00:00:38.460and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:43.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:00:47.300Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:00:51.020abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:00:54.640These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:00:58.700Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:10.360There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:18.480I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:21.200have you been noticing that trad wife content is everywhere on social media lately that is0.99
00:01:29.380content that glamorizes and romanticizes women doing things like not working outside of the
00:01:34.660home or submitting to a man i joined my friends samantha and annie over at the podcast stuff mom
00:01:40.340never told you to dig into what exactly is going on here have you seen this kind of content all
00:01:45.920over your feeds like I have? Let me know. Hey, this is Annie. And Samantha. And welcome to
00:01:55.680Stuff I Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio. And we are thrilled to once again be joined for
00:02:10.300the first time in 2024 by the well-traveled, the well-read, Bridget Todd. Thank you. I mean,
00:02:19.160not well-traveled lately, but maybe over the course of my lifetime, moderately traveled.
00:02:24.980Although I can't really compete with you, Annie. You really get around.
00:02:28.460Last year, your Instagrams took you all over the world. You were traveling,
00:02:34.040traveling for the podcast world. So I think that's understated.
00:02:38.240Okay, I guess the entire year of 2023, maybe recently, it feels like in the last couple weeks, I've been traveling from my fridge to my bed to my couch for sure, but that's really the extent of it.
00:02:52.400That's about where we've been for a while.
00:03:42.180I feel like I'm a little, I don't know, January is such a weird time of year because you kind of start and you're like, this is going to be new year, new me.
00:03:49.940And then by the second week of January, you're like, oh, well, turns out it's still same old me.
00:04:12.320I mean, essentially, whether it's from, like, spending too much money, being around too many people, all of those things, just kind of recuperating.
00:04:19.880And it does, as Annie and I talked about earlier, I was like, I feel like January and February ends up being the longest months of the year.
00:04:26.940Like we did an episode and I was like, it's still January.
00:04:29.560I really thought we had hopped into at least February and we're still nowhere near.
00:04:33.100And I'm like, why does it feel like we're in the middle of the year, but we just started?
00:04:44.740I don't know about that life thing yet.
00:04:46.380yeah no well uh we have done several episodes about how neither of us are big fans of new
00:04:54.980years so we're right there with you because i feel like it's so anti-climatic you're like yes
00:04:58.680and then you're like oh this is kind of depressing to like look back on your past year and be like i
00:05:04.340gotta change all this and then you're like well i can't really right totally that takes money and
00:05:10.760time yes and then once the kind of so you have the holidays and you're kind of like oh boy I
00:05:17.080could really go for this being over the holidays end and then you're like okay now I'm feeling
00:05:21.940back to the grind like holidays are over there's just a thing that happens after the holiday
00:05:28.060wind down kind of wears off that just is so it's just such a slog it's a slog of a month I think
00:05:33.380for everybody so for folks who are listening and maybe feel like they're a little off feeling a
00:05:38.620little weirdsies i think we're all in the same boat it's true it's also dark and again as you
00:05:44.280said cold and who likes the cold it's not me here in the south i prefer cold to hot but it is dreary
00:05:52.460it's like a and there's not like anything really coming to look forward to i don't look forward to
00:05:57.340like valentine's day like there's no it's just like okay i'll wait a couple months for something
00:06:02.480sunshine just hold on till saint patrick's day
00:06:05.860or arbor day when is that i don't know
00:06:10.660yes i'm a huge celebrator of arbor day uh well i have to say you you really came in swinging
00:06:19.300with this topic and i have i have been thinking about this because i'm actually not on social
00:06:24.960media a lot but i have seen i feel like i'm one of the only people i know and this i'm sure it's
00:06:32.600not true but I've in my circle that watches a lot of YouTube and YouTube there's something going on
00:06:40.240with YouTube ads that I've been trying to make into an episode but I can't quite nail down what
00:06:45.160it is but they've become so gendered in a way that like isn't new but feels like wow we've gone this
00:06:53.000far back but it'll be something like especially around the holidays like well my wife loves me
00:07:00.760So she got me this thing that she can use to make my life better.
