Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Tradwives

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

First of all, we are downright GIDDY to share two iconic voices on this week’s episode—not only our expert guest, culture reporter (and personal hero of Amanda’s) Anne Helen Petersen, but also Sounds Like A Cult’s very own intern (actually recently promoted to coordinator 😎), Reese Oliver!!! Speaking of new voices, team SLAC has been cooking up additional cult leaders to add to the hosting rotation later this year, and Amanda is v excited not to have to converse all by herself 😂 In all seriousness, everyone at team SLAC has been feeling a lot of gratitude lately, and we want to thank you listeners for sticking around for this wacky roller coaster ride. NOW, onto introducing the “cult” of tradwives. Short for “traditional wife,” this disturbing cultural craze marries idealizations of biblical womanhood with romantic social media aesthetics to create a freaky wave of politically regressive influencers, who’ve rejected feminism in favor of oppression… but make it "cute?" In between churning their own butter and brushing their naturally birthed kids’ hair, tradwives evangelize a host of ideologies so racist and sexist, at first it seems like a bit… and then it’s not. SCARY!!!! Join Reese, Anne, and Amanda down the rabbit hole, as they attempt to puzzle out this confounding modern-day “cult.” Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell To order Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, click here :) To subscribe to her new Magical Overthinkers podcast click here! Thank you to our sponsors, who make this show possible: Get 20% off your first order of Liquid I.V. when you go to LiquidIV.com and use code CULT at checkout Go to stopscooping.com/SLAC and enter promocode SLAC to save an EXTRA $50 on any Litter-Robot bundle.   Dipsea is offering an extended 30 day free trial when you go to DipseaStories.com/cult.  Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

I am so excited that Litter-Robot is sponsoring this episode of Sounds Like a Cult. As a special offer to listeners of the show, go to stopscooping.com slash SLAC and enter promo code SLAC to save an extra $50 on any Litter-Robot bundle. That's an extra $50 off any Litter-Robot bundle at stopscooping.com slash SLAC and enter promo code SLAC at checkout. Stopscooping.com slash SLAC and enter promo code SLAC at checkout. Stop scooping.com slash SLAC and enter promo code SLAC. There are a lot of fancy drinks on the market, but you know what my favorite one is?

Liquid IV. Turn your ordinary water into extraordinary hydration with Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code COLT at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code COLT at liquidiv.com.

Good news, the perfect t-shirt does exist and you can find it at Skims. Shop the Skims t-shirt shop at skims.com, now available in sizes XXS to 4X. If you haven't yet, be sure to let them know I sent you. After you place your order, select podcast in the survey and select my show in the dropdown menu that follows. Thank you to our sponsor, Squarespace.

Start with a free trial at squarespace.com. It's where dreams become websites. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to https://www.squarespace.com slash cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely

host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Oftentimes I see that like a lot of cults, it happens after a trauma, after someone has had their life fall apart for some reason, and they're trying to find a way to make the world legible to them again. And what trad wife life and Christian fundamentalism does, it allows them to have very strict rules,

a very strict understanding of their role in the home, in their marriage, as mothers, in society. It's very comforting in that way. And then there's this like external cult of people who are aspirational trad wives, right? Or like are taking parts of it. So I think of it as kind of concentric circles. Mm-hmm. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montell, author of the books Cultish and The Age of Magical Overthinking, Out Now, as well as the host of the new Magical Overthinkers podcast. Every week on the show, you're going to hear about a different fanatical fringe group from

the cultural zeitgeist, from K-pop to CrossFit. To try and answer the big question, this group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into? A live-for-life? A watch your back? Or a get-the-fuck-out-level cult? After all, the word cult, it's up to interpretation these days. Today, we're gonna be talking about the cult of tradwives.

And if you've never heard this term before, if you don't know what the mother fuck a tradwife is, don't worry, by the end of this episode, you're gonna have a damn PhD in the cult of tradwives, thanks to two very special guest voices that we're having on the show today. Stick around because later we're gonna be doing an interview with Anne Helen Peterson who is a cultural critic, an icon, a tradwife connoisseur, fortunately, unfortunately.

But before we get into that interview I'm gonna be bringing on a voice that is very important to Sounds Like a voice that is very important to Sounds Like a Cult. That's usually a behind the scenes figure here behind the curtain at Slack. And that is our intern, paid intern. Feel that? The term intern can be triggering, okay? Everyone please welcome Reese Oliver.

Hi. Hello. Reese is an emotionally and professionally important voice at Sounds Like a Cult. In 2024, if you've enjoyed a meme roundup on our social media on Instagram at Sounds Like a CultPod, you have Reese to thank. But the reason why I wanted to bring you, Reese, on to help me set up this episode was because when we were having like a little editorial meeting,

when I mentioned that I had a Cult of Tradwives episode in the works, your face lit up like a Christmas tree in a Tradwives Pinterest ready farmhouse home. And I was just thinking how fun would it be to set this up together. So welcome and thank you. Well, thank you. I am always happy to be here to info dump on all of my most niche and not the niche interests. Reese, yeah, why the glow to your expression when I mentioned Cult of Tradwives?

I am a huge lover of all things fundy, snark related, or just general religious criticism, I guess you could say. I feel pretty lucky in that I am one of the only little white girls in my hometown that was not raised super duper religious. Congrats. Right? I'm like, you know, my parents had their ups and downs, but they really did their job there. So no offense if you're religious or raised religious kids or were raised religious, I think that's all well and good unless you're a tradwife, which we'll get into.

Just fell down a rabbit hole one day and here I am watching Nara Smith TikToks. Okay, here's the thing is that I thought I knew what a trad wife was until I spoke to Anne Helen Peterson for our interview, which you're going to hear about later and was filmed long before we did this introduction. I thought trad wives were a bit. Oh, yeah. I thought like, even if you were earnestly participating in the aesthetic or even some of the beliefs that you were performing for the camera and that at the end of the day, you did not actually live and breathe

the trad wife lifestyle, but I've come to understand that this is not the case. So actually just to back the fuck up because there are plenty of people who are not in our same algorithm and don't have ballerina farm just kneading bread all over their Instagram feeds. For those fortunate enough to be unaware, could you help us define what a tradwifery is?

I sure can. Short for traditional wife, according to political research associates, tradwifery is a movement that's part aesthetic and part ideology, encouraging women to embrace supposedly feminine characteristics like chastity and submissiveness and trade feminist empowerment for a patriarchal vision of gender norms. Just what we all need. Now that I understand truly what a tradwife is, that the ideology is a necessary part of it, when I see them popping up and I see them saying like, my makeup routine before my husband wakes up in the morning

so I'm always beautiful, or even a subtler piece of content, like an aesthetic trending song on Instagram and a woman like dancing around in a crinoline petticoat being like, I used to dress in a way that didn't honor my body and now, and they're like in a full blown Christy Don peasant gown. I'm like, I love this for you. And then low key fundamentalist evangelical and or Mormon rhetoric starts to enter the picture. And I'm like, that's scary. So again, to break it down,

tradwifes do actually come in many shapes and forms. We will go into these many shapes and forms later, but the core tenets of tradwifery are homemaking, submission to men, upholding your wifely and motherly duties with pride, dressing modestly, those Christy Dawn dresses, I do love them, I am a modesty blogger accidentally, baking sourdough, there is so much fucking sourdough. So much sourdough. What is that? It's like, is it easier on the gut? My theory is that it is the easiest thing to make that feels really homemade. Totally. So like, you know, the bit with Trod Wives is like, oh, they grew their vegetables fresh from the ground.

And you know, you're breaking every component of what you eat like down into its most base form. So you can feel like you did a thing. And sourdough famously over COVID blew up because it's easy. Everyone can make sourdough. Remember sour bro, that's a portmanteau. That's a fucking portmanteau, sour bro. Put that on a t-shirt.

