There Are No Girls on the Internet - Is Taylor Swift a Trad Wife？ The Internet Thinks So (w⧸ Jo Piazza)

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00:01:51.280 what is it about taylor swift whenever she does something it almost doesn't matter what she 0.98

00:01:59.840 actually did because our reaction always says more about us than it ever could about her

00:02:05.380 her fan base is so massive that every little moment becomes a mirror revealing all these 0.99

00:02:11.320 cracks because taylor swift exists at the crossroads of things like power gender class race 0.67

00:02:18.400 and visibility. And that means she is basically a magnet for charged, messy, emotional, and 1.00

00:02:25.340 sometimes even manipulated online discourse. Case in point, after the release of her latest

00:02:31.240 album, The Life of a Showgirl, the internet is asking, is Taylor Swift secretly a trad

00:02:37.500 wife? You know, the kind of woman who uses her platform to say that real liberation means

00:02:43.120 marriage and submission. But that question isn't really about Taylor. It's about us and how pop

00:02:49.360 culture, politics, and patriarchy collide online. Now, I am no scholar of Taylor Swift's music.

00:02:56.300 Honestly, gun to my head, I could probably name five songs. And I haven't heard her new album.

00:03:00.380 But even I could not escape this conversation online. So I called up my friend Joe Piazza,

00:03:06.960 host of the podcast Under the Influence and the author of the new book, Everyone is Lying to You,

00:03:12.020 which dives deep into the culture of trad wives to ask,

00:03:15.820 what exactly is a trad wife? 1.00

00:03:18.040 Why does everyone suddenly think Taylor Swift is one?

00:03:20.880 And what does all of this say about marriage today?

00:03:25.000 Yeah, I mean, I did actually write the book on trad wife influencers.

00:03:28.740 And it's so funny because I've also weirdly become like America's leading expert on trad wives.

00:03:33.680 Like I've been interviewed in the international press about trad wives at this point.

00:03:37.940 And I'm like, I did not see this coming when I got an economics degree in college.

00:03:42.720 Did not see it coming at all.

00:03:44.480 So one of the things I like about your work is you kind of come at it from this orientation 1.00

00:03:48.920 of trad wives are essentially making tons of money from lying about everything on the 1.00

00:03:55.760 internet. 1.00

00:03:56.140 They tell women not to work while they themselves often are running thriving, lucrative businesses.

00:04:03.000 Why is it important for you to have that orientation of like, yo, these people are basically lying?

00:04:07.560 Yeah, totally. And I mean, and that's like the goal of everything that I say about the Trad Wives. And it's the lies and the deception that really get to me because they're pushing these messages and really influencing a lot of young women saying, hey, quit your job. It's okay to be dependent on a man. A man should be the breadwinner of the family. Go off birth control. Have five kids. Homestead. Homeschool. Just like me. Look how happy I am. 0.82

00:04:35.420 when really these women are running a multi-million dollar media business making money off your 1.00

00:04:42.340 attention span usually they're the breadwinners in their families and their husbands are working 1.00

00:04:46.500 for them they have nannies they have domestic staff they have like all of these things behind

00:04:52.280 the scenes that you're not seeing and yet I talk to so many young women these days that are like 1.00

00:04:57.320 why would I climb the corporate ladder look how happy these trad wives are I just want to quit 1.00

00:05:01.640 my job and like live a soft life. And I'm like, they're not living a soft life. Content creation 1.00

00:05:05.620 is hard work and it is labor and they are making money and running a business and pretending that

00:05:11.040 they're not. I think that this message is resonating with young women. Do you see it

00:05:16.380 resonating? Are women responding to this and saying, oh yeah, why would I want to work? This

00:05:20.360 person has it figured out. They've got a great life. All they do is hang out with their kids

00:05:24.020 and bake bread and wear prairie dresses. I can have that. Is it working on these young women?

00:05:28.060 It 100% is working. And it's really insane. You know, some of like the best examples we have, too, are that, you know, another part of the messaging that we see in a lot of trad wife accounts is you should go off birth control. Birth control is dangerous. There's definitely a right leaning pro natalist vibe going on. And I talk to young women all the time who are like, oh, I would never take birth control. And I'm like, what? They're like, yeah, no, I mean, I saw this TikTok and it said it's going to make me infertile and give me cancer and kill me.

00:05:56.880 and I'm like look I didn't love the pill in my 20s and 30s and yet I loved not getting pregnant

00:06:03.520 by every douchebag that I dated so like there are good and bad parts of it but that messaging is

00:06:09.800 really resonating as is women are saying maybe I don't need to go to college or if I go to college 0.65

00:06:14.300 I'm just going to get my MRS I'm just going to go to find a husband this level of influence is

00:06:20.660 working on the generation that is just coming out of their teens and in their 20s right now

00:06:25.800 and also in women my age I mean I'm 45 who are burnt out from leaning in like it was exhausting

00:06:32.380 trying to like be a girl boss and have it all and do all the things because society is not set up

00:06:37.540 to support us and so we look at these images and think wow that does seem easy that does seem nice

00:06:43.940 but again it's all a fantasy they're cosplaying a kind of traditional America that never really

00:06:49.480 existed or if it existed it only existed for like a very small sliver of rich white people

00:06:56.020 It's true, these women are ultimately selling a fantasy that does not really exist, and never did,

00:07:02.180 because this idyllic life of comfort and bliss never really existed for most of us.

00:07:08.200 But that doesn't keep Tradwise from selling this lie, using a kernel of truth to sell it.

00:07:14.180 For instance, birth control.

00:07:16.020 It's true, birth control can have side effects for some of us.

00:07:19.880 So they take that kernel of truth to the extreme,

00:07:23.680 that it's better to use no birth control whatsoever and have kids before you're really ready.

00:07:29.620 Or another one, that doing wage-earning work outside the house is often hard and stressful,

00:07:35.640 and most of us that do it are burnt the fuck out and exhausted

00:07:38.340 and putting up with a whole handful of stuff that we'd rather not.

00:07:41.920 Yes, if you can't tell, that is true. 0.99

00:07:44.420 So the extreme alternative that trad wives would offer 0.99

00:07:47.740 is that getting married, 1.00

00:07:49.620 bowing out of the workforce,

00:07:51.100 economic, and civic life

00:07:52.560 is the answer.

00:07:54.020 Even though that is not even 1.00

00:07:55.720 what these trad wife influencers 0.95

00:07:57.520 themselves are doing. 1.00

00:07:59.660 They're really exploiting

00:08:01.260 this like kernel of truth

00:08:03.120 and blowing it up and saying,

00:08:04.480 so it will be better

00:08:05.300 if you just got married,

00:08:06.740 had a bunch of kids

00:08:07.400 and relied on that person

00:08:08.340 for all of your economic decision making.