00:07:04.300Or like, it'll be from the wife's perspective and it'll be, oh, I got this because my husband's been so tired and I can make his life easier.
00:07:14.140So it's like gifts that are all about him, but it's painted as if she wants it too and she likes it too.
00:07:21.420And I'm just confused by the whole thing.
00:07:27.320I feel like lately the internet and social media has become this weird marriage of gender roles and gendered expectations and commerce and capitalism all kind of like blended into one where the only kind of online experience you could ever really hope to have around that is like, buy this thing for your husband to like be a good wife.
00:08:24.080So if you've spent any time at all on social media, you have
00:08:26.820probably seen what is called trad wives content right uh have you i guess annie you're not really
00:08:34.080on social media but it does sound like you're getting a little of this on youtube sam have you
00:08:37.740encountered any of this in your time on tiktok so yes so we've had many conversations on the show
00:08:44.460about the crunchy uh oh yes wives movement that quickly kind of devolves into being a trad wife
00:08:51.060As well as talking about religious trauma and how that plays into the trad wife culture, as well as the red pill episode that we talked about, because that actually jumps into trad wives as well.0.98
00:09:05.640Of course, white supremacists and white feminist culture also goes into that.
00:09:11.280So definitely had a little bit of research beforehand.
00:09:14.240And I definitely get it, of course, because of my For You page, FYP, Annie, just in case you needed to know.
00:09:23.420It does feed me the satire of Trad Wives and or stitching the problematic things with Trad Wives.
00:09:29.540I don't follow any and I would not recognize any by name necessarily.
00:09:34.300And I know you're going to talk a little bit, but like Joe Piazza actually was on the show.
00:09:38.260And we talked very briefly with her about some of the things that she has seen and she has addressed.
00:09:44.240Also her because she was coming around like Halloween after Halloween and her precious, amazing costume of playing trad wife as well.
00:09:52.560But yeah, there's definitely a lot of content. I get a lot. And we've talked about the family content stuff, which, again, aligns with that when a lot of moms of TikTok use their family content as moneymakers and to get to get viral.
00:10:10.860And then, of course, the Ruby Frank case, which is Annie, just so you know, just recently a woman was convicted for child abuse and so much more after it was released that she was abusing her kids and she was using that content with someone, a business partner to make money off on TikTok.
00:10:30.980And she was severely abusing her kids.
00:10:33.340So horrible. And she's, I think she might have like, I know she was in prison for or in jail for a while. And then she was released and I think flipped on her business partner and was like, oh, she was the mastermind.0.94
00:10:46.160Yes, they flipped on each other, obviously, but it was intense. And the whole content is about how she is very cruel to her children and how she punishes them by not letting them have dinner was the beginning of everything. But this type of content, which you have talked about before using children as moneymakers for content creation, but on that same line with Tradwives that have been popping up so much.
00:11:14.780Totally. So it is interesting that I think that, you know, we're talking about this mix of gender and commerce that is so ubiquitous on social media. And I think you've really nailed something that the depiction of motherhood and romantic partnership that were shown as women on social media is highly commercial. Like somebody is probably making money from that depiction in some capacity.
00:11:39.680So for folks who don't know, Trad Wives is short for traditional wives, and it's these content creators who make content about, ostensibly about the bliss that they find in doing traditional domestic labor.
00:11:52.480You know, cooking, cleaning, sewing, running a household.
00:11:55.660So I should say right off the bat that, like, not all Trad Wife content is created equal.
00:12:00.560Some Trad Wife content creators just seem to be sort of showcasing their lives.
00:12:04.820We'll talk about some of those. But others seem to be more directly and explicitly romanticizing and advocating for, like, this bygone time when women were happier, primarily in the home.
00:12:17.040So I did an interview with Jo Piazza, who I'm so glad that she stopped over on y'all's pod, too, because she is incredible and hilarious.
00:12:25.300She has a podcast called Under the Influence, all about influencing and women.
