Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - The Tradwife Era Is Over. So Why Are We Still Obsessed？

00:00:00.000 hey y'all joe here and you are listening to under the influence a little over a month ago i launched

00:00:12.100 the parisian heist at boswell's in milwaukee it's one of the best independent bookstores in the

00:00:17.860 country and i love it there so much i love milwaukee i'm a big milwaukee stan nick is from

00:00:24.080 there i love myself a great lake i love a supper club i love fish fries beer gardens these are all

00:00:29.320 just some of the best things in life. They truly are. And while I was there, I met Claire Swinarski

00:00:34.320 and we figured out within about 90 seconds that we'd both written novels about mom influencers.

00:00:40.700 And we've just been trading thoughts on that back and forth ever since. Claire's newest book is

00:00:45.240 called The Supper Club Saints, and it's about a young woman coming home to a small town in Wisconsin

00:00:50.460 after leaving a mom influencer group. And it digs into something that I think about constantly.

00:00:56.140 Why are we so attracted to mom-influencing and TradWife content?

00:01:00.820 And also, when did our rage and our exhaustion get so big that we decided the answer might just be for all of us to quit society and move in together and start a mom-yoon?

00:01:12.960 Claire has lots of thoughts on yesteryear, so just want to let you know we have some spoilers in here, and we're going to chat honestly about what we think about the book.

00:01:25.300 We're also going to talk about why so many smart and progressive women who are out there

00:01:29.920 marching for abortion rights and voting for AOC are still watching a ton of trad wifey content.

00:01:38.600 I think it has nothing to do with the actual content or with sourdough because no one's

00:01:42.640 going to make the sourdough. Okay. Except for my friend, Sarah and my friend, Stephen.

00:01:46.940 Also our friend, Ted. But it just has to do with rage. We need somewhere to put our rage. And I

00:01:51.580 think so many of us are rage watching it and we're so exhausted that it still kind of feels

00:01:57.060 a nice place to land. Here's my chat with Claire. Hey, Claire, how are you doing? I'm good. How are

00:02:09.880 you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm so excited to have you on. We met at my book event in Milwaukee when

00:02:15.760 we launched Parisian Heist into the World, which feels like 19 lifetimes ago. And it was two months,

00:02:20.660 not even two months it's like a month it truly does and it's at boswell which is like one of

00:02:25.480 the greatest bookstores in all of the midwest they just they do the best events there i will

00:02:30.080 argue that it's one of the greatest independent bookstores in the country i love boswell's i love

00:02:34.900 daniel who runs the store i mean he is just a force of nature and everyone everyone's always

00:02:40.600 like where'd you go on your book tour and i'm like i launched in milwaukee and they're like

00:02:43.720 why and i'm like one because after philadelphia milwaukee is the greatest city in america

00:02:49.060 and two, Boswell's is freaking amazing. Yeah, and we had like, I forget what it's called,

00:02:54.320 the French Fest that week, right? So it worked out perfectly. You guys have the largest Bastille

00:02:59.580 Day festival in the country. Bastille Day, right, right, right. And it was the same weekend as

00:03:04.000 the Italian festival, of which I have also been against that and also spoke. Festa is crazy.

00:03:11.580 I have many a t-shirt from Italian Festa and also from Bastille Day in Milwaukee. So yeah,

00:03:17.680 If you were if you were going anywhere in the middle of the country, I highly recommend Milwaukee.

00:03:23.300 It is a wonderful, wonderful city.

00:03:25.760 Couldn't agree more.

00:03:27.320 Right.

00:03:27.640 Exactly.

00:03:28.140 And I got to meet you, which was amazeballs.

00:03:31.260 And we bonded over the fact that we have both written books that involve trad wife influencers and mom influencers.

00:03:40.360 We sure have.

00:03:41.460 And the first time that I ever heard your name was because a million years ago when you started this podcast,

00:03:46.440 you interviewed natalie holbrook who i once upon a time was obsessed with i mean i read natalie

00:03:52.660 holbrook's blog religiously no pun actually every pun intended and when you had her on on your early

00:03:58.300 podcast that was how i first heard of you so i feel like our entire virtual friendship is going

00:04:02.260 to be based on traps you know i love natalie holbrook so much and in fact i need to message

00:04:08.700 her because i want to have her on the show again she was one of the please do i will i will actually

00:04:13.900 i'll text her while we're doing this interview uh because she was one of the og mom influencers 1.00

00:04:19.160 she was hey natalie jean and you know she just she quit the entire enterprise because she was

00:04:26.140 like this is so toxic and terrible that i i just i i will not survive if i keep doing this

00:04:33.020 a hundred percent and her blog was originally named i still remember nat the fat rat and

00:04:38.900 She's like, I'm going to pay Natalie Jean to become more like palatable.