00:08:10.820 Exactly, exactly.

00:08:11.680 And there's a kernel of truth

00:08:12.880 in all of it.

00:08:13.800 And that's,

00:08:15.140 those are the themes

00:08:15.820 that work so well.

00:08:17.000 again because like we are burnt out and so watching these like videos of sourdough or them

00:08:22.540 running through a field and gardening all day like one of my girlfriends who's a lawyer said

00:08:26.840 to me the other day she's like I think I think I would really like just baking bread all day

00:08:31.180 and I asked him like have you ever baked bread and she's like no I'm like do you like cleaning

00:08:35.520 your kitchen after making anything with flour because we never see that in the videos no never

00:08:39.860 see how messy a kitchen gets after baking bread and there is flour everywhere there's gonna be

00:08:44.220 flour like in your hair in your scalp in your kids scalps between your toes for weeks weeks

00:08:50.560 but we never we never see that she's like no I don't know and I'm like then I don't think you

00:08:54.180 would like baking bread I think you like the idea of this just ease and I think we're what that's

00:09:00.200 what we're craving we're craving ease and that's what they deliver in these videos yeah I think 0.95

00:09:05.480 what they're really saying is like I could use a fucking break like that's really I think like 0.96

00:09:10.220 at the heart of it. We're exhausted. We're broke out. We're stressed. We're tired. Maybe you don't 0.98

00:09:14.280 want to dedicate your life to baking bread. Maybe you need a break. And maybe you need

00:09:18.620 institutional support systems to make all of this a little less impossible. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe

00:09:24.140 we just maybe we could use, you know, paid and subsidized child care. Maybe we could use

00:09:30.180 more time off. Exactly. Like we live in a society that is not cutting us a break,

00:09:36.380 that is not trying to make life easy at all for women. 0.71

00:09:40.720 In fact, it's making it harder and harder 1.00

00:09:42.420 on a daily basis.

00:09:44.220 And that's what we want.

00:09:45.420 We want this easy life.

00:09:46.780 But we're very vulnerable because we are anxious.

00:09:50.380 We are burnt out. 1.00

00:09:51.600 And that's why these women can suck you in so easily. 1.00

00:09:55.000 And then they're all just selling you stuff. 1.00

00:09:56.340 They are selling you their $50 high protein flour.

00:09:59.640 They're selling you their egg aprons

00:10:01.080 and their courses on how to make money online

00:10:03.740 and be more like them.

00:10:04.580 You said earlier that you didn't necessarily think that this is what you would be talking about with your economics degree, but so much of this is an economy.

00:10:13.580 Yeah, exactly. I mean, the thing is, it is an economic story. It is a business story.

00:10:17.820 When I first started the Under the Influence podcast, which is more than five years ago, which is crazy to me.

00:10:23.140 Wow.

00:10:23.580 and started covering influencers. What surprised me, and again, this is five years ago,

00:10:29.720 it was that we were in the thick of the influencer economy, but it was so much smaller than it is

00:10:35.640 today. But it was still a multi-billion dollar business run by women for women, mostly ignored 0.97

00:10:40.760 by the mainstream media because it was run by women for women. And I've been to these mom

00:10:47.020 influencer conferences and I kind of satirize some of them in Everyone is Lying to You because the

00:10:51.960 goal of the book is it's a novel. It's a thriller. It's pulpy and juicy. It is supposed to be a lot

00:10:56.700 of fun. But at the same time, there's so much reporting that I've done that went into the

00:11:02.900 book. So I've been to these mom influencing conferences and they are a masterclass in

00:11:07.400 business. Multi-million dollar deals are getting made at these conferences. And also because two

00:11:12.640 things are true, there are a lot of women high on weed gummies. So it is, it is a masterclass 1.00

00:11:20.800 in marketing and branding and also mom spring break if it wasn't for the lying to enrich yourself

00:11:28.360 personally part of that that actually sounds like a pretty good time to me totally totally well and

00:11:33.580 to be fair i've got to say this the influencer economy not everyone is a grifter right so like

00:11:42.160 the influencer economy is the new form of advertising and marketing it is where eyeballs

00:11:47.540 are. As a person who sells books for a living, and I say this all the time, I could get a profile

00:11:53.120 in a major magazine and I have, or be on a morning talk show and I have, and I won't sell as many

00:11:59.060 books as when an influencer just shows it on their Instagram feed. That is the world we're living in

00:12:03.800 right now. And so, you know, it is a completely, you know, lucrative business. And at the same

00:12:10.960 time, you have a lot of people who are grifting you and who are lying in order to capture your

00:12:15.760 attention and make money off of you. Before journalists like Joe, who clocked the influencer

00:12:21.920 space as important early on, started looking deeply at what was happening in these corners

00:12:26.420 of the internet, they were pretty much ignored by the male-dominated tech press. And that allowed

00:12:31.140 these spaces to do two things, amass a whole lot of power and influence, and also refine the ability 1.00

00:12:37.720 to use that power and influence to expose women to pretty dangerous political and social ideology.

00:12:44.860 So you mentioned how this, you know, when you first started leaning into this coverage

00:12:49.180 of what was going on with the influencer economy, it was really ignored.

00:12:53.240 Like maybe it would be in a style section or something, but certainly the Wall Street

00:12:57.440 Journal at this point was not, you know, taking a hard look at what was going on in

00:13:01.940 these spaces.

00:13:02.420 Do you think that that allowed for these spaces, them being overlooked in this way, to kind

00:13:10.000 of also be used as vectors to push things like telling young women not to be on birth control

00:13:14.680 or, you know, really being used as a pipeline to indoctrinate young women into more odious

00:13:20.200 kind of political or social ideology? 0.99

00:13:22.840 Yeah.

00:13:23.180 And I think that that's still the case.

00:13:27.220 For the trad wife accounts, and the trad wives are short for traditional wife, a lot of them 0.61

00:13:33.940 were boosted during the last election because they do push such right wing ideologies.

00:13:40.000 of homesteading, homeschooling, 1.00

00:13:43.220 strip women of their rights, 0.99

00:13:44.600 strip women of their agency. 0.99

00:13:46.060 So we know that they truly did grow,

00:13:49.180 especially over the past four years

00:13:50.580 because they were being boosted.

00:13:52.260 Some of them were even created

00:13:53.600 by Turning Point USA.

