. But if you're offended, you essentially like if
(16:15):
it sounds offensive, but it's actually true because there's this
whole underlying level of creating more white babies. And I'm
assuming this one woman is a white woman and in
this whole culture of go against the zeit guys, which
now the Zeit guys is too liberal, which is that
you know, in their in their mind of course, in
(16:35):
this conversation, which is again what we were really like
every time I would go down this rabbit hole of
anything tradwives, anything crunchy moms situation, it gets very succinct
to this ideal of moms protecting white children or the
white community in itself. In this level of that has
(16:57):
to be also meaning that we're rebellious against the norm
and those are the devils who you know, this level
of conversation, it's like, yeah, this makes perfect sense, and
that guitar playing is you're supposed to think this is
a Midwestern family out in the cornfields in their dresses,
having the perfect little like dinner at the tables, but
that they have obviously gardened themselves because they don't trust
(17:20):
the government or the fertilizer and you know, wore these
clothes that they have made themselves, as well as the
fact that you know they don't do doctors, none of that.
Like this level of ideal of the perfect life that
kind of also insinuates by the perfect light means you
have to be white.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
A thousand percent. And something that you picked up on
that I really want to pull out is how so
much of this content also sort of has this almost
like faux persecution angle to it, like they don't want
me to be submissive to my husband, who like they
don't want me making homemade meals. It's like, who are
(18:00):
you talking about that is preventing you from doing this?
This is something that I've noticed a lot. It's almost
like these people want to be persecuted or like victimized
in some way, and they really they're so committed to
wanting to feel like they're going against the grain and
challenging norms that they have made that into an identity
and they've kind of like built it up that everything
(18:24):
they do is like being challenged. Everything they do, like
they don't want me to grow my own food, And
it's like who, Like who is preventing you from doing
this if that's what you want to do, right, I've
seen so many people say like make it seem as
though there's some sort of feminist conspiracy to keep women
(18:45):
from staying at home and not doing way durning work.
And I, I mean I would if I could afford
to comfortably do that. I think I would love to
do it, right. I think a lot of people would
love to do that. But like what people are saying
is like, yeah, you should have choice to do what
you do whatever you want to do, and what they're
hearing is like, they're not letting me stay at home.
(19:05):
Where where are these people who are preventing women from
like staying at home with their families. That that's what
they want to do.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
That's called capitalism, babe in it. This sucks for everybody.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, we're all we're all dealing with the same we're
all suffering.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
But you know, I think that's that conversation again, this
whole like they won't let me do this thing, or
they won't let me do that thing. And it's kind
of that conversation you were talking about earlier where black
women were pretty much excluded from the white feminist movement
because they did not listen to the fact that black
women have been working, Women of color have been working
the entirety of their existence from jump because they had
(19:39):
no other choice, that the fact that they want to
go to work and women should be they're not listening
to the other side of what feminism should look like.
And that conversation is that it's the choice right, the
choice to do what you whether it is to be
a stay at home mom and to have whatever balanced
life that you want. If you agreed upon it and
(20:00):
everything is fair for you too, and there's respect, then wonderful.
That's the thing that's the choice to have. That choice
is the feminist ideal. But yeah, the more I see,
like again with the tradwise, they're going to a nineteen
seventies tactic of the fear mongering of feminism, right, they
(20:21):
want to take away men they hate oh man, they
want to kill men.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
A B.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
The fact that they can't wear You can't wear bras
because if you do, you're not a feminist and you
can't wear like who ever said these things? Who said this?
What is happening this fear mongering that has come back,
and that they have not only taken this on, they're
pushing it so hard that those who always hated the
ideal of something absolutely are gripping to this. It's like, yes,
(20:52):
they are trying to take away these things from me
or make me do these things, and I hate the feminists.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yes, it is such a for aw man. Absolutely, And
so this actually is one of the three major points
that I want folks to think about and really know
in terms of coming to this content with a critical
eye and with with a little bit of media literacy,
is that this kind of content is often specifically engineered
to make us have a big reaction. Right, So, in
(21:21):
the example that we were just talking about, you know
that influencer does not have a huge following. She has
like twenty k on Instagram and I think or on
forty k on TikTok, which is pretty small in the
ecosystem of trad wife influencers. And so you know, because
some of these people have like millions and millions of followers.
