Latest / Mini Scroll / Nara Smith & The Internet's Obsession with (Fake) Tradwives

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Nara Smith & The Internet's Obsession with (Fake) Tradwives · Mini Scroll

0:00
On January 12th, 2024, Nara Smith posted a TikTok video
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making her children peanut butter and jam sandwiches.
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Like many mom fluencers on the app, Nara primarily shares
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lifestyle vlogs and aesthetic home making content cooking
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barefoot in her white marble kitchen, wearing a red lip while
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tending to her children, showcasing her loving
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relationship with her husband, and narrating all of this in a
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soft voice that conveys that she has found the ultimate happiness
0:26
and peace from her domestic life.
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But unlike most other mom fluencers on TikTok, Nara is
0:32
making the peanut butter and jam sandwiches from scratch.
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Like scratch scratch. This morning my toddler stumbled
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into my room and her first words were PB and J.
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So that's exactly what I got Started on.
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Growing up, I loved having fresh bread.
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It was one of my favorite things, so I get it started by
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making a really simple sandwich Bread with some yeast, water,
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salt, sugar and flour. Kneaded that until the dough
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formed and then let that dough rise for about two hours until
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it doubled in size. I started on my Raspberry jam.
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I used some lemon monk fruit sweetener, but you can also use
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sugar and some cornstarch to thicken it.
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While that was going, I started on my peanut butter.
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I roasted all my peanuts in the oven and then ground them up
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with some sea salt until a paste formed.
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You can definitely add honey to this if you want to.
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I didn't today because the Jelly would be quite sweet, but by
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this time my bread was doubled in size so I punched it to
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release all the air and then split it in two, rolled that out
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and then folded that over to fit in my loaf pans.
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I let that rest for another 30 minutes to about an hour until
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it looked like a decent size in my loaf pan and then I popped
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that in the oven and it came out so perfectly brown, soft in the
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middle. I was so excited I couldn't
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wait, so I definitely sliced it a little too early.
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My daughter requested a mini PB and J so I cut the bread down
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and spread it with my peanut butter and Jelly, cut it
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diagonally and this was really good.
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She ended up having a few of them and wanted more.
2:03
It's Nara's commitment to making her family homemade meals from
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scratch while looking gorgeous and calm that has built her a
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loyal following of over 3 million who have branded her a
2:13
very loaded label trad wife. And though Nara, a woman of
2:18
color, has not openly peddled trad wife ideology, nor has she
2:22
been clear about her political or religious beliefs, she is
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just one of many young mothers on TikTok who have found
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themselves accused of taking women's progress back in time to
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the 1950s, an accusation that is not always justified.
2:38
From Centennial World, I'm Lauren Meissner and this is
2:41
Infinite Scroll, a podcast about Internet culture at the creator
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Go Lauren. I'm loving the new format and
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Thank you you guys are so freaking swayed.
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And then we also got some really sweet messages in Geneva, which
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I never know if I should read things from Geneva because I
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feel like it's kind of like a close community.
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It's it's like a Discord, right? So it's like a closed community,
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essentially. So I don't want to, like, put
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you guys on blast if you're interacting with us in Geneva.
5:41
And then I kind of like read it out, but just know I saw them
5:45
Love you guys. Nara Smith, born Nara Pelman, is
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a model influencer and the wife of popular Tumblr model Lucky
5:52
Blue Smith. They have two children, Rumble
5:55
Honey and Slim Easy, and are currently expecting their third.
5:58
Nara has gone viral for posting Stay at Home mom fluencer
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content. While there is nothing
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inherently wrong with these types of videos, users have
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criticized her for promoting trad wife ideology, Mormon
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propaganda, and anti feminist beliefs.
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Nara's most viral moments have all been centered around her
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commitment to making food for her family completely from
6:19
scratch. Aside from questions about how
6:21
Nara possibly has the time, her content has led to accusations
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that she is creating trad wife propaganda, an accusation that
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more and more creators in that momosphere space are facing in
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recent months Now I have explored the definition of trad
6:37
wife before, specifically when we investigated the career
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trajectory of Gwen Swinnerton, a once bisexual ASMR YouTube and
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only fans creator who has seemingly transitioned to a trad
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wife, TikTok creator. Yes, that is a real sentence
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that I just said. A portmanteau trad wife is a
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descriptor combining traditional and wife.