00:13:55.060 And I've been talking about this

00:13:56.360 for a couple of years now,

00:13:58.700 about how Turning Point

00:14:00.340 incubated influencers.

00:14:02.880 And they've gotten so much more attention,

00:14:05.080 obviously, after the murder

00:14:06.820 of Charlie Kirk recently.

00:14:08.000 but he truly was a genius when it came to branding these kinds of influencers and he used to say he's

00:14:16.220 like the left has hollywood they have celebrities we have to create our own celebrities and if we

00:14:21.500 win the culture we win the war and it's this kind of soft proselytization of doesn't this look

00:14:27.420 beautiful it's nicer over here all of you all of you with your feminism you seem so angry 0.71

00:14:32.980 all the time we're we're the party that is fun and nice and easy breezy and it worked to sway

00:14:39.620 a lot of young women we talk too much about how young men were swayed by like the podcast bro

00:14:46.780 sphere to switch parties but i think that young women have truly been influenced by by instagram

00:14:53.900 i remember after charlie kirk was murdered watching erica kirk gave a speech at his funeral

00:15:00.380 and seeing so much chatter online that was like,

00:15:03.100 Erica Kirk just destroyed the feminist movement. 0.53

00:15:05.900 And then when I looked into Erica Kirk's background, 0.70

00:15:07.680 I thought, oh, well, this is someone who is very educated. 0.99

00:15:11.160 She got married in her 30s.

00:15:13.560 Before she was married, she ran her own business

00:15:17.140 and was a very educated young woman. 0.97

00:15:20.260 I don't know that she did destroy the feminist movement

00:15:23.140 because I think that from where I'm sitting,

00:15:25.180 the feminist movement is why she was able to have

00:15:27.280 all of those great accomplishments 1.00

00:15:28.680 and make the kinds of choices that she was allowed to make.

00:15:31.640 A hundred percent.

00:15:32.340 But here's the thing. 0.99

00:15:33.920 Women like Erica Kirk, Alex Clark, 1.00

00:15:37.360 who's another Turning Point influencer 1.00

00:15:39.400 who was incubated in the Turning Point universe,

00:15:42.000 which I'm like, it's like the Marvel universe,

00:15:44.040 but for child wives.

00:15:45.360 The Turning Point cinematic universe.

00:15:46.880 The Turning Point cinematic universe.

00:15:48.760 Coming soon to a theater near you. 1.00

00:15:52.580 It's okay for some women to benefit 1.00

00:15:55.400 from all of the things that feminism has given them. 1.00

00:15:58.960 But they do want other women out of the workforce. 0.99

00:16:02.600 They do want other women to depend on men 0.98

00:16:05.400 as the breadwinners of their family 1.00

00:16:07.060 and to stay in the home and raise their children.

00:16:09.760 And the thing that I also like to say a lot 0.65

00:16:13.160 is Tradwife is not a stay-at-home mom.

00:16:15.860 A stay-at-home mom is the CEO of their household.

00:16:19.500 The Tradwife themes are that you hand over all agency 1.00

00:16:23.340 to your husband, 0.65

00:16:24.560 that you're not in control of your finances. You're really not in control of your life. And

00:16:28.680 that's what's so dangerous to me. And that's what Eric Kirk is preaching. It was very funny because

00:16:33.220 I was doing an interview with La Repubblica, the Italian national newspaper, about the book

00:16:39.520 Everyone is Lying to. And the journalist was in Rome, but she read the book while she was covering

00:16:45.100 Charlie Kirk's funeral. And like while she was watching Erica Kirk on stage, and she's like,

00:16:50.200 there were so many parallels to the women in your book and i'm like i know it's it's creepy um

00:16:56.760 but the fact is these women have multi-million follower accounts erica kirk i think i mean i

00:17:06.660 might be wrong but she definitely had less than a million followers prior to her husband being

00:17:11.720 killed i think it's something around like 350 000 and last i checked she was around six million

00:17:15.660 i mean that's the it like that like that is power that is currency that well it is power and that

00:17:22.580 is the thing um and it's something that i think we have to pay closer attention to again because

00:17:30.980 women are being convinced to give up their agency to give up their rights by these kinds of accounts

00:17:36.960 or to check out of politics altogether which is equally as dangerous and i i also talk to young

00:17:42.560 women who say what I just said. They're like, all of you feminists are so mad. And I'm like, 1.00

00:17:47.600 well, yes, we have damn good reason to be mad, right? But just showing the things that feminism

00:17:53.440 has done for us does not make a beautiful Instagram reel. Like, I am ridiculously happy

00:17:59.880 because I was able to be on birth control and not have kids until I met the man that I had my

00:18:06.280 children with. I firmly believe your husband is your glass ceiling. And I married the right man

00:18:10.980 who supports my career, I can be successful because I was able to have my kids when I chose

00:18:16.000 to and also equal pay and also access to jobs. Like all of these feminist things created a 1.00

00:18:23.680 beautiful life for me, but that doesn't look great in an Instagram reel. I've said this so many times

00:18:28.160 for heterosexual women, especially women who are ambitious or have, you know, inclined toward making

00:18:36.200 something of themselves or building something for themselves. You're the person that you marry is

00:18:40.100 either going to be an anchor or a springboard, and there's really no in-between. And so it really

00:18:44.180 is a very important choice who you decide to marry. And in a lot of ways, I think that for

00:18:48.540 women, marriage can be kind of a raw deal. And so it behooves us to not be pushing women into 0.99

00:18:56.040 doing it quickly or willy-nilly or just to check the box. Really put some thought and intention

00:19:00.860 into who this person that you are anchoring your life to, what they're about. And whether or not

00:19:05.880 Even getting married at all is something that you actually meaningfully want for your life.

00:19:10.960 It should absolutely not be something we just funnel young women to as a default.

00:19:15.540 Exactly. 0.99

00:19:16.160 Exactly.

00:19:16.940 And the messaging in Tradwife accounts is get married as soon as you can.

00:19:21.720 Get married at 18 and start having babies before you're able to take that springboard 0.80

00:19:28.520 onto what kind of life you want.

00:19:32.120 And again, maybe your choice is to be ambitious about being a mom and about being a wife.

00:19:38.100 Also, awesome. 1.00

00:19:39.400 What feminism is about is having those options, having those choices, having access to money 1.00

00:19:46.280 and credit and the ability to live the life that you're choosing. 1.00

00:19:51.560 And what trad wives want to do is take away those choices. 1.00

00:19:55.520 So is Taylor Swift a trad wife?

00:19:58.160 Joe and I get into that after a quick break.

