00:00:00.000Hey guys, there was a part of me that thought, maybe we're finished talking about Trad Wives.
00:00:13.960Maybe it's over. It's over. Walk away. Find something new to talk about. But I keep getting
00:00:22.180so many messages from all of you about this kind of content, and it just keeps getting bigger and
00:00:27.320bigger, and their influence keeps growing and growing, that we're going to do one last story.
00:00:33.820One last story. And I have a guest today that I adore so much, so much. She recently wrote a
00:00:43.420story for The Cut. She writes a column called Brooding. Her name is Catherine Jeezer Morton,
00:00:50.860and her story was titled, Is Tradwife Content Dangerous or Just Stupid? Such a good question.1.00
00:01:01.100Such a good question. I first met Catherine years ago when I started this podcast, when
00:01:07.980I was really digging deep into the early days of mom influencers. She's one of the few academics
00:01:14.980who has been taking this very seriously. See, Catherine actually received her doctorate in
00:01:22.440sociology from Concordia University, where she studied mom influencers and their impact on
00:01:29.500culture. She's so smart on this subject and on parenting in general, which is why she now writes
00:01:35.680the brooding column for The Cut. I just, I had to have her on to talk about this question.
00:01:42.140are tradwives dangerous? Or again, is their content just stupid? Now, I have a lot of1.00
00:01:51.060thoughts on this, and we're going to dig into it. But I do want to say up front that I believe
00:01:57.560it is dangerous because tradwife content portrays an unrealistic version of the actual labor of
00:02:06.000motherhood. It also often portrays an unrealistic version of the actual labor of homesteading
00:02:12.880and farm work. It also seems to be dividing us in a lot of ways, and it has definitively
00:02:21.180breathed new life into the mommy wars that's pitting women who work outside the home1.00
00:02:26.060against women who work inside the home. We are going to get into all of these things
00:02:31.720in this episode. But first, actually, Catherine opens up with the story of how her and I first
00:02:37.980met in person in real life, because before we just talked on the phones and on the computer.
00:02:43.680And it just so happens that she found me at a mom influencer conference.
00:02:50.040I feel like I want to recall how I met you because you looked, you were so amazing. You
00:02:55.220were sitting at the bar eating lasagna, wearing the amazing dress caftan something. You were
00:03:00.960very pregnant and i was pregnant i was pregnant yeah i must meet this woman because you just0.98
00:03:07.460you were really um you were in command of this scenario if i was like damn that's how to do it
00:03:16.000that's how to do it just you know leave the conference and go have some bar lasagna
00:03:19.740yeah yeah still that's i mean that's like one of my top tips for life if you are hungry and i was
00:03:26.600I was oh my gosh yeah um the funny thing is while I was sitting there either before or after I talked
00:03:32.340to you I totally got hit on by some like hot young Australian dude who didn't realize I was pregnant
00:03:38.800at the time um who just wanted me to like party with him all night and I'm like this is what
00:03:43.460confidence will do for you if only I could have told my like sad ass 29 year old self this story
00:03:48.240yeah no that's that's the trick to everything it's the trick to everything it really really is
00:03:54.360It totally is. I have about a thousand things that I want to talk to you in this episode about,
00:03:59.720but I feel like I have to narrow it down. Tell our audience about your mom influencing research.