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While the term originated in 2015, it has gained increasing
7:01
popularity in the twenty 20s, particularly thanks to TikTok.
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In January of 2020, the BBC released a documentary called
7:08
#trad Wife submitting to my husband like it's 1959,
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featuring a popular creator named Alina Kate Petit.
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This soon led to coverage from other mainstream outlets like
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the New York Times and the Guardian.
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The Trad Wife niche has grown exponentially since then,
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especially with the COVID-19 pandemic and the advent of
7:27
TikTok. At the time of recording #trad
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Wife has 433 million views. TikTok creator Ali Rooker
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outlines some of the reasons why Trad Wife content is on the
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rise. First, she notes that as Gen.
7:40
Z enters the workforce, they are realizing that basically work
7:43
sucks, leading them to potentially follow the Trad Wife
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path. Though trad wife life involves
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significant domestic labor, this lifestyle might be appealing to
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young people because they are not working in a professional
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setting. The 2nd is that there is a
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general malaise about capitalism at the moment, with many young
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people feeling unfulfilled in their career.
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Quote at least being a trad wife serving someone that you love
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maybe feels like there is a little more of a point, Ali
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says. Additionally, Ali explains that
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many women today tend to do a significant amount of domestic
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labor while also having a full time job, so it may be enticing
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to leave the professional world if you have to do everything in
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the home anyway. Lastly, trad wife is a very
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lucrative niche for creators. This is something that we as
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viewers should keep in mind when consuming trad wife content.
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More on that later. The trad wife belongs to Tik
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Tok's Momosphere, the corner of the app where mothers and wives
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post content related to cooking, relationships, and parenting.
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The trad wife will post content centered around domestic life,
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sharing aesthetic vlogs, preparing a meal for her
8:48
children with the ingredients often made from scratch or
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cleaning the house, sometimes with homemade cleaning supplies.
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But there is an important distinction to be made here.
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Trad wife is not an online aesthetic, it is not a type of
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content creator, and it is not a stay at home mom who likes to
9:05
cook for her family. Trad wife is an ideology rooted
9:09
in white supremacy. It is Nazi propaganda, and
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though Trad wives claim to be empowered by this lifestyle, its
9:16
core values are deeply anti. Feminist.
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Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Elon University
9:22
Devin Proctor notes quote Triad wives promote traditional gender
9:26
roles in family life, wherein the man provides for and
9:28
protects the family and the woman has children and takes
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care of the family's needs. Triad wives believe that the
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place of the woman is in the home, justifying this
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perspective through various political, religious, and
9:40
personal beliefs. By embracing traditional
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principles, trad wives claim that opting for a more
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conventional path in marriage does not diminish their rights.
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The recent popularity of tik tokers like Nara Smith has
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created both increased interest in the trad lifestyle and a
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misunderstanding of what a trad wife actually is.
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The most obvious critique of trad wives is that their
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lifestyle is inherently sexist and heteronormative.
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Trad wives, often entrusting their husbands with complete
10:10
control over the family's finances, find themselves
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confined to domestic responsibilities, and are
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expected to wholeheartedly submit to their spouses.
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While this may be the goal, the trad wife lifestyle
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fundamentally contradicts the objectives of feminism dating
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back to the first wave in the early 20th century.
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As Proctor writes, quote, trad wifery stands firmly against
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many feminist struggles over the past half century.
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The right to work, the right to maintain one's own finances, the
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right to bodily autonomy, the right to freedom from
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harassment. So many trad wives are proud to
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be, quote, anti feminist. Proctor explores how some trad
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wives maintain that their chosen lifestyle is a way of expressing
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feminism. This comes down to the concept
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of choice feminism, the idea that the individual choices of a
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woman are inherently feminist. But Proctor goes on to debunk
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this argument, noting that the majority of women don't have the
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luxury to make this choice quote for racial, geographic,
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cultural, and many other reasons.
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Many women are unable to work even if they would choose to,
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and for economic and systemic reasons.
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Many women who have to work would choose not to.
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The choice itself reflects privilege.
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Proctor also explains that domestic labor is inseparable
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from the demands of a capitalist society.