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00:20:50.620 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:20:56.500 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:21:02.860 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:21:06.560 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

00:21:14.660 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:21:18.880 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

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00:22:49.260 between the pages.

00:22:56.100 And we're back.

00:22:59.320 Earlier this year, after being

00:23:01.020 branded a childless, single cat 0.99

00:23:03.160 lady in her 30s, you know, the worst thing 1.00

00:23:05.080 a woman can be, Taylor Swift announced 1.00

00:23:07.020 her engagement to Travis Kelsey.

00:23:09.220 On her new album, Life of a

00:23:11.060 Showgirl, that shift is front

00:23:13.040 and center. She sings 0.99

00:23:14.980 about how all she really wants will be truly

00:23:17.060 make her happy is to get married, have kids, and settle into a home with a basketball hoop in a

00:23:22.420 driveway. Sure, she's a billionaire, so that home would probably be a huge mansion, but still. 0.93

00:23:29.520 And all of this does sound pretty traditional. So is this Taylor Swift's big white lady trad

00:23:37.560 wife pivot? So the reason I wanted to talk to you was a criticism that I keep seeing about Taylor

00:23:44.680 Swift's new album. And I should say, I don't know a ton about Taylor Swift. I am not a Swiftie.

00:23:49.140 But I keep seeing people say, oh, well, Taylor Swift is a trad wife now because she's newly

00:23:53.720 engaged. Her new album seems to be about wanting to get married and have kids and sort of find

00:23:58.700 enjoyment in a domestic life. Now, I completely kind of understand and I'm sympathetic to this

00:24:03.920 feeling that, oh, you know, this woman who was a public example of being a single woman who had a

00:24:09.980 fabulous life, then decides to get married. So like, I genuinely do get it. But I don't

00:24:14.460 necessarily feel that making a record about wanting to get married and have kids automatically

00:24:19.540 makes someone a trad wife, like a lot of people are saying online. What do you think folks are

00:24:24.640 missing about this conversation? They're missing so much. Just because you want to get married and

00:24:29.900 have kids does not make you any less of a feminist. It's so obscene and offensive. She is a, 1.00

00:24:37.540 I think she's still 35. Maybe she's 36 now. I don't know. But like she's writing songs about 0.58

00:24:43.460 her evolving desires and what she wants out of the world. I mean, I'm a married woman with three

00:24:50.020 kids and I'm like a witchy feminist, right? Out there just like preaching and screaming from my 0.53

00:24:56.320 soapbox every day. And all she said was, I'm excited to get married and have kids with this

00:25:01.980 wonderful freaking man, by the way, who supports the hell out of her career, who promotes her 0.95

00:25:07.960 every chance he gets. I do not get it. I hate it so much. It makes no sense to me. 0.96

00:25:14.320 How do you think we got to a place where simply wanting to be married or wanting to have kids or

00:25:19.640 opining about how this might be something that would make you happy kind of got branded as being

00:25:24.920 conservative? Well, because they were able to capture it. And the conservative branding is so

00:25:30.940 good that they've been able to call a lot of things quote theirs they've taken on femininity

00:25:39.060 masculinity um marriage kids uh like all of these things they're claiming are part of their

00:25:47.260 platforms because they've been really really good at branding and promoting it well and i say this 0.97

00:25:52.340 all the time i'm like the left like can't brand itself for shit to be honest like the left is 0.96

00:25:58.280 just like they have no idea who they are, what they want to be, where they want to go. And there's 0.99

00:26:03.380 a reason that we lost. And I feel like we are just like not willing to look at that and be really

00:26:08.920 honest about it or to form a coalition of maybe opinions that do not all agree with each other

00:26:15.880 in order to be fighting for the greater good, which is, you know, to have a country not fall

00:26:20.740 into fascism. Okay, so we can't really talk about our country's slide into fascism without talking

00:26:29.680 about marriage. Marriage, especially for white heterosexual women, has historically been a 0.56

00:26:36.160 structure that upholds and reinforces certain conservative or patriarchal attitudes. While

00:26:41.380 white women overall tend to favor Democrats in national elections, the picture changes once you 0.98

00:26:46.940 look at marriage and education, because married white women, particularly those without college

00:26:52.080 degrees, have consistently voted for Republicans. And now, as women's rights are being rolled back 0.68

00:26:58.500 and threatened across the country, it's that same voting bloc, married white women, that is helping 0.99

00:27:03.600 to usher those restrictions into power. You really hit on why this is such a weird sticking point for 1.00

00:27:10.760 me, because Taylor Swift is getting married and talking about how excited she is to be married. 0.55

00:27:16.280 Not all of her fans are white women, but she is very popular with white women. 0.98

00:27:20.640 I do think that especially for white straight women, structures like marriage can be kind of politically dangerous. 0.99

00:27:27.560 Married white women voting against their own rights and things like that.

00:27:30.300 But I do think you're right that when we just simply give things over to the right, like parenting, marriage, all of that, that's for them.

00:27:39.780 I think it means that there'll be less interrogation about what marriage actually means for folks and what these how you actually do these things in systems and structures that support you.

00:27:50.480 Right. Like, I think it really limits the conversation about what parenting and marriage can look like and should look like.

00:27:57.060 If you're just like, oh, well, being married means that you're a Republican now.

00:28:00.480 It kind of invites us not to do any actual interrogation.

00:28:03.200 it invites us not to fix the problem, not to fix the problems with marriage, not to fix the

00:28:07.940 problems with not caring for parents in this country. And I think it's very dangerous because

00:28:13.460 marriage isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I will say I do think that heterosexual marriage 1.00

00:28:18.980 often fails women because there is an issue culturally with most men, you know, not being

00:28:27.220 raised to support women uh the way that they should the way that would create a more equal

00:28:34.060 marriage and culturally we just like do not do it when i think about it all the time i'm raising a

00:28:38.840 boy child uh and he sees me work my ass off he sees my husband support me working my ass off uh

00:28:47.160 and hopefully this next generation that we're raising these men will be men who support women

00:28:55.540 Not all of them, obviously.

00:28:57.520 But a lot has to change in the culture.

00:29:00.240 And to do that, we have to embrace the idea that married people are going to continue to exist.

00:29:06.420 We should just fix the institution of marriage to be better for women.

00:29:10.800 I have to be real here that I am not someone who puts marriage or being married on a pedestal,

00:29:16.200 mostly because I think it can be kind of a raw deal for women.

00:29:19.120 And I think for all the right-wing talk trying to pressure and fear-monger women into marriages

00:29:24.320 and parenthood, shocker, those same Republicans are also doing their damnedest to make marriage

00:29:29.720 worse for the very women they're trying to push into it. 0.99

00:29:33.340 They're stripping away the flexibility, freedoms, and support systems that make marriage sustainable 1.00

00:29:37.920 in the first place.

