The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - "i dream of becoming a hot trad wife"

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Why do rich people like to pretend to be "poor"?From hot rich trad wives to D'Amelio sisters cosplaying at Walmart- there seems to be a new romantic appeal to labor.Learn & Grow with me.💖 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeunlimited/💜 TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@zoeunlimited🪭 All my outfits https://www.shopltk.com/explore/zoeunlimited👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/zoeunlimited🛒 Essentials https://www.amazon.com/shop/zoeunlimited📧 Business inquiries: [e-mail]//🕙Timestamps: 0:00 Intro2:49 Trophy wife & Trad wife fantasy6:34 Case Study 1: Nara Smith 10:55 Case Study 2: Emily Mariko12:40 New money 15:31 Romantic poverty

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows.

Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision, to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the the Cadillac definition of luxury. Imagine you have it all. A beautiful house, a wardrobe of the most gorgeous clothes,

a loving and attractive husband, a baby coming your way, and bills forever taken care of. What would you choose to do all day? I cut in my butter before going out to harvest my strawberries. These were perfectly ripe. Would you make cheese from scratch? Then I got soted on making my cream cheese.

Dress up to wait for your husband to come home. Or work at Walmart? for fun. Old professionally is probably a very rich. I really don't want to work anymore. In this day and age, working is almost taboo. Something that seems second class. Except when you're so wealthy to the point of boredom, there is a new appeal to labor.

From domestic activities such as cooking and baking to cosplaying as Walmart cashiers, while many are in by some were all of these trends on TikTok. It is actually nothing new. The quote unquote simple life with a romantic undertone of poverty has become almost an aesthetic, just like Marie Antoinette. The last queen of France before the French Revolution, who was known for her absurd lavish lifestyle, even she romanticized labor

by building the Little Hamlet, which is a modest peasant village, where she sometimes went to this backyard farm to dress up like, a peasant and will milk cows, 10 gardens, and play pretend. Although the extent to which this is true is controversial amongst historians, there lacks no evidence of an appeal to domesticity and even poverty to the rich.

From making cereal from scratch to living in luxury vans or an 1800 farm and hand-milking cows when your dad is a billionaire who founded JetBlue Airlines. Before we begin the video, I want to make it clear that there is absolutely no hate to war the people who chose one lifestyle over another. If anything, from an artistic and filmmaking viewpoint,

I enjoy watching a lot of the content we will be talking about, and look up to the men and women for their success at such an early age, whether in career or in family. So without further ado, let us talk about the rise of the tradwife culture. We'll talk about Nara Smith and Emily Mariko, both incredibly sweet and competent women I admire, who have been getting quite a bit of backlash lately which scratches the surface of how the internet culture has completely distorted our view of money nowadays and explore why do rich people like to pretend to be poor the trophy wife to tradwife fantasy here's all the food i made my husband for super bowl sunday how to become a traditional wife number one embracing ultra traditional gender rules into your marriage the man he is the provider

the main breadwinner the woman the wife she does the cooking and some of us might be familiar with the trophy wife stereotype usually with an image in our mind of an attractive young woman who is married to an older successful man the wife's beauty and youth signify the status of the husband she is married to think Naomi as the wife of jordan belford in the wolf of wall street daffney sylvan as the stay-at-home wife of cameron in season two of the white lotus daisy the wealthy beautiful and charming socialite married to tom buchanan a a wealthy and powerful men. Although these women have different personalities and types of beauty,

when it comes to the dynamics with their husband, they swallow their pride and bow in front of the money and luxurious lifestyle their men will bring. From the Kardashians to the real housewives of wherever to the White Lotus, pop culture never ceases to be obsessed with women living the good life. But moreover, women living the good life handed to them. The fantasy of not having to lift a single single, a single finger or brain cell for an employer, yet having a credit card that never maxes out, if only until it becomes true for some people.

