00:05:12.820And that was one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you today because, you know, I've been scrolling social media a lot lately and I can't seem to get away from this like, I guess, trad wife content.0.95
00:05:25.000this content made by women that is sort of giving us this idea that being a traditional stay-at-home
00:05:31.000wife and mother is the path to power and happiness for women. Have you seen this content on your feed?
00:05:37.100Yeah, not only have I seen this content on my feed, but it has been dominating my feed for some
00:05:43.820reason. I don't, maybe sometimes I'm like, Instagram knows I'm pregnant and wants to force
00:05:50.000me to stay home in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant forever. And it thinks you'd be happier
00:05:56.900if that's how you lived your life. And they think I'd be happier. And you know, so my gut reaction
00:06:02.040to this is, and it's the same as it is with most things. If you want to stay home and be a quote
00:06:08.940unquote, traditional wife, and, you know, take on all of the trappings of domesticity that were1.00
00:06:16.300popularized by mass media in the 1950s. And this is what you really want. Fucking awesome. You do
00:06:23.180it. You do you. And my feminism is mostly centered on women choosing what makes them happy. I do not
00:06:30.000necessarily think that this is the path to empowerment for the majority of women. But
00:06:37.760I do think that this is becoming so popular. And we know that Instagram surfaces things that they
00:06:45.020think will soothe people's addled brains as they make them more addled because the world is kind
00:06:52.360of a disaster right now. And when the world is a disaster, people want nostalgia, even if it's a
00:06:59.020false nostalgia. And this nostalgia for a quote unquote better time when women were quote unquote0.99
00:07:06.340traditional is really obscenely misplaced. Yeah, it almost seems like it is painting a fantasy0.95
00:07:13.460portrait of a time that did not exist because you know even for white women back in the day0.77
00:07:19.780I'm not necessarily quick to say that they were so happy you know it was like legal for your spouse0.73
00:07:26.200to rape you you couldn't own property you couldn't you know take like have your own money like I
00:07:31.520don't you couldn't have a credit you couldn't have a credit card right and yeah so I mean it's most0.99
00:07:35.060let's be honest it's mostly can't having a credit it's mostly not having a credit card and rape
00:07:40.220marital race. Right. And so I think it like it hearkens back in a way that that paints these0.96
00:07:46.060times as like really rosy. And yeah, it's like a fantasy world that never even existed,
00:07:51.680even during that time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And not to mention the fact that it
00:07:56.540absolutely 100% never even existed in media for black women and women of lower economic statuses
00:08:04.300and immigrant women. So, yeah, it's a completely, completely false nostalgia.
00:08:09.400And I think you hit on something interesting, which is that these TikToks, especially that I see that really seem to be trying to convince women that we've been lied to into thinking that having a job and, you know, working outside of the home is empowering.0.92
00:08:22.380It really, for that narrative to work, you basically have to ignore non-white women.0.60
00:08:27.920You have to basically say, like, I'm a white woman talking to other white women in a world where people who are not white, if they exist, we're not speaking to them.
00:08:37.100We're not thinking about their experiences.
00:08:53.180Obviously, it certainly did not exist for non-white women.1.00
00:08:56.760And it kind of didn't even really ever exist for white women either.
00:09:00.120Or not the way we've been led to believe anyway.
00:09:02.720In fact, Joe says the entire happy housewife thing was a creation presented by a few specific pieces of mass media that made its way into the culture and just kind of stuck.
00:09:13.840I mean, the whole trad wife aesthetic really does come from a very narrow sliver of 1950s sitcoms. And we're talking June Cleaver, we're talking daddy, father knows best, daddy knows best.
00:09:28.920The shows we saw in Nick at Night as kids, really. And it was mass media telling us that this is what the world looked like. When it didn't look like that for the majority of white women, it never looked like that for black women, women of a lower economic status, immigrant women.
00:09:47.680And I think, look, we're desperate. We are desperate to cling to something because the world isn't working right now. I don't think that the concept of women working outside the home, I think work has failed all of us, not just women. Work has failed to empower us as a human race right now.