00:29:39.480 Take the efforts to roll back no-fault divorce laws. 1.00

00:29:42.180 That keeps women and their kids trapped in bad or even unsafe marriages.

00:29:47.720 And while people love to frame attacks on abortion rights, reproductive health, and our lack of paid leave as identity politics,

00:29:55.200 the truth is these are bread-and-butter economic issues.

00:29:58.680 When you have less control over when, whether, and how you have kids, you have less control over your household budget and finances. 1.00

00:30:05.880 And every cut or attack to an already very fragile social safety net means fewer options for women, 0.62

00:30:13.300 especially the ones carrying the biggest load at home.

00:30:16.700 So if we keep ceding marriage and married women as the rights territory to define, 0.89

00:30:21.760 marriage will keep looking like this, or it will look worse. 0.91

00:30:26.580 Especially against this backdrop where there are very real forces trying to make the institution

00:30:31.700 of marriage more harmful for women right now in very specific and clear ways. Like if we just say,

00:30:38.020 oh, if you want to get married, you are signing up for all of this harmful stuff. Good luck.

00:30:44.400 I think it really just ignores the problem and we don't have to fix it.

00:30:48.480 And it totally does.

00:30:49.700 And it also alienates people.

00:30:51.420 That is the problem here.

00:30:52.540 Like, I've talked to so many women who are very progressive who say to me, they're like,

00:30:57.600 I feel like I don't have a party anymore because I feel like the party has left me.

00:31:02.580 I am a suburban mom with kids who wants women to have reproductive choice. 0.96

00:31:07.800 But is there room for me in their tent? 1.00

00:31:10.060 And the other side will let anyone in their damn tent. 0.99

00:31:13.980 So Taylor Swift kind of responded and weighed into some of this. 0.98

00:31:17.400 So when fans were wondering if this was going to be her last album because she was going to quit when she got married, she said, that's a shockingly offensive thing to say.

00:31:26.060 Women don't get married so they can quit their job. 0.65

00:31:28.580 And I remember thinking if she were really a trad wife, she might have, you know, upheld the lie. 1.00

00:31:33.700 You know, she might have said something like, oh, the only job that matters for a woman is being a wife and mother or something like that. 0.81

00:31:39.100 She might have downplayed the fact that she is a working woman, but she didn't do that at all. 0.99

00:31:44.180 No, no, because she's not a tried wife.

00:31:46.040 And it was the best answer ever to call out that question.

00:31:50.480 It was a man who asked it, a BBC interviewer who couched it as being like, your fans are asking.

00:31:56.980 But it's like, no, really, this dude is asking her if she's just going to quit her job.

00:32:02.460 It was shockingly offensive.

00:32:04.120 That is the answer I now want to give, which I get asked all the time when I'm on book tour,

00:32:07.760 when I was on book tour for everyone is lying to you like who's watching your kids I want to be 0.97

00:32:11.260 like that is a shockingly offensive question to ask their other fucking parent okay like men never 0.99

00:32:15.500 get asked that and so no she's not a trad wife at all again it is the dumbest thing that the 1.00

00:32:23.380 internet has come up with in a year of the internet coming up with really dumb things 0.96

00:32:28.500 I have this theory that we are all kind of kind of stuck in a I don't know a trauma loop or

00:32:35.340 something where women are being, as you said, kind of told that we need to be married parents

00:32:40.680 to have full lives on top of this like very real rollback of our rights.

00:32:45.300 And I think it has created this dynamic that is very unhealthy where we're all sort of

00:32:50.360 hyper vigilant.

00:32:52.260 And so when this heretofore single childless woman living this great life gets engaged,

00:32:57.540 I think it's inviting us in a not healthy way to see it as something that perhaps it

00:33:03.000 is not because we're all in this hellscape where we have to be so vigilant and so like hyper aware

00:33:08.660 of everything all the time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it truly is. And what I would like people to focus

00:33:15.500 more on is the man she chose. And I think that is very interesting. I truly do. She dated some

00:33:25.100 real assholes, okay, and had some really rough relationships. This isn't a woman either who has 1.00

00:33:32.420 just been perpetually single and then all of a sudden decides she wants to get married there's

00:33:36.240 no 180 here she has been like a serial dater since she's been in the spotlight since she's

00:33:42.240 been a teenager and so and yet the man that she chooses to settle down with to that she says she

00:33:50.140 wants to have babies with is a man who supports women and that's what we should be focusing on

00:33:54.840 that's what we should be looking at and that should be celebrated like that should that is

00:33:59.200 something we should want for all people that want it to find yourself a good partner who loves

00:34:06.340 lifting you up. I think that's part of this that I want a world where if you want to be married or

00:34:13.400 partnered you have good options for that working out well for you and if you don't want to be

00:34:19.220 married don't want to be partnered if you want to be a single cat lady if you want to be polyamorous

00:34:22.920 like whatever it is that you want to do that you feel supported to do that in a healthy way that's 0.83

00:34:26.540 to fulfill you. And I just don't like that we have boiled that down to, oh, in order to be

00:34:33.040 a progressive woman, being a single childless cat lady is part of that. If that's not genuinely

00:34:39.120 what you want, like we should be championing and trying to build a world where people do

00:34:42.940 have options that align with the things that they want out of life.

00:34:46.420 I want you to have all the choices, literally all of the choices, all of the options.

00:34:51.540 You know, we are in this place where I think everyone feels it. But for young women,

00:34:55.680 and especially where they are being bombarded with so many conflicting messages online about

00:35:02.300 who they are meant to be, what kind of life they are meant to choose. Some of these things are

00:35:07.220 benign, but some of them really aren't. It's like that scene from the book, The Bell Jar, where she

00:35:13.300 sees all these different choices and outcomes for her life as figs on a fig tree that she has to

00:35:19.300 pick from. One is marriage, one is being a famous writer, one is traveling the world, and she's

00:35:24.480 really stuck and can't choose and all the figs wither and die on the tree. Only in our scenario,

00:35:30.140 some of these figs that young women are being offered are also actually toxic or poison.

