Four Years Of Trad-Wife Fantasies: How Did We Get Here?
White cotton dresses, dewy morning grass, the smell of freshly baked bread wafting through the corridors of your charming cottage home. No nine-to-fives, no morning traffic. The only responsibilities left are to be a smiling wife for your husband and a loving mother to your shrilling, multiplying babies. After years of online aesthetic cultivation, who amongst us doesn’t reap the burden of instantly recognizing the landmarks of the trad-wife fantasy?
But how long has she been here? It’s easy to conjure her up in 2024, a year of trad icons and rabid internet debating. Think of the discourse around figures such as Hannah Neeleman, recognizable by the social media handle ‘Ballerina Farm’. This summer, the internet was set alight by rage after The Times published a profile on this 34-year-old mother of eight, revealing her story as an ex-professional ballerina turned dutiful, laborious wife. She quickly became a figure of tragedy, her life analyzed by thousands as symbolic of the kinds of powerful women that become entrapped into the family unit and conservative performance. And who can forget 23-year-old Nara Smith, viral supermodel, cook, wife and mother? Even after extensive discourse, it’s unclear whether her elaborate from-scratch recipes should be taken as Mormon propaganda, tongue-in-cheek satire, or a reclamation of feminine aesthetics. Adding fuel to the fire, the latest round of allegations against the Smith family comes in the form of their allegedly pro-Trump ballots.
Trump voters or otherwise, this gossip is revealing of the real, tangible consequences of trad online identities. In 2025, Donald Trump will come back to office, elected not only by the electoral college but by the popular vote, a first for his career. Shockingly, Trump’s popularity amongst young women has actually increased since 2020, with over half of white women voters choosing him as president. We already know that young men are growing increasingly disenfranchised and right-wing, but between loneliness epidemics and incel discourse and Andrew Tate prototypes, the trend has been much discussed. But now the glaring question remains: why have young women, especially young white women, followed suit?
The term tradwife, like many things on the internet, has been lurking in distant corners since long before our collective subconscious became aware of it. According to Google analytics, searches for this word have been around since 2010, rising in popularity slightly in 2018, jumping in 2020, and peaking in 2024. Its earliest iterations would be found on distant blogs and Tumblr accounts which fantasized, usually erotically, over the 1950s aesthetics. So, what happened in 2020 to unleash the beast onto the internet at large?
Well, everyone had to stay home, on their phones, connected to the algorithm more than ever before. Covid lockdowns were imposed in March of 2020, beginning a long year of isolation for many. The first layer here seems obvious: who wouldn’t dream of open fields and self-grown produce at a time like this? But what concretized this heart’s dream for many was the already thriving popularity of the Cottagecore aesthetic. This online identity called on themes of sustainability, femininity, and nature’s beauty. It was, however, disavowed from familial duties; motherhood and wifehood had little place in this fantasy, instead favouring a commune-like system of all-female cohabitation. There was a certain touch of childhood play, calling on the imagery of fairies and witches. But it wasn’t without its controversies, with many pointing to the hegemony of whiteness within the popular imagery of the aesthetic. Still, in just three months since the beginning of the lockdowns, Tumblr reported a 153% increase in Cottagecore posts on their site.
Serendipitously, one of the major tenets of Cottagecore is the aestheticization of household activities. Think baking, knitting, drawing, reading… All this landing on the screens of thousands whilst they searched for anything to keep the boredom of isolation at bay. How many of us tried making banana bread? Sourdough? That one-pot feta pasta dish? How many others picked up knitting, sewing or coffee-brewing? Innocuous tasks, helpful in maintaining some sanity at home. And then, on March 20th, Animal Crossing New Horizons was released for Nintendo Switch, selling over 44 million copies worldwide. An escapist fantasy of a video game, Animal Crossing was primed to pull in buyers beyond the already hefty fanbase that awaited its release. The game allows players to build a little island up to whatever standards they like through rural activities like fishing and digging for fossils. You befriend animal villagers and craft all kinds of items. An introduction to cozy gaming for millions of people, and a consolidation of the rural fantasy that had already taken online spaces by storm.
It is the online-ness of it all that makes these little innocuous trends verge into dangerous territory. As algorithms learned of our interests in baking and sewing and farm life, we know now that they were also pushing right-wing conspiracies to the most vulnerable people online. The reserves of pre-existing QAnon theories were released onto the world as desperate people searched for answers during the crisis of the pandemic. By June, three months after the beginning of lockdowns, QAnon related content grew by 175% on Facebook, 77.1% on Instagram and 63.7% on Twitter. This spread was facilitated by the kinds of online structures that recognize popularity and virality above everything else. So, should we not assume that associations would be made between the rise in right-wing conspiracy content and then, on another side of the internet, the rise in aestheticized traditional identities?
As lockdown measures were loosened, vaccines were rolled out, and the Biden administration beat Trump out of office, one would think that this fascination with domesticity would be left behind. But young people left their homes and despaired over a year of lost youth. They felt robbed of precious time and then faced a bleak future with disparaging economic prospects. Who wouldn’t be lulled by the siren song of fields and farm animals?
Meanwhile, online spaces have built on these aestheticized identities without pause. They breezed through Catholic imagery consisting of crosses and bent knees. They promoted Old Money and all the plaid that comes with it. We met the Clean Girl, the Ballet Girl, and the ever-dreaded Coquette. We started saying things like “girl math” and “girl dinner”. All of it became increasingly entrenched in beauty standards, essentialized gender and reliance on traditional value systems. Whilst white women are not alone in engaging with these trends, it’s no secret that these aesthetics are set up by creators and algorithms alike to valorize whiteness. As we scroll mindlessly on our phones, it’s easy to forget that the algorithm isn’t randomized, that it is built on a history of popularity economics, and that we are not invulnerable to right-wing ideologies.
Today, it is not uncommon to hear young girls talk about their wish to drop their nine-to-fives and simply find happiness within the home. It’s an almost anti-capitalist sentiment, except no one ever seems to realize the kind of labour that goes into farm tending and motherhood. Some girls argue that feminism is about giving women choices, and if their choice is to be in the household, then so be it! Others joke about whether the feminist fight has even been worth it in the long run. Have we not ended up more fatigued than before? It’s almost anti-capitalist, almost revolutionary. And yet, the past four years of online traditional aestheticization have led millions of young women, especially young white women, to point their fingers the other way. Towards a vague and distant past, belonging to the imagination only.
Edited by Roxy-Moon Dahal Hodson
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