Exactly, boys who made bread in the panty were sour bros. Exactly. And it wasn't that deep. They weren't trying to say anything with their sour bro bread making, but tradwives are trying to say something. And it- Tradwives are saying, look at me make this sour bro. Look at me make this sour dough, followed by example, this is where women belong, making

the easiest form of bread. It's like, once you hit me with a, with a, like a raisin swirl. Yeah, make me a brioche and then we'll talk. Then we'll fucking talk, a brioche, listen. Then that's traditional. Now, tradwife originally became a term of interest in the early 2000s in November of 2004, specifically according to Google Trends.

But it only really started accruing interests in when January of 2020, huh? I wonder what national tensions and sense of isolation and mistrust in existing institutions may have triggered this. And TradWife has been consistently increasing in searches ever since. In the surge of this TradWife content, the true trademarks are just aesthetically pleasing montages of nice, quiet, soothing domestic labor. This is usually the thin veil atop a ton of honestly cringe-worthy at best and really bigoted, abusive rhetoric at worst.

The balance of aesthetic and ideology varies among the different varietals of tradwife you'll encounter on your journey down the alt-right pipeline. Speaking of which, Catherine Ballieu of The Cuts Crunchy to Alt-Right pipeline said that you, you know, you come for the calming visuals of pouring milk into one big glass container into another glass container. I do come for that. There's always the sourdough. There's always the overnight oats. And you stay without realizing that you are consuming covertly white nationalist content.

Exactly. To your point, to the Cuts point, it is sending you down a rabbit hole in a way that there is the new age. I go to Bali and do yoga in Orange County. Oh no, oops, fell down a rabbit hole. Now I'm in anti-vax Q and honor. And the way that there is that pipeline that would never appeal to me because I'm not flexible and my hips don't move.

Same. This pipeline would get me. All of a sudden I'm like spewing accidentally alt-right rhetoric because I just love Paisley. This is for the girlies who grew up reading historical fiction. This is like, oh, it feels like I'm just reading a little book, but it's my life and it feels like a dream. Oh my God, do you remember those little diary books?

Did we talk about this? It was called like Dear America or something. It would be like, I'm Abigail. And like, I'm living through the Civil War. Do you know the pages with the gold on the tips? Oh, the guild. Oh, I'm a slot for those. Right. So, so the tradwives are coming for, for us, but I feel like we should walk through some of the key features in the classification and identification of these different tradwife varietals before we get into a teaser of the culti analysis. Karly So yeah, as the title of that cut piece implied, subtly supplying the tradwife ecosystem with fresh meat to indoctrinate more TikTok-obsessed preteens is the ever-flowing to alt-right pipeline. This crunchy

to alt-right pipeline also functions as a little spectrum. So it's like an axis on the graph of tradwife subsex. We do love a three category system here at Sounds Like a Cult and so does Anne Helen Peterson, our special guest today. She has a fantastic sub stack called Culture Study. And for her newsletter, she wrote a piece titled, hashtag tradwife life as self annihilation. In that piece, she proposes three genres of tradwives. Okay. First is the evangelical Christians living out some understanding of biblical womanhood.

Think submissive motherly duties, picture a great deal of beige, so much beige. And honestly, during times of crisis and existential peril, I do see how that lifestyle or the illusion of that lifestyle could appeal even to progressives. You know what I'm saying? This is what makes Tradwives confusing to me. There is this one Tradwife that I've seen online who used to be a super alternative, outwardly queer creator, and she's fully fond on the tradwife pipeline and is now like, again, making the bread, pouring the milk. I think it's truly just like, wow, that, that comes nice. And then you're racist. This is how people join cults like NXIVM and Scientology and Heaven's Gate as well. It's

a great deal of work to have to navigate the cognitive dissonance of submitting to a group that promised to save you, then feeling like those promises are not coming to fruition, but also you've sunk so many costs, time, money, hope into this group. And also you joined it in the first place because something was wrong in your life. So here's the thing, there's this lady named Morgan. If you're on my side of YouTube, you've probably come across her. Morgan of Paul and Morgan, the fundamentalist YouTube channel.

You might also have seen them in the documentary, Shinee Happy People About the Duggars. She's one of the ladies who falls into this category. Her content is very trendy, couple-focused, lots of Bible teachings, a healthy dose of conspiracy, lots of Bible teachings, a healthy dose of conspiracy, lots of cis heteronormativity. It's like submit to God, submit to your husband, but also be famous on YouTube.

Paul and Morgan, to me, they're a lot more modern than some of the tradwives we'll get into. They're not necessarily making the bread. These are definitely a starter tradwife for people who might already be there ideologically, but aren't quite there aesthetically. They're just making content about like, oh, here's how to be a good God honoring wife. All the ideologies there.

They're just not as beige. Literally not a single floral printed apron, which like doesn't make sense because that's the best part. Okay. According to Anne Helen Peterson, category two is God-loving mothers, okay, God-loving in scare quotes, who are more into the aesthetics and are homesteading. This is me. I'm like an aspiring trad wife who's just like, there's like too much to swallow.

I can't like fully get the whole entire vibe down my throat. But yeah, these folks are less urban. They usually live on many homesteads. They're a little crunchier. God is definitely present here, but in a much less outwardly political capacity. So there's a famous Julliard dancer turned jet blue heiress turned trad wife, Ballerina Farm.

You may recognize that name from our Momfluencers episode. She definitely falls into this category. She is this like very, very, very, very wealthy woman, cosplaying, cholera stricken wife on the Oregon Trail. There's also a Tumblr scene girl turned Laura Ingalls Wilder wet dream named Kelly Havens, who would fit the bill of this category. She made a vegetable mobile for her kids that will never not be hilarious. And this is also where a lot of those sort of new age anti-vax natural birth tradwives reside too. To me, that aesthetic is a little different. That's more like I gave birth to my triplets in a mango peel in Hawaii. As Anne Helen Peterson puts it, there's also a point where extremism on both ends

becomes a bending line that eventually becomes a circle. Horseshoe theory. So you have your like divine pseudo-feminist Bali ladies sort of marching shoulder and shoulder with alt-right conspiracy theorists in this category. Yeah, you might be different, but at the end of the day, you can both agree that sunscreen will kill you, and that's truly what matters. Yeah, sunscreen will kill you. We need to destroy the elites. Okay, now we land at TradWive category number three,

which is the stay-at-home girlfriend. She's the least biblical. She's the youngest. She's this girly. Think smoothies, pilates, standing desks, unending skincare, overconsumption. Reese, name some fucking names. Who are these stay-at-home girlfriends? When you might have seen as Kendall K, she's lots of, here's my morning routine as a stay-at-home girlfriend. I make my smoothie bowl and I do nothing all day, but I look

pretty. And then if you have been on Twitter in the past like three weeks or at least on my side of Twitter, you've definitely gotten probably hit with way more Nara Smith content than you were wanting to. Nara Smith is like real weird and insidious because all of her videos are basically her being like, my kids were hungry so I'm making them cereal from scratch. And she's doing it in like a gown, like FormAware. Like she just makes cooking videos in form aware and she has like a little clean girl, sleek French bob and she doesn't really say much. And she's super like mysterious, but then people are like doing a little digging and they're like,

she's a huge Mormon. So I vary back and forth on whether she belongs here or whether she belongs in the category prior to this, because she is a mom and she's definitely religious, but her content leans way more polished stay at home girlfriend core as you will. The Mormons are always so good at branding. They pioneer the beauty blogger vibe. They pioneer the mommy blogger vibe. They're just so good at making cultishness mainstream. Literally shout out to the Mormons. Shout out to the Mormons. Nicole Now we got to get into the culty aspects because we're giggling. This is all fun and games, but there is serious bigotry here. So

there is this one trad wife named Lori who goes by the transformed wife. Nicole Lori is so terrifying. Nicole Tell us about Lori for God sakes. Nicole So if you are familiar with famous fundies and child abusers Michael and Debbie Pearl, who wrote To Train Up a Child, which is like one of the world's most disgusting books. Michael and Debbie Pearl are good friends of Lori. A lot of her stuff is like way extreme, way bigoted, way gross. And then some of these tradwives in this category are like Nora Smith, subtly dipping their

toes into the white supremacist eugenicist content. This is definitely Mrs. Midwest, if anyone's heard of her out there. Or some of them, like Girl Defined, just like to write subtle little captions about their Nazi grandparents and then ignore it the rest of the time and just biblical womanhood. Yeah, Girl Defined, we talked about them in our Purity Rings episode. I was their like number one subscriber, AKA paying their bills in like 2017 because I was fucking rubbernecking so hard at their content.

