Monica Hesse
Appearances
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
So first of all, I want to go back to what I started saying in the beginning, which is I think that it is possible to see equal partnerships in households where there's a stay-at-home partner, man or woman. I see those relationships in my own life where... Yes, right now the mom isn't working, but her husband completely respects her as an equal partner. They're still making decisions together.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
They understand that their work is equal and just happening in separate spheres. So it doesn't have to go badly. But I think that where you run into problems is where men assume the power that women have willingly ceded. And if the marriage breaks up, even if the marriage is great, but still the husband loses his job or something, what's the backup plan? Do you have your own money?
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
I don't want to sound like a recruiter robot, but have you thought about how you would go back to work if you needed to? And a lot of this also just comes back to, do you trust your partner? Do you trust the person that you're with to have your back if things go sideways? Or are you just going to be...
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
you know, stuck in the kitchen making homemade cereal because he said that the finances are his responsibility.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
No, it's really true. And when I write about this issue, the reader feedback that I get that's the most frustrated is older women who are in their 60s, 70s, 80s, who are basically saying, this is what we fought for, for you guys. Like, why are you throwing it away? And I think that what a lot of it comes down to is that people aren't happy now.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And so they're looking for these solutions that require a time machine to go back rather than trying to figure out the solutions that would mean going forward.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Oh man, so you're starting with a question that seems like it should be so easy to answer and is so complex and is going to really depend on who you're talking to. So I'll give you how I think about it, which I think is a pretty typical way. So a trad wife is somebody who embraces the lifestyle of being a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home partner, but not just...
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Yeah, I think that, I mean, it's fascinating to me when you read, especially young women who are aspiring to this, who see it as like a pathway to an easier lifestyle. Just the idea that like, I don't want to work myself to the bone. I want to live a life that feels easy. And you know, my gosh, I want that too. My TikTok feed is like 50% trad wives.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
I watch ballerina farm content and I'm like, I too want to put up a movie screen and my prairie house and we'll all go out in our pajamas and you know, all of this. And then I think in real life, that would drive me crazy, but man, is it beautiful to look at on screen.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Yeah. And I think that it is completely understandable and also completely dispiriting that we think that we have to life hack this by ourselves or that people would say, the only way I can do this is via a romantic relationship rather than we can do this societally. We can figure this out. It can get better. There are ways that it can get better.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
the duties of that, the kind of patriarchal history of that. So I know a lot of women who are stay-at-home moms who consider themselves modern or feminist, or they're just doing it because this is what works well for their family. Maybe they'll go back to work, maybe they won't. But trad wives in general are embracing the idea that Being the caretaker of the home is really the woman's destiny.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
It's the woman's job. She wants to take care of her husband. She wants to take care of her house. And it's done often with a particularly retro aesthetic. So it's a flashback to the 1950s, both in terms of the aesthetics and the clothing, and also in terms of the belief system. And I say the 1950s, I should have just said the 50s because you see a lot of prairie dress lifestyle.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Sometimes it feels like the 1850s. But regardless, it's being a stay-at-home mom or partner and pairing that with a set of particular beliefs about why you're doing that.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
What's really fascinating is when different cultural niches start to overlap with each other. And what I think is a particularly interesting overlap with the trad wife movement is the Make America Healthy Again sort of crunchy granola moms movement. who really supported RFK and who fear vaccines and who fear additives and who are really about organic health.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And so you'll see a lot of Tradwife videos, not only of them, here we are on our farm getting our own eggs or here I am homeschooling my children, but also like my children wanted golden grams for breakfast, so here's what I did. And then the video will be them like making a breakfast cereal
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Yeah, she's aware. She knows. If it wasn't a parody in the beginning, she's aware now.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Yeah. So Ballerina Farm is a wildly popular Instagram account. And I get it. I get why.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
The proprietary of the content is a formerly trained ballet dancer who moved out west to be with her husband and their many beautiful children on a farm. And their videos are all... about this very quote-unquote simple back-to-nature life that she's decided to live. She's left the city. She lives in this rustic household, which is full of these abundant homemade foods. Her children are beautiful.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
She's wandering around barefoot. I mean, it really is like Laura Ingalls Wilder cosplay in terms of its aesthetic.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
What's particularly interesting about her is something that might be true of a lot of influencers, but she's just been researched and studied so much that we know this with some certainty. her husband is the heir to a kind of enormous fortune. And so while they're living this lifestyle that looks very rustic and basic and get back to the basics, she's cooking on a retro stove that costs $40,000.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And they're actually dedicating quite a bit of resources and money to living this style that looks very simple. And to me, that's another thing that's fascinating about this lifestyle is that I'm always wondering how much of this is a performance, how much of this is how you're living authentically, and how much of this is an act that you're putting on for your many followers.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
possible if you are of a certain class you know i'm going to answer that in a roundabout way please by telling you my favorite scene from the reality show the secret lives of mormon wives please i'm so glad you brought that up yeah which which has just premiered its second season but last year in its first season there was a fascinating scene where all of these mormon women who are tiktok influencers who call themselves mom talk they're all they're all
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
quote unquote stay-at-home moms who are Mormon and who espouse this Mormon lifestyle and a lot of the aesthetics we've been discussing and consider themselves devout Mormons and socially conservatives and their husbands ahead of their households. And then there's this moment where one of the women asks the others, who is the high earner in your family?