00:04:43.880 But she's really interesting because on the one hand, she was like this mommy blogger that everyone knew and loved. 0.97

00:04:50.260 But she was also, I think, seen as kind of like a rebellious mommy blogger. 0.82

00:04:53.980 She only had one child and she would swear. 0.99

00:04:56.940 I always thought she was like edgy for the mom blogs. 1.00

00:04:59.820 She was totally edgy.

00:05:01.060 But like in the early days of mom blogging, it was all edge.

00:05:05.480 It was all amazing, right?

00:05:06.800 It was like very, very scary mommy and it was great.

00:05:09.860 But like Natalie and I, I definitely have to catch up with her because our interview

00:05:14.820 was seven years ago, which is insane.

00:05:17.360 I'm like, what is time?

00:05:18.540 This is nuts.

00:05:19.280 But she told me, she's like, look, I had to I had to quit because people were so mean

00:05:23.020 to me.

00:05:23.820 They were mean about me.

00:05:25.000 They were mean about how I looked.

00:05:26.000 They were mean about my kid.

00:05:27.800 Yeah, it was it was a rough time for her out there.

00:05:30.860 And I had her on the early days of Under the Influence because she was such a great example 1.00

00:05:36.240 of how the internet is just so toxic to freaking women yeah absolutely i remember when she got 1.00

00:05:43.380 kind of she got like bullied off the internet she like wrote a book and people just yeah they 1.00

00:05:48.620 like ripped her to shreds they were meaner to her than they were to the average mob blogger for sure 1.00

00:05:52.280 i think and i think that's what you guys talked about in the interview it's like why was she so 0.88

00:05:55.780 specifically hated i don't even know if they were meaner to her than the average i think that women

00:06:03.500 just get beat to hell on the internet i mean one of the things i get asked a lot why i think that 0.95

00:06:10.480 yesteryear hit such a chord it's very interesting to me because i actually think the trad wife

00:06:15.860 phenomenon on social media is over now and so it's interesting to me that yesteryear has resonated

00:06:22.960 this year after like so long after this was actually peak trad wife but i think it's because

00:06:29.760 it feels like a safe way for women to hate on other women i would agree i mean when i read

00:06:36.420 yesteryear and you and i both wrote novels that are trad wife adjacent like they i wouldn't call

00:06:41.760 them like trad wife novels but they have things to do with trad wives but the whole time i was

00:06:46.740 reading yesteryear which is and i mean we can get into it it's worthwhile book to read i found it

00:06:51.660 interesting i certainly found it compelling like i read it really quickly um but i just kept

00:06:56.040 thinking like this is what a reddit snark thread or like a gomi forum back in the days of gomi

00:07:02.140 well i think this is what those people think is like she was also she was also on the podcast

00:07:07.720 yes that's right oh my gosh that was a long time ago i need to go back and relist some of this but

00:07:12.700 yeah it it felt like if you got a bunch of gomi writers and a bunch of reddit people together and

00:07:17.720 were like what is a trad wave they would have written yesterday that was how i felt reading it

00:07:22.740 Yeah. I mean, I haven't I haven't talked that much about it on the podcast. Caro has been on this show before. Yesteryear is not my kind of book. It's just it's it's not my favorite genre. I do not. I don't I don't love a massively unlikable female character.

00:07:42.440 I feel like I write unlikable female characters all the time, but I still want to have a spicy margarita with them.

00:07:48.080 And I felt like there was no one I could root for in the book, which was very, very hard for me as someone who wants to root for women and wants to uplift women.

00:07:57.120 And so the fact that there was no female character in the book that was at all likable or redeemable was very hard for me.

00:08:05.720 Yeah, I would agree. Or a male character. Every single character. 1.00

00:08:08.880 Everyone was kind of awful. Yeah, yeah. Like everyone could die and I wouldn't care.