Welcome to a day in the life as a trad husband. I wake up bright and early to get ready for the day before my wife wakes up. My role as a husband is to look good for my wife. Wouldn't want her leaving me for a younger man at the office. And what kind of trad husband would I be if I didn't have dinner ready on the table the second she gets home from work? Gentlemen, let us remember that our role in marriage is not to be lesser than our wives, but to respect and submit to them no matter what. If you score on TikTok long enough, you might come across a very specific type of content,

posted by women in flowery dresses from lavish country kitchens. Tradwife, short-hand for traditional wife, does not refer to your ordinary stay-at-home mom. She is perfect. Her home is spotless. Her makeup is on point. She makes nearly everything from scratch, usually in a perfect dress. For anyone who might be familiar with a 50 sitcom, she walked straight out of there. The movement emerged on social media around six years ago, gaining popularity on Reddit.

One of the well-known TikTok trad-wife figure is Esty Williams, a 26-year-old tradwife who lives with her husband in Virginia. You can find her feed of pictures and videos wearing a-line dresses with immaculately styled blonde hair, while waiting for her husband to come home to her. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify.

Want to talk ETS with the people behind them? Join me, Etienne Jean-Cabouchard on the Upside Ticker Talk. We dive into what's moving markets with timely analysis, trends, and answers to ETF questions you've actually been thinking about. Hit play on the upside ticker talk and elevate your ETF investing IQ. The underlying premise of the Trad Wife is for women to take up quote-unquote traditional wife roles by staying at home while their husbands go out to work and work. bring back financial resources. Of course, everything is fine and lovely when the perfect love

story continues until the end of their lives. Until you remember, the U.S. divorce rate is in the 50% range. When little girls start dreaming only of cashing in their youth and beauty by how to get the most profitable marriage, that begins to be a little concerning. No wonder there's been a surge of angry comments on the Tradwife trend and even Forbes is saying that the quote-unquote Tradwife movement is anti-feminist. But is it true for all the women who some will embody the Trad Wife lifestyle? Let us analyze the two case studies of Nara Smith and Emily Mariko. Today is my husband and I's fourth wedding anniversary so I decided to wake up super early and make some bagels and cream cheese from scratch. If you've been on TikTok lately, you almost certainly

have come across a stunning woman in a classy dress or cardigan making the most aesthetic and delicious home-cooked meals for her, her husband, and children from scratch. Yes, you heard it right. Every single thing from scratch. From the bread to the cheese to cereal, two kinds of them, to ice cream, to the Oreo in the ice cream, to the chicken. Just kidding, although I wouldn't be surprised if she started raising her own chicken. It is completely mesmerizing. I personally love watching her videos. There's something so soothing and calming about them.

And damn, all the food looks amazing and everything so clean and tidy and perfect. But sometimes being overly perfect is also a problem. Recently, Narrow Smith has been getting a lot of backlash, critiquing her for creating unrealistic fantasies of domesticity and portraying a quote-unquote false idealized mom life. As she uses the luxury of time and leisure to make everything from scratch, where are the children?

What about the messes of raising a family? They are performing labor in these videos. It's always something that, strictly speaking, is unnecessary and they are doing it the hardest way possible. It is for show, it is all a performance. She is quote-unquote selling a false promise of marriage and promoting the idea of a comfortable and luxurious life by marrying well. I think most people are enraged by the privilege of choice when it comes to

labor, such as cooking. When regular people cooked, oftentimes not out of enjoyment, but because eating out all the time could be costly, the rich are taking it as a pastime. When regular people do not have the time to make things from scratch, because of the time pressure from work and family responsibilities, the rich seems to have all the time in the world to even make their own olive boiled and add that to their homemade cheese. When a burden to you is suddenly enjoyed by someone else, just because they are privileged enough so they can and if they ever get bored, they can simply stop. That is why the internet is mad.

It's as if you have to read a textbook 30 times to pass and someone who will get a hundred either way just flips a page in front of you for fun. It feels ironic and humiliating. I agree that the life of Nara Smith is not is not something that could be easily replicated by her audience. And as a viewer, I understood that from the beginning. This is a 22-year-old influencer model whose husband is Lucky Blue Smith, a high-profile model.