00:12:29.920So Joe actually makes it very clear that this bygone era where women were so happy to be staying in the home actually kind of does not exist, right?0.56
00:12:40.200It's like a throwback and a romanticization of a time period that, like, did not actually really exist for women.0.60
00:12:46.840Because truly, can you really romanticize the choices made by white women at a time when they, like, could not even own bank accounts, right?0.75
00:12:56.660Like, it's a little hard to be like, oh, well, our grandmothers were just choosing to be in the household because that was what was better.0.65
00:13:05.520And it's like, well, she couldn't have her own money legally.
00:17:45.320Our culture tells women that it's honorable to sacrifice everything for your job, but it's unfair to sacrifice everything for your family.0.65
00:17:54.140That it's liberating to be sexually used by men who are not committed to you, but it's oppressive to love and respect a man who is.0.70
00:18:01.380that it's somehow empowering to rely on the system
00:18:04.620to educate your kids, feed your family, and keep you alive
00:18:08.120rather than have the skills to do it yourself.
00:19:21.080meant to make people feel a certain kind of way.
00:19:23.640Do you all see this, or am I way off base here?
00:19:26.300Well, the minute you said that she was a writer for the far right news article, I think that, again, kind of coming back to what we were talking about with red pill slash white supremacy, this level of indoctrination is the MAGA world.1.00
00:19:41.880I doubt we have any MAGA listeners, but if you're offended, f**k you.0.99
00:19:47.480Essentially, if it sounds offensive, but it's actually true because there's this whole underlying level of creating more white babies.1.00
00:19:56.200And I'm assuming this woman is a white woman.0.90
00:19:59.060And in this whole culture of go against the zeitgeist, which now the zeitgeist is too liberal, which is that, you know, in their mind, of course, in this conversation.0.52
00:20:10.660Which is, again, what we were really, like, every time I would go down this rabbit hole of anything Trad Wives, anything Crunchy Moms situation, it gets very succinct to this ideal of moms protecting white children or the white community in itself.
00:20:29.280And this level of that has to be also meaning that we're rebellious against the norm.0.67
00:20:35.920And those are the devils who, you know, this level of conversation, it's like, yeah, this makes perfect sense.
00:20:41.440And that guitar playing is you're supposed to think this is a Midwestern family out in the cornfields in their dresses, having the perfect little like dinner at the tables.
00:20:50.900but that they have obviously gardened themselves
00:20:53.160because they don't trust the government or the fertilizer
00:20:56.020and, you know, wore these clothes that they have made themselves
00:20:59.940as well as the fact that, you know, they don't do doctors and none of that.
00:21:04.160This level of ideal of the perfect life0.57
00:21:08.360that kind of also insinuates by the perfect life means you have to be white.1.00
00:21:30.500Like, they don't want me making homemade meals.
00:21:33.840It's like, who are you talking about that is preventing you from doing this?
00:21:37.000This is something that I've noticed a lot.
00:21:38.520It's almost like these people want to be persecuted or like victimized in some way.
00:21:45.960And they really, they're so committed to wanting to feel like they're going against the grain and challenging norms that they have made that into an identity.
00:21:54.700And they've kind of, like, built it up that everything they do is, like, being challenged.
00:22:00.980Everything they do, like, they don't want me to grow my own food.
00:22:06.700Like, who is preventing you from doing this if that's what you want to do?1.00
00:22:09.160I've seen so many people say, like, make it seem as though there's some sort of feminist conspiracy to keep women from staying at home and not doing wage earning work.1.00
00:22:22.500And I mean, I would if I could afford to comfortably do that, I think I would love to do that.1.00
00:22:28.580Right. I think a lot of people would love to do that. But like what people are saying is like, yeah, you should have the choice to do whatever you want to do.
00:22:35.880And what they're hearing is, like, they're not letting me stay at home.
00:22:39.240Where are these people who are preventing women from, like, staying at home with their families if that's what they want to do?0.55
00:22:45.340That's called capitalism, babe, and it sucks for everybody.
00:22:48.660Yeah, we're all dealing with the same harsh—0.96
00:22:52.940You know, I think that's that conversation, again, this whole, like, they won't let me do this thing or they won't let me do that thing.