00:04:04.960And you were you were an expert in the very first season of Under the Influence. You were in the
00:04:10.080trenches. How did you how did you get get to be that person? Yeah. So I did a Ph.D. in sociology
00:04:17.080and I finished in 2022 and I studied momfluencers. You wrote a piece recently that I want to talk a
00:04:23.700little bit about for the cut for your brooding column that was entitled, Is Trad Life Content1.00
00:04:30.420Dangerous or Just Stupid? Can we talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So that was actually, I feel0.99
00:04:38.800like you had gone deep into trad life right before I wrote this. This was in your trad life deep dive
00:04:45.520moment. And I think right around the same time, Sarah Peterson and Anne Helen Peterson and you
00:04:51.940and i all hit the trad way um you know topic and i remember thinking to myself damn it well you know
00:05:00.320what no one wants to read about this anymore because those guys already covered it but like
00:05:03.200my editor wants me to write about it and it's kind of my beat so like i gotta do it but i have
00:05:06.800a feeling that like this you know this train has left a station and no one cares how wrong i was
00:05:13.160that piece did really well tons of traffic like definitely one of my top of the year um which
00:05:18.740indicates that people really are fascinated by this and like want to read and understand it,
00:05:25.320which is something that I think I was underestimating at the time. But there was a
00:05:30.020question of, is this bad for women? Right. Like, is this content dangerous? Does it does it give1.00
00:05:36.160young women on TikTok like bad ideas about what it is to be a mother? And I think I was just kind
00:05:44.820of feeling like, you know what, like this behavior is so ridiculous. You really do have to be0.98
00:05:52.360incredibly impressionable to think I'm going to do this. What did you go into this article thinking?
00:05:59.180And then I want to know what you came out of it thinking. I think I went in feeling like,
00:06:04.660you know what, this can't be a threat to us. Like we can't be this vulnerable to the influence of
00:06:13.140traditional femininity i just i don't know i was like guys this isn't for real we can't we can't
00:06:20.520worry um i was feeling indignant i think about this content and the idea that that it poses a
00:06:29.520threat to young feminists i was like no we've come too far obviously this is like the road to hell0.73
00:06:35.460is paved with no we've come too far right like that's never true i saw that you also talked to
00:06:41.220Niha Vrush, who has been talking about this a lot.
00:06:44.660She's the founder of Mom Untitled, a group that's working to redefine the ideas around stay-at-home motherhood.
00:06:49.540She was like, you know what, this really sucks because a lot of stay-at-home moms are actually, you know, business people or people working on projects that they're very passionate about.0.51
00:06:59.040And they're not at all these traditional versions of housewives.
00:07:03.520And like, we have to come up with a better idea of what it means to be a stay at home mom, because this version is like really demeaning and also totally unrealistic. And I was like, oh, that that really does make sense. And I kind of became I became very sympathetic to like the stay at home mom case for this.
00:07:23.120you know that yeah they've been sort of there's been this kind of fake war between the work1.00
00:07:28.820outside of the home moms and the work from home moms and these trad wives are kind of exploiting
00:07:34.200that like fake uh conflict and that pissed me off so so i got on board with the discourse and
00:07:42.360and i do think that it's a lot of this content is in bad faith i think it's exploitative i think
00:07:47.980it's exploiting people's feelings for various reasons i think that's so interesting that you
00:07:53.360went into it one way and i'm going to tell you i went into it the same way i'm like whatever like0.94
00:07:58.640this is just dumb these women are these women do they actually believe it are they just performing0.80
00:08:03.680this and i came out of it after talking to so many experts really believing that the the images that0.99
00:08:11.740we see and the content we consume impacts us whether or not we're realizing it or not um and1.00
00:08:19.560even less than there's one argument there's one argument that says oh my gosh these women are1.00
00:08:24.720going to drag us back into this false sitcom version of the 1950s i think that could be a0.98
00:08:33.540possibility i unlike you do think that young women are wildly impressionable about what their future
00:08:39.380should look like. And so I think that that content is dangerous in that way now. But more than that,
00:08:45.280I agree with Nia that I just think it gives the wrong idea of what it means to be a mother. It
00:08:53.120strips the idea of motherhood of all of its unseen, really hard labor and makes it look like it's just0.98
00:09:03.120beautiful and clean and easy and sourdough kneading all the time which is fucking wrong and not true
00:09:10.760yeah and you know i also i did say this in the piece because i i'm not sure that it would have
00:09:17.020been interesting to people but i realized afterwards that it is kind of a cyclical thing
00:09:21.580where when i was um just a younger mother you know and i'm gonna say like 2013-14 i was looking
00:09:30.380at like really picture-perfect Instagram stuff and it was it was messing with me and I found it
00:09:35.240super alienating and I think I just outgrew it um and like now that kind of content doesn't like
00:09:40.980really affect me as much but there are younger mothers who are very much in that vulnerable
00:09:46.920place and I just was cut I've sort of forgotten about them I wasn't thinking about what it's like
00:09:53.040to be you know up with a newborn and you know you're on this you're like brief maternity leave
00:09:58.000And you don't know what you're doing. So I think that it was a moment where like I sort of lacked the compassion or something that I like should have been bringing to the situation.