00:35:35.340 And also the act of choosing one of the figs itself has been hijacked and weaponized by bad

00:35:41.000 actors. I feel like we're living in the bell jar and I'm just banging my head against the bell jar

00:35:45.180 every day, right? We're living in the bell jar. We're living in the beginning of The Handmaid's

00:35:51.080 tail we're just we're it's not a great world to be a woman right now but it's also I think that

00:35:59.060 there is so much virtue signaling saying well you have to believe in all of this you have to behave

00:36:07.040 this way you have to speak like this like I said or you're out of our tent which means that it

00:36:13.520 feels like every option is toxic because I'm not moving to the right politically I firm I am a firm

00:36:19.540 believer in progressive values. And yet I'm not seeing a ton of candidates that I think

00:36:27.320 are going to fight for what I want. We have to accept nuance and we have to start giving people

00:36:31.840 more grace. We truly, truly do. And expand the tent. We have to be more welcoming instead of

00:36:41.340 less welcoming to people. Talk through these ideas. Talk to women and say, look, why are you

00:36:48.680 following these child wife accounts like what is appealing about that then really dissecting it and

00:36:53.500 that's what that's what I do when I speak to young women so I went on book tour this summer

00:36:57.840 for everyone is lying to you and we went to places that were very conservative we did we filled an

00:37:04.320 entire theater in right outside Indianapolis it was gorgeous with young women who have had their

00:37:11.060 reproductive rights very recently taken away from them and I asked them I'm like what is appealing

00:37:16.880 about these accounts when they say they're like but it looks they make they make life look so easy

00:37:21.500 they're like okay let's dissect that what does an easy life mean it means access to a good job

00:37:28.100 it means access to money it means freedom it means all of the things that feminism

00:37:32.960 has given you those are the things that actually give your life ease let's talk about how anxiety

00:37:40.520 inducing it truly is to be dependent on a man for all of your money like would you like it if you

00:37:46.420 had to ask your husband if you wanted to go like buy a new purse or if you had to run run your

00:37:53.480 grocery list by him is that a thing that that seems nice and easy because that is what is 0.97

00:37:58.820 actually happening in a trad wife's home and even when you look down the line if your husband turns 0.97

00:38:06.080 out to be abusive if he leaves you if he cheats on you he dies men die yeah or yeah if he becomes

00:38:11.800 disabled or chronically ill and you have to care for him there are so many things that could happen

00:38:16.580 or gets laid off when he gets replaced by ai like all of these things okay yeah i wonder if part of

00:38:22.460 it is just we're living in a a media criticism kind of crisis where those you see some you you

00:38:31.660 could make i firmly believe you could make anything look shiny and nice on social media i have done it 0.99

00:38:36.980 I had taken pictures of things, experiences that I knew were shit. 0.81

00:38:41.100 And when you get the lighting and the filter just right, 0.98

00:38:43.340 you can make anybody look like, oh, I want to, I wish I was there.

00:38:45.780 And I wonder if like, we have just,

00:38:48.240 we have a generation that has a little bit of a hard time peeking behind that

00:38:51.260 curtain. And I want them to, I, that's,

00:38:53.940 it's really the point of the book is to pull back the curtain on influencing

00:38:58.640 on trad wife influencing to say, okay,

00:39:02.460 what you're looking at is not real.

00:39:05.860 you're looking at someone creating a magazine essentially these women a lot of them are not 1.00

00:39:11.300 even shooting the content in their actual houses a lot of influencers rent the kitchens farms to do 1.00

00:39:17.780 all of their content in in a single day that they would shoot for them like the entire month they're

00:39:22.460 changing outfits 11 times in a day to make you think that it's different days and then they're

00:39:27.980 posting their stuff they have videographers photographers editors and like i said in them

00:39:32.700 behind the scenes. They have nannies and house cleaners and people making this all look beautiful,

00:39:38.460 but it is no one's real life. And that's the dangerous thing about social media

00:39:42.600 is that we don't have media literacy around it. And we think that we're looking at people's real

00:39:47.260 lives because we're looking at our neighbor, like our neighbor is on the feed, right? Or like our

00:39:51.320 dentist or our kid's teacher, but then also this influencer. So you're like, well, that's my friend's

00:39:57.920 life. So it must be this influencer's real life. But it's not. It's never not funny to me when you

00:40:03.440 talk to somebody who actually lives a rural farm lifestyle. I actually have a lot of people in my

00:40:09.100 life who have lived on farms, grew up on farms, worked on farms, owned farms. And I will take my

00:40:14.320 phone and show them these trad wife influencers. And I'll ask, is this a lifestyle that you 1.00

00:40:18.980 recognize? Is this what your life on the farm looked like? And they'll say, no, when I lived

00:40:23.320 on a farm, I was up at 5 a.m. doing backbreaking labor and I was covered in blood and poop half

00:40:29.000 of the time. It's like stolen valor. More after a quick break.

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00:41:08.420 That's 844-844-iHeart.

00:41:10.880 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,

00:41:15.280 welcome home.

00:41:16.800 This is Prose Society,

00:41:18.540 the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,

00:41:23.240 pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the

00:41:27.540 same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,

00:41:32.960 the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up

00:41:37.260 this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk

00:41:42.180 creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can

00:41:47.120 hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a trojan horse whether

00:41:53.960 you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers

00:41:59.080 who love to think a little too much you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart

00:42:04.900 radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts see you between the pages when i was 14

00:42:12.500 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life

00:42:18.960 exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these

00:42:25.280 are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't

00:42:33.640 say anything every week i'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable i knew if he woke

00:42:40.940 up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the

00:42:47.740 end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced

00:42:55.400 but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make

00:43:01.260 it out alive listen to the survivor files with elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple

00:43:07.660 podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda

00:43:15.500 Kotb. If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools

00:43:21.400 to maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful

00:43:27.880 conversations with fascinating people. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to

00:43:33.880 aspiring actors, and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time

00:43:40.460 and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. You have something in your guts. You go with

00:43:46.740 it. And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one.

00:43:53.200 He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane

00:43:58.740 before without his family. It was so pure. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app,

00:44:07.140 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:44:17.240 Let's get right back into it. It might sound strange, but if you really want to see how

00:44:23.140 effective these trad wife influencers are at spitting fantasies and tall tales, 0.99

00:44:27.500 just look at how they talk about what it's like to raise chickens. 1.00

00:44:31.060 They've managed to turn the messy, smelly, and sometimes even painful reality

00:44:35.400 of what it's like to live amongst hens into some kind of a cozy pastoral dream.

00:44:41.400 Yeah, so hen-fluencing is very popular on social media.

00:44:45.240 It's people just posting pictures of chickens to their millions of followers.