So I suspect the reason that she has to frame
(21:41):
her video in such a smug way where it's like
my choices are good, other women's choices not good, is
because she is trafficking on our big reaction to get engagement.
If she just said I like to homeschool my kids,
I like to play with my kids, I like to
cook for my husband. I have a relationship where I
(22:03):
rested back to my husband, who would care. Nobody would
care because it's like, oh, good for you. She has
to tweak it to be like I'm doing it in
a good way and everybody else is doing it wrong
intentionally because it gets our blood boiling to get more engagement,
to get more views, and to ultimately boost her profile.
Where it's very clear she wants to have a big one, right,
And so in some ways this is just a good
(22:25):
old fashioned engagement grift where you say things in a
way that is intentionally said to be a little bit
inflammatory to get more engagement. Right.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Gosh, that took me on a rabbit hole of like
a dark time in her company where that was like
you should make people mad, they'll engage with you.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Like, please don't do that. This is a bit of
a side note, but this is my new media literacy
battle cry, which is that we should understand how many
places on the Internet and how many places and influencers
and people and content creators that make up our internet
discourse are doing that They are trying to get one
(23:05):
over on us because it is effective. We already know
that social media platforms intentionally boost content that gets a
lot of engagement that makes us angry or gets our
hearts racing because it is better for their platforms. And
so the dynamic where anybody who says something that is
inflammatory that gets people upset that they are rewarded with engagement,
that is a bad system and we need to be
(23:26):
looking at it like I can't tell you how many
stupid TikTok skits. I have gotten sucked into where I'm like,
wait a minute, why do I care? Like what this
fake scenario says. It's happening like the story time of
a woman doing her makeup telling me a made up
story about a friend that doesn't exist. Like why am
I giving this my attention? And we need to put
(23:47):
a wrench in that entire system, that entire machine that
continues to crank out content like that, because it's not
good for us.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
No, and I think a lot of it is so
And I know you're going to talk about this a
little bit, but it's so dishonest and the time it
takes and perhaps the production it takes to just make
these videos. I always kind of laugh when I see
like ring lights in their eyes and it's clearly supposed
to be like, oh I just woke up.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I'm like, no, you did it.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
But you do have another example of somebody who has
a lot of engagement, yes.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yes, and that is Ballerina Farms. So if you don't
know who Ballerina Farms is, her name is Hannah Neeliman
and she is a follower of the Church of Latter
day Saints Akaam ormon. She married into the family that
owns the airline that Jet Blue, So girl married very well.
She is probably not living like a rule kind of
(24:43):
dependent on the land lifestyle. However, if you looked at
her content, you might think like, oh, she's living a
very humble rule existence, because that's what she wants you
to think. She spends a lot of time on TikTok,
cooking with her eight kids on her farm, and when
she's not doing that, she is competing in a beauty
passiont She has almost ten million followers, so a huge,
(25:04):
huge footprint in the landscape. I would say Ballerina Farms,
I would describe her as like a source of a
lot of skepticism and frustration. Like she competed in a
beauty pageant just I think a few days after she
gave birth, for instance, and people were like, you know, like,
you're probably not in your best shape when you just
(25:26):
have given birth. What it like. People felt some kind
of way about the fact that she was, you know,
competing in a beauty pageant. But as a recent piece
in Glamour points out, you really would never know that
her content is like controversial or is a source of
frustration or skepticism for people. The piece reads, neely Man
has never wavered. She doesn't publicly address her haters, she
(25:49):
doesn't engage with the discourse, and she doesn't try to
clear the air on, for instance, whether her wealthy father
in law bought her ranch for her family. She just
continues to make bread, post videos of her dancing, and
lift her life. She seems to be, at least online,
completely unbothered and content, which of course is its own
kind of privilege when you have eight kids. But on
the other hand, we have no idea what her reality
(26:10):
really looks like, do we, And so she does not
have to engage in the kind of rage baiting that
somebody who might be a less successful Tradwives influencer might
have to write, like her thing is like I just
make my bread and like smile weird and like pretend
to be living a rural, rustic life even though I'm
(26:32):
very wealthy, right right.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
And there's a lot of romanticizing of like that kind
of work and that kind of life that I think
I see happen a lot in general conservative movements, where
like let's get back to the land of like do
you know how to get back to.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
The life yeah, I was talking to So my partner
grew up on a farm in rural upstate New York.