Fundy car crash. So as if tradwives even needed a cultish analysis, let's run through some of what makes this the perfect and most nefarious cult of 2024. So yeah, as we talked about with the Quarantina All Right pipeline earlier, with the TradWive content, you are coming for the cute aprons and the scrub daddy montages and the vacuuming your beige rug like a frog in a pot of boiling water. Your brain is being steeped in misogynistic, Eurocentric, anti-science ideals. Tried life content is generally just the perfect combination of sensorially pleasing, turn off your brain, just doom scroll brain rot side of the internet, and the side that

is obsessed with categorizing and living up to the ideals of femininity. It just, it takes all of your guilty pleasure social media time and uses it to indoctrinate you, which is honestly so mean. Like I came here to have a good time. Why am I being converted? So mean. One thing I want to shout out is how this trad waif content has really come to appeal to Gen Z. This piece by political research associates put it really well in their article, Why are Gen Z girls attracted to the trad waif lifestyle? They said, quote, "'Zoomers' foray into tradwifery signals a massive change in the movement. Not only is this ideology becoming more mainstream

with younger, right-leaning female audiences, it's becoming integrated into Gen Z internet culture. Taking on timely cultural trends, political views, and concepts of gender, tradwifery is a complicated movement entangled in a difficult history of patriarchal religiosity, racism, and misogyny, but aspiring Zoomer tradwives are actively simplifying it, transforming tradwife ideology into fun musical video bites easily digested by their followers in 30 seconds or less." So much to your point, essentially, that gateway style content gently lulls you into this false sense of security as cults

so often do and then stabs you in the fucking back with these significantly less pleasant fundamentalist alt-right ideologies all behind, you know, like get ready with me. So we're going to get into our interview with Anne Helen Peterson, our very special guest soon, because once we do that, all of this chaos will start making a little bit more sense. But something very, very cultish that I wanna point out for now that Anne Helen wrote in a piece for Elle is that proper tradwifery is not something

that you can just dip a toe into. It's not something that you can just like do for five minutes and then return to your regular life, your regular identity, your regular beliefs. It requires this all in commitment. I'm gonna quote her. She said, trad waif behaviors seem to require

a wholesale ideological conviction that a woman's primary role is to be the helpmate of her spouse. They demand a subsumption of personal will and unquestioning eagerness to bend to a man's desires and a belief that those who don't are sinning against God. Yes, as political research associates kind of echoes, these extreme movements simplify an increasingly complex world, one that is easy to retreat into through chat rooms and algorithmic recommendations. The nostalgia for a mythic past in which gender norms are dictated by a clear division of labor or the reinforcement of social status becomes appealing. And I definitely agree with that.

There's something predictable and soothing that the human brain likes about the binary that gender provides. And what better way to experience that and to let yourself live that than combining it with like consumerism and TikTok, you know? 100%. Just across arenas of life, whether we're talking about gender, social identity, cultish affiliation, we like to put things in boxes because it makes the world feel more organized

and manageable and like it makes sense. And we are willing to sacrifice, apparently, a lot of liberties in order to make the world feel more manageable. Now that said, it seems like there are some trad waifs who have defected from the cult, who were like all in on it and then woke up to the serious damage that this lifestyle can cause. So in an article for Apple News, this one former trad wife named Anitsa Templeton of Littleton, Colorado,

shared that she quote, embodied the trad wife lifestyle for 10 years. At 4 a.m. she would start making bread and begin prep for the day's meals, always from scratch. This mother of four would do all of the household chores while her husband focused solely on bread winning. A lot of carbs in this conversation. Templeton though has since left this life and now she spends her time basically educating

other trad wives online and encouraging them to do the same kind of like the anti MLM movement on social media, YouTube, Tik Tok TikTok podcasts, but for anti trad wives, maybe we'll start to see that become more popular. She says that she felt quote, as if the daily mental tasks were meant to distract her from her lack of autonomy and independence, which is something that we see in cults all the time, monotony, constant tasks, exhaustion. They distract you from the fact that you're in a fucking cult. She also said that in the beginnings of her trad life, she hypothesized that the solution

to her lack of fulfillment in life would be more kids, which only further embedded her into this life of financial dependence on her husband, which is something that I've seen in much more insidious religious cults like the Amish and other groups I shan't name because it's too fucking controversial, where like women are coerced to having as many children as possible in part so that they can never

leave. How could they fucking leave, you know? All of your resources are divided amongst your 10 children. Exactly. And also like you fucking love them. Like you're not gonna leave your kids. You're gonna sacrifice your life for them. Also, I can't help but relate to this idea that having more kids would solve her lack of fulfillment because I think we as human beings have a bias toward that consumerist solution to a problem. Like, oh my God, something doesn't feel right in my life. I need to add more things. I need to add more kids, more supplements, more clothes. And that's why there are so many consumerist cults in the United States

because there's this fucking capitalistic lie. And I would even like rope having more kids into that, that having more, more, more, more, more will save you. Templeton finally had to get a job after 10 years of not having one, which was extremely difficult, a major exit cost. And she had to rely a job after 10 years of not having one, which was extremely difficult, a major exit cost. And she had to rely on food stamps from the government to begin her new life as a single mom. So that kind of like sets the stakes of what

trad wives are getting into when they join this cult. What do you see as the future of trad whiffery? Do you think this is going to continue to get worse and worse? Or do you have hope, Reese? I think as with most internet cults, it's going to get worse and better at the same time. I would like to give a little shout out to specifically Dave, but also Bethany of Girl Defined. They recently did a collaboration with Paul and Morgan. And all of this is to say, it seems like Bethany is moving in a more accepting direction with her content, a more sex positive direction for sure, which is like pleasant surprise. But then on one hand, it feels like those who are the worst

might be getting better. But I also feel like there's so many more stay at home girlfriends now and so many more girls my age wanting to like get into that and like being indoctrinated. So it's getting worse and it's getting better. Yeah, the damage is done. Like all of that Gateway content is out there and that's just fucking done. Okay, exciting. Well, Reese, thank you so fucking much for joining me for this intro. I feel, again, under caffeinated, but glad that you were here to help me explain this ever confusing topic. Stick around for after our little breaky break because Anne Helen Peterson, the fucking granddaddy priest of understanding tradwives,

is going to come here. I recorded this interview with Anne Helen like before Reese was even born, so she's not part of it. But I really hope you enjoy. But I really hope you enjoy. Dear cat parents, that's me. Admit it, if we looked at your camera roll, it would be 90% pictures of your feline friend. I sure have a lot of photos of my cats, Claire and Teddy Rue on my phone. You give them the best, but if you're honest, you might struggle to keep their litter box clean. But have you heard of Litter-Robot? Litter-Robot is the solution to all your litter box problems.