00:44:50.300 And for some reason, they make it look so idyllic and so lovely, 0.94

00:44:54.700 such that I have friends that have been tricked into getting chickens because hen fluencers make

00:44:59.740 it look so beautiful. I have both a hen fluencer and an aspiring hen fluencer and everyone is

00:45:05.000 lying to you. And at every book event, someone's like, that's not real, is it? And like, let me

00:45:09.180 show you these like millions of followers of hen fluencing accounts. But we watched our friends

00:45:14.520 chickens up here in the Catskills while she was away for a few days. And there's nothing lovely

00:45:18.260 about chickens in real life. Like they were such a-holes. My text chain with my husband is amazing

00:45:23.580 as he tried to get them back in their roost one night.

00:45:26.840 And the text chain is just, I'm going to need a net. 0.54

00:45:29.600 I need three more adults to come here.

00:45:31.980 These chickens aren't going anywhere.

00:45:33.760 It was kind of myth.

00:45:34.780 And one of them bit one of my kids.

00:45:36.180 It was miserable.

00:45:37.680 But again, it's something that you can make

00:45:39.140 look really beautiful online.

00:45:41.440 When you were researching the book

00:45:43.300 and putting the book together,

00:45:44.680 was there anything that shocked you

00:45:47.060 where people would be,

00:45:48.180 because in reading the book, 1.00

00:45:49.840 I was shocked to learn how many of these women 0.74

00:45:52.540 are renting their farms, renting their house, batching their content, how just it's not real. 1.00

00:45:57.320 They really do make you think this is a slice of life from their like gorgeous life. And it's just

00:46:01.980 not. What other experiences did you have while you were putting this book together and researching it

00:46:07.240 that might surprise people about the reality of what they're seeing?

00:46:10.880 Yeah. So the book was so easy to write. I wrote it in three months last summer because

00:46:14.920 I have been doing the Under the Influence podcast for five years. So I had all of the reporting

00:46:20.840 already done. I've interviewed thousands of influencers. I've interviewed trad wife

00:46:24.100 influencers. I've interviewed former trad wives. And I think that people would be surprised by

00:46:30.920 a lot of things. I keep getting asked all the time about it being a satire. And it's really

00:46:36.380 not. Almost everything in the book is very true to life. And I kept trying to push the boundaries

00:46:41.720 and make it a little more bananas. So I did make up this one storyline where an influencer really

00:46:49.000 wants to deal with pampers but she doesn't want to ruin her body so she creates an ai baby 0.99

00:46:52.480 and a fake ai like pregnant pregnancy baby bump because honestly a lot one of the reasons that 1.00

00:46:58.880 these influencers have so many kids is that instagram and brands there's so much money

00:47:05.000 in small babies and pregnancy and so they just like it's very lucrative for them to keep popping

00:47:11.340 out babies so in the book this woman fakes a pregnancy and fakes a baby with ai and i had a

00:47:17.040 bunch of influencers read it and they're like oh yes like stacy did that i'm like what i'm like i

00:47:21.820 made this up this is supposed to be the most bananas detail that i put in this book like no

00:47:25.020 no no stacy totally did that for a pamper steal there's no end to how people will push the 0.87

00:47:30.700 boundaries of what you think is happening to sell us shit on instagram no there's no end i mean one

00:47:35.920 of my favorite things i think this one and made it into the book too is that the that last big 0.83

00:47:41.520 hurricane to hit florida there was so much like boosting people's accounts uh that were there

00:47:49.440 that were reporting from there that a lot of influencers pretended they were in florida with

00:47:54.340 a green screen and and that's that's true for some travel influencers as well and some mom

00:47:59.880 influencers that if they see a certain place is trending they'll just completely photoshop

00:48:04.780 themselves on like a vacation on the amalfi coast when you think about the advancements that we're

00:48:09.860 seeing with AI. I mean, it seems like the possibilities are endless with what they can

00:48:13.940 do. The possibilities are endless. Instagram has already created a lot of AI influencers and they

00:48:18.520 got pushback on them. But I do think that we're going to see AI influencers really taking over

00:48:25.340 very soon because they don't have the messiness of real humans. Are the human trad wife influencers

00:48:30.360 that you talk to, are they worried about this? All influencers are worried about this. Yeah.

00:48:33.800 Yeah. They're all worried about the bottom falling out once once AI influencers become much easier for brands to create and then manipulate.

00:48:42.320 I have a sense that the influencer economy is I mean, it's not waning, but I just think people are sort of sick of it in a kind of way. We all maybe get the sense that we're not being sold reality. I wonder how would you describe the climate right now for influencing?

00:49:00.760 I think people like us are sick of it but it is only getting bigger every single day and it's

00:49:07.880 only they're getting more influential and I have this conversation with people a lot but they're

00:49:13.020 people who live in media like you and I do right like we've come up through traditional media I

00:49:19.200 came up in newscapers and magazines and now podcasts you are an OG podcaster like I am we've

00:49:24.860 been doing this forever so I think people that live in media are skeptical and then we think

00:49:29.620 everyone's skeptical, but they're not. That's probably so true. I often forget when you're

00:49:35.260 mired in it, you don't necessarily realize how it's coming off for like normies who are not

00:49:40.540 consumed with media and thinking about it all the time and reading about it all the time and

00:49:43.960 making it all the time. It can be I can can I can really forget what the experience of consuming

00:49:49.700 this kind of media casually is like for other folks. Totally, totally. And I and I do, too. And

00:49:56.120 And that was one of the things that I wanted to show in the book, too, because the main character in the book is a journalist, is a regular mainstream magazine journalist who's seeing her career destroyed by social media.

00:50:10.900 I wanted to show that perspective of a journalist is skeptical of this world, because I am also skeptical of this world. And yet, and yet, and yet, the brighter side of influencing and why we see so many smart women doing it is that corporate America sucks for women. 0.97

00:50:27.240 It is really hard to be a mom or a caregiver or even person that just wants to take care of yourself in a corporate job. 1.00

00:50:36.780 And that's why we're seeing so many women become entrepreneurs. 0.97

00:50:39.720 And a lot of that entrepreneurism involves Instagram.

00:50:43.380 I first got interested in influencers because I was living in San Francisco.

00:50:47.760 and a lot of the early influencers one they were mormon because you know mormon the mormon church

00:50:55.820 does actually preach that you should be journaling your life in a very public way

00:51:01.700 in order to share mormon value but they were also like san francisco former tech

00:51:08.500 entrepreneurs because they left the businesses because they weren't being supported once they

00:51:14.760 had kids and they became influencers in order to have a better handle on their time.

00:51:20.340 And it goes back to this idea of, you know, pretending that this is all happenstance.

00:51:26.800 Somebody who left a high-powered job in tech or marketing or media, they know how to curate

00:51:34.500 a digital presence that is specific, but then they do it in such a way that is like, oh,

00:51:40.600 this is just a snapshot of my normal life.