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While trad wives may opt for this lifestyle, their choice
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also responds to the significant challenges of balancing
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caregiving and the seemingly ever rising cost of living.
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The trad wise lifestyle is driven by patriarchal norms and
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the notion of an idealized woman undermining the perception of
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genuine choice among these women.
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As Bella Kellogg for the Michigan Daily writes quote, the
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patriarchal oppression doesn't discriminate between the
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traditionalists who embrace it and the feminists who defy it.
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Under the patriarchy, inferiority is an inescapable
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condition of the female psyche. Traditional women cope with this
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patriarchal oppression by framing their subordination as
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self sacrifice. This includes the denial of
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basic emotional communication between themselves and their
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husbands. Having said that, it is not
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inherently anti feminist for a woman to value and pursue their
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role as a mother and a wife, and this false conflation has
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created a lot of tension online as the trad wife aesthetic has
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become increasingly trendy. The real issue arises when these
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roles are weaponized to platform the alt right, an ideology
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shrouded in racism and white supremacy.
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While many trad wives do not personally identify with the alt
12:47
Right, it has been well documented that embracing the
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trad life can lead women down this path.
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Christie Champion and Kirioli ignam right for the conversation
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quote Trad wives believe contemporary society is beset by
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decadence and consumerism, sexual depravity and promiscuity
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and unnatural ways of living. This is all supposedly
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engineered to weaken the white race.
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Becoming a trad wife is one way far right women push back
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against the supposed threats. Evian Ledig explains in the book
13:17
The Women of the Far right that the idea that society is in
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moral decay is very common in these circles.
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This has led many people who subscribe to this ideology to
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homeschool their children quote to circumvent mainstream social
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and cultural norms. This conspiratorial mindset has
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become prevalent in trad wife circles, where many of these
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women adopt A crunchy lifestyle. For those unfamiliar with the
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term crunchy, it refers to a subculture defined by the
13:44
pursuit of slow living, Wellness, independence, and
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traditional aesthetics. As Kathleen Belew writes for The
13:51
Atlantic quote, crunchy, coined as a pop culture reference to
13:55
granola, has come to refer to a wide variety of cultural
13:58
practices, including avoiding additives in food dyes,
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declining or spacing out childhood vaccinations beyond
14:05
what pediatricians recommend, and more extreme actions in
14:08
pursuit of health, independence and purity.
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Ballou further outlines the Crunchy to Alt Right pipeline,
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observing that this subculture serves as a channel for direct
14:18
recruitment into the white power movement.
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Essentially individuals who embrace the crunchy lifestyle
14:24
become more susceptible to fear mongering and conspiracy
14:27
theories fueled by their pre-existing distrust in
14:30
government, medicine and other institutions.
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For an in depth analysis on how this crunchy to alt right
14:36
pipeline happened before our very eyes with popular YouTube
14:39
Gwen Swinnarton check the show notes for episode on Gwen in
14:43
season four. Considering Baloo's crunchy to
14:45
alt right pipeline Trad Wifery often has a strong association
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with the far right through domesticity and white
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nationalism. Trad wife memes are a good
14:54
example of this. Author Casey Davis reflects on
14:57
her experience with trad wife culture online in a recent
15:00
TikTok series. Trad wives are Nazi propaganda.
15:04
I'm not being hyperbolic. They literally are.
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I've talked about this on my page before, but I recently
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discovered something that I first saw 15 years ago that I
15:13
think will finally cement this for people that don't believe
15:15
me. People think that trad wife is
15:17
like this new TikTok trend because it's videos of these
15:21
beautiful women being like domestic goddesses and having
15:24
these aesthetically pleasing videos of them like baking bread
15:26
and having babies. But the term trad wife like the
15:31
things that that those people are doing when they #trad wife.
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It originated long time ago. This is one of the first trad
15:40
wife memes. I first saw it 15 years ago and
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it's this, you know, liberal feminist versus trad wife.
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Trad wife stands for traditional wife and I want to draw your
15:49
attention to things on this chart.
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The trad wife, bottom left, loves her family, race and
15:56
country in that order. Knowledgeable about her European
16:00
roots, homeschools her kids so they aren't taught progress BS
16:05
in school. If we look over here at the
16:07
Liberal Feminist, you can see second from the bottom right
16:11
she's only attracted to black men on the left.