Never scoop again with Litter-Robot. Litter-Robot's self-cleaning technology automatically cleans after every use, so your cats will always have a fresh bed of litter to do their business. I have had my Litter my litter robot for a year. I am obsessed with it. And now I am hashtag blessed

to own the fourth generation iteration of the litter robot, which has the most miraculous odor control and bigger drawer so you don't have to change it as often. And looks like it was invented by a genius alien species. When I found out they wanted to sponsor Sounds Like a Cult, I screamed. The Litter Robot has changed my life. Instead of having to scoop litter every day, I just take out the pan full of soiled litter whenever the Litter Robot tells me to.

It is the future. As a special offer to listeners of the show, go to StopScooping.com slash SLAC and enter promo code SLAC to save an extra $50 on any Litter-Robot bundle. That's an extra $50 off any Litter-Robot bundle at stop scooping.com slash SLAC and enter promo code SLAC at checkout stop scooping.com slash SLAC and enter promo code SLAC. Okay, coltis, let me tell you about my best friend, Liquid IV.

Yes, my best friend is a packet of hydration powder. I will explain. Liquid IV has been a sponsor of Sounds Like a Cult for quite a while. And when my brother got married last summer, I supplied a whole bunch of Liquid IV to all of his guests because it makes the most amazing party favor for weddings and other summer soirees.

One stick of Liquid IV delivers superior hydration to water alone, with three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients. It is hydration for endurance, mental clarity, and overall well-being. It tastes amazing. I'm obsessed with it. This is how it works. You just tear, pour, and enjoy a packet of Liquid IV wherever you are on the go, chilling at home. They come in so many amazing sugar-free flavors, including white peach, refreshing and delicious,

green grape, strawberry lemonade. The Liquid IV hydration multiplier is perfect for before, during, and after workouts or nights out. Personally, I am motivated in my daily life by treating myself to a special drink. And Liquid IV has the double benefit of being a very special fancy little drink and so good for you. Turn your ordinary water into extraordinary hydration with Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com

and use code COLT at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code COLT at liquidiv.com. Let's get into it, the cult of tradwives. No one can see that I'm dancing, but I am thrilled to be talking about this with none other than Anne Helen Peterson.

Could you please introduce yourself and your work to our listeners? Yeah, I write the newsletter Culture Study, which is a newsletter that's about thinking more about the culture that surrounds us. I do that like it's super broad so that I can really just write about anything that I find interesting. And I have a PhD in media studies, and I used to be very much more focused specifically on the history of celebrity and the history of celebrity gossip,

but those analytical tools have served me well as I've expanded to look at other phenomenon within our larger pop culture world. Yes, and the interpretation of celebrity has become so loosey goosey as celebrities are now in spaces where maybe 50 years ago we would have never envisioned them to be. Well it's so funny because I think that there is always anxiety about celebrities of new parts

of media and like I spent a lot of time in the gutters of the 1950s pop culture press, like lots of different fan magazines and like there was so much anxiety over television stars. Like imagine being anxious about television stars and teen idols also, many of whom were either like, oh, like maybe they can sing, but they don't have any other talent, right? So there was just this real like hierarchy of movie stars are the most important and everyone else is somehow like if you were paying attention to them or if they show up in this magazine, it is an attack on the integrity of the pop culture world. And I think that we see that especially when people are like, oh, how dare we pay attention to influencers, whether they're trad wife influencers or like home decorating influencers.

Ooh, slick transition. Thank you for that. You're right though. And I do have to check myself too because I can slip into that like moral panic of like stay in your lane celebrity because the worst-case scenarios are like the Donald Trumps and the Dr. Oz's and the. But we do need to remember that that type of panic is nothing new at all. But onto the topic at hand, when I say the cult of trad wives, what does that mean to you exactly, the cultish aspect of it?

Well, I mean, there's the people who are in the world, right? Deeply invested in the world. And I think that if you are not super familiar with fundamental Christianity, then this is hard to understand. But like a lot of people who espouse this ideology have never known any other way, right? And who understand choosing to live not this way as choosing damnation for themselves and their family, right? I think that that's hard for a lot of us who understand personal choices, like a cornucopia

of like different ways that we can find happiness, right? When you are within this fundamentalist worldview, it's like, if I try to escape or if I try to leave this, then we're all going to hell forever. And so there are those people who've grown up into it or who have been otherwise inculcated, which is a great word because it sounds like cult, into that world. Oftentimes I see that, like a lot of cults, it happens after a trauma, after someone has had their life fall apart for some reason, and they're trying to find a way to make the world legible to them again.

And what trad wife life and Christian fundamentalism does, it allows them to have very strict rules, a very strict understanding of their role in the home, in their marriage, as mothers, in society. It's very comforting in that way. And then there's this like external cult of people who are aspirational trad wives, right? Or like are taking parts of it. So I think of it as kind of concentric circles. calls. Mm-hmm. I always go back to that fleabag quote when she's going through a rough time and she's in the confessional with the hot priest and her life feels unmanageable and she just is pleading to him, I want someone to tell me who to vote for, what band to like, who to love, how to love them, and it's no coincidence that she's in like a religious space having that crisis, begging this person

to tell her what to do. And I love that point of like, it's exactly what you said. It's just a way to make the world feel more legible and not worrying about the consequences because the most urgent desire is just like, I need to get grounded in something that feels manageable. I want to back up though. Could you sort of explain to the listeners how you developed an interest in tradwives

and in writing about them to begin with and some of the work that you've done looking into tradwives? Yeah, you know, I think like a lot of things about the way that Christianity and evangelical Christianity manifests online. It's one of those things that other people in my universe were like, oh my God, can you believe this? And I'm like, yes. So I grew up Presbyterian, but in the 90s, a lot of

churches that were what's called mainline Protestant. So mainline is like basically like any of these Protestant religions that you can think of that were like had churches in suburbs, right? So like Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, all those sorts of things. A lot of them took a little bit of a evangelical flair in the 1990s. Because the evangelicalisms had their mega churches and their fabulous Christian rock.

I mean, a chord progression. The evangelicals mastered the chord progression is what they did. Just like raising your hand, like having that what's known as like a charismatic experience in worship of like raising your hand and closing your eyes and like feeling the spirit wash over you. Like that is a very evangelical pivot from like Presbyterians were known as the frozen chosen.

Like you did not do that sort of movement. And then suddenly in the 90s, we had an early service with guitars. And it was also, I think, especially prevalent in the way that pastors were speaking to the youth. You had a bunch of evangelical movements happening on a national scale in terms of purity movements and trying to make Christianity more prevalent in schools. See what the poll was one that I remember where you went and prayed at school in the morning. So I grew up around a lot of this stuff and I understand how where I was positioned, I knew people both in my friend group and then also who I went to church camp with who had taken it to a further extent, right?

Who were more in the evangelical, non-denominational, some of them fundamentalist, don't believe in evolution, that sort of thing, and much more traditional understanding of wives in the home. I also grew up in Idaho around a lot of Mormons, and I was familiar with lots of families whose the way that their family was organized was not dissimilar to a tradwife.