00:22:58.820And it's kind of that conversation you were talking about earlier where black women were pretty much excluded from the white feminist movement because they did not listen to the fact that black women have been working, women of color have been working the entirety of their existence from jump because they had no other choice.0.62
00:23:14.740that the fact that they want to go to work and women should be, they're not listening to the
00:23:19.320other side of what feminism should look like. And that conversation is that it's the choice,
00:23:24.900the choice to do what you, whether it is to be a stay at home mom and to have whatever balanced
00:23:31.940life that you want, if you agreed upon it and everything is fair for you too, and there's
00:23:36.380respect, then wonderful. That's the thing. That's the choice to have that choice is the feminist
00:23:43.420ideal but yeah the more i see like again with the trad wives they're going to a 1970s tactic1.00
00:23:51.940of the fear mongering of feminism right they want to take away men they hate all men they want to1.00
00:23:59.400kill men a b the fact that they can't wear you can't wear bras as if you do you're not a feminist0.96
00:24:05.020and you can't wear like whoever said these things who said this what is happening this fear mongering0.99
00:24:11.020that has come back and that they have not only taken this on,
00:24:16.320they're pushing it so hard that those who always hated the ideal of something
00:24:36.460And so this actually is one of the three major points
00:24:39.940that I want folks to think about and really know
00:24:43.220in terms of coming to this content with a critical eye
00:24:46.120and with a little bit of media literacy
00:24:47.800is that this kind of content is often specifically engineered
00:24:51.840to make us have a big reaction, right?
00:24:54.260So in the example that we were just talking about,
00:24:57.800you know, that influencer does not have a huge following.
00:25:00.280She has like 20K on Instagram and I think around 40K on TikTok,0.84
00:25:03.280which is pretty small in the ecosystem of trad wife influencers.1.00
00:25:07.520And so, you know, because some of these people have like millions and millions of followers. So I suspect the reason that she has to frame her video in such a smug way where it's like, my choices are good. Other women's choices, not good, is because she is trafficking on our big reaction to get engagement.
00:25:27.420If she just said, I like to homeschool my kids, I like to play with my kids, I like to cook for my husband, I have a relationship where I respect my husband, who would care? Nobody would care because it's like, oh, good for you.1.00
00:25:41.500She has to tweak it to be like, I'm doing it in a good way and everybody else is doing it wrong intentionally because it gets our blood boiling to get more engagement, to get more views, and to ultimately boost her profile where it's very clear she wants to have a big one, right?
00:25:56.880And so in some ways, this is just a good old fashioned engagement grift where you say things in a way that is intentionally said to be a little bit inflammatory to get more engagement.
00:26:09.180Right. Gosh, that took me on a rabbit hole of like a dark time in our company where that was like, you should make people mad they'll engage with you.
00:26:17.880And I'm like, please don't make me do that.
00:26:20.060This is a bit of a side note, but this is my new media literacy battle cry, which is that we should understand how many places on the internet and how many places and influencers and people and content creators that make up our internet discourse are doing that.
00:26:37.600They are trying to get one over on us because it is effective.
00:26:40.920We already know that social media platforms intentionally boost content that gets a lot of engagement and that makes us angry or gets our hearts racing because it is better for their platforms.
00:26:51.060And so the dynamic where anybody who says something that is inflammatory, that gets people upset, that they are rewarded with engagement, that is a bad system.
00:26:58.780And we need to be looking at it like, I can't tell you how many stupid TikTok skits I have gotten sucked into where I'm like, wait a minute, why do I care like what this fake scenario says is happening?
00:27:11.080Like, the story time of a woman doing her makeup telling me a made-up story about a friend that doesn't exist.0.90
00:27:17.680Like, why am I giving this my attention?
00:27:19.240And we need to put a wrench in that entire system, that entire machine that continues to crank out content like that because it's not good for us.
00:27:28.880no and i think a lot of it is so and i know you're going to talk about this a little bit but it's so
00:27:33.760dishonest and and the time it takes and perhaps the production it takes to just
00:27:41.000make these videos i always kind of laugh when i see like ring lights in their eyes and it's
00:27:46.820clearly supposed to be like oh i just woke up i'm like no you did it
00:27:50.420but you do have another example of somebody who has a lot of engagement yes
00:27:57.120Yes, and that is Ballerina Farms. So if you don't know who Ballerina Farms is, her name is Hannah Neelyman, and she is a follower of the Church of Latter-day Saints, aka a Mormon. She married into the family that owns the airline JetBlue, so girl married very well.