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She aborted her black baby last year.
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By the way. The liberated Feminist is chubby
16:19
when you see that chubby and sleeps around, whereas the trad
16:24
wife has a natural tan, natural hair highlighted from the sun
16:30
and a slim figure from her homemade meals.
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The far right sees the woman's role as one of service, meaning
16:37
that a woman's purpose is to bear children for her husband
16:40
and subsequently spend her time raising them.
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Through these efforts, trad wives quote serve their imagined
16:46
racial and cultural heritage. Champion and ignam right Trad
16:50
wives draw upon a very specific period of history, the 1950s.
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Throughout this era, women were largely denied access to the
16:58
workforce or any sense of independence.
17:00
While this was vastly different from previous decades where
17:04
women participated in activities such as textile production,
17:07
agricultural management, industrial work, and even
17:10
military service, trad wives view domestic life as the
17:14
epitome of womanhood. While a trad wife's definition
17:17
of true womanhood is oversimplified and inaccurate,
17:21
it aligns perfectly with the messaging with an alt Right
17:23
circles beyond the synergy Championing 1950s ideals of
17:28
womanhood inherently favors white women, as Proctor writes
17:32
quote. By framing these particular
17:35
formations of gender roles and identities seen in the white
17:38
middle class United States of the 1950s as traditional, the
17:42
trad wife personifies them into natural fact for all humans.
17:46
This certainly makes for a powerful breeding ground for
17:49
white supremacy and nationalism. And though many creators making
17:54
aesthetic trad wife content would argue that they are not
17:56
white supremacists, and they see no correlation between their
18:00
lifestyle and Nazi propaganda, some creators in this space do.
18:06
One trad wife creator known as Wife With a Purpose, whose real
18:09
name is Elias Stewart, epitomizes these racist beliefs.
18:13
In 2017, Elias started the quote White Baby Challenge,
18:18
encouraging white people to match or beat her number of
18:22
offspring, Annie Kelly writes for the New York Times quote
18:26
Wife With a Purpose might be the most prominent and certainly
18:29
most openly white supremacist of the women who call themselves
18:32
trad wives, but she is not an anomaly.
18:36
These accounts veered dizzyingly from Cosmo style tips on
18:39
pleasing your husband to racist musings about ghetto music to,
18:44
on some occasions, calls to reassert their vision of the
18:47
white race. Considering the ideals that
18:50
underpin the trad wife lifestyle.
18:52
Ali Rooker on TikTok outlines why trad wife propaganda is
18:55
problematic. You are working this framing
18:58
that there are women who work and there are women who don't
19:01
work because men have gifted them the opportunity to stay
19:03
home and cook and clean for them.
19:05
You're both working. It is fine to want to stay home
19:08
and do those things, but that is not a gift of no labor.
19:12
You are both working, and when you're doing it exclusively in
19:15
the home, you're working with no rights, no protection, no safety
19:19
net. You're providing services that
19:20
if you weren't around, that man would have to pay multiple
19:22
professionals to get because it's work, It's valuable work.
19:25
But your job security and doing that is entirely contingent on
19:28
that man deciding to keep you around as your youth and your
19:31
beauty, two things that are very protective of that job security
19:35
to a certain point, start to fail.
19:36
Just because it feels fulfilling and free to not go to work
19:39
everyday does not mean you are free.
19:42
So with these extremist beliefs in mind, what really constitutes
19:46
trad wife content? In a recent video, Casey Davis
19:50
explores this question in relation to TikTok, explaining
19:53
that trad wife content is defined by three concepts #1
19:57
women should be at home raising their children, and men should
20:00
be working outside the home. Number two, they must be
20:03
Christian religious. And #3 they must believe that
20:07
wives are called to submit to their husbands by God.
20:10
Davis then notes some trad wife red flags, which include
20:14
homeschooling, homesteading, and the importance of being
20:18
beautiful and feminine for their husband.
20:21
So while Trad Wife embodies a specific lifestyle with a set of
20:24
underlying beliefs, TikTok users have increasingly applied this
20:28
term to a wide range of creators in the momosphere, most of whom
20:32
are not actually Trad wives. Emily Mariko is 1 creator who
20:36
has been facing the Trad wife allegations as of late.