00:10:07.480and so there is this small set of people saying well what if you didn't have to work look at these
00:10:13.640women who didn't have to work these like three women who didn't have to work in 1954 don't they
00:10:18.820look so happy in their gingham dresses with their beach waves that they never could have really0.97
00:10:24.420gotten in 1954 they do that shit with the dyson hand wand yeah i love your point that we're even0.96
00:10:32.000if you're thinking about mass media from the 50s the trad wife stuff from that was shown there it's0.95
00:10:37.680only a small like subsection of shows like lucille ball even she wanted to be on the show in it or
00:10:44.320be in in ricky and um desi's show back in the day so like they're not even demonstrating that like0.99
00:10:50.600it was a a dominant you know a dominant culture never lucy wanted to work lucy was messy lucy was0.95
00:10:58.800i mean i love lucy i just said i love lucy um because she was delightfully fucked up in so many1.00
00:11:06.160ways and she kind of bucked the trend of the trad wife that was on tv in so many ways you don't see0.94
00:11:12.620that if you just like you know glance at one episode of the show but she really did and lucille1.00
00:11:16.560ball in real life was a goddamn baller she owned her brand she owned her shit she owned her show1.00
00:11:21.280so I that she she was not a trad wife in any way shape or form but the just the fact that1.00
00:11:29.060we keep getting served this on Instagram and this is not what I want to be seeing right now
00:11:35.380I want to be seeing more nap dresses and caftans and frankly I'm just in the mood1.00
00:11:42.780for some fucking cat memes I don't want to see a trad wife1.00
00:12:15.520can present a palatable pipeline for women to be led into extremist ideology.1.00
00:12:21.520Yeah. And I think that you make a good point about the way that it's definitely being like
00:12:25.560surfaced right now for whatever reason. And I think that's what I think can be kind of almost
00:12:31.940harmful, right? Like trad wife stuff for me is like a little annoying, a little, I find it a
00:12:37.840little bit smug, but I know that a lot of that content can really be a pipeline into like more
00:12:43.500extremist thinking. If you are saying like, oh, well, the world was much better in the 50s and
00:12:49.000the 40s when people of color, quote, knew their place and women knew their place. It's like a0.99
00:12:55.080hop, skip and a jump away from some pretty nasty extremist ideology. I wouldn't even say it's a
00:13:03.920hop, skip and a jump. That's giving it too much credit. That's saying that it would take us three
00:13:08.040steps to get there. I mean, I think we're kind of just teetering on the edge of this dangerous
00:13:13.340territory. It's also, for me, very dangerous because it pits two groups of women against0.98
00:13:20.280each other. It pits the woman who does stay at home for whatever reason, to take care of her0.94
00:13:26.140children, to take care of her home, because she fucking has to, because there's no goddamn child0.99
00:13:31.100care in this country, against the woman who either chooses to work because she wants to,1.00
00:13:36.840works because she has to and it's setting up this dichotomy that says oh like this life is better0.52
00:13:43.880than this life or this woman is so different from you that you are at odds with her when at the end
00:13:49.960of the day we're all doing labor raising children is labor making meals cleaning the house it's
00:13:55.440labor like neither of these things is necessarily better than the other one yeah that's actually my
00:14:02.640biggest other than the like extremist ideology that's one of my biggest problems with this kind
00:14:08.440of trad wife content is that it really I think a lot of times hinges on this aspect of comparison
00:14:15.100and that's part of it that I don't like I think there's like a smugness to it that's like0.99
00:14:19.520I figured something out that other women are too stupid or too shallow to see and I just feel like0.98
00:14:27.460if people like I think people should do whatever makes them happy whatever they can afford to1.00
00:14:32.620do. You know, I also think there's a kind of, in some of the content, there's a kind of
00:14:38.100persecution complex, like, oh, I don't want to be on Tinder, or in the office or away from my child
00:14:44.860or having my children in public school, and I'm demonized for it. And I think in 2022, I don't,
00:14:50.120this is my opinion, I don't necessarily see a lot of people demonizing women who stay, who aren't
00:14:56.260working outside of the home. I think that like, frankly, if, in my opinion, if you can, if you
00:15:01.020figured it out how to make that work for you, like, I'm jealous, if anything, like, I think
00:15:04.840that's great. God bless you. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think you're right. It sets up this
00:15:09.480dichotomy of two different groups of women where one is better than the other, or one's choices0.98
00:15:14.600are better than the other, or more real than the other. And I just think it's not really a binary.