00:10:10.720Absolutely. Absolutely. And yes, I think that it is dangerous any time that we're not showing the actual labor involved in being a woman and being a mother.
00:10:19.860And that's my biggest issue with the Trad Wives.
00:10:24.640And the Trad Wife content, ever since I've been talking about it, I've become this unexpected expert on Trad Wives, which is a weird place to be.
00:10:34.180I was a Trad Wife for Halloween, which took a lot of explaining in my Philadelphia neighborhood, I will tell you.
00:10:41.540Finally, I was just like, I'm a pioneer woman.
00:11:18.420so prior to prior to this trad wife content she was something else on the social medias right
00:11:23.040yeah yeah so an asm artist is usually a youtube creator who um like whispers and creates little
00:11:30.020sensory sounds and people like to listen to them for relaxation and there's often a little bit of
00:11:35.720a kind of a sexy girl um you know appearance vibe but like it's not necessarily about that
00:11:42.700so that was what she did and i think she would she was kind of bisexual was part of like her story
00:11:46.940And, you know, she was kind of like a young, exploring herself person. And she, during the pandemic, it kind of took a turn. And she went from this kind of crunchy persona to like a much more sort of, you know, she went to kind of anti-vax.
00:12:04.720When the crunchy kind of turns rightward and now we don't trust the government and now we're kind of going to move to the countries that we can become more self-sustaining.
00:12:14.580And she doesn't live on a farm, but she was kind of talking farm word in her in her like ideology.
00:12:21.380And then it was like, oh, and now I'm going to be submissive to my boyfriend.
00:12:24.400So she she just we watched her kind of go on this ideological journey, which actually a lot of people have done, especially in the influencer space, the kind of wellness influencer space and around covid to this, you know, it was often said was kind of anti-vax or vaccine kind of skeptic.
00:12:42.840And then it kind of went Joe Rogan and et cetera.
00:12:48.420And now and now she's doing this like very sort of, you know, like like a dewy, gauzy filter, almost like very boobs, very blonde, very trad.
00:13:01.100Like I'm looking after my boyfriend, but we don't see the boyfriend.
00:13:04.300And there are people who are like, is like, is the boyfriend real?
00:13:08.460And it does actually. One of the things that's funny to me about trad wife content is that because there are almost never any men in it, and sometimes there aren't even that many children. And so it's like you could conceivably do trad wife content without children or a partner, because that's really the only realistic way you could act out that reality. Like when you're not actually caregiving, you know, like as soon as you're actually doing work, it's very hard to sustain that appearance.