20:40
Emily gained viral fame on TikTok in 2021 for her cooking
20:43
and lifestyle content, most notably her salmon and rice
20:46
bowls. Before becoming an influencer,
20:48
she graduated with a neuroscience degree from
20:51
Columbia University and worked at L'Oreal and Facebook.
20:54
Last year, Emily married her longtime boyfriend Matt Rickard
20:58
and is currently expecting a child.
21:00
Her recent marriage and pregnancy, coupled with her
21:02
cooking and cleaning videos, have led TikTok users to jump to
21:06
conclusions and claim that Emily is a trad wife.
21:09
Look, I'm just going to say this.
21:10
Emily Mariko is the ultimate trad wife.
21:12
The performance of domestic labor on her account is
21:14
impeccable. In terms of the fine print of
21:16
patriarchy, she is a dream wife. The audience, AKA the people for
21:21
whom she curates this performance, only know her as a
21:24
woman who lives inside of a kitchen.
21:26
She is pregnant and she is silent, which means that you,
21:30
the viewer, get to project any of your own opinions or thoughts
21:34
or feelings on to her. She is a vessel.
21:37
This is literally the dream when it comes to patriarchy.
21:41
A smiling, silent woman who cooks meals and reproduces.
21:45
However, Shannon McNamara, the host of the Fluently Forward
21:48
podcast, recently made a TikTok questioning whether Trad Wife is
21:52
an accurate label for Emily. I've been seeing videos on here
21:55
of people calling Emily Mariko A trad wife, and I just feel like
21:59
the lingo is out of control. There is always a word that gets
22:03
popularized on TikTok, and then people start assigning that word
22:06
to everything, even when it shouldn't be.
22:08
This happened with nepo baby, right?
22:09
People were like, oh, anyone who's has rich parents is a nepo
22:12
baby. Not what the word means happened
22:14
with PR relationship. People were like, oh, everyone
22:17
is in a PR relationship. No, no, no.
22:18
And now that the phrase trad wife is getting popular now,
22:21
it's been around for like years, people are using it in a way
22:24
that doesn't mean anything. So I saw this video where this
22:26
girls like Emily Mariko is a perfect trad wife because she is
22:30
performing domestic labor while pregnant and she is silent while
22:33
she's doing it. Which number one?
22:36
Performing domestic labor. She's cooking like she's also
22:38
cleaning up around the house. But I just find it crazy that
22:40
there are so many male creators on here who all they do is cook.
22:44
You know, there's that guy, right?
22:45
Who? What's it?
22:46
He's like, what does Catherine want?
22:47
I'm going to make a meal for my wife every day.
22:49
No one calls him a trad husband. Nobody would because he's a man.
22:52
But if you are a woman and you're cooking for people in the
22:55
family, all of a sudden now it's sinister.
22:57
Trad wife like energy content. Trad Wife creators also espouse
23:00
their values, calling on their followers to make food from
23:04
scratch and uphold the traditional ideals of womanhood
23:07
that we have already discussed. Emily Mariko, on the other hand,
23:11
rarely shares anything with her followers.
23:14
On top of this, Emily clearly has financial independence.
23:18
She has had partnerships with different brands and most
23:20
recently launched $120.00 Tote Bag, a move that did generate
23:25
considerable criticism but I'm sure still made her a lot of
23:27
money. The idea that Emily has
23:30
financial independence and thus is not a trad wife is a point
23:33
worth exploring, however, because that is the hypocrisy of
23:36
trad wife content creators. They do have a job through
23:40
content creation, and they do have financial independence
23:44
through their influencing careers, A career built off
23:47
telling other women to submit to their husbands and let them
23:50
control their finances. Even if these popular trad wife
23:54
creators are not monetizing their videos through
23:57
sponsorships or through the TikTok Creator Fund, they have a
24:00
safety net of thousands if not millions of followers that they
24:04
can easily monetize if things go South in their marriage and they
24:07
find themselves needing to support themselves.