00:15:19.160Plenty of people, especially parents, will work, will leave the workforce, come back to the
00:15:23.860workforce. It's not this binary thing where if you are able and enjoy not working outside of the
00:15:30.700home, that is like a, that innately makes you better. I just think it like, it negates the
00:15:37.620reality of just like being a person who has to make choices that are right for, right for their
00:15:41.320lives. Totally. Totally. Absolutely. And also a lot of the Tradwife content, much like most of
00:15:47.980the content on instagram is a glossified version of reality and it's also a lie you know a lot of0.99
00:15:55.900these traditional wives claim that this child wife lifestyle is about paying homage to a slower1.00
00:16:02.300more intentional lifestyle there's nothing slow about being at home with two toddlers0.86
00:16:08.020are you kidding like give me my work day any day where i'm like sitting at my computer and
00:16:15.660drinking coffee rather than getting up every two minutes to be like, I need strawberries. This
00:16:20.880water doesn't have enough ice. There's something weird in between my toes. What the fuck? That is
00:16:26.120not slow and intentional. That is being, I say this all the time. I love my kids. Like I really,
00:16:33.040really like them. I like being a mom. And I also don't really want to be alone one-on-one with
00:16:40.200them for longer than three hours at a time I don't I'm not I think I'm exhausted I need a break
00:16:49.120and I just for me striking a balance between doing meaningful work and caring for I also don't want
00:16:56.040to come home at night and have them already in bed right so meaningful work with caregiving I mean0.84
00:17:00.700that's the goddamn sweet spot for me and I think everyone has to find their own sweet spot yeah I0.89
00:17:06.500think you're right and i think you know that's for at least for me like that's what feminism1.00
00:17:11.000is about like people like women being able to make the best choices for them and that being okay and0.99
00:17:17.600i think you know every time i see one of those tiktoks it's like i live a slow life part of me0.91
00:17:23.600wants to be like what part of a slow life involves setting up a tripod you know what i mean like if0.97
00:17:28.080i'm living a slow life i'm not like a lot a lot of the tiktoks that i see on that are like probably
00:17:32.560involve an incredible amount of like work to put together oh my god that doesn't look so
00:17:36.500slow and soft to me. It actually looks like a lot of work went into this on top of being around your
00:17:42.000kids, which we know is exhausting and draining. Awful. I mean, it's just, let's be honest, a lot
00:17:46.280of it is awful. Yeah, those beach waves, that wasn't slow. It took a lot of work. Those eyelashes,
00:17:50.960you all wear, you all get fake eyelashes on. There's nothing slow and intentional. Actually,
00:17:55.480it's intentional. There's nothing slow about putting on fake eyelashes. Oh, no, it's incredibly
00:17:58.980time consuming. And like, yeah, and I think like, that's, I don't know, part of me wonders if like,
00:18:04.860there's just something about this content that is tailor-made for social media and that
00:18:10.100it invites comparison and it can it is an easy way to sort of polish up a lie you know that like
00:18:18.280you're living a slow life you're so centered and in touch with your kids and yada yada yada but in
00:18:22.980fact it can be none of that but you're presenting this very pretty package to women and moms a lot
00:18:29.220of them are frankly at their limit they've been doing remote learning they've been through this
00:18:33.820pandemic, we've gone through like tampon shortages and baby formula shortages and no meaningful
00:18:39.980institutional support or help. Selling, continuing to sell moms this polished up lie is almost kind0.97
00:18:47.580of cruel to me. It is cruel. It's absolutely cruel. And I think it's just, it's a very
00:18:53.700patriarchal view of the work of motherhood of saying, oh, look at these beautiful pictures
00:19:00.140of these beautiful houses this is so easy this is a slower life no that is work that is so much
00:19:06.700labor and you know I've I've dabbled in the domestic arts at times and that's that frankly
00:19:14.000that's harder work for me than having a dozen meetings in a day trying to make a zucchini bed
00:19:18.620okay like it's just like I'm not good at that it's not innate to me that's not to say someone
00:19:23.640someone else doesn't wildly enjoy it and I do think that we have sidelined we've sidelined work
00:19:29.560in the home, right? And my biggest issue is always that we just don't call things done in the home
00:19:36.360work, but neither do the trad wives. They're blowing off that work. They're saying this is1.00
00:19:42.220a slower and easier lifestyle and not recognizing that everything that a woman does in the home1.00
00:19:47.520is actual work. Yeah. I think that's a good point that like, if you are a mom or a parent who is1.00
00:19:53.900engaging in the pretty exhausting work of raising little humans to have someone go on social media
00:20:00.220and be like, actually, this isn't labor. This isn't work. This is just something that, you know,
00:20:05.680you shouldn't, that you should always enjoy that should come naturally to you as a woman that
00:20:09.380should just be really pleasing and nice and happy and gentle and slow. I think a lot of parents,
00:20:15.720the work of raising a child does not feel happy or slow or, or any of that. And I don't know,
00:20:21.040But just another way to lie to women about the work that we're all doing, that we are doing, and sort of this burden that we all have to, that we're all shouldering and telling us that we should enjoy it all the time.