Of course, her life will be vastly different from a fresh out of college 22-year-old who is just beginning to figure out rent and adulting. But I do think to a large extent, the woman is just sharing her love for her family and making food. not to flex wealth and the privileged choices that come with it. There are also many creators who are making food from scratch on TikTok but do not get attacks and labeled as anti-feminist because of that. Feminism is about respecting all paths, including being married, motherhood, God forbid, baking.

Yes, I do see how our content romanticizes homemaking, but I also think a lot of people are using feminism as a cover for their jealousy and envy towards a beautiful, happy, successful woman in her 20s. Because of how unobtainable Narah's life really is. And that is exactly why she gained an audience that is curious. The point is not to compare yourself to her aesthetic life, her dreams, her accomplishments, that is her life.

Unlike SD Williams, Nara never preach her lifestyle as a wife or model. She never created tutorials about being an expatriate wife. The woman also has a career as a model. She's allegedly been modeling since 14. And even if she didn't, being a mother or homemaker is just as respectable as a choice. It is up to the audience whether her life is aspirational or unrelatable. Another big lifestyle creator recently under a lot of scrutiny is Emily Mariko,

the Queen of Salmon on TikTok, and also known for her aesthetic cooking videos who just launched her merch, a $120 toad bag. A lot of the comments are saying how unreasonably priced the to-beye. bags are, quote, your bag is the cost of my eye exam. Quote, this looks like a freebie gift bag with a purchase. Meanwhile, others started digging up her background and criticizing her for having graduated Columbia with a BA in neuroscience and behavior, worked in L'Oreal and META, but decided to do influencing and selling a picture-perfect version of domesticity because that makes more money

and that's how dystopic our society has become. First of all, I completely agree that Emily Mariko has a very impressive education and career background. But what I disagree on is the condemning undertone that one certain career path or life path should be seen as superior or inferior to another. If Emily didn't go to college or worked in big corporates, does that make her current career as an influencer more justified? What then constitutes an appropriate profession

and who is to determine that? More on this later, I do agree that the pricing is high, for a tote bag and if intended for the average household, it's a miscalculation of the market. But there is also a market for luxury tote bags, if that is what she's aiming to achieve. However, it is certainly true that for many celebrities to influencers, the sensitivity to money is getting more and more warped. Where Lambeaus are casually destroyed, million-dollar mansions are where people feel sad and lonely. looking at houses. It's definitely a good distraction for like everything else that's going on in my life.

And Walmart is a fun place to play cosplay. I don't know about you guys, but that video totally inspired me to show my love for Walmart. Just look at my smiling face. New money. Quote, people are becoming, you know, just very fatigued by influencers, for sure, especially as they are struggling to buy the groceries to put in the tote bag. With the new wave of the attention economy, new money has been generated with influence, thus raising a new generation of millionaires, some of whom are still too young to understand

the responsibilities that come with their new influence and wealth. When the D'amalos sisters dressed up in cashier Walmart uniforms for a comedic TikTok video promoting their new popcorn brand, they never wondered if real people were earning minimum wages, wear that uniform, do it not for a good laugh, but to work 12-hour shifts four days a week to barely afford to live. Quote, I wish I had enough money to cosplay as a retail worker, so fun being in the working class, said one comment. It is true that blowing up as such a young age, without a full grasp of their own identities and an overwhelming amount of wealth and

hate are extremely towing on the D'amelio sisters. Think back to some of the things that I said in interviews three years ago, yeah, hate comments don't bother me and I was like, you went home and cried all night because of it. I would say things to make people think one thing, but inside I was very shelter. And I have no doubt that the amount of psychological damage from being so exposed on the internet is unimaginable. But the echo chamber that the new money has created made so much. So many celebrities and influencers like the Damelios, out of touch, and insensible.