24:10
Another element of this discussion around trad wife
24:12
finances is the fact that so many of these really popular
24:16
trad wife influencers, like Ballerina Farms, have incredibly
24:19
wealthy husbands. That privilege enables them to
24:22
choose to stay at home and live a domestic life that is far more
24:25
glamorous than the average woman.
24:27
This financial privilege also appears to extend to Nara Smith,
24:31
who, as noted at the top of the episode, has blurred the lines
24:35
between trad wife creator and mommy Blogger.
24:38
Given her fame and influence at the moment, several journalists
24:41
have attempted to uncover who Nara is and if she is really a
24:44
Trad wife. First and foremost, Nara is
24:47
married to Lucky Blue Smith, who was raised in the Church of
24:50
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
24:52
Trad Wifery is closely linked with Mormonism.
24:55
While not all Trad wives are Mormon, many Mormon mommy
24:58
vloggers fall into the Trad wife category.
25:01
This is arguably because Mormon beliefs around motherhood align
25:04
with Trad wife values. The LDS Church places a strong
25:08
emphasis on family values and motherhood is highly regarded.
25:13
Women are often encouraged to focus on their roles as wives
25:16
and mothers, with an emphasis on nurturing and raising children
25:19
in accordance with religious practices.
25:21
With this in mind, many Internet users have come to believe that
25:24
Nara's content is promoting this lifestyle.
25:26
Quote This couple is Mormon and making bank off of promoting
25:30
trad wife stay at home Mormon content.
25:32
But both she and him are successful models, him being one
25:35
of the most highly paid male models.
25:37
She is not a trad wife but is encouraging women to be and to
25:41
leave the workforce for men. Insidious wrote ex user at Give
25:46
receipts. While Mormon Mommy vloggers may
25:48
not actively prophetize or endorse their religion, many
25:52
leverage their influence to advocate for values
25:54
traditionally associated with the church, even when addressing
25:58
A secular audience. EJ Dixon for The Rolling Stone
26:01
points to Ballerina Farm, whose real name is Hannah Nealman.
26:05
As an example quote, the former ballerina and beauty pageant
26:09
winner has garnered 8 million followers by performing
26:11
traditional wife, Dim and Motherhood.
26:13
She bakes Brad barefoot, wears overalls and her rustic wood
26:17
paneled kitchen and cooks from scratch on her $30,000 Aga
26:21
stove. Although there is an apparent
26:23
link between Trad wives and Mormonism, Nora's affiliation
26:27
with the church beyond her connection to her husband
26:30
remains ambiguous. This complicates the claim that
26:33
Nara's content is Mormon propaganda, as many TikTok users
26:36
believe quote The specifics of Smith's relationship with
26:39
Mormonism are unclear, Dixon continues.
26:42
Though I was unable to verify online rumors that she had
26:45
converted upon marrying Smith, she has responded affirmatively
26:49
to comments asking if she self identifies as LDS, and she is
26:52
obliquely referred to studying scripture and the Book of Mormon
26:55
in her content. On top of this, Nara's content
26:58
isn't overtly religious. She rarely, if ever, discusses
27:02
her faith, Dixon claims. She only mentions her faith to
27:05
put a stop to rumors and speculations, pointing to a
27:08
December 2023 TikTok where Nara says quote, it's absolutely
27:11
crazy to me that people assume they know what I believe and
27:14
what my faith is and what they assume.
27:16
My stance on other issues are. Nara's admittedly tenuous
27:19
association with Mormonism has prompted a discussion online
27:22
about whether Nara would be receiving the same criticism if
27:25
she were a white woman, as Internet users do not direct the
27:28
same amount of criticism towards white Mormon trad wife creators,
27:32
once again holding black women to a double standard.
27:35
On the flip side, many Internet users feel unsettled by the fact
27:39
that Nara is a woman of color and allegedly supports a church
27:42
that has long been discriminatory to minorities.
27:45
For example, until 1978, the Mormon Church avoided opening
27:50
missions in areas with large black populations, discouraged
27:54
people with black ancestry from investigating the church,
27:57
advised members to avoid social interaction with black people,
28:01
and instructed black members to segregate themselves when white
28:05
members complained about having to worship with them.
28:07
Some ex users have even gone on to praise Nara, applauding her
28:11
for excelling in a space dominated by white women.