00:13:34.280it's so true right i mean i was um i put on a tank top today for no reason whatsoever because
00:13:43.460it's freezing here and noticed that the tattoo that i wore when i did a triathlon last weekend
00:13:49.000is still in my arm because i don't know how well i've bathed myself in a week much less done my
00:13:54.960hair or fed myself something nutritious or baked some sourdough and i think that's what everyone's
00:14:01.660thinking when they're looking at ballerina farms account it's where's your help and so and i think
00:14:08.180whenever anyone's looking at any of any of these accounts i don't believe that any of these women
00:14:12.080are doing it on their own and again then they're making it seem as if people who do have help um
00:14:20.480who do have parents or relatives helping or who hire a babysitter or a nanny they're somehow not
00:14:26.440the same level of mom that you are that makes me so distraught and I actually I wrote about this
00:14:34.160in my old newsletter which was really just about momfluencers about how we never see help in any
00:14:42.240momfluencer content of any kind let alone trad wife content and it's really just because it
00:14:47.260it's hard to incorporate helpers into like a cute story if we're using the narrative framework of
00:14:54.800the nuclear family like oh who is this person like we see this person occasionally in pictures
00:14:58.740who are they again and then like often like helpers wouldn't necessarily want to be you know
00:15:05.480have their picture taken like they're not there to look nice like they're there to help out so
00:15:10.020I mean I can only imagine like being someone's nanny and be like no you are not taking any
00:15:15.400pictures of me like I mean that being like their call right I mean I can't imagine wanting that
00:15:20.180for myself so i don't know i will i will tell you that our babysitter loves having pictures taken of
00:15:26.300her and in fact has my ring light right now so i can't use it because she loves pictures so much
00:15:33.720the reason that i actually keep um our babysitters and caregivers and even my mom off of our social
00:15:40.840media is that i don't want people to follow them um because i don't want people to know where my
00:15:45.540kids are because it has i'm like not a public figure but it has happened a couple times that
00:15:50.800weirdo creeps at the playground have known who my kids were uh and so i don't really want them to
00:15:57.620be able to follow my caregivers like instagram to where they're going but i don't think that
00:16:03.420that is the reason that caregivers are so often left off of these mom influencing feeds
00:16:06.960me neither i mean let's be honest it's because it just doesn't look as alpha to have help um
00:16:15.340even though it's really what like everyone needs and most people do um well and it would normalize
00:16:21.540it right it would normalize that we all need help that we all need help that we all need someone
00:16:26.440else watching out for us watching out for our kids that no one can do it all and that's part
00:16:30.600of the reason that i think the trad wife content is so dangerous because i think it it makes it seem
00:16:35.640like of course you can of course you can do all of these things of course you can have this
00:16:40.360beautiful house and cook all these things and raise your kids and not need any help0.66
00:16:43.360And so that just negates, you know, the fight that we're constantly fighting for women to have decent child care.
00:16:50.860No, the child care question and when it comes to actually like mobilizing around policy, it's so damaging that it just kind of neutralizes the urgency when all the pictures that you're enjoying are, you know, have nothing to do with the need for child care.
00:17:11.540I'd like to leave this up to our listeners. How can we make it more normal to talk about child care and to talk about our villages and talk about the help that we need on all mom influencing social media, but especially on our own social media? How can we normalize that?
00:17:28.980Like, I mean, I'll happily show more pictures of my entire daily routine that involves 20 to 30 to 40 child care hours a week, depending on what I'm working on.
00:17:39.480Right. And my mother and my freaking mother.0.99
00:17:42.420Like, I moved I moved home to Philadelphia because my mom is here.0.98
00:17:46.000And if my husband goes out of town, she's here.
00:18:38.460This is, these are the people that are part of this with me.
00:18:40.440It just doesn't, it hasn't historically in our little short internet history had a place
00:18:45.920in these stories at all we just don't do it and then I think maybe people are like well this is
00:18:50.580going to be like eating my vegetables you know it's like and here's the the content where I
00:18:55.020dutifully show all the people who make it possible for me to do my work right and what I would love
00:19:02.900to see is a way for us to tell that story in a way that is actually like really fun do you know
00:19:07.340what I mean like and that's so challenging like this is going to be for us to figure out how to
00:19:11.640do because i don't think that any of us want to like it turns into virtue signaling right which
00:19:17.560is that we're all i think very wary of at a certain point like oh you just want everyone to know how
00:19:21.000good you are no but this is how i really am like this isn't how good i am this is just my actual
00:19:25.240life right so how do we like bring in all of this care infrastructure into the stories of our lives
00:19:31.040in a way that are like it's like yeah i'm having fun i'm just i'm just doing my life and and it
00:19:35.000looks like this you know right right as opposed to the virtue signaling which i hate which makes
00:19:39.480me want to die on instagram all the time there's way too much virtue signaling i don't know i mean
00:19:44.040is it just like a mom gleefully dropping dropping her baby off at daycare and then standing in line
00:19:51.160to get to get her macchiato or whatever because she is child free for the rest of the day i don't
00:19:57.300know i don't know i don't know how how to better show all of the things it takes to be a mom or
00:20:05.660Well, you know, it's the same thing with with partnerships. And Eve Rodsky has done such a good job with this when it comes to division of labor. We don't see division of labor on social media or really even in pop culture or in literature or or anywhere.