00:20:33.460It just is like another added way that we're just not supported.
00:20:38.540It's another way of putting it down and putting down the labor that we put into a life, to make a life, to raise human.
00:20:44.260I think, I think that raising human beings is one of the hardest things that I do in this portfolio of many things that I do in our economically precarious society. But it also, it's just, it remains undervalued in the traditional wives movement. While they claim that they're elevating it, are continuing to undervalue it by saying this is an easier way of life.
00:21:06.860Oh, that's so true. I really want to see like the 70s, 80s era, completely checked out mom who has not seen her kids all day. And when they come home, she's like, oh, I hope you've been fed because I'm not making dinner. I want that mom to come back into vogue.
00:21:20.580yeah i mean i the parenting book that i want to write and then no one will let me write because
00:21:26.320cancel culture uh is a parent like it's 1984 man put them in the way back of the car let's find
00:21:35.220some candy cigarettes right and just and pop them in front of the tv and give them all the sugary
00:21:40.980cereals because you know what and smoke i guess smoke and drink in front of them too because that
00:21:45.060was my life um even though if i had a cigarette now i'd probably die but sometimes i still think0.93
00:21:49.480about it about how like wonderful it would be um and i feel like i turned out fucking great0.84
00:21:54.860and i was a latchkey kid whose parents chain smoked two packs of cools a day
00:22:00.900in front of me i don't even have asthma it's honestly so funny to see the different like
00:22:07.220i don't want to say trends but waves of parenting because yeah i was parented like that
00:22:11.860i was i feel like i was the last generation of kids whose parents were like go outside i don't
00:22:18.440want to see you for several hours and like if you did that today you'd be arrested well it was funny
00:22:24.060I have a story which will probably get me arrested and I don't care anymore um just don't take my0.92
00:22:28.640kids away okay like I'm a good mom but it was pouring fucking rain yesterday at school pickup0.89
00:22:34.060and my husband hates using a car because we live in the city and so like obviously like I dropped0.89
00:22:39.320my toddler off at her first day of preschool pick her up again in the pouring rain I'm seven months
00:22:43.420pregnant by the way I'm huge when I asked another parent I had a car there if they could drive me
00:22:49.420the four blocks home to drop me off I'm like oh I don't know if I have enough seats and it was like
00:22:53.320a massive Subaru I'm like what does pile onto the way back it's fine it's four blocks they wouldn't
00:22:57.200do it they're like there's no seatbelts back there and I was like it's the way back
00:23:02.280it's okay I'm like we you know I mean like again like I'm not going to do it for like a
00:23:09.660three-hour road trip with my kid but like we're just so afraid of everything anymore that i and0.77
00:23:17.100i think it's it's created this is a whole other episode it's creating fucked up kids it's creating0.99
00:23:20.620kids who don't know how to live in the goddamn world as the world is burning down around us but0.99
00:23:23.720that's that's another podcast that no one will let me do i had that same experience on a family0.99
00:23:28.700trip recently where my sister-in-law we were piled into a car and she was like i'll just hold
00:23:34.260on my lap car see we're going two blocks it's fine two blocks yeah yeah I don't know again like0.96
00:23:41.180I think so many corners of the internet are dark and terrible for women and the ones that are dark1.00
00:23:46.900the most dark and terrible are the ones that look the prettiest that's such a I mean I think you're
00:23:55.480right because you know I'm not a parent but I can imagine if you're a new mom it's scary and then
00:24:02.060you go to these social media places or spaces that are ostensibly supposed to be about support
00:24:07.380and helping you and they just make you feel that much more inadequate and alone and terrified
00:24:12.760terrible i would never want to be a new mom again and be and be scrolling the internet and looking
00:24:18.240at instagram i'm just happy that i'm an old mom at this point who's just going to let a third child
00:24:24.980fall out of my body and probably sleep in a cardboard box next to it but I just yeah I don't
00:24:32.040have time for it but like thinking if like I was so terrified about new motherhood which all new0.97