00:51:42.880 This is someone has happened to have a camera on me making bread and looking fabulous.

00:51:47.520 My favorite example, and this is this happened eight years ago when I was living in San Francisco.

00:51:54.280 And I knew one of these early mom influencers.

00:51:57.820 And I used to have these like bonfire parties in our backyard because I had no friends in San Francisco. 0.65

00:52:03.440 So if I saw another new mom on the street and like, do you like beer and sausages and fire pits?

00:52:08.740 Come to my house on Friday.

00:52:10.360 And it was it was so much fun.

00:52:11.580 We made a lot of friends that way. But one day I invited one of these mom influencers over. 0.82

00:52:16.360 She didn't speak to anyone. She was miserable and sitting in the corner the whole time. 1.00

00:52:20.680 She actually went up into my kitchen to get the one glass that was like photo friendly. It's like

00:52:26.100 an old mason jar. I don't think we were using it as a drinking cup, but she decided to.

00:52:30.060 She put her own little striped paper straw into it and then took a picture of it in front of the

00:52:36.480 bonfire that looked beautiful and posted like, had such a gorgeous time tonight at my good friend

00:52:42.440 author Joe Piazza's house. I'm like, you were miserable. You didn't speak to anyone. And yet

00:52:47.260 you completely manipulated this photo to look a certain aesthetic. And that was my, one of my

00:52:53.640 aha moments of, oh my God, everyone is lying to you. Is that why you wanted to write the book to

00:53:00.080 just peel back the curtain and say, Hey, they're all liars. You know, I didn't want to write the

00:53:06.000 book for a long time the book didn't come to me until very recently I wanted to do the podcast

00:53:12.180 to feel back the curtain that was always the goal of the podcast but then the podcast became a lot

00:53:16.740 more nuanced because the world of influencing is nuanced because the world of women is nuanced

00:53:22.060 I wanted to write the book when I saw the rise of the trad waves because that's what I thought 1.00

00:53:27.620 was just so damn dangerous so I guess the big question in all of this is how do we move through

00:53:33.460 our social media landscape in a way that allows us to cut through all of these lies, lies about

00:53:38.660 marriage, lies about trad wives, so we don't get stuck feeling as if that is an actual truth or

00:53:43.740 reality. Honestly, you really have to remind yourself on a daily basis that this isn't real,

00:53:50.900 that this is no one's reality. It's not even your neighbor's reality, because even if you're not an

00:53:55.200 influencer online, everyone is choosing a lovely filter and also choosing what to post. You didn't

00:54:00.320 see their kid tantruming this morning or like the knockdown fight that they had with their husband

00:54:04.500 last night and so you really have to look at it in the same way as if you were looking at celebrities

00:54:12.260 in like us weekly or people magazine you know it's not their real lives or you know that like it is

00:54:16.700 like life but enhanced and the goal of the book is really to try to eliminate that shame and guilt

00:54:22.380 that so many women feel when we're scrolling instagrams or scrolling whatever our social

00:54:27.740 media drug of choices because it is a drug and these platforms are designed to keep us coming

00:54:33.040 back to keep us addicted and to keep us feeling anxious and vulnerable because when we're anxious

00:54:37.840 and vulnerable we buy things but here's the good news you can change your algorithm and so I have

00:54:45.540 been so proactive in the I don't follow any news organizations anymore on my phone because that's

00:54:51.700 not how I want to get my news I want to get my news separately from this thing in my hand I also

00:54:57.700 unfollowed any account that makes me feel bad or guilt or shame. But I started liking and sharing

00:55:03.340 things that I do want to see on social media, which is mostly otters holding hands and fat

00:55:07.760 bears. And now my feed is a lot of otters holding hands and fat bears and gay dads. These are things 0.96

00:55:15.040 that I like. And in videos of Atticus Finch set the sexy back. Oh, with the glasses? Absolutely.

00:55:20.940 With the glasses. When he's like in the jail and they're hurt. It really works. I love that I know

00:55:26.860 exactly what you're fucking talking about i know like that's the kind that's the kind of content i 1.00

00:55:31.660 want to open my scroll and that's what i want like i do not want to look at some some woman's fake 0.99

00:55:36.360 picture perfect life or fake picture perfect kitchen or someone calling me to bake my cinnamon 0.99

00:55:40.920 toast crunch from scratch because i'll tell you i tried to bake nara smith cinnamon toast crunch

00:55:46.060 from scratch uh that she posted on her tiktok or instagram when i was doing a live segment for fox

00:55:51.920 promoting everyone is lying to you. And it did not work. It took four hours. My kitchen was so messy.

00:55:57.880 My kid put it in his mouth and it spit it on the floor. I was like, where's the real Cinnamon Toast

00:56:01.540 Crunch? Time well spent. Well, I do think that your point of, you know, I think that especially

00:56:08.300 for women, tech companies are really exploiting us and taking advantage of us. And I like that

00:56:13.600 you saying, listen, divest from content that makes you feel bad about yourself. Divest from content

00:56:19.400 that makes you feel shamed because they have a financial incentive in making you feel shamed

00:56:24.240 or anxious so that you buy things and you don't you can curate a more positive social media and

00:56:29.680 digital experience for yourself you do not have to succumb to that you do not have to succumb to

00:56:34.160 that and you know there are certain accounts that i love like i love design i love looking

00:56:39.900 into people's houses but i'm not going to feel guilt and shame about like them having a more

00:56:44.560 beautiful house than i am because i know they're sponsored by freaking west dome or pottery barn

00:56:48.200 or whatever right uh and or i know that they had like a set designer help them make this like

00:56:53.940 beautiful tables tablescape of grape sun skewers for their kids birthday party like they didn't

00:56:59.360 just do this on their own uh and so when i know that i can still kind of enjoy the content and

00:57:05.280 be like oh like that is that that is that is pretty i do like that right but i like i don't

00:57:11.000 let it make me feel like guilt or shame we shouldn't be feeling guilt or shame about our

00:57:16.100 choices, because at the end of the day, it isn't the algorithm that gets to decide who

00:57:21.040 you are.

00:57:21.940 You do.

00:57:27.320 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

00:57:30.840 You can reach us at hello at tangody.com.

00:57:33.100 You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com.

00:57:36.540 There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

00:57:39.280 It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:57:42.020 Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

00:57:44.080 Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

00:57:46.680 Michael Amato is our contributing producer.

00:57:48.700 I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

00:57:50.500 If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

00:57:54.080 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - October 15, 2025

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