00:20:23.460So if we don't see division of labor between husbands and wives, men and women, then how do we know how to model it? If we don't see how to integrate caregiving into our lives, how do we know how to model it?
00:20:35.660Absolutely. No, it is one of those things. Division of labor being a perfect example of, you know, like in therapy, you know, my therapist finally was like, so what was it like between your parents and, you know, division of labor? And I had to realize, like, I don't know anything other than what I saw. It really is just that simple. Like, you see a thing, you're like, and that's what I know. And everything else is you're kind of trying to learn something new.
00:21:02.020And I think that applies to the way we tell our stories online. I feel like so many of us are just like kind of grasping in the dark at how to do equitable house stuff because we've never seen it done before.
00:21:19.700But also we feel like failures when we're not doing it, which is a real, I mean, it's such a, I mean, I know this has been written about a lot, but it's something that I have so many feelings about that I actually struggle to write about it because it's too emotional.
00:21:33.460Like I can't get the kind of editorial distance that I need to actually write well about household division of labor.
00:21:40.840Well, and so this is, let's bring it all back. This is why I think trad wife content is dangerous. Because if the husband, the father is ever pictured, he's never pictured doing work or labor with the children. I mean, he may be doing farm labor or, but most of the time he's just standing there like looking like a kind of classically handsome Ken doll, like being just a macho man in the background.0.98
00:22:08.080like he's not participating and that right there is where i think that this trad wife content gets
00:22:14.480dangerous me too i want to take a minute though and shout somebody out there's a mom's answer
00:22:19.620named becca martinez do you know who she is oh yeah everybody loves becca martinez and i i just0.87
00:22:26.180started following her and um everyone keeps telling me i should have her on the show i should
00:22:30.920have her on the show right you totally should she's awesome she's great um yes yes she's really
00:22:35.340fun i i only bring her up because and you know her content like a lot of the time she's she's
00:22:40.900transgressive a lot of her content is no offense becca i do really think you're awesome it's like
00:22:45.420a bit boring like almost on purpose she's like no this is going to be boring and you're going to
00:22:49.500watch it anyway and i'm like you're right i am um so she's on to something but her husband is this
00:22:55.920guy gray something something and he is this kind of bro he's like a rock climbing instructor
00:23:03.200and he's around the house a lot and we see them co-parenting a lot in her content and it's
00:23:09.840remarkable in the sense that i can think of basically no one else who does this so it's
00:23:14.720very rare but um when i see her doing that i'm like okay see it looks like this you know the
00:23:21.080thing is you do kind of need a partner who is a bit of a performer like he's a ham he he knows
00:23:25.800how to he's first of all he's very cute um and he knows how to like do it for the camera like he's
00:23:30.760funny a lot of us who love to make content might have a partner who's very offline like myself
00:23:36.560my husband doesn't want to be part of my content so that does put a little you know you need two
00:23:43.220partners who are kind of up for it that's part of it totally my husband I usually just don't tell
00:23:48.820him when I'm about to have him on the podcast I'm just I just start recording and then later on he's
00:23:53.980like were you recording me and i'm like yes i was sorry apologize don't do not ask for permission
00:24:01.380just apologize later which i which i which i do get but then at the same time we're not seeing
00:24:07.820we're not seeing what men do we're just i mean really it's just so much sourdough needing is
00:24:13.320what it is no i know it really is and there's it's it's incredible that we can watch this that
00:24:19.320the narrow slice of life in the trad wives world it just it is incredible that they managed to kind
00:24:26.620of make that they stretch it out to so much content but it's like so little of light it's0.64
00:24:30.380amazing really it's like right like actual like so little of actual life oh my god all right so
00:24:36.960yeah i am i am following becca martinez um and she's like um what can i say about becca i mean
00:24:43.400she's she's crunchy but then also like she's i i find her fascinating she's very she can make