00:08:12.440 yeah and i felt like i if you don't like a character i don't mind reading one where i

00:08:18.300 don't want to hang out with them but i felt like there was something about the main character

00:08:22.640 natalie that i just it didn't ring true to me like i felt like maybe the author just didn't

00:08:29.680 know her as well as she should have if she was gonna write a book about her and i'm not trying

00:08:34.560 to like beat anybody i'm not trying to beat any women up on the internet myself like i'm just

00:08:38.420 trying to talk about my feelings about a book obviously millions of people love this book but

00:08:42.120 I just got the sense that she was not really interested in her main characters in her life,

00:08:47.480 which I just think is an odd choice if you're going to then write a novel where that person

00:08:51.040 is the main character.

00:08:52.120 I talked to people about Yesteryear a lot at my book events, obviously, because I did

00:08:57.620 write this trad wife novel and everyone wants my opinion on it.

00:09:00.740 I think the writing is very lovely.

00:09:03.000 I think that she's a very, very good writer.

00:09:05.180 She can like turn a phrase, right?

00:09:07.020 Yeah, it's compelling.

00:09:08.100 It's compelling.

00:09:08.780 i will say i was like i kind of feel like she thinks everyone's a loser in it like even like

00:09:16.160 reina the college friend and again spoilers right there's the college friend but like she comes off 0.84

00:09:21.740 as awful too so i'm like okay so you know a woman an ambitious woman who's like chasing her career 1.00

00:09:27.380 she also sucks balls yeah and i'm guessing her intention of doing that was trying to not be like 0.99

00:09:34.100 oh stay-at-home mom trad wife similar people suck and all the professional women are great i'm 1.00

00:09:39.580 guessing like she did not want to give that message so she was kind of like oh i'll make 0.98

00:09:43.120 reena suck too but kind of how the book then leaves you feeling is like there's no good path

00:09:48.860 for women there's no choices we can make that are actually going to bring fulfillment there's no 0.99

00:09:53.380 like joyful avenue we can walk down basically all of our choices suck and everything is terrible and

00:09:58.940 it's just not a great feeling to have after you read a book that's not how i want my books to

00:10:03.200 leave people feeling i guess and like i said i mean millions of people love this book so this is

00:10:07.260 just one person but i don't know that is that is how i felt after reading it and i was just confused

00:10:13.540 about natalie as a person like i felt like she was simultaneously a criminal mastermind and also 0.98

00:10:21.740 so stupid like she doesn't know that you can't have like mold in a house and that you can't like 1.00

00:10:28.340 live with small children in a mold covered room but she's also like so smart she can run this 1.00

00:10:33.140 entire enterprise. I just couldn't quite understand her. I just never understood her in this book.

00:10:38.640 Yes and yes. But I will also say like I am equally dumb about things like that. Like I was telling 0.97

00:10:44.940 someone the other day when we got our cabin in the Catskills that neither Nick or I understood

00:10:50.020 the propane situation. And so all of a sudden we're like, it is very cold here. There is no heat.

00:10:55.700 When it's like your propane tank is empty. And we're like, what is that again? Excuse me? So

00:11:00.240 So, yeah, I mean, I think, again, like I found her hard to grasp onto, but I loved I loved the premise.

00:11:06.640 I thought it was a really great premise.

00:11:07.960 And what I think is the most interesting and that's I mean, that's what I really want to talk about today is why are so many people talking about it?

00:11:15.680 Why are we so obsessed with it right now? 0.99

00:11:17.300 I do think it's an easy way to hate on women. 1.00

00:11:19.720 I also think and women do hate on other women.

00:11:23.940 I also think that we have so much rage right now.

00:11:26.540 against the general way that the world is operating and yesteryear has given people a

00:11:33.240 vessel to talk about that rage yeah i mean there were like a million different threads that you

00:11:38.520 could take from the book whether it was like the dad i thought the father-in-law's political thing

00:11:43.660 was really interesting again i got a little frustrated where it's like natalie is saying

00:11:48.900 like i didn't even know the policies i didn't even take the time to listen i'm like i don't

00:11:52.740 think you're this dumb like I think you would I don't buy that but but it was interesting to kind 0.92

00:11:58.620 of think through that pipeline and how I think maybe she was trying to answer the question of 0.99

00:12:03.600 like how have we gotten here like why are so many women so attracted to this I think her answer fell 1.00

00:12:09.520 flat but I think it was an interesting question to ask for sure like why are so many women going 0.99

00:12:14.520 into these ideologies that are harmful to it's like what is it about it that is so attractive

00:12:20.700 and so I think like trying to show how Natalie got there was was her goal and that's like a

00:12:27.100 goal for sure no totally totally I mean and it's something that we've been trying to answer