It probably wasn't as explicit some of the rules that tradwives broadcast in terms of like, you submit to your husband and that sort of thing. But that is very much written into the way that a lot of not progressive Mormons understand like the way the family should be. So my interest, like a lot of the stuff was like, I already know a lot about this. I should think about it more and how it's manifesting now, why it's popular now, that sort of thing. And I think I also saw it popping up a lot

in another area of my work, which is, so when we talk about what different parts of Idaho are known for, I'm from North Idaho, which is known for racists and neo-Nazis and now like the extreme far right. And this has been the case for decades. There was an air and nation compound in North Idaho where like if I talk to people who are my parents' generation

and you say you're from North Idaho, that's what they bring up. And now it's just a lot of like people fleeing California because there's too much unrest there Okay, so this is the type of trad wife that I think of as like the canonical trad wife is someone who aspired to a more liberated world and The reality did not meet their expectations and so they were like, you know what I reject it all

I'm going to Idaho and I'm gonna bake and I'm gonna submit to my husband. Am I mistaken? And those tradwives are usually like really hot, right? Because the thing is, is they've already become incredibly familiar with like the vernacular of social media and like how they should dress, how to do their hair, all that sort of thing.

Whereas like the tradwives that I knew had hair down to their butts and braided it and would never ever show off their shoulders, like are much more conservative in that capacity. They are not social media ready. It's not a Christy Dawn dress. The puffy sleeves are so much more honest than that. Okay, but those people would never call themselves a tradwife because

tradwife is like a branding exercise. They're just a woman as far as they're concerned. No, they would say that they follow the teaching of biblical femininity. Okay. So then speaking of why tradwives are like in the zeitgeist now and where that term came from, can you like set the scene a little bit? Why, I feel like a year and a half ago, did this term tradwife seem to explode all over the internet? Well, I think there was a handful of people doing exactly what you described who wanted to figure out their influencer brand and like move to places like Idaho and started hashtag homesteading. In the pandemic, it feels like. Yeah. And in the pandemic,

I think a couple of them had this before. The roots were there, obviously, for online performance of this sort of lifestyle. Like, Mormon mommy blogging was absolutely doing this long before the tradwife was. But I think there's a whole bunch of different internet niches that people went deep in over the pandemic, right?

And so when something seems to hit the algorithm, this is particularly true the pandemic, right? And so when something seems to like hit the algorithm, this is particularly true on TikTok, right? You're like, oh, well, if I do more of that, if I lean into that, then that will make my account more popular, all that sort of thing. So I think that like some people who may have thought of themselves

as just like conservative mamas, became tradwives in the way that they marketed themselves and what they emphasized in their content. And then it became somewhat of like a panic point, right? An anxiety point of people saying, why is this happening? This seems so retrograde, which includes, you know, that made it so that more people like you and I were following them. So they would make more content. So you have people who are like oppositionally following them, so they would make more content. You have people who are like oppositionally watching them and then people who are watching

them because they actually see them as aspirational. And I think that that's actually a much smaller percentage. Well, I can't tell which I am because I don't want to subscribe to like fundamentalist religious patriarchy, but I do sometimes like the aesthetic of it. Well, and here's the thing, it's like the aesthetic is very, like, what if we lived in Little House on the Prairie, but no one got sick and we had electricity? I know, it's like, I call it tuberculosis core. Remember during the pandemic when that headline went viral saying that medieval peasants had more time off than the average contemporary worker or whatever.

And it's like, no one wants to be a medieval peasant. It was objectively like a bad, bad, bad time. But the middle ages have a similar kind of romance to them because they've been romanticized in fairy tales. And I eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I love that kind of nostalgia. What does that say about me? Can you help me understand? It says that you're just doing too many jobs. And that is the hard thing, right? And I wrote about this in this article that I ended up writing for Elle where

my editor was like, you should live as a trad wife. And I was like, do I actually want to lose money by doing this? Because if I didn't do my work for a week, the amount that I would get paid to write the article would not make up for the lack of doing the work. But I think that the appeal is absolutely to women who feel like you're already doing so many jobs, right? And whether or not you have kids,

you're doing all of the jobs at the home, whatever that means in individual's experience, and then doing work for pay in most situations. And that's just so exhausting. So the idea to just do the responsibilities of the home, who wouldn't want to do one job instead of two or five? And so I think that that's part of the allure. And that to me, that is a manifestation of the fact that so many of us, our lives have become so incredibly tethered to work.

Work is the center. Work and maybe family, maybe parenting. Parenting as a verb. And I think that that doesn't leave any space for things that can be really nourishing about work that we do in the home and what are often dismissively called hobbies. I have personally done a lot of work to get into hobbies in the last couple of years. That's my anti-burnout strategy

is having things that I actually like to do that are not work. Because before I just didn't have that. There was just work and I was like, well, why wouldn't I do more work? Totally. Well, also, because I feel like we like to write and that's what's tough is like, I

really like my work, if I may say so, but that doesn't mean I should do it 24 seven. I'm still really reckoning with that. So anyway, hobbies. So do any of your hobbies have a whiff of tradwife? Gardening, I think intersects with especially the homesteading component, especially someone who's kind of in this larger tradwife universe, like Ballerina Farm, who is an enormously popular Mormon influencer who is married to one of the heirs to the JetBlue fortune and is currently pregnant with her eighth kid and is also the reigning Mrs. America.

Not Miss America, Mrs. America. She has a beautiful life in this homestead area that they have in Utah that's not that far from Park City, even though it seems like it's far in the middle of nowhere, you're just over the hill from Park City. But part of the reason that it looks so alluring is because they have a lot of money. Yeah, money makes a big difference in branding,

as it turns out. Look, I was of the mind that a perfect t-shirt did not exist. And then I discovered the Skims t-shirt shop. Holy macaroni. These t-shirts are flattering. Every time I wear my Skims cotton jersey t-shirt, which is a lot because it has become a staple in my wardrobe, my partner Casey compliments the way that my torso looks. He doesn't say it quite

like that. That would be odd. In fact, the fact that I'm saying it that way right now is odd. But that's only because I feel awkward telling you how dang good I look in these Skims t-shirts. Let me tell you, the Skims Cotton Jersey Long Sleeve T-shirt in the color Bone is the hottest little t-shirt I've ever owned. I said it. The perfect t-shirt does exist and you can find it at Skims. Shop the Skims t-shirt shop at skims.com. Now available in sizes XXS to 4X. If you haven't yet, be sure to let them know I sent you. After you place your order, select podcast in the survey

and select my show in the dropdown menu that follows. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace, if you dare not to know, is an all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online, whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website,

engage with your audience and sell anything, all in one place on your terms. I am not very technologically savvy, but the Sounds Like a Cult website, that was built using Squarespace and it was very, very easy. Sometimes I'll log in, make a little update, couldn't be simpler, I'm a Luddite

and I can use it effortlessly. And that is thanks to Squarespace's easy to use, handy dandy features, including their Fluid Engine, a next generation website design system from Squarespace. It has never been easier to be creative. You just start with a lovely looking website template and you customize every design detail with drag and drop technology.

You can even create a custom merch store on a Squarespace website to generate some passive income. We love that. And there's a wonderful little asset library where you can upload, organize, and access all of your content from one place that makes managing files easier than ever. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, go to https://www.squarespace.com slash Colt to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay. Speaking of ballerina farm, I would love if you could sort of break down the different denominations of trad waif, the different sects. And could you name names in addition to ballerina farm? Like she is sort of canonical reigning trad waif, but how would you describe her denomination? And then how would you describe others that might diverge a bit?

She's canonical, but like sneaky canonical, because she would never call herself a trad wife. She would never hashtag something with trad waif. Never. Why not? That's just not, it's not her brand. And it's also not Mormon brand at all. Like I'm not going to speak like universally here, but I think talking to people who are experts in Mormon evangelical style, right? Cause it's different than that of Christian

non-denominational evangelicals. And having seen it a lot and analyzed it a lot, like you show you don't tell. So there is the style that is very much you tell, right? Like there is Mormon missionaries knocking on the door, recruiting people to come to church, but there's a lot of just being a very public Mormon person. So that is why something like the blogging or the Instagram accounts and that sort of thing, like that is a great way to be an example of what Mormonism looks like, right? So, Valerina Farme would never say, like, you should consider joining the LDS Church, would never put that on her Instagram.