00:24:49.340herself up and she does like a full face she really knows what she's doing with makeup which
00:24:52.320is something that i don't so i'm like i admire her so much for that but then also often she's
00:24:56.640kind of very like she doesn't shave her legs which i know is like a big deal for a lot of her
00:25:00.760followers um she kind of it's really really her followers freak out because she doesn't shave her
00:25:05.640legs so yeah i think so i mean i've never like gone and found the receipts but she indicates
00:25:11.500that people often are like why don't you shave your legs and she's like i stopped you realize
00:25:15.960years ago guys like get with the program um and she actually has like hairy legs that's the other0.99
00:25:20.740thing i'm like okay not shaving your legs but you like have little blonde hair that's not the same1.00
00:25:24.340thing i want to see her not the same thing no no no no because if i hadn't shaved my legs i would
00:25:29.380be a yeti i would be like just yeah so not that there's anything wrong with that but i think
00:25:35.400there's a difference between not shaving your legs and having like little like soft blonde fuzzy
00:25:40.320hairs uh or a lork from rudy jude i bet she doesn't shave her legs but you know what you can't tell1.00
00:25:47.060like she's a blondie so she doesn't get credit for that but um you know uh becca martinez she's
00:25:53.660she's charting a slightly different path and i i do commend her for it it's not easy easy i'm sure
00:26:00.780it's easy she makes a lot of money but she's doing something you know well and that's that's what i
00:26:05.680That's another thing that I want to talk about. You know, I do find a lot of the trad wife thing kind of a farce because they're saying I'm submissive to my husband. I don't work outside the home. But if you're a successful trad wife, you're making money on your content. So you are therefore probably making quite a bit of money. And it just it is completely counter to what you are claiming is your ethos.
00:26:33.520yeah of course and everyone knows on tiktok like when you have a creator account like you're
00:26:39.860you're starting to make money i mean i don't know it is i think that's one of those things where
00:26:46.480it's obvious and they're just choosing not to address it um and also like i think
00:26:53.260yeah i don't know like that's it's a contradiction that i think they have just they're comfortable
00:26:59.420with because it's money right like no one's gonna say no to that um not even like that's just one of
00:27:03.920those things that it's like a religious imperative if you're given the opportunity to earn you will
00:27:08.400earn exactly totally absolutely i mean if i thought that i could make so much money off sourdough
00:27:13.360making i would definitely give it a try but no one wants to watch me make sourdough but if they
00:27:18.740were like i'll give you lots of money to make sourdough yeah i'll do it i'll do it i want all
00:27:23.460the money but that's you know that's always been the big question for me with ballerina farm and
00:27:30.000hannah nealman is that those guys are people for whom money is literally no object they're
00:27:35.460very very very wealthy and so i do wonder and i would love just some like some conservative or
00:27:43.660like mrs america some outlet to just interview her like if she would just speak to someone1.00
00:27:48.040why are you doing it because a lot of the time she doesn't look like she's having fun she looks
00:27:53.580exhausted and i'm like you don't need to be doing this anyway like what's the motivation
00:27:59.480why are you doing this why are you doing this it's not for the money like it just isn't those
00:28:04.720guys are rolling in cash um maybe they're not maybe actually their lifestyle does seem
00:28:11.080fantastically expensive and they're constantly expanding their operation and like oh we built
00:28:15.380a new barn i'm like that barn is like you know it's like a half a million dollar barn and then
00:28:19.920you heat the barn like what i'm thinking about like the the bills and i'm like okay maybe you
00:28:23.740know but also maybe you need that maybe you need that child wife money man may i say one other0.60
00:28:29.340thing about her i've she i know it's it's it's perverse how much space she takes up in the world
00:28:35.840of mom fluencer uh expertise and and sort of critique there is someone spoke to me off the
00:28:45.380No one will speak on the record about this, about the perverse incentive that exists when you're creating content to have more children.
00:28:51.940She was like, listen, your engagement spikes after you have a new baby, usually like pregnancy announcement to six months.