00:12:31.820 on this podcast for a long time let's take a quick break and I will give my hot take on that

00:12:37.180 okay we are back I get asked all the time 1.00

00:12:46.840 why I think that, you know, seemingly progressive, intelligent, over-educated women fall into the 0.99

00:12:55.280 trap of following, you know, what used to be what I really think we're in a post-Tradwife world, 1.00

00:13:01.400 but what was like the Ballerina Farm Nera Smith content. And I think because it felt like a soft

00:13:07.240 place to land when the world is really rough. I think that we're exhausted. I think that,

00:13:12.920 you know, we live in a culture and a society that does not care for the caregivers. And so

00:13:19.640 that content seems really lovely because it takes out all of the labor of domesticity,

00:13:26.840 right? Like making sourdough bread takes a lot of commitment, okay? I will never make a sourdough

00:13:32.660 because I do not have that level of commitment. Same reason I won't get a dog, okay? I will get

00:13:37.260 a cat that can take care of itself. I cannot grow heirloom tomatoes. I cannot have nine children

00:13:42.760 because all of this is so much work.

00:13:45.920 But when the labor is stripped away from it

00:13:48.160 in an Instagram setting,

00:13:50.180 it seems very lovely

00:13:51.700 and it's a nice fantasy to fall into for a while.

00:13:54.560 I want to hear your take on this.

00:13:56.320 I agree completely.

00:13:57.780 I think one of the strongest parts of the book

00:13:59.580 was actually where Natalie 0.67

00:14:00.940 is kind of mentally venting about Rina 0.99

00:14:03.560 and how she's just going to go into corporate America

00:14:06.260 and they're going to bleed her dry 1.00

00:14:07.700 and she's going to work for 80 hours a week 1.00

00:14:09.320 and be miserable 1.00

00:14:09.960 and she's going to freeze her eggs 0.80

00:14:11.360 because it's going to be too late

00:14:12.000 in like this whole spiral and on the one hand it could have come off as really judgmental but i

00:14:16.560 actually think there were some points in what she was saying the way that like corporate america just

00:14:21.520 burns and churns they just take young women in and if you're not really thinking ahead thinking

00:14:26.360 about what you want your lifestyle to be or your family to be or if you're just out of options

00:14:30.620 because of you know parts of society that feel toxic in terms of like late stage capitalism

00:14:36.600 people have to go into these industries and then they just get burned and churned like that and

00:14:41.540 they get exhausted and there was something to what natalie was saying about how like this lifestyle

00:14:45.920 doesn't exactly lead to joy so i'm going to do the exact opposite i mean and if you think about

00:14:50.860 it in our in our real world there was kind of that era of the girl boss you know for a while

00:14:56.160 and i mean i talked about this yeah you covered it you covered it and it's i feel like so much of

00:15:02.240 the trad wife dumb was a reaction to that of like no i do not want to have it all because it's

00:15:07.620 impossible because it's exhausting because people are making their offices look pretty and glamorous 0.95

00:15:12.060 online but the actual work of of having a business is so tiring i just want to go play with my

00:15:18.040 chickens but then it's like wait that is super tiring and exhausting too and that's where i just

00:15:22.700 feel like we are asking all the right questions but not necessarily landing on the right answer 0.99

00:15:26.900 totally also chickens are assholes okay yeah they suck i don't want to i will bake sourdough bread 0.99

00:15:33.080 i do that all the time but i will not have a chicken i won't have any animals this is an 1.00

00:15:36.940 animal free homes. No, we're getting a cat. We are getting low maintenance though, right?

00:15:44.180 I think so. Yeah. I promised my middle child a cat because I just think she needs an emotional

00:15:50.120 support animal for being a middle child. And we are going to get a middle aged cat,

00:15:54.860 a middle aged orange cat. And she wants to name it Sarah with an H. Yeah, I know. Exactly. And

00:16:01.180 I'm like, Sarah. And she's like, yeah, it's a great name for a cat. And I'm like, sure. Why not?

00:16:06.080 But then my son wanted to name the orange cat Garfield.

00:16:08.960 So I came up with the idea that I want to call it Sarah Garfield, which sounds very proper, as if she were like the ancestor of a president.

00:16:16.520 Hello, Sarah Garfield, the middle-aged cat.

00:16:19.600 You could tell me that was a first lady and I'd buy it.

00:16:22.220 You could just tell people that and quiz how much they know about history to see if they believe it or not.

