EJ Dixon
Appearances
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
Like it's a very obvious thing. pro-Trump, conservative slant, but it's sort of buried amongst the more innocuous, like, apolitical pieces that you find on there.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
Yeah, you know, when you were initially describing the angle to me, I was like, huh, that doesn't sound like something that they would run. But then when you mentioned that the woman had just gotten married and she was, this was on her honeymoon, I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. So yeah, it makes perfect sense that they would run that disclaimer.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
They are very, and they have been basically since their genesis, very aggressively anti-premarital sex victims.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
they sort of adhere to this very old-fashioned line of thinking that sex is for after marriage, sex is for someone you love, and if you have sex before marriage that you're somehow spoiled or tainted in some way, and men, and it's always men, then men won't find you, won't be interested in you anymore. And I think they're serious as a heart attack, honestly. I think they're trying to make money.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
I think they're trying to capitalize on what they believe to be, and correctly, I think, believe to be an untapped audience. But I also think they genuinely believe a lot of the stuff that they're writing. I mean, you look no further than like... the people who you see contributing.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
Like, I remember when I was trying to reach out to writers when I was reporting the piece out, there were all these names. Like, when I looked at people on LinkedIn, these were people with ties to PragerU, which is this conservative digital media behemoth. These were people who...
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
You know, attended Hillsdale College, which is this private Christian college in Michigan with strong ties to the Trump administration. Like these were like one of the contributors early on was like the conservative influencer Abby Shapiro, who's the sister of the Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, except she was going by her married name then, Abby Roth.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
I mean, you really only need to look at like the people who have invested in EV adjacent enterprises, like the natural family planning app that Brittany Martinez launched to know that they're serious. Brittany Martinez is also the founder of this planning app called 28, which launched in August 2022.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
And it's basically this wellness app that encourages people to adopt natural family planning methods and offers like personalized fitness and nutrition recommendations based on where a user is in their cycle. Which kind of sounds like innocuous and apolitical on the surface, but it's actually like the anti-birth control argument is like a pretty strong talking point on the right.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
Actually, when Evie, you know, in the first year or two that Evie was running, there were a lot of stories that were, like, very... broadly skeptical of birth control in general. These are headlines like the birth control pill could increase your risk for breast cancer, 13 reasons why you should quit hormonal birth control. And it didn't disclose the relationship between Evie magazine and 28.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
So obviously there's sort of an inherent conflict of interest there. And 28 had conservative backing. It had $3 million in backing from Peter Thiel, who's the right-wing billionaire who served on Trump's transition committee. Um,
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
And she's denied that, like, he has any involvement with Evie in general, but it really, like, it does raise questions, especially since 28 was initially branded as, like, 28 by Evie in the URL for 28 initially redirected to Evie. Like, it does raise questions about, like, what the agenda is here.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
I do. And this is sort of where my feelings about EV Magazine get a little bit more complicated, because I think everything that you're saying is, like, totally spot on. Like, I do think... I came of age in the early 2000s where I was being inundated with, you know, the how to give a good blowjob listicles, but also told that I shouldn't dress too sexy and... And be very, very thin and yeah.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
Yeah, exactly. And like a really bad time in retrospect for young women. And I do think that this idea that young women... these very conflicting messages that young women got about being sexual were really harmful and continue to do harm to this day. And I do think that there is a need for a corrective to that. And there is a need for a conversation about how like,
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
Well, women were sold a false bill of goods to some extent. You know, we were told we could have it all. We were told we could have great sex lives and have these amazing careers and, like, have these families. And now as millennials are coming of age, we're sort of slowly realizing that, no, like, this is actually not possible in this country.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
Like, it's really, really hard to have even one of those things. And we feel like we've been sold a false bill of goods. So I think they're really tapping into that. Whether or not I agree with it as a blanket statement, obviously I don't. But I don't think it needs to be either or.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
I don't think it needs to be so black and white as to say, well, casual sex is good for women or casual sex is bad for women. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I will say I do give them credit for sort of trying to carve out a space in the conversation.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
My name is EJ Dixon, and I am a senior writer at New York Magazine's The Cut. Tell me about Evie Magazine. Evie Magazine is a magazine that was started by a model named Brittany Martinez that was sort of branded as like the Gen Z right-wing version of Cosmo. And the mission was basically stemming from her frustration with the fact that most women's magazines are left-leaning.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
And she wanted to come up with an alternative for conservative women aged 18 to 35, approximately.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
She wrote an op-ed for this, I would categorize it as a right-leaning website, Quillette. And she sort of said that the mission was to, quote, empower, educate and entertain young women with content that celebrates femininity, encourages virtue and offers a more honest perspective than they get elsewhere. She's classier than Cosmo, sexier than Refinery29 and smarter than Bustle.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
And I immediately know what that means. Like at first glance, it really looks like a lot of content that you would find geared toward Gen Z women. Like the main story on the homepage right now is an SEO story about how much money Mariah Carey makes every year from All I Want for Christmas is You.
Today, Explained
Trad wife takeover
And like I bet it's doing good traffic because like people are probably searching that this time of year. 10 romantic Christmas holiday ideas, best accessories, new feminine fragrances to try. And so it's all like none of that really seems conservative outright. But it's really when you scroll down that you kind of see these articles that are really buried, that are more insidious.