28:14
Quote, people keep shitting on her because she's 22, Mormon,
28:17
two kids and pregnant. But I saw a whole TikTok about
28:20
how white women own this space and it's nice to see someone who
28:23
isn't white succeed in this space.
28:25
So that made me a Nara Smith fan, thank you very much.
28:28
So if Nara isn't promoting Mormonism, is she promoting Trad
28:32
wifery? Nara's content definitely
28:34
champions traditional stay at home motherhood, even though she
28:38
caters to an audience that may not necessarily have those
28:41
values or financial means to follow her lifestyle.
28:44
Having acknowledged this, it's worth noting that she hasn't
28:46
explicitly endorsed the trad wife lifestyle.
28:50
She doesn't espouse the racist or anti feminist beliefs
28:53
associated with Trad Wife Free. However, she does perform them
28:57
in some ways, seemingly prioritizing domestic labor and
29:01
acting like the idealized version of a woman.
29:04
But as Dixon notes, we don't know the true nature of her
29:06
relationship with her husband. She clearly values motherhood
29:10
and being a homemaker, but it doesn't seem like patriarchal
29:13
servitude is her only option, distinguishing her from many
29:17
other women who may live a similar lifestyle.
29:20
There is no indication on Smith's social media platform
29:23
that her husband, Lucky, harbors such expectations.
29:26
He appears to be a devoted partner to the degree that her
29:29
fans and followers regularly swoon over the affection that
29:31
they have for each other, expressing their desires to
29:34
similarly cater to their own husbands.
29:37
But it's hard not to notice that many of the meals his wife makes
29:39
from scratch are intended for him, and that he is rarely seen
29:42
performing any type of domestic labor whatsoever, Dixon writes.
29:46
TikTok user Ali Rooker makes a similar point.
29:49
While she doesn't speak on Nara specifically, she notes that
29:52
many trad wife or trad wife adjacent influencers are selling
29:56
a reality that doesn't truly exist.
29:58
This is the most insidious part of these trad wife influencers.
30:01
If they're not even trad wives, they are not dependent on their
30:04
husbands. They have their own money from
30:06
influencing us to want to be trad wives, but they've found a
30:10
way around the worst part of being a trad wife, The part that
30:13
made us rebel against being a trad wife and go get our own
30:16
jobs, which is trad wives are dependent on their husbands
30:19
because they make all the money and we do all of the unpaid
30:21
labor. They are getting paid for their
30:24
labor for selling you the aspirational life of being a
30:28
trad wife while other people do the labor behind the scenes that
30:32
make that aspirational, soft, easy life possible.
30:35
Nevertheless, considering the aspirational nature of Nara's
30:38
content, she is essentially portraying what a perfect life
30:42
could look like, potentially pushing her followers down the
30:45
trad wife path. But this is where we need to be
30:48
cautious. TikTok users incorrectly putting
30:52
the trad wife label onto women poses a threat impacting both
30:56
the creator and the audience. Not only are we imposing A
30:59
deeply problematic belief system on, to quote UN quote regular
31:03
influencers, but we are also downplaying the influence this
31:07
ideology wields. It is easy to get caught up in
31:11
the seemingly easy and fulfilling life of a trad wife
31:15
through her aesthetic vlogs and cooking videos, but it is only a
31:19
slippery slope to adopting the racist, anti feminist, and
31:23
conspiratorial beliefs that support the doctrine, a slippery
31:27
slope that has been well documented as we explored
31:30
earlier in the episode. As the trad wife aesthetic
31:33
continues to expand across TikTok, it is more important
31:36
than ever for us to understand the nature of this ideology and
31:39
which creators actually fall into the trad wife category.
31:43
Because while every trad wife is a stay at home mom, not every
31:47
stay at home mom is a trad wife. And it's imperative we
31:50
understand the difference between mommy vloggers sharing
31:53
their lives and trad wife creators peddling white
31:57
supremacist propaganda. Infinite Scroll is a podcast
32:01
written, produced, edited and presented by me, Lauren Meisner
32:04
for Centennial World. Additional research and
32:07
reporting is by Annabelle Ben David, thank you so much for
32:10
listening. I love you guys so much.
32:12
And I will talk to you next week.
32:14
Bye.