When I say a farm, I don't know, Like I'm
not a country girl. So when he was like, oh,
I grew up on a farm. My parents will on
a farm. The first time I went to visit his parents,
who still live on that farm, I was like, oh,
(27:10):
I don't know what I had been envisioning, but like
it is a farm farm, like a real farm. And
so he grew up like tending to animals as part
of his chores, and they would, you know, butcher and
package steaks, you know, for to eat and to sell,
so like a real farm. And it's always so funny
to him and his family. How people online have convinced
(27:32):
themselves that farm life is this like route to a soft,
slow life. That is only true for people who are wealthy,
who are not actually farming as a source of their existence,
as a source of sustenance, as a source of their
financial security. Anybody who actually lives on a farm, a
real farm, where that farm where like you live or die,
(27:53):
or you eat or don't eat based on how that
farm is doing, will tell you that it is a
ton of work. People who have farms are always tired.
Their schedules are wild. Like this idea that that oh,
you know, we're just gonna buy a land and start
a farm, and that that's gonna be an easy, slow life.
Absolutely not. That is just a fiction, a fantasy. Talk
(28:14):
to anybody who's ever done farming. That's not true.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Have they not seen a little house on the prairie.
They're waking up at four am and going to bed
at nine and they're I know, that's that's my reference,
But no like to know that they actually have to
wake up at the crack of dawn to make sure
whether it's snowing or raining and all of that, to
make sure they have to take care and tend to
(28:37):
all the things, the living things that are on there,
including any crops, and if they have like workers on there.
And I'm assuming, because I don't know anything about this
Ballerina farmer, that if they're that wealthy and they do
actually own a farm, that they do hire workers, and
how the little she's active on that farm. Maybe I'm
(29:00):
just static, you know, speaking up too much, but just
like that doesn't seem like a thing that she would
be doing. Now she's also posting pretty little pictures of
herself dancing with our kids.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I can confirm that they have like a pretty big staff,
like a paid employees to work for them. I should
also say, like, side note, I have heard some horror
stories about what is actually like going down on that farm.