00:28:13.480She is probably not living like a rural, kind of dependent on the land lifestyle.
00:28:20.340However, if you looked at her content, you might think like, oh, she's living a very
00:28:23.800humble rural existence because that's what she wants you to think.
00:28:27.180She spends a lot of time on TikTok cooking with her eight kids on her farm.1.00
00:28:31.440And when she's not doing that, she is competing in beauty pageants.
00:28:34.040She has almost 10 million followers.0.97
00:28:37.020So a huge, huge footprint in the landscape.0.98
00:31:00.720And it's always so funny to him and his family how people online have convinced themselves that farm life is this like route to a soft, slow life.
00:31:10.960That is only true for people who are wealthy, who are not actually farming as a source of their existence, as a source of sustenance, as a source of their financial security.
00:31:21.180Anybody who actually lives on a farm, a real farm, where that farm, where like you live or die or you eat or don't eat based on how that farm is doing, will tell you that it is a ton of work.
00:31:32.620People who have farms are always tired.
00:32:02.420But no, to know that they actually have to wake up at the crack of dawn
00:32:06.000to make sure, whether it's snowing or raining and all of that,
00:32:09.420to make sure they have to take care and tend to all the things,
00:32:12.460the living things that are on there, including any crops,
00:32:16.860and if they have, like, workers on there.0.91
00:32:18.740I'm assuming, because I don't know anything about this ballerina farmer, that if they are that wealthy and they do actually own a farm, that they do hire workers and how little she's active on that farm.
00:32:33.540Maybe I'm just out of, you know, speaking up too much, but just like it doesn't seem like a thing that she would be doing while she's also posting pretty little pictures of herself dancing with her kids.
00:32:45.060I can confirm that they have, like, a pretty big staff, like, paid employees who work for them.
00:32:51.660I should also say, like, side note, I have heard some horror stories about what is actually, like, going down on that farm.
00:32:59.000If you are interested, there are Reddit rabbit holes, but, like, I cannot confirm any of that myself, so, like, don't have anything to say about it.
00:33:05.460But that is out there about some of the allegations of how the animals are treated on that farm.
00:33:12.720But, like, do your own research there because I don't know either way.
00:33:16.020But, yes, she definitely has paid staff to do the actual labor.
00:33:21.440And, again, there's nothing wrong with that.0.61
00:33:23.060That's, like, if that's how you're going to do it.
00:33:24.460But then don't go on TikTok and make it seem like you are doing this work yourself and it's actually not that hard and you actually have a slow life, a soft life.
00:33:36.980And so I think that's sort of like my biggest point is that I think that some of these creators are just not being totally honest in the way that we understand that most online content is probably not honest in some way.
00:33:49.540But there's something about the like trad wife, slow life, rustic vibes, content creators that I think makes it harder to see when someone is basically lying to you on the Internet about what their life actually looks like.
00:34:01.640And so Ballerina Farms might not have to, like, engagement farm the way that the other influencer does, but that doesn't mean that she's being totally honest about what is going down in her life or that we're getting an honest view of it.
00:34:15.760Because, you know, what do you call somebody who makes content to make their life look a certain way, maybe not totally accurately, to sell commercial products?
00:34:31.640Ballerina Farms, I would argue, is a business and her social media shtick is just part of the0.98
00:34:36.960marketing arm of this business. Their farm is a farm where you can buy boxes of meats from it0.99
00:34:43.640online. It is a corporate entity. And so she is just marketing her consumer goods to try to get
00:34:51.180us to buy not just the product, but into the whole lifestyle that her product revolves around.
00:34:57.900And what's also kind of interesting is there's this creator, Caro Claire Berkey on TikTok, who has really made a thing out of doing some media analysis around Ballerina Farms as a brand.
00:35:10.560And she basically is like, we don't actually know or see the actual real person behind Ballerina Farms, Hannah.
00:35:18.560We don't really see a real view of her life.