00:30:12.020Another woman that you talked to in your piece for The Cut was Beth Gantz, who is an actual homesteader, a real-life farmer.
00:30:23.740And Beth thought that a lot of this content was dangerous, not because of how it portrayed motherhood, but because of how it portrayed farming and homesteading.
00:30:34.060Again, like the unreality of what they're showing us.
00:30:37.320Can you tell me a little bit about that?
00:31:49.060I mean, and I heard this from so many farmers and homesteaders, actual farmers and homesteaders.
00:31:54.100And one of the things that Beth says in your piece is that a lot of these homesteading skills that are glorified on trad wife accounts are actually rooted in people who were in poverty,
00:32:08.560who were doing these things, not because they thought it would look nice on social media,
00:32:13.300but out of necessity. You know, making quilts out of leftover t-shirts and rags or making your own
00:32:21.460sourdough bread because bread is expensive. And that is also ignored in a lot of the Tradwife1.00
00:32:27.320content. Now, I don't believe that we constantly have to be giving the entire history of how
00:32:33.620something was done. But I do think that it is putting a fancy, pretty spin on something that
00:32:40.200so many people continue to do out of necessity. And I do think that that is dangerous.
00:32:46.060Absolutely. I mean, it's like commodifying activities that were at one time necessary
00:32:52.360so as to like, you know, avoid commodification, avoid commercialism. Like, I can't afford to buy
00:32:58.500it, so I'm going to make it. And now it's like, well, now I'm going to make that into a product.
00:33:01.380I mean, it is like classic. Capitalism eats everything, including anti-capitalism. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's really, it's disappointing on multiple levels, the whole trad wife thing. It's really true.
00:33:14.120it really is and you you say something that has stuck with me since i read your column
00:33:22.280you talk about the aestheticization of care i'm gonna i mean that is a hard word to say it's a
00:33:28.320hard word to spell it's a hard word to say aestheticization of care um and or we could
00:33:35.340we'd say the simple way pretty pretty fine care pretty fine care and how trad wives obscure how1.00
00:33:40.880exhausting it really is and reinforce these outdated gender norms that's that's the issue
00:33:47.180i think they are prettifying prettifying so many things that in real life are not pretty
00:33:52.780yeah and and then i do think that it robs us as an audience as the ability to imagine
00:34:03.260like a you know beautiful interesting meaningful life experiences that aren't pretty which is so
00:34:11.200limiting it's to me it makes me really sad to think of like younger people thinking that
00:34:16.940you know a party or a birthday or a celebration has to look a certain way in order for it to be fun
00:34:23.960i i just it honestly brings me to despair um i think about those balloon garlands for some reason
00:34:32.260those balloon garlands really really send me to a dark place which is really unfair because there's
00:34:37.480nothing wrong with them at all and they're very cheerful and fun and like I need to get over it
00:34:41.820but I'm like you know there are kids who are like well if there isn't one of those then like it's
00:34:46.560not a party like people didn't make an effort and I'm like you know there's so many ways to like
00:34:52.400show your love and show your care that are can't be captured in a picture and I worry that like
00:34:59.400younger people are able to they're not like growing up with a very robust sense of what
00:35:04.720those things are totally totally absolutely when for me it's like all right motherhood but make0.83
00:35:10.620it cute homesteading but make it cute potty training but make it fucking cute yeah i have
00:35:17.360no interest in any of that for me personally i have i was brought up in a very very uncute0.91
00:35:23.260environment um by hippies actually now it would be an environment that would probably be very
00:35:29.100cutified because it would look good on instagram even though it was actually very disgusting like
00:35:32.780at the at the tactile level um but cuteness is not something that's ever been a part of my like
00:35:39.740um dream my like set of dreams my mood board the things that i'm aspiring towards so i've never
00:35:47.820struggled with the like it should be cute and it's not i'm doing it wrong but i think for a lot of
00:35:52.500people it really is that and i'm like that's just a tough road to hope i mean it's really
00:35:57.420it is it's a terrible it's a terrible thing to kind of lay at people's feet has to be cute no
00:36:04.520no it's too much and you know what i'm gonna say something controversial
00:36:09.180i don't like balloon garlands they're bad for the planet no balloons generally are bad for the
00:36:15.120planet um they're expensive there's no need to spend that much money on a one-year-old's
00:36:21.260birthday party unless you just care about the pictures of it i'm just gonna say it i'm anti
00:36:25.160Balloon Garland. And if that gets me canceled, I don't care. I stand with you, Joe. Thank you.