If you were interested, there are Reddit rabbit holes, but like,
I cannot confirm any of that myself, so like, don't
have anything to say about it. But that is out
(29:32):
there about some of the allegations of how the animals
are treated on that farm, but like, do your own
research there because I don't know either way. But yes,
she definitely has paid staff to do the actual labor,
and again there's something wrong with that. That's like, if
that's how you're going to do it, but then don't
go on TikTok and make it seem like you are
(29:55):
doing this work yourself and it's actually not that hard
and you actually have a slow life, soft life, because
that's not true, right, And so I think that's sort
of like my biggest point is that I think that
some of these creators are just not being totally honest
in the way that we understand that most online content
is probably not honest in some way. But there's something
(30:16):
about the like trad wife, slow life, rustic vibes content
creators that I think makes it harder to see when
someone is basically lying to you on the Internet about
what their life actually looks like. And so Ballerina Farms
might not have to like Engagement Farm the way that
the other influencer does, but that doesn't mean that she's
(30:36):
being totally honest about what is going down in her life,
or that we're getting an honest view of it, because
you know, what do you call somebody who makes content
to make their life look a certain way, maybe not
totally accurately to sell commercial products a marketer? Right? Like
that is marketing. Ballerina Farms, i would argue, is a business,
(31:00):
and her social media stick is just part of the
marketing arm of this business. Like their farm is a
farm where you can buy boxes of meats from it online,
like it is a it is a corporate entity, and
so she is just a like marketing her consumer goods
to try to get us to buy not just the product,
but into the whole lifestyle that her that her product
(31:22):
is kind of revolves around. And what's also kind of
interesting is there's this creator, Carol Claire Burkie on TikTok,
who is really made a thing out of doing some
media analysis around Ballerina Farms as a brand, and she
basically is like, we don't actually know or see the
actual real person behind Ballerina Farms, Hannah. We don't really
(31:45):
see a real view of her life. What we're seeing
is the way that her corporation or her company wants
us to see her for marketing purposes. She compares it
to the Kardashians, who you know, we know have become
literal billionaires from leveraging a highly curated peace into their
personal lives to get us to buy into them as
a brand. But the difference is, she says that the
(32:05):
Kardashians are maybe even more upfront about this dynamic than
these trad wife influencers. I don't think anybody would be like, oh,
the Kardashians are just trying to give us an honest
look into the lives of billionaires and like they're just
being so authentic. I don't think anybody would say that.
Anybody would know like, oh, they want you to buy
the makeup, the lip kit, the skims, the whatever, this that,
and they're leveraging showing a curated look at their lives
(32:28):
to do that. I think with these trad wife influencers,
they're just not being honest about what the dynamic is.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
It feels like it's going backwards, gonna because for a
long while, there was a lot of parents who are
truly honest, like this is what it looks like to
get to our videos here where they're doing the video
and doing it behind the scene, and they're being more
open and transparent. It feels like it's going back to
again where Instagram started and everything was so pretty. Now
(33:04):
all the pictures were so perfect and they had to
show the perfect life in order to get the more
ads and more views. So it feels like it's going
backwards again, just like our society in how they are
trying to romanticize, as you were saying, a lifestyle.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I think that's a really good point, and I do
think that that this has something to do with that.
I think for a while, what popped on social media
when it came to making content about motherhood was authenticity, like, oh,
I'm a mess just like you, Like my kids are filthy,
and I'm exhausted and i haven't washed my hair just
(33:44):
like you. And I think that that authenticity maybe became
leveraged where like that it almost felt like a curated authenticity.
And so I almost wonder if this trad wives kind
of perfection is a response to this authenticity that kind
of typified motherhood content on the Internet of a certain era.
(34:08):
Like if it was cool to be authentic, then now
what's cool is like being being like, isn't my life perfect?
Like we're just coming back around.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Coming back in that circle. And just as a reminder,
with her having that many followers and that many views,
she's making lots of money just off of her tiktoks.
Lots of money.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yes, like that is my thing, there's no shame in it,
but like this is a business. And in my interview
with Joe, she puts it really well that if you're
somebody who is setting up a tripod, setting up lighting,
putting on a face of makeup, putting on a particular outfit,
to film content that you then edit published to millions
of your followers, and have built up a social media
platform that might involve navigating like brand deals or sponsored posts,
(34:49):
you have a job that is employment, that is labor.