00:35:21.140What we're seeing is the way that her corporation or her company wants us to see her for marketing purposes.
00:35:26.940She compares it to the Kardashians who, you know, we know have become literal billionaires from leveraging a highly curated peak into their personal lives to get us to buy into them as a brand.
00:35:36.780But the difference is, she says, that the Kardashians are maybe even more upfront about this dynamic than these trad wife influencers.
00:35:44.760I don't think anybody would be like, oh, the Kardashians are just trying to give us an honest look into the lives of billionaires and like they're just being so authentic.
00:39:47.340There's no shame in it, but like this is a business.
00:39:49.960And in my interview with Jo, she puts it really well that if you're somebody who is setting up a tripod, setting up lighting, putting on a face of makeup, putting on a particular outfit to film content that you then edit, publish to millions of your followers,
00:40:03.280and have built up a social media platform that might involve navigating, like, brand deals or sponsored posts,
00:40:25.380I feel like they forgot the mom blogs, which was the beginning, honestly, of all of this.0.79
00:40:31.600And the way that it was created, it was stay-at-home moms trying to figure out how to make money to help assist and figuring out this is profitable and has now ventured into this.
00:40:43.180And as where the blogs were curated in a way that it was written and entertaining, this is an entertainment on a different level, which is a show, is a show.
00:40:53.020Like, in some ways, this is just like entertainment.
00:40:57.080Like, it's like curating a version of your life for entertainment value, right?
00:41:01.600And I've actually even heard the theory that at least some of this content is fetish content, like sexual fetish content, that it's not actually meant to be speaking to women at all or saying anything or making any kind of comment about women and what we should be doing with our lives or not doing with our lives.
00:41:17.400that it's meant to appeal to horny men0.86
00:41:19.560and their submissive wife sexual fantasies0.98
00:41:22.880and that these creators have just sort of found a way0.97
00:41:25.320to make fetish content in a way that does not trigger,
00:41:28.760you know, TikTok or whatever's not safe for work content censors.
00:41:33.460And so, like, if that's what's going on,
00:41:35.380like, more power to you, you know, do your thing.
00:46:25.540And I think that something that gets left out of the discourse
00:46:28.880is that the reasons that women are staying home
00:46:31.940are not necessarily, like, to deprogram their kids1.00
00:46:35.800from government instruction or whatever the f**k.0.93
00:46:38.720A lot of times it's because childcare is so f**king expensive0.92
00:46:41.400that it does not make financial sense to work outside of the home anymore.
00:46:45.080Or maybe on the flip side, both parents are working
00:46:48.340and they're just, like, figuring it out and just squeezing by.
00:46:52.060A lot of people are just doing what they have to do based on financial circumstances that are not great. And so that is a very different thing from choosing to work because feminism and like woke society says that you have to. It is like some of these creators are creating a straw man for why women either work outside of the home or don't. And that's actually not a reflection of the reality that most parents are facing right now.0.99
00:47:16.360Yeah. I mean, especially during the beginning of the pandemic, there were so many articles about that of like women being forced out of the workforce, like all of the scientific papers from women decreased. And I think it's interesting, a lot of content like this immediately out the gate feels defensive for whatever lifestyle. And I could see it being defensive from like women judging you.
00:47:37.400But I can also see it being maybe trying to find, like, a reason that it's okay that you didn't have the choice.
00:47:45.120And so let me make this look prettier.
00:47:50.340So I think that totally makes sense, Bridget.0.99
00:47:53.000And I think people are picking up on it because women are tired.
00:47:56.160And we just love for someone to do it.
00:47:58.160Like, yes, you go out and work and let me just chill here, which is not the truth at all.
00:48:03.080The way they make it look like while I sit here with these pretty little kids and tell them to go take a nap.
00:48:09.460If you've been in any child care, you know that's not a thing.
00:48:13.400And everything's a mess and everything's a disaster and cooking is hard.
00:48:16.480And being a stay-at-home mom is a full-time job in itself and deserves pay.0.88
00:48:22.160Which is the other conversation that they don't want to have, trad-wise, is that a lot of those stay-at-home moms who love it also are like, but we should be paid.0.92