00:36:32.280Thank you. Garland's. No, I mean, I really don't like them. And whenever I see a picture of them,
00:36:38.580it makes me feel a little bit sad. Like I said, they represent something to me that that I don't
00:36:44.160like. What can I say? Totally, totally. Well, and the last point that I want to make, and you say
00:36:51.500this in your article is that trad wife content is breathing new life into the old mommy wars
00:36:58.780and i've seen that so clearly by how i have been attacked on my social media after talking about
00:37:07.740trad wives and writing about trad wives people have such intense feelings about this and it's
00:37:15.580become such an intense part of their identity that we are just breathing, just breathing new
00:37:21.300life into the mommy wars where it's this kind of mom versus that kind of mom. Instead of all of us
00:37:27.220saying, hey, being a woman in the world is hard. Being a mom in the world is hard. Can we all just
00:37:32.480admit it's hard together and try to do things to prop each other up instead of just trying to break0.97
00:37:38.340each other down and shit on each other? I know. And I want to say, too, because what I wrote about0.90
00:37:44.500trad wives i got a lot of feedback i didn't get any feedback from people or at least if i did
00:37:48.720it didn't get to my instagram like people who are like how dare you trad wifery is cool and i
00:37:54.880am for it i got instead like people who are agreeing with me but they were so disgusted by
00:38:01.460this content it was so like offensive to them and i mean i understand this is what we've been
00:38:06.280talking about but like it works both ways right like they are horrified at the other side and
00:38:12.380honestly like probably if most most of us were to encounter one another like a you know indoor
00:38:18.240freaking trampoline gym during a snowstorm like we'd probably all have a perfectly fine time
00:38:23.420chatting you know people are usually pretty cool but it just reinforces this idea that there's
00:38:29.280like more and more difference among us that's ideological and i think a lot of it's just done
00:38:35.460for for the gram physically for the gram totally yeah I mean when I talk to people when I actually
00:38:43.520talk to people instead of just commenting back and forth we all pretty much get along that's
00:38:48.460the truth of it you know it's just or as you said if we all got stuck in a trampoline park0.84
00:38:53.800during a snowstorm that's the sort of a fucking horror movie right there it is it really is no
00:38:59.820it's too familiar for so many of us too familiar for so many of us we would all find common ground0.95
00:39:06.700because being being a woman in the world being a mother in the world we all have common ground
00:39:11.540but i do think that this performative kind of social media strips us of that common ground
00:39:17.500and that's that right there that's what's dangerous about it it's not it's not necessarily
00:39:22.220like oh my gosh you're inspiring a whole generation of women it's a little true but not totally true
00:39:27.580it's that it is really erasing the labor and it's pitting women against each other. And that's what
00:39:35.620sucks. I think that's it. I think that's the real thing that sucks the most. I think we nailed it0.97
00:39:42.040because it is actually harmful socially. Like it has real world consequences. I mean, a lot of
00:39:48.760things do too, but it's not an abstract idea. It's like the discourse is bad. It's like, no,
00:39:53.660like people's potential interactions could be harmed, you know?
00:40:14.160And I think that that is true in a lot of cases.
00:40:17.720This is a content strategy more than anything else.
00:40:20.700I mean, social networks, as Max says, are designed to engage people through the performance of political and social identity.
00:40:28.760And if you put that together as a lifestyle, people are going to keep coming back and the algorithm is going to keep feeding you more followers.
00:40:36.720I think that this is all a content strategy.
00:40:38.480And if we looked at it more like that, I think, you know, it would it would be a little bit easier to take in.