So you have a situation where some of these women
are making content about how they do not do wage
earning work, but the strategy that in which they are
doing that is work. It's like a mind.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Like I feel like they forgot the mom blogs, which
was the beginning honestly of all of this and the
way that it was created. It was stay at home
moms trying to figure out how to make money to
help assist and figuring out this is this is profitable
and has now ventured into this and as where the
blogs were curated in a way that it was written
(35:26):
and entertaining. This is an entertainment on a different level,
which is a show? Is a show pretty much?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, Like in some ways this is just like entertainment,
Like it's like using curating a version of your life
for entertainment value, right. And I've actually even heard the
theory that at least some of this content is fetish content,
like sexual fetish content that are not actually meant to
be speaking to women at all or saying anything or
(35:53):
making any kind of comment about women and what we
should be doing with our lives or not doing with
our lives. That it's meant to appeal to horny men
and their submissive wife, sexual fantasies, and that these creators
have just sort of found a way to make fetish
content in a way that does not trigger you know,
TikTok or whatever is not safe for work content sensors,
(36:13):
and so like, if that's what's going on, like, more
power to you, you know, do your thing, But we
need to come at this content with a little bit
of like media literacy and criticism, because people would then
take that content and then use it to make some
kind of a point or a statement or turn it
into a way to understand our own lives. And it's like, well,
why would you be doing that with fetish content, Like
(36:34):
I don't think it's I don't think it's meant to
help you understand how you should be living your life
or making your choices.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, it's gonna be accidentally fetish, right, Well, there's a
we passed over it.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
But there was a note you had in your outline
that I was I thought was interesting. Was the sort
of like cause playing a certain type of life. Right
after the insurrection happened on January sixth, I wrote this
really long article about like a lot of people there
were couse playing, like the idea of Okay, I'm going
to take back our country, and then they get into
(37:06):
trouble and all of a sudden they're in court and
they're like, oh God, well, like the consequence has come
and it just falls apart. So it does have these
sort of implications that I don't think people think about
when people watch that and it gets in their head
and they get this idea of like, oh, I can
live that life, I can live off the land, or
(37:26):
I can do all these things, but the reality is
not there, and it can become a really toxic soup
that infects all of us. And it sounds like, based
on my experience and what you're saying, that we're getting
a lot more of this content right now.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That is such a good way to put it, and
something that I didn't have. But I just want to
say is that I want to make it clear that
I think that everybody should be able to do what
they want to do. Like my feminism is about letting
people make choices for themselves. If that choice is to
like rage bait other women online for their choices, I
(38:04):
don't love that, but you know, in terms of if
you want to stay at home or work, that should
be your choice. However, one thing I will say is
that I have definitely seen an uptick in people giving
younger women the advice that they should just marry and
start having kids really young. And I don't generally get
down for one size fits all advice, but for someone
(38:27):
really young to tell them that they should not know
anything about having their own money or managing their own money,
that they should not try to have any kind of
employment history, should this marriage fall apart, should there something
happen to their partner, whatever, I think that is really
dangerous advice. Even if you're somebody who wants to get
married young, wants to have kids young, wants to have
(38:49):
a submissive traditional marriage, do all of those things, but
make sure that you know how to take care of
yourself and live your own life, because nothing in life
is guaranteed, Like you could be happily married forever and
get married very young and then have your partner die
unexpectedly or something right. And so I think that we're
giving young women advice based on a fantasy that does
(39:11):
not come to fruition in reality. And I think you're right, Annie,
that we are seeing more and more of this kind
of content. And I just don't think we can talk
about the rise of this kind of online treadwife content
without looking at where we are as women right now,
which is not great. You know, we've experienced this major
rollback of our rights. The Journal of the American Medical
(39:33):
Association actually put out a report just this week that
found that since Roe fell, rape has led to an
estimated fifty eight, nine hundred and seventy nine pregnancies in
states that ban abortion without exception for rape. That is staggering.