00:16:25.760 This is Sarah Garfield.

00:16:27.640 She's named after the first lady.

00:16:28.900 And they'll be like, of course she is, obviously.

00:16:31.200 But no, exactly. 0.99

00:16:31.880 Like, I think that women are just so effing burnt out that watching TradWive content, especially when it started to rise around the pandemic, felt like a nice little break. 1.00

00:16:43.960 But I say this all the time. 0.99

00:16:45.660 I'm like, oh, my God, I could never go back to corporate America.

00:16:48.460 I'm feral as F now.

00:16:50.820 Yeah. Same here.

00:16:51.660 But also, I worked in magazines and media for a very long time and managed mothers as a dumb ass 20 something with no children. 1.00

00:17:01.860 I should not have been managing these women who were juggling so much. 0.99

00:17:04.900 And I was such an a-hole to them. 1.00

00:17:06.740 But I had them in the office till like 7 o'clock at night.

00:17:09.600 Like that is inhumane.

00:17:11.760 And companies still do this, right?

00:17:13.640 You get into the office at 8.30, 9 o'clock.

00:17:15.740 You don't leave till 7, 7.30.

00:17:17.560 How can you possibly raise children in that environment?

00:17:20.560 It does not work.

00:17:21.660 right and that's why i think like the work not to just sing your praises but like the work you do

00:17:27.500 on your podcast and stuff is so interesting because it's really getting to that of like

00:17:30.820 so why are women interested in in tradwifery and i think it's exactly what you're saying

00:17:37.300 instead of just pointing at them and being like look at these freaks who want to go back to 1850

00:17:42.100 like what losers i just think that's like so unproductive and i think a lot of that has been

00:17:47.720 happening the past few years like we have to work within these binaries of of the girl boss and the

00:17:53.260 trad wife and those binaries aren't working for us like we have to figure out a different way through

00:17:58.340 it but i also agree with what you're saying where i the era of the trad wife is over as well i mean

00:18:03.840 not that there aren't really scary corners of the internet of course where the manosphere is

00:18:08.900 thriving because they are but i think it's less and less in terms of popular culture like the way

00:18:13.840 that ballerina farm hannah i never know how to say her last name nealman i say nealman nealman

00:18:20.720 okay i think it's nealman yeah like i think she's straight up identifying as like a businesswoman 0.94

00:18:26.280 she 100 is of course she is yeah the past few interviews have been like i run this goddamn 0.97

00:18:31.760 company and same thing with nara smith right yeah and everyone was like so mad at her for being like 0.68

00:18:39.940 i'm not a trad wife and i'm like i i think you were watching her content and you were really

00:18:45.000 believing that she was taking three hours to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich there is a

00:18:48.880 little bit of it that's like that's on you clearly she didn't embrace it in order to grow an audience

00:18:56.000 that's i think she knew exactly what she was doing um i think the neil men's also knew what

00:19:00.500 they were doing but i will say but they're also fairly fairly conservative i think they're very

00:19:06.280 libertarian to be honest i've spent time in that corner of utah i visited yeah what i do think is

00:19:12.900 hilarious my favorite thing about visiting the farm is that it is an ai powered farm like it is

00:19:18.560 robots milking those cows and robots cleaning up all of the poop and like just like fully automated

00:19:24.680 uh yeah yeah yeah they have a robot like wisconsin and i have been to plenty of dairy farms and it is

00:19:31.820 very high tech in there. Like it is not the women not up milking the cows at 5 a.m. Machines do it 0.96

00:19:37.040 all. No one no one is milking that cow at 5 a.m. The cows are standing in line to get into the

00:19:42.360 milking machine and then they get a cookie. So they love going to the milking machine. So yeah

00:19:46.600 so I do love like the old images of Hannah like milking the cow every morning and I'm like that

00:19:51.920 is no that is not that is not your life. But no I do I think that the trad wives have come out 1.00

00:19:56.680 And what I appreciated about the Nara Smith call, call your dad, is it call her daddy or call your daddy?

00:20:02.500 It's call her daddy.

00:20:03.660 It's call her daddy, right?

00:20:04.840 I'm such an old, I really am.

00:20:06.920 But I do love her podcast.

00:20:09.340 I think she's a very good interviewer.

00:20:11.080 She does great work.

00:20:12.300 But, you know, she was like, yeah, I work.

00:20:15.900 I have health.

00:20:16.640 My husband is an equal caregiver in so many ways.