00:24:37.380moms are and then they see these kinds of pictures and they're like I'm failing well women we think0.90
00:24:41.980we're failing every day I wake up and feel like a failure even though like rationally I know that
00:24:46.640I shouldn't I write good books I make good podcasts but like I still feel like I'm failing
00:24:51.580every day. We don't need another person to tell us that we're failing. Especially not doing so
00:24:56.780under the guise of I'm telling you this to help you. This is just for your own good that you need
00:25:01.880to know this information about how much you're failing as a mom. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So
00:25:07.560I don't, again, like women working in the home, raising children, doing domestic labor,1.00
00:25:14.540good thing. Women that say that we, women have failed by being in the workforce, workforce,0.99
00:25:20.020course, fuck you. Fuck you real hard. More after a quick break. Let's get right back into it.1.00
00:25:42.280I do have one last quick question for you. So speaking of all things throwback-y and traditional,
00:25:47.140especially for women. I happen to know that you have a particular interest in a one Miss Laura
00:25:51.940Ingalls Wilder. If you don't know who that is, she was the writer of the series Little House on the
00:25:56.760Prairie, which became a TV show and was massively influential. Can you tell us about that interest
00:26:02.160and where it might take you next? What a badass bitch she was. Yes, I love me some Laura Ingalls1.00
00:26:09.500Wilder. I read all the books growing up, but I'm not as much of an obsessive as my dear friend
00:26:15.660Clanness McNichol, who co-hosted Under the Influence with me, and who also married my
00:26:21.500husband and I in front of a sphinx seven years ago. I mean, she's like a freak about Laura Ingalls0.76
00:26:26.360Wilder. But we're both obsessed with how this woman's real life stories of growing up on the
00:26:34.280prairie have become the most read books, probably among the most read books in the entire world,
00:26:43.100and also have shaped how we view the American West.
00:26:47.840And we are doing a new podcast called Wilder,
00:27:10.120there's a lot more that she could have included.
00:27:13.100in those books about what was happening in black America at the time, what was happening with the
00:27:17.820indigenous people whose land that her family was constantly moving on to. That said, she was so
00:27:24.580ahead of her time in terms of being a wild child who just wanted to explore the world. And those
00:27:34.160things we reported out while doing this podcast have been so fascinating. My favorite is that
00:27:41.460Laura is really huge with Japanese tourists oh huge she's huge in Japan who knew and it's for0.86
00:27:49.680a couple of reasons one Japanese schools often use the little house books to teach English
00:27:54.140the darker side of that many of the internment camps forced people to read the Laura Ingalls
00:28:02.120Wilder books here in America and then the television show was wildly popular so these
00:28:06.700little towns these little very white rural towns where Laura's from get busloads of Japanese tourists
00:28:13.480visiting them every year but to their like the towns love it and it has actually opened the
00:28:20.700town's eyes to different cultures that they never would have experienced were it not for Laura and
00:28:26.300so and that's just like one of the little tidbits that that we loved while we were doing this and
00:28:30.860yeah that podcast is coming out in March I'm also hoping to work on a podcast about Judy Bloom
00:28:36.640and her her and her enduring legacy on our lives oh my god please i am obsessed with judy bloom when
00:28:43.560i was a kid the uh book are you there god it's me margaret like it's like it was i we like trade
00:28:50.200i mean this is we used to trade it like when i was in like fourth or fifth grade it was we thought
00:28:55.460it was like the most grown-up like you know book about our bodies and our art the way you know we
00:29:01.880would like like like trade it to each other like have you read this i know i know that one and then0.76
00:29:08.440also dini in forever i'm like this is the dirtiest sex i've ever read about um yeah all right great0.94
00:29:14.400you're gonna come on that show i'm trying to get that green lit right now so you're coming on it0.87
00:29:17.520i'm gonna tell everyone that you're i'm in i'm in i cannot wait great joe thank you so much for