Would never say, here is why I'm a trad wife and here's why you should be a trad wife, right? Like, to her, there's nothing that is, like, exceptional about the way that she is living her life. She is simply living according to her faith. Okay. So, I would put the vast, vast majority of Mormon influencers who have a lot of overlap

with what we think of as hashtag tradwife in that bucket. Got it. Then there are people who are really leaning into the tradwife thing, right? And that's the people that you were talking about who like either have converted to evangelical Christianity or who grew up in it. And I think that there are extremes in terms of like people who are very focused on presentation and like looking hot.

There are people who are much more focused on homeschooling and having like that be the real focus of their brand. And then there are people like the transformed wife. She is an older woman. She's probably in her either late 60s or 70s and came to espouse the teachings of biblical femininity probably within the last 20 years and like has had a blog for a long time. And now because she can't create content of her own life that's in that vein, she instead just like does these screenshots of tweets that

are like, women waste themselves when they go to school, like just really ardent and aggressive understandings of how a woman should embrace passivity in the home. So she's like on the, I think, extreme end of the spectrum. And so there are people who are like arguing about theology a lot more and she's there. And then there are people who are like arguing about theology a lot more and she's there. And then there are people who are much more into the aesthetics, right? And who like still have like Jesus loving mama of six or whatever in their bio, but they're not as, I mean, aggressive is the only word I can think of. Yeah. And then there are the watered down types. And some of those are like on TikTok,

there's this woman named Estee Williams, who sometimes puts some stuff about like God or like, I don't know, like we go to church or something like that. But I don't actually think she goes to church necessarily. I think it's Christian the way that like a lot of Trump voters are Christian and that they say they are Christian but haven't gone to church in probably a year and don't necessarily ascribe to a particular theology but really understand Christianity as part of their overall identity. Sure. And so Esti, I think, this is my theory, understood that she was performing really well on TikTok when she dressed like Marilyn Monroe and talked about how she did her hair the way that her husband liked and cooked the way that her husband liked and dressed the way that her husband liked.

And so she creates content that a lot of it is like my rules for being a trad wife, right? So it's very much leaning into it. And it's so obvious that like to me it strikes me as different. But I think if you are not a discerning consumer of tradWife content, then it might be a little different. Okay. So she's beholden to the algorithm, essentially. The algorithm told her that this was the brand she should stick to. And now she's sort of like her own cult leader and her own cult follower in that sense. I'm confused by all of the denominations of TradWife because I understand that there's the sort of more explicit missionary style TradWife

who's like spreading gospel, trying to get other people to see that this is the right way of living in the way that any missionary religion does. And then there's the branding exercise of it, people who maybe don't even earnestly believe this stuff, but like it's just working for their social media platform. But then I wanna talk a little bit about the like neoliberal tradwife. And maybe this is not a tradwife at all, but I definitely followed hella DIY homesteader influencers, not so much on TikTok, but on YouTube very much so,

during the pandemic, because it felt like, okay, the apocalypse is here. Here's a way to like return to a pre slash post-apocalyptic style of living. But they don't talk about God or Jesus. I think they're progressive in their politics, but the aesthetic... Maybe. Maybe. No, maybe. I don't know.

Now that we're talking about this, I'm not sure. No, but I know exactly what you're talking about. And I think that they're progressive in so much as they're like, gay people should get married. We hate racists. And Donald Trump is bad. But they're like, woke them as maybe gone a little bit too far. Sure.

There are too many trans kids in schools. And school choice is important. Right? Like I should be able to have my kid go where they're... Like, they probably are in private school. Well, and I guess the people that I follow don't have kids yet. So I think they are, like, more apathetic. They're maybe pregnant right now, or they'll maybe be pregnant soon. And so, like, I don't really know their point of view yet.

And so I give them the benefit of the doubt because I'm projecting what I want to believe onto them. Did you see any Vax content? No. Because a lot of those people, not all, some are like into natural birth and like, let's wait and see on Vax, you know, like that style. I don't know. I mean, okay.

My favorite YouTuber is this like fully DIY homesteader. She like built her own tiny house wearing a sundress. She's either engaged or married. She knows how to operate a spinning wheel. She made her own wedding dress out of a curtain. She has her own garden. She harvests her own vegetables. She knows how to make every vegan dish under the sun.

I bought her a cookbook. Oh, then she's just a hippie. Okay. She's not a trad wife at all, but she's living so old school. Right. She's living old school but like did she have sex with her boyfriend before she got engaged to him? Probably, right? Probably, yeah. You can't be a trad wife if you're not a Christian. Not at

all? I mean I think that like there can be people who are living trad wife elements who are different religions. What if you're like evangelical to new age? Because that's the thing that trips me up. Well, this is the whole circle, right? It's like the people who were like, I would have voted for Bernie, but Bernie didn't get elected so I voted for Trump. There are a lot of people that I have met who were like that mostly older people. And it's where the circle goes complete, right?

And how anti-vaxxers also meet. It's the far right and far left. Completely. Or like raw milk people or homeschoolers too, oftentimes on either side. So it's like, I think a lot of new age stuff is just like evangelicalism with a new aesthetic. But if you've like rejected God and Jesus,

you can't be a tradwife anymore. I think you can have tradwife elements, but where this all springs from, at least its current manifestation, is all from biblical femininity. Okay. It's all from understanding this as the path to salvation. And so I think you get more of it within Mormonism because it is a part of their understanding

of the way to salvation, the way to being a god of your own planet and being eternally pregnant with your husband's children. But I think you can have elements like this woman of the tradwife aesthetic, but I don't think that she at all espouses to like the idea that she should be submissive or that she should like not leave the home after dark without her husband, right? Or like I'm looking at the homepage,

like there's all the stuff of her in a bikini and like tank tops and all that sort of thing. You're right. Well, this is just how clever the tradwife wave is because I have now convinced myself that it's not that bad. And this is how you know that it's a cult, because there are elements that are good and appealing and harmless.

So now in my mind, I'm like, none of them really truly believe this, but you're correcting me and saying like, no, no, no. Some of them really, really, really do believe it. And I'm being hoodwinked right now. I just think like the part that appeals to you is not letting your husband make every decision in your home, right? Or letting your partner, you know what I mean?

I think it's more like, Oh, what if I did cold plunges and yoga in the dawn light and like was self-sustaining and I didn't have to worry about stuff all the time. Like that is what is, that's the lifestyle that is depicted here. And that's just like a bucolic ideal. And I think that has had a hold for so long in so many different manifestations, but content like this is just the current iteration. And it appeals to people of our age group who want that sort of connection and yearn for that sort of connection

Yeah, and trad wives are dominating that corner of the internet So it's like if I want to see people doing that I very well might be getting that from a trad wife Okay, that makes more sense. Thank you for puzzling through that with me What would you say are the cultiest beliefs and rituals in the tradwife community that you've observed? This is a sensitive one because having as many children as possible is part of like tradwife belief system. Like biblical femininity is letting God's will take action on your body and making yourself available to your husband whenever he wants you to be available to him. Like saying no is actually like a big no-no within the understanding of biblical femininity. And if your husband cheats, it's your fault because you didn't say no. But as a result of that, there are a lot of pregnancies,

right? And there are a lot of miscarriages. And I think there is a real devotion to memorializing those miscarriages in a very prominent way. So a lot of child wife bios will say like, seven kids on earth, three kids in heaven. And it's not that three children that they gave birth to at full term lived several years and died. It's that they had three miscarriages. They name every miscarriage oftentimes, and then they often also really celebrate their birthday when they lost that child. And so there's just a lot of that. And I think that

miscarriages are so complicated and I think we don't talk about them enough, but also the way that they are, it's almost like a fetishization of these lost children. That's part of the cultishness of it, I think. Whoa. And being so public about them and sort of using them as a clout building exercise. Right. You have a post about it. And then because you get a lot of commentary on it, it does well. And so that encourages people to do more of them. And I think that, again, being public about grief, about a miscarriage, totally makes sense. But I think this is one of the things that becomes almost ritualized within the community.