00:20:20.480 She was not portraying that image before. 0.79

00:20:22.180 She was riding the trad wife wave and good for her.

00:20:25.400 also she's in her 20s and she is so young and so successful and god bless her but she could she 0.83

00:20:32.940 could try a thousand different things right right and i'm here trying to like defend all the popular 0.92

00:20:38.940 trad wives but i will say like is it great to tell people that they should go drink raw milk no it's

00:20:44.760 not is it great to tell people sunscreen is bad no but i've just seen corners of the internet that 0.57

00:20:49.780 are so much worse and scarier like women really actively pushing narratives about how women 0.85

00:20:56.220 shouldn't work outside the home or even in some christian circles their pushes to go back to 0.97

00:21:00.840 single family voting so when i see people getting mad at nara smith some of this stuff it just gets

00:21:06.040 a little eye-rolly because i'm like she is not that bad like it's not great but it is nowhere

00:21:10.600 near some of the really scotchy stuff out there on the internet not at all please the internet is

00:21:16.900 gross okay there's terrible terrible things on the internet i want to talk a little bit more

00:21:23.020 about your book and why you decided to set it in this world of mom of mom influencing and like the

00:21:31.460 all of the crazy social media stuff let's take one more quick break and then when we get back

00:21:35.700 let's talk about your novel

00:21:36.960 okay we are back tell me about your book

00:21:46.720 so the supper club saints is about a young woman named cass and she has been away from her home in

00:21:53.860 small town wisconsin for a couple years as part of a mom influencer group she's the personal assistant

00:22:00.200 to the number one mom influencer and something kind of sketchy has gone down there we're not

00:22:05.860 really sure what at the beginning of the book and she returns home to her small town in wisconsin

00:22:10.640 thinking that she is going to work the rest of her life at her family's supper club only to learn

00:22:14.960 that her mom is selling it. And so she needs a new job really fast and she ends up getting a job

00:22:19.760 as a parenting advice columnist, which is pretty much the last thing that she should be trusted to

00:22:25.340 do. And so that's kind of the setup of the book. I will say I usually have to explain what supper

00:22:29.560 clubs are to people, but you connected to Wisconsin, so you probably know all about supper

00:22:33.420 clubs. Well, I was literally just going to ask you to explain supper clubs to our audience. I know

00:22:39.340 what a supper club is. I love a good supper club. But yeah, please tell people. Often when I talk

00:22:44.440 about the book people think I mean like a club where people get together and cook but a separate

00:22:48.780 club is actually a really specific type of restaurant mainly found in the Midwest especially

00:22:53.280 there's so many in Wisconsin and it's the type of restaurant that you go to for like a few hours you

00:22:59.520 kind of spend your evening there so they're known for having like an endless unlimited salad bar

00:23:05.120 and like when you first show up you often get like a bread bowl and a relish tray and you do before

00:23:10.320 dinner drinks there and then the food is usually like pretty heavy americana type stuff you're

00:23:15.600 making like fish fries and ribeyes like you're you're not counting calories at a supper club by

00:23:20.860 any stretch of the imagination and then your dessert is usually a grasshopper which is like

00:23:25.320 an ice cream cocktail so it's just kind of this very midwestern food they're kind of old school

00:23:31.120 vibes lots of like wood paneling and vinyl seats very old school vintage so it's a really cool

00:23:37.580 type of restaurant that we love to go to. And often they are run by families for many generations.

00:23:43.140 I love a supper club. I mean, it's one of the magical things about Wisconsin,

00:23:47.440 in addition to fish fry Fridays. Absolutely. We love a good fish fry here. I think it's because

00:23:54.220 there's so many Catholics here. So some people here who don't eat meat on Friday. Don't eat

00:23:58.680 on Fridays, which has created the wonder of fish fries on Friday nights. Also, this whole episode,

00:24:06.060 It's like Trad Wives, Yesteryear.

00:24:08.220 And let's just talk about how much I love Milwaukee.

00:24:10.440 There's just beer gardens, pop-up beer gardens everywhere.

00:24:13.860 Well, yeah, I'm going to one tomorrow.

00:24:15.540 We love a beer garden here.

00:24:17.320 That's the thing where when I try to explain what it is, people get really confused.

00:24:21.080 But a beer garden is literally just people drinking beer outside.

00:24:25.240 Outside.

00:24:25.700 Like a beer, a bar will have like a little pop-up, almost like a food truck, but just for beer.