00:29:23.100being here where can folks keep up with all the cool work that you're doing unfortunately the0.77
00:29:27.880fucking Instagram at Joe Piazza, at Joe Piazza author. Like I spend all of my days trashing0.98
00:29:33.540Instagram and saying how much I hate it. And then I'm like, this is a really the easiest place to
00:29:38.100find me. So thank you. Instagram at Joe Piazza author is the easiest place. I'm going to have
00:29:44.060this baby in like two months. So I'm going to, I'm either going to go dark or I'm going to become
00:29:48.360a traditional one. Well, everyone will have to check in on your Instagram to see which way it
00:29:52.820goes which way it goes awesome that was just a little bit of there are no girls on the internet
00:30:08.720now we're gonna play a little bonus thing that i did with bridget talking about why we postponed
00:30:13.900the woman's day off the internet and exactly when we're doing it we picked a good day promise
00:30:22.820This is a very special episode of Under the Influence because everyone has been asking me
00:30:31.680if we're doing a Women's Day off the internet, as I promised everyone. And I don't like to break
00:30:37.140my promises. We were going to do it on my birthday, which is September 12th. And the reason it hasn't
00:30:42.560happened is that I think it will be a failure. What makes me say this? Because I have seen many,
00:30:48.320a, many, a, many, a, many, a group of women tried to organize an internet strike and it has not had
00:30:56.680the kind of impact that a lot of women have wanted it to have. And I don't like to set myself up for
00:31:02.600failure, but I know Bridget, you've been on the show before and you were also a woman who lives
00:31:07.900in the internet. You're like deep, deep in the cracks of it. You're in there and, but you've,0.97
00:31:14.400You've worked on strikes before, internet strikes, and I want to hear from you if they've worked, if they're worth it, how we could improve upon it to actually make a fucking impact.0.93
00:31:35.580I almost wonder if it's too long because by day two, I was like a bit twitchy.
00:31:39.720It was like, what's going on on Instagram?
00:31:40.880I don't know if I would say that particular time of social media was effective in the way that perhaps the organizers had intended, right? Like, did it impact Meta's bottom line? That I couldn't say. Was it like a financial impact on them? Unsure.
00:31:59.080But I do think that there is an empowering to say like, I, the person, the user, the individual can be more in control of how and when I use this, right? Like Mark Zuckerberg doesn't decide when I want to log on to Instagram. He can't control me via little dings on my phone or these little kind of insidious ways that they buy for our attention. That doesn't control my behavior. I control my behavior.
00:32:23.800And so whether or not it was impactful for Facebook's bottom line, I couldn't say. Whether or not it was impactful for the people who participated to reclaim and reaffirm our agency over social media apps, I would say yes.
00:32:37.060Yeah, no, and I agree with that. I think what I'm getting tied up on is I'm like, when we've discussed the women's day off, we've compared it to the women's strike in Iceland that completely changed the course of women in history in Iceland. So in my mind, I want to just completely change the course of women's history with this strike.
00:32:54.060I do think it'll be beneficial to anyone that does it. Any day that I put my phone down for a day or for six hours where I just don't pick it up right now to check it is incredible. But I'm worried we won't see the impact on the bottom line, on the businesses, and then it will be seen as a failure, which is stupid. Again, like women, we're constantly convinced that we're failing at everything.0.98
00:33:14.420Yeah, I mean, I will say, I think that we've created a situation where both us as people who use social media apps and the tech leaders who make these social media apps have completely neglected and overlooked the power of users.
00:33:29.620And so I do think that when users do something as a collective, it can be really powerful, right?
00:33:35.040Like, there are so many examples in recent Mind, you know, where people all doing one thing on social media did have a, you know, create some traction.
00:33:43.920And so I understand your trepidation to engage in something that might not pack the punch0.95
00:33:48.900that you're hoping, but I do think that women are powerful.0.98
00:33:51.960We use social media more than men.0.98
00:33:54.280We use social media more than other marginalized groups.