Yes. And I think, obviously, there's no right and wrong when it comes to how you want to manage your grief. And if you have a social media profile, it's like, do you? But I think as onlookers, we are so intuitively discerning. We can tell because our gut tells us when someone is doing it for reasons other than a sincere individual expression of grief. They make it known that this is a ritual, it sounds like.

Can you tell us more about your Elle piece and that tradwife experiment? So it actually was an experiment that never was because my editor at Elle emailed me with this idea. I was like, what if you lived as a trad wife for a week and then wrote about it? Because you're like very much not a trad wife. I'm not married to my partner.

We've been together almost 10 years, but not married, no plans to get married. I don't have kids and I'm not going to have kids. And so it would be like funny, right? Like it's stunt journalism that also would be illuminated in some way. And I was like, no, this is silly. I'm not gonna do this. And I like talked about it with my partner

and he's like, he's the one who brought up, are you sure you wanna lose money on this assignment? And he's like, if you do it, you just have to, you have to say in the piece that this was not my idea, right? To make all the food for him. Because I figured out, okay, what are the elements of this checklist that I can do? One of them is you're not supposed to go to the gym by yourself.

And I was like, my gym is my peloton in the basement, so that's okay. You're not supposed to leave the house at night by yourself. And I live on an island of 900 people. So like, that's not really a problem either for a week, right? For a non-trad wife, you're set up pretty well to be one. I am. And I was like, okay, I can kind of like play along with some of this stuff.

But then my dog died and that actually forced me to take a real step away from work and allowed me to actually write the piece in like a very different way where I was like, oh, you know how I took care of my family? I stopped working for a little bit and focused on my family and on care, but it didn't have to be in submission. It could just be out of love.

So that's how that went, but it was fun. And I think that piece did well, but also the piece that I wrote for my newsletter that was kind of a, here's all the things that I couldn't put into a 1200 word piece. That did even better, I think. Yeah. Can you tell us about the piece for your substack and some of the reactions to it? It was one of those pieces where I was like, I'm just going to barf some of the stuff that I didn't have an opportunity to talk about.

I don't know if you've had this experience where you spend a lot of time researching a piece or a book chapter or something like that, and it has to be refined to become whatever polished thing that it goes into the world. But you have this giant knowledge cloud all around it. And for me, that knowledge cloud was in part what I had gleaned from having followed these tradwives for nearly four or five months. I asked my followers on Instagram, which tradwife should I follow?

And I followed all of them. And so I just had this content in my feed. And if something's in your feed for five months, you see a lot of it. And so a lot of it with those learnings. And in the L piece, I very briefly did a little taxonomy of the different types, the know, like what your, the denominations, as you said. And this, I, you know, I kind of dove more into someone like the transformed way for

like, there's this one called growing goodings, uh, different ones, the, the more softer side that you see on Instagram a lot. And I thought people were kind of sick of dreadwaves. In fact, no, they still want to know a lot more. But I also was surprised, I should never be surprised by this, but I was surprised by people who were like, I had no idea that this was a thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, I am learning right now.

I thought, I've followed a couple of these people because I follow Sarah Peterson, who we interviewed for our episode on the Cult of Momfluencers. And I've learned a little bit about tradwives through her work and of course yours. But I still find myself mystified by them in the way that I am mystified by cults in general. And this podcast is a result of that brain cloud that you were talking about, the result of like what couldn't be in the book

and me wanting to talk about it like in a more casual way because who's a cult expert? Like anyone branding themselves as a cult expert? I am skeptical of because we are all in cults, right? And like I find a new subculture, cult-like subculture every single week. And I can't be an expert in all of them just because I know a few things about cult language.

So I think the way that we never get sick of cult documentaries, they're all the same. The Nexium ones, the Jonestown ones, the Heaven's Gate ones, the freaking Scientology, whatever. It's like we are trying to determine if this thing is a threat to us. And the answer is always yes. And we can't get enough of that. Yes. And this is the thing is I think that what makes it concerning for a lot of especially feminist women is that you're like, how is this still pervasive? How is this a message that is getting through? I mean, I think there will always be reactionary politics, right?

Oh, women are more liberated, so let's take this reactionary step backwards. Yes. But that doesn't mean that it is a salient ideology for the vast majority of women, right? Like yet maybe one in 10,000 junior high girls right now are like, this is what I want more than anything. Yeah. But others are like, no, I want to go to college. College is good, right? Or like whatever they want to do after they graduate. Like I want to have sex before I get married and not feel bad about it. Like all those sorts of things.

That's actually a really important counter perspective is that like when something's in your feed, as much as tradwives were in your feed, it can start to feel like this is representative of the whole world and this is like a major, major problem, but it doesn't seem like tradwives are like a major global threat. They're just a threat to certain people. Well, I mean, there are a manifestation of an ideology that I think is pernicious. Like, it's kind of like,

oh, there aren't that many white supremacists, but also there are ways in which that gets watered down and manifests in systemic racism and policy and all that sort of thing. And so I think that like, I'm not concerned about tradwife accounts. I'm concerned against anti-abortion and reproductive rights. You know what I mean? Like that's where I try to concentrate my energy on like, this is where we need to fight it completely, but they all are part of the same piece. You're so right.

And yet, it's so much more fun and juicy to look at the tradwives and not have to do the unglamorous daily policywork of supporting reproductive rights. Right, so personally, I analyze how tradwives are like this anti-feminist backlash. And also, I donate to an abortion access fund, right? That's how I do my work.

Yeah. Love that. Love that. I want to ask a couple more questions and then play a game. So obviously society and the internet are really hard on women. And I would love to know, what's the deal? Are there trad husbands? Should we be redirecting our rage at them instead?

Who are these people's husbands? Do they have an internet presence? Why aren't we mad at them? I mean, trad husbands are just like most husbands. I would say that there is a solid percentage of husbands whose wives maybe understand themselves as feminists who the husband is still pretty much a trad husband, who's like, I'll do some parenting,

but like that's not totally my job, or like I'm not gonna learn how to be competent in it. Like they're learned in competency when it comes to domestic tasks is part of being a trad husband. So like, I like to think of it as like part of that larger sphere. But I mean, like what's the version of a trad husband is like,

I don't know, like a Huberman bro mixed with a Joe Rogan bro. Like, it's like the same guy. It's just espousing a sort of powerful masculinity that doesn't necessarily say things like, wives submit, but it's implicit. Some of these husbands show up periodically in these women's accounts being strong biblical men, which means providing for the household and providing a good example and being a man of faith in the home and that sort of thing.

I think of Ballerina Wife's husband who has an Instagram account that's hog fathering, I think. Oh Christ. But it's I think whenever the husbands show up in the accounts it's always really interesting to me because it's kind of feminizing to show up in your wife's very popular account. Yeah you're acknowledging that you love a woman? How dare you? No but like also that you are like a character in your wife's world almost. Does that make sense? Like your wife is controlling the narrative in terms of like what your home life is like and you are passive to that understanding.