You know, we also are facing rising costs of things
like groceries and housing. Bloomberg found that on average, US
(39:55):
households want to spend an extra five two hundred dollars
this year just to be able to enjoy the exact
same standard of living that they did last year. Add
to that, things like climate instability, political instability, all things
that historically women have really for the burden of. And
so I just can't help but think that we're seeing
this rise in content that romanticizes and glorifies times when
(40:16):
women had even less rights than we do right now
is related to what's happening currently, which brings me to
the last thing that I want people to really keep
in mind when they encounter this content online. Is that
I believe that tradwife content is responding, albeit oftentimes in
a very distorted way, to very very real issues that
(40:38):
we're facing as women. You know, we're kind of being
served a crap sandwich right now from being honest with you, Like,
we don't have paid leave, we don't have affordable childcare,
we don't have any real social safety net. Women are
burdened with more and more of the labor that it
takes to keep a family stable with very little social
or institutional help. And it just doesn't surprise me that
we're seeing this online glorification of stay at home parenthood
(41:02):
in a particular kind of way right now as a
reaction to it. And I think that something that gets
left out of the discourse is that the reasons that
women are staying home are not necessarily like to deprogram
their kids from government instruction or whatever. The A lot
of times it's because childcare is so being expensive that
(41:22):
it does not make financial sense to work outside of
the home anymore. Or maybe on the flip side, both
parents are working and they're just like figuring it out
and just squeezing by a lot of people are just
doing what they have to do based on financial circumstances
that are not great, and so that is a very
different thing from choosing to work because feminism and like
(41:43):
woke society says that you have to. It is like
some of these creators are creating a straw man for
why women either work outside of the home or don't,
and that's actually not a reflection of the reality that
most parents are facing right now.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, I mean, especially during the beginning of the pandemic,
there were so many articles about that of like women
were being forced out of the workforce, like all of
the scientific papers from women decreased. And I think it's
interesting a lot of content like this immediately out the
gate feels defensive for whatever lifestyle. And I could see
it being defensive from like women judging you, But I
(42:17):
can also see it being maybe trying to find like
a reason that it's okay that you didn't have the choice,
and so let me make this look prettier. And I no,
I definitely like it, and this is definitely what I want,
so I can. I think that totally makes sense, Bridget.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
And I think people are picking up on it because
women are tired. I would just love someone to do it, like, yes,
you go out and work and let me just chill here,
which is not the truth at all, but the way
they make it look like, while I sit here with
these pretty little kids and tell them to go take
a nap like would if you've been any childcare, you
know that's not the thing. And everything's a mess and
(42:54):
everything's a disaster, and cooking is hard, and being a
stay at home mom is a time job in itself
and deserves pay, which is the other conversation that they
don't want to have chidwise, is that a lot of
those stay at home moms who love it also are like,
but we should be paid. Yeah, absolutely should.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
It's labor. I mean absolutely exactly. So I think you're right.
I think a lot of these influencers can really oversimplify
and glamorize what is ultimately a dynamic that does not
allow for women to make the choices they want to make,
Because being a stay at home mom because you cannot
afford daycare is not the same thing as choosing it
for yourself because it's what you want to do, and
(43:32):
it's because you can't afford to do it. And I
think that ultimately women deserve to have choices. You deserve
to have better choices to be able to do what
we want to do with our lives.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yep, women do women Yes, women, Yes, agreed, agreed one
thousand percent. Well, thanks as always, Bridget. Again, I feel
like we could go on and on and on, but
we will let you go for now.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Well? You can listen to my podcast. There are no
girls on the internet. If you want to hear my
full conversation with Joe Piazza, we put it out as recently.
She's hilarious. Definitely recommend. Can find me on Instagram at
Bridget Marie in DC, or on TikTok at Bridget max Pods.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yes, and hopefully we'll be able to do some irl
things and maybe we can see some.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Of you all there. Listeners. Let's hope. So TVD stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yes, stay tuned well, Thanks as always Bridget and listeners.
If you would like to contact us, you can our
email Stephania mom stuff atiheartmea dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at most of the podcast, or on TikTok,
which we don't post very often, but we might start
posting more. It's Stia Graham at Stuff Mom Never Told You.
We have a tea public store, and we have a
(44:49):
book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
as always to our super producer Christina, executive producer Maya, and.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Stuff I Never Told You is production by Her Radio,
More Podcast or my Heart Radio. You can check out
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