00:24:30.800 And they often have like playgrounds.

00:24:32.380 So they're family friendly.

00:24:33.400 Your kids can go play and you can sit and eat pretzels and drink beer.

00:24:37.120 They're so family friendly.

00:24:38.960 And yeah, I mean, we're we're we're trying to figure out when we're coming to Milwaukee next pretty soon.

00:24:44.680 And we're like, well, you know, I will.

00:24:46.840 I will. Which beer gardens are going to be open for us to hang out in?

00:24:50.940 Well, yeah, plenty.

00:24:51.820 There's well into the fall because of October fast and stuff.

00:24:55.040 Well, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

00:24:56.700 All right. So this book is centered around the world of mom influencers.

00:25:01.440 you're also in a part of the country where there are a lot of stay-at-home moms again i hate the

00:25:08.260 word stay-at-home mom like if i could just banish it i would because obviously no one is just staying

00:25:13.560 there is so much labor happening but also a lot of influencers so like what kind of research did

00:25:17.780 you do for this book so i have been a fan of the mom blog from the days of yore as we discussed

00:25:25.120 like i way before i got married or had children i was reading taza and hey natalie jean

00:25:31.320 and the day book and all these like really popular mob blog. And when I think why, I think that I was

00:25:38.240 nervous about the future. Like I didn't know where I was going to end up or what I was going to end

00:25:42.660 up doing or would I ever get married. And I think reading these blogs was almost like the way single

00:25:46.900 people watch Hallmark Christmas movies. It's like maybe this will be a comforting picture to me.

00:25:53.180 Everything was like very beautiful. And I still have never really stopped being interested in the

00:25:58.560 idea of influencing and what it is and its effect on culture and the way like children view

00:26:04.400 influencers and YouTubers as the new celebrities. Like I don't my kids really don't even watch a

00:26:09.480 ton of TV. They couldn't name a bunch of Hollywood celebrities, but they do know some YouTubers and

00:26:13.840 I don't let them on YouTube that much. Don't no one freak out. But you know, that's really how

00:26:18.500 our culture has changed who we view as like famous or influential. And I think with parenting in

00:26:23.840 particular it's just the thing that we all want to get right so badly like I think so many of us

00:26:30.160 are are willing to accept that we're going to mess up at work and our houses are not going to be

00:26:35.300 perfect and like we're probably gonna have friendship faults but like momming is the thing

00:26:39.120 that we want to do really really well and because of that we have a lot of anxiety about it and so

00:26:44.820 the fact that there's all these women on the internet being like don't be anxious just do

00:26:48.440 what i do just follow my steps it's just such a tempting siren song and so i was really interested

00:26:54.420 in all of those things coming together and then ruby frankie got arrested did you i bet i'm sure

00:27:00.560 you podcasted about this we did we did so many episodes on ruby frankie uh yeah yeah i mean it

00:27:08.080 was it was ruby frankie was so much of what you said i have like 19 000 comments on but yeah because

00:27:14.680 I also I just want advice like I want to I want more of a village I'm like give me everything

00:27:20.740 tell me what everyone else does because I don't know what I'm doing right like yeah I would I

00:27:26.700 would love to have a house with less screaming in it there's so much yelling in my house we yell so

00:27:31.440 much and like what if how could we stop yelling so much but I asked my friends and they're like

00:27:35.940 we yell so much too there's just a lot of yelling and then you look at like pages like Ruby Frankie's

00:27:41.140 And you're like, oh, she has a solution.

00:27:43.340 And then you're like, oh, she's also like beating her children.

00:27:48.100 Everyone is lying to you was already written.

00:27:49.420 It was already out in the world when that happened.

00:27:51.140 But I already knew how much smoke and mirrors there were about influencers.

00:27:56.600 And so, I mean, that's where the title came from, right?

00:27:59.780 You and I talked about this.

00:28:01.380 Because I'm like, everyone is lying to you.

00:28:03.360 Like, this is a performance.

00:28:04.740 And Ruby was so clearly performing and forcing her whole family to perform as well.