So I think anytime that the husband shows up, it's always a really interesting text. Oh yeah, that's a wrinkle. Right, because he's the protagonist and she's not even the main character in her own story. This is just a side story. Right. She's just the narrator. Right, right. So then we go back to the beginning commentary, which is like the allure of these people for me is to just foam at the mouth watching someone give up all control because

there's some part of me that wants to do that. You know, it's like what we were saying before. It's like we're like these quote unquote empowered feminists, like work and women, but I am so fucking tired. Right. But it's like, you want to go on a drug trip for like one day, right? Like you don't actually want this to be the rest of your life. You like talking me off the ledge. Watch it two weeks.

There's only a Shradwife podcast. I will be espousing proverbs. No, but I do. You know how sometimes you're so tired and you so want to go on vacation and like, you watching two weeks of this little shradwife podcast. I will be espousing proverbs. No, but I do. You know how sometimes you're so tired and you so want to go on vacation and like, you're like, all I want to do is go to a beach

and just like lay there and relax. And like that works for two days. And then you're like, I'm kind of bored, right? And that's the thing. Like you talk to our grandmother's generation or people who had to stay home because like they didn't have access to bank accounts. They weren't allowed to drive. So fucking boring. And I think that that's what we have to remember. It's like part of the reason these women are doing their Instagram accounts is because they are so fucking bored.

Bored and trapped. No, this is so fucking true. It's like I would rather be in temporary pain that I chose than some boring lifestyle that I did not choose. Okay, so I would just love to hear a story of the worst case scenario because we're trying to evaluate how bad of a cult this really is. So how bad does it get? What's an extreme example of how far Tradwives can go? Well, I mean, it's become a cliche now to say that like we become the Handmaid's Tale, but that, you know, there's a reason why that is a dystopic novel, right, is that Margaret Atwood perceived the risk of that sort of regression, right? And the popularity of that novel goes up and down. And I think it's like it's popular again now because of that understanding of like,

here's what happens when you cede control in this way and it's a mix of men and women who make that possible right it's never just like men are like oh all women you must be subjugated like women are the handmaidens to that particular project and I think that like there's a reason why the vast majority of these like I don't even think I've seen one that's not white, right? That's a traditional, a real child wife that's not white. And so some of it too is consolidating your societal power in whatever way you know how. So maybe you are disempowered within the home, but you are empowered as a family unit.

Nicole Sade Holy shit. This reminds me so much of the power structure of basically like every notorious cult in history where there's like a quote unquote charismatic potentially halfway good looking white man at the top. And then the second tier of power is like a gaggle of white pretty young women that he's surrounded himself with who exchange their sexuality and whiteness for a grain of more power. Who are the cultiest tradwives at large right now? To me, I think transformed wife is the absolute worst of them.

She's on Instagram. She's on Twitter. But then I also think that the cultiest oftentimes are ones who don't make their politics as clear, right? Who are much more insidious in the way that they talk about it. So that I would love to hear like from your listeners who they think are like the person

who is like most effective at this. I mean, there's an argument to say Ballerina Farm is, right? But that I don't have the answer yet. Yeah, I'm gonna toss up a post on the Instagram where we can all caucus and mourn each other whisper network style about who the most pernicious tradwives at large right now are. We're now going to play a little game. It's just a classic sounds like a cult game called What's Cultier? I'm gonna name two tradif related scenarios and you're simply going to answer based on your opinions and instincts, which is cultier?

Conservative Christian evangelical tradwives who were born into the lifestyle or reformed sort of city slicker tradwives who've elected to go all Laura Ingalls Wilder on their own volition. Gosh, I can't tell you. I think that they're just, they're effective in different ways. What do you think? Oh, I think those who've elected into it are cultier because there's so much justification of your choices that goes in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. Yeah, you're right. Round number two, what's cultier? Princessy Snow White 1800s cottage core tradwives or 50s leave it to beaver Susie Homemaker tradwives? Susie Homemaker tradwives. Yeah. Because I think that there's like,

there are positive things to be said about like, cottagecore, like, communing with nature. Like, there are like parts of it that like make sense. Whereas I think that there is like a real ideological perversion that's going on with like, I love my microwave, like that sort of thing. Yeah, I love just add an egg, Betty Crocker, instant cake mix so much. I don't know, based on the tchotchkes alone, I'm going cottagecore all day every day. What's cultier? People sensationally comparing all tradwaves to the Handmaid's Tale or people sensationally comparing all cults to Jonestown? Let me kind of justify that question.

Because whenever a threat to feminist liberation arises in the discourse and in politics, I think people are typically quite quick to cry Handmaid's Tale, for good reason. But the same shit happens whenever something culty happens with Donald Trump or whatever, people are like, it's Jonestown. And I think sometimes that sensationalism

can shut down conversations because I can't speak to the Handmaid's Tale tradwife thing as much, but in terms of Jonestown, I think when people threaten that this is just another Jonestown, it's like that was an unprecedented and since unreplicated event, Donald Trump is dumber than Jim Jones and more dangerous, dumber and more dangerous, more populist, more of a coward, equally narcissistic. I just think like they're different situations that can't be directly compared. Anyway, that's why I formulated that question.

Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, but you're asking me, these are like, I actually think those two are very similar. Like I think that the Handmaid's Tale analogy loses its power as it's deployed more and more. Right. And so it's deployed because we don't have language or imagery to express the horror and the fear of like this sort of regression,

but you become numb to that comparison. I do remember the first time that I saw like women in handmaids cloaks, right? At some sort of event, like protesting something, I was like, that's powerful. That's the only time, right? Then it became reductive and replicative and like it didn't seem to have that power.

So what's other language, what's other imagery that we can use to express that, I think, is one of the things that the feminist movement and the reproductive rights movement has to grapple with. Totally. And I understand why people make both comparisons, too, because it's shorthand. But yeah, I don't know.

In terms of what's cultier, the Handmaid's Tale comparisons or the Jonestown comparisons, what do you think is more insidiously cultish? Jonestown, don't you think? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I think so. Last one, what's cultier, tradwives or men? Oh, man. Men. What do you think?

Yeah, men obviously. No qualifiers, no explanation, no notes. I'm just going to say that my partner said that he couldn't do something because like he had some stuff to do around the house. Like he was just trying to like that my partner said that he couldn't do something because he had some stuff to do around the house. He was just trying to be on top of some stuff that I hadn't even asked him to do. He had to decline an invitation.

Someone responded to that and was like, oh, like, Annie's really cracking the whip, right? That idea that you would only do stuff around the house because your partner is disciplining you or something, right? That to me is evidence of the cult of men. One thousand percent. And it is all over the place. So, so true. Yeah.

So now I'm just going to ask you the final question that we ask at the end of every episode of Sounds Like a Cult. The Cult of Tradwives. What do you think? Is it a live your life? A watch your back? Or a get the fuck out level cult? Watch your back.

Explain. Oh, I just think like what we were talking about before, I think that it is a flair going up of like the popularity of regressive and reactionary understandings of the place of women in society and how much power women should have in society. And so we have to be incredibly vigilant about attempts on the part of our legislatures and governments to roll back those protections and those rights. But I'm not scared that like my friends are going to go do this.

Fair. And we don't need to like throw ballerina farm in prison. No, no. She's already in a prison of her own creation. Oh my gosh. Wow. This conversation has been a joy for me. If folks want to keep up with you and your work and your cult, where can they find you?

At AnneHelen.com. That's where Culture Study is. And maybe by the time this is out, our Culture Study podcast will have launched as well. So hooray. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty.

Not too culty. But not too culty. Sounds Like a Cult is hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of the Podcabin. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. This episode was made with production help from Katie Epperson. Our intern is Reese Oliver. Thank you as well to our partner, All Things Comedy. And if you like the show, please feel free to check out my books, Word Slut, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, Cultish, The Language of

Fanaticism, and the forthcoming, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality. If you're a fan of Sounds Like a Cult, I would really appreciate it if you leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.