Jamie Loftus

There are a lot of Mormon rituals that aren't often referenced in this kind of content, but is addressed a lot in ex-Mormon content. There's rituals like the washing and anointing, there's endowment ceremonies, and aesthetics that are all but directly pulled from Joseph Smith's interactions with the American Freemasons.

But whether the LDS likes it or not, this is the latest step that actively Mormon influencers have made into mainstream culture. Again, I haven't seen an episode of this show yet, but it looks like the wives are going to be centered in the story here, which would have been unheard of in Mormonism at one time.

But what I've learned is that part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other trad wives... Okay, let's define trad wife.

Part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other trad wife influencers of other religions is because the Mormon church has been unusually good at adapting to the internet and always has been. That's not the only reason, but we'll get there.

if you've managed to make it to fall 2024 without having the word tradwife shoved in your face congratulations and sorry because i am going to tell you what it is tradwife content is a social media trend from about the last half decade where women create lifestyle content and make lifestyle changes to more closely align with traditional gender roles with an emphasis on the beauty of a return to old time values

So TikTok's about making meals from scratch for five hours, defining oneself primarily as a wife and a mother, rejecting or abandoning a career outside the home, and being generally deferential to the patriarch, whether that's a husband or father or priest. Not all trad wives are Mormons. Hashtag not all trad wives. Not even close.

And I'm not going to tackle the topic of trad wife content wholesale in this episode.

What you need to know is the term trad wife shouldn't be conflated with stay-at-home moms because while trad wife creators are moms and at home with the children, making trad wife content is, for my money, a separate job from the actual parenting because being a stay-at-home parent is a job, although most cultures are not conditioned to view that labor as valid.

Radwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and low on practicality, showing only the aesthetically pleasing parts of the nuclear family and rarely any of the struggle or mess. There's a sense of self-surveillance to this content, an appearance of perfection in the home and family that's projected to the public, and often visual signifiers that harken back to mid-20th century America.

So if this makes sense, tradwives don't look like stay-at-home moms. They look like the advertisements of stay-at-home moms. And so much of what makes their content appealing is that an incredibly difficult lifestyle to achieve is made to seem easy, attractive, and morally correct.

Because if you're making lifestyle content of any kind, whether you personally or morally endorse the lifestyle, you're working in sales. I hate to break it to you. How many hot dogs have I sold by accident? Incalculable.

The trad life space is predominantly white, but possibly more diverse than you might expect.

There is an active Black trad life community who, according to a Refinery29 piece by Nyla Burton in late 2022, believe that, quote, "...traditional marriage is the key to Black women's liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity, and the stress of trying to survive in a world hostile to our survival and existence."

Tradwife content is popular across a lot of religions, but what's consistent across these communities is a feeling of performance and this aesthetic of either mid-century housewives or cottagecore.

In my opinion, there's very little intimacy to these posts in spite of the fact that we're seeing inside of a family's home and usually seeing their children who are, make no mistake, a part of the business model. While I totally get why the content is so appealing, it does feel like a performance. and a very effective one.

I mean, I'm like a militant feminist, and I would be lying if I said I hadn't seen a few tradwife posts that made me feel like I was living my life the wrong way. But neutral statement, these posts are a performance. Think of it like this.

The Donna Reed Show very effectively sold the idea of Donna Reed as a nuclear housewife and mother that lived in this effortless way and in reality was a television show that was produced by its star and that the real Donna Reed was a multi-hyphenate creative and a TV pioneer who was selling the idea of this housewife rather than actually living that life herself.

From a social media perspective, the tradwife phenomenon has a lot in common with a pattern that we talk about on this show all the time. A lot of the reason we're still talking about this content is because there's been so much backlash and outrage toward it.

Since it became popular in the early 2020s, left-leaning feminists who believe that the tradwife trend harkens a dangerous period of regression as the American people's right to bodily autonomy slowly and surely slips into the very mid-century timeframe that tradwives so often portray. In this outrage, does help to fuel the success of the influencers.

Because yes, they have millions of followers, but the snark Reddit boards and hate comments saying that tradwives are self-hating and glamorizing oppression have engagement in the hundreds of thousands as well. And as far as the algorithm is concerned, Engagement is engagement, whether it's positive or negative.