00:28:10.580 but we didn't necessarily know that's what was happening yeah and I wasn't like oh my gosh so

00:28:17.220 surprised and shocked but I think it was just so blatant that I couldn't look away like I watched

00:28:23.440 body cam footage I sat and watched hours of YouTube body cam footage because I was just

00:28:29.680 fascinated and I was thinking like how would it affect me if if it came out that Natalie Holbrook

00:28:36.560 was like going to prison forever you know I think it would affect me like I would stop and think

00:28:41.900 about it and and so those that's all those ideas kind of came together to make the book but another

00:28:47.760 big point of Supper Club Saints is that all the mom influencers live together in a big house and 0.99

00:28:53.520 have become like very like we need a matriarchy men are the ones ruining them think so like not 1.00

00:28:59.620 quite a trad wife because they're not wives but just this idea of like how can we how can we swing 1.00

00:29:06.240 it all the way to the other side and basically just have like a mom unit together because that 1.00

00:29:10.480 is essentially what Ruby Frankie was doing at the end like her and her husband did not have this 1.00

00:29:15.080 happy marriage she was living full time with this crazy business partner I know I know I mean she

00:29:20.360 she really was it was gosh I want to talk a little bit about mom units because I think about them all

00:29:27.440 the time I'm like yeah this this is actually the answer to all of my problems right here a mom unit

00:29:32.620 where it's just like women living together and doing everything.

00:29:37.040 And I say that even though I have the most helpful husband on the planet.

00:29:41.760 I mean, he's just the best.

00:29:43.360 He truly is.

00:29:44.180 I'm not just saying that because he edits this podcast,

00:29:46.300 but I love the idea of a mom moon.

00:29:50.200 How did you decide to put that in the book?

00:29:51.820 I actually had two friends who went through really horrible divorces

00:29:56.380 kind of back to back, and they were really thrown off

00:30:00.580 because one of them had been working part-time. One of them had been out of the workforce for a

00:30:04.980 long time. It was a very panicky moment and they weren't sure what to do. And they literally moved

00:30:11.140 in together just to kind of get their feet settled and kind of figure out what they were going to do

00:30:15.460 and have some support. And they called their apartment the Ma Moon. And I just thought that

00:30:21.080 was the best idea when you are completely like terrified for the future. You're not sure what

00:30:26.560 to do next just to have support right there in your home i'm not sure like what their family life

00:30:31.720 is like of why they couldn't like move in with their parents or anything but just to have each

00:30:35.500 other i think had been so helpful for them and they would just post things like when one of them

00:30:40.280 was sick the other one made them homemade chicken soup and took their kids and it just looked really

00:30:45.460 really dreamy and i knew the background that like yeah there were really dreamy parts but also

00:30:50.440 they're going through hell on earth like it was just such a terrible situation for both of them

00:30:54.920 to find it to find themselves suddenly single with no warning basically but i there was that

00:31:00.480 element of like wow from the internet i could see how this could be really convincing especially if

00:31:05.400 someone's husband is not your husband you know if someone's husband is really unhelpful and someone

00:31:10.340 is really suffering you could see how they could really fall prey to this idea that like well if

00:31:14.860 you just moved in with all these moms things would just be so much better for you and you're so near

00:31:19.780 your breaking point like let us come you know add in some wellness lingo let us come heal you like

00:31:25.240 come find your inner divine feminine spirit like you could totally see how that was totally totally

00:31:31.200 I mean I I always go back to 80s sitcoms because they were just so fucking progressive right like

00:31:38.640 Kate and Allie was such a progressive amazing show I think about all the time I'm like if for 0.85

00:31:43.920 some reason I lost my wonderful husband I'm never marrying a man again okay like that seems gross

00:31:49.220 That seems so gross. I will happily move in with another mom like Kate and Allie. Also rewatching Kate and Allie, you're like, you guys are so pretty. Like, you're so hot and like so cool and just awesome. And live in a mom moon. But it can, like all utopias, go quite wrong.

00:32:07.040 yeah and i think when we're living in society and getting frustrated at the way things are for women

00:32:13.980 it's just really tempting to be like and the men are the problem but it's like well when you take

00:32:19.100 them away we still have other problems too so i think it's a society problem for fear is a society

00:32:25.500 problem truth total truth i could talk to you all day but i have to go do a school pickup and it's

00:32:30.740 raining and that sucks tell me tell tell everyone where they can find your books and you you can

00:32:36.460 find me on Claire Swinarski.com. Nice and easy for you. It's just my name, but everything is 0.84

00:32:40.320 linked there. All my books, all my social media, blah, blah, blah. Wonderful. Thanks so much for

00:32:43.740 being here, Claire. Thanks, Jill. This is super fun.

00:33:06.460 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - September 03, 2026

The Tradwife Era Is Over. So Why Are We Still Obsessed？

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