As if money is just numbers to be freely thrown around. Jobs are a spur of a moment type of fun activity and poverty or bills are unfamiliar verbiage from another world. Don't get me wrong, as a creator and knowing many creators who hold their art and their community to the highest degree of care, this is not an easy job. But it is a very privileged career path. when it comes to compensation and opportunities. The mental struggles such as the depression and unhappiness that the Demelio suffer in their

million dollar mansions are absolutely valid. But it does not excuse the tone deaf attitudes toward working and labor. I'm in the process of figuring out how to avoid a 9 to 5. Specifically a 9 to 5 corporate desk job. Romantic poverty. Tying everything with the whole crowdwife drama. The glam of social media is making studying hard in school, working on 9-to-5, seem so futile.

What is the point of trying so hard to make a living through a job, just to struggle to pay rent or afford food when rich teenagers can cosplay to work whenever they want to, and beautiful girls have the time to make cereal from scratch because they are influencers. The picture-perfect lives of the rich, gorgeous influencers make the working-class life mundane and suffocating, as if mocking the lack of choice people have because they are not them. On the other hand, the rich romanticizes poverty by painting a skewed picture of the working class, hustling hard and overcoming their circumstances.

Not knowing that many poor people who work so hard every single day still remain poor. Yet there lacks no evidence that a quote unquote poor life where one has to exert extra labor and effort is the new romantic lifestyle. However, living in a rich modified van life is not the same as not being able to afford a home and being forced to be nomadic.

Baking a loaf of rustic bread, hand-moking cows with your children at your ballerina farm in front of millions of followers is not the same as not being able to afford bread and force to make everything from scratch. From Balenciaga's $1,500 dirty shoes to Rick Owens $2,000 distressed jeans to Chanel's graffiti cloth handbag at almost $13,000. Having the poverty look is almost a new. way of stating wealth of knowing that you're so rich that it is fun to be poor an aesthetic and this is a core to the extreme and dark side of the tradwife trophy wife new money issue

domesticity is not an aesthetic labor is not an aesthetic poverty is not an aesthetic and working a job is not superior or inferior to being a nepo and influencer a full-time wife. We all take different paths to fulfill our financial needs and to make life more meaningful. But the echo chamber of TikTok and social media is very monotone. There is such a big appeal to easy money. Money from a rich husband, money from blowing up and going viral, money from anything and anywhere other than working under a boss. I really don't want to work anymore. There's never been such a disdain for working. Because of all the rosy fantasies of the cushy lives, of those who quote unquote won life's lottery.

I want to tie this back to my experience of working as a CPA, then marketer in tech while doing content. First, I do not regret working in finance or in tech while building my career as a creator. For me, I know my passion and heart lie in content and creativity, but coming straight out of college being so fresh to society and the adulting world, I still had to face the reality that I had no money in the bank, and no experiences or skills as a creator,

but very thankfully, a job that would teach me skills and put a roof over my head. Ultimately, there are many things I appreciate in my three career paths in finance, in tech, and in content creation. Working for someone else is not inferior to working for yourself or not working at all because you have money handed to you.

You are getting paid to build up your toolbox. So one day if you do decide to work for someone else or yourself, you have assets, and value to bring to the table. I think it is truly a gift to be able to add value to other people's lives, whether to society through your role in an organization or independently, and to people you love by making them a hearty meal. No one single way is superior to another,

and each should be treated as respect instead of being overly romanticized and fantasized as an aesthetic. Both the beautiful childwife trope and the rich pretend, to work and live a restricting life for vibes. So no, there is nothing shameful about not having a beautiful mansion when you're 20 all the time to make a bread and hummus from scratch in a gown or a getaway farm to pretend you're poor. Working a quote-on-quote normal job to put a roof over your head is not shameful. It is respectable. Having the ability to take care of yourself and others is respectable. It is respectable to know that you earn every single solid brick of foundation towards the future you want to build. And it is comforting to know that your value is not capped by any individual other than yourself.

So what are your thoughts with the Tad Wife trend and the richest obsession with being poor? Comment that below and like this video to help the algorithm push it to more people who need to be aware of the dangers of both extremes. Subscribe for more video essays and see you next week. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear.

of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-meat products for always 375 and get Life brand pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready with a whole world and more.