How the Tradwife Killed the Girlboss Age
16th February 2024
The tradwife smiles as she feeds her sourdough starter, wearing a long dress and a baby and wrangling the occasional toddler underfoot. She beams at her husband as he comes in from a long day on the ranch, or from the hedge-fund trenches. She makes salt-dough modeling clay for the little ones, whether her stove is from Lowe’s or La Cornue. The Cut describes her Instagram account as both “dangerous” and “stupid.” CNN experts lament that too many girls are turning to her as a “Band-Aid with ideological cover,” and fret about the sourdough-starter-to-White-Supremacy pipeline. Tradwives, both self-identified and smacked with admiring or hostile labels, are the latest cultural phenomenon in media crosshairs.
And no one agrees whom they’re arguing about in the first place. The term is online shorthand for “traditional wife,” which translates to a woman who performs all the tasks your grandmother once did but with access to infinite camera filters and no shag carpet. Most seem to be selling an aesthetic family ideal rather than sex, although some of the bouncing is, let’s say, a little too calculated.