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And there is a uncomfortable stare exchanged among the women. And then slowly, one after one, they all start to raise their hands. Because what's happened is that they have actually made successful businesses out of being successful. trad wives. They have sold the concept of staying home so well that they're making lots of money from it and in some ways out-earning their husbands.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
But they still, because of their beliefs, because of their social status and the way that they present, have to present a facade in which they are still the helpmeets. They are still the subservient wives to their husbands. And this is really head-spinning because What it sort of reveals is how much this is a performance. And it also just gets at the question of women's work generally.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
What is it worth if we were paying it equally? What would it look like? And what would an equal partnership look like? So you see this sort of really interesting journey where I think a lot of women become enamored of the trad wife lifestyle because it looks relaxing and it looks...
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
peaceful and it looks like i can finally have enough time to have a clean house and homemade meals and not be stressed and get enough sleep and get to the gym and the only way that i can do this is by embracing the trad wife lifestyle which as you point out is a position of privilege to be in And then if you get really good at that, you start making your own money.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
So it's just, it's a really fascinating Ouroboros of what this life cycle means, what the money inside it means.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
You know, I think that that's part of it, and I don't think that that's actually a new concept. When I think back to the 1950s, like the real 1950s, the first time around, you had a lot of women who were well-educated, perhaps had been to college, perhaps had met their husbands there, and then didn't work after they married and had kids because that was the expectation.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And for a long time, society ran on the invisible labor of these incredibly talented, smart stay-at-home moms because those were the ones who were available to volunteer. They were able to organize food drives. They were able to volunteer for class field trips. And that's where we get a lot of our visions of the nuclear suburban American family. And then there's a backlash to that.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And the backlash comes in the form of the feminine mystique and Gloria Steinem in the 1960s and 70s. And women wondering, can I have more? Should I have more? I want more. What does that look like? So there's this period of consciousness raising and questioning. And what is the status quo that we're embracing? By the time we get to the 80s and 90s, what we're seeing is...
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
you know, women, you can have it all. You can be a man in the boardroom and you can still have this at home. And I think that's the lifestyle that people were... That's the story that people were trying to sell for a while, that they were trying to invest in. And then that led to that famous Anne-Marie Slaughter article in The Atlantic about whether women could have it all.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And her article is basically saying that's BS. I'm like... It is impossible. I'm exhausted all of the time. Somehow I'm working full-time outside the home and studies have shown us I'm still responsible for everything happening inside the home. So instead of working 40 hours a week, I'm working 500 hours a week and I'm burned out. And I think that...
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
That in a way, what we see of some social media influencers and people interested in this lifestyle is just a kind of throwing our hands up in the air or throwing their hands up in the air and saying, I'm opting out. I'm just rejecting. I'm rejecting this concept.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Yeah, I mean, I'm of the belief that this is not a solution that can happen only in households. This is a solution that has to happen in society at large. And with the help of government policies and industry policies, I think that we need
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
paid parental leave, not just for women, but I think we need equal parental leave for men too, so that they can become invested and trained in the domestic arts and not have situations where women are just saying, oh, well, I'll just do it myself because he doesn't know how to.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
So I think that part of that is a solution that you can really only make via the ballot box, via the people that you're electing and via the things that are important to them and the things that they're actually interested in doing for families.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
I recommend getting ready, doing some makeup, putting on a cute outfit before you see your husband.