There Are No Girls on the Internet - Trad wives are lying to you online - STUFF MOM NEVER TOLD YOU

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Have you seen trad wife content on social media lately? Bridget joins Sam and ANney over at Stuff Mom Never Told You to break down what's behind it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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business. Call 844-844 IHeart. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. So we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Have you been noticing that tradwife content is everywhere on social media lately?

That is, content that glamorizes and romanticizes, women doing things like not working outside of the home or submitting to a man. I joined my friend Samantha and Annie over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You to dig into what exactly is going on here. Have you seen this kind of content all over your feeds like I have? Let me know. Hey, this is Annie. And Samantha. And welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production of Eye Heart Radio. And we are thrilled to once again be joined for the first time in 2024 by the well-traveled. The well-read, Bridget Todd.

Thank you. I mean, not well-traveled lately, but maybe over the course of my lifetime, moderately traveled. Although I can't really compete with you, Annie. You really get around. How last year, your Instagrams took you all over the world. You were traveling, traveling for the podcast world. I think you're less understated. Okay. I guess the entire year of

2023, maybe recently, it feels like in the last couple of weeks, I've been traveling from my fridge to my bed to my couch, for sure. But that's really the extent of it. That's about where we've been for a while. Yes. What a journey it's been. That was 2020.

It has been. Like you say the last couple of weeks, 2020, that's been our journey. Backyard, couch, bed. Where else do you need to go? Well, we haven't gotten to see you in this virtual way. We are working on some RRL hangout soon. Hence the discussion we had about traveling previous to our recording just now.

But how was your Weirdo Christmas, your New Year's, Bridget? Weirdo Christmas was fantastic, as always. Lots of bad movies were watched. We actually did a special thing to watch horror Christmas movies, I didn't know there were so many, but like 10 out of 10 would recommend. New Year's was also fun. I feel like I'm a little, I don't know, January is such a weird time of year because you kind of start and you're like, this is going to be new year, new me. And then by the second week of January, you're like, oh, well, turns out it's still same old me. And maybe that's okay. It just feels like a little bit of a slow start. It's been really cold in D.C. and snowing.

I'm doing dry January, so I'm sober, I'm broke from Christmas, I'm tired. Like, January is just a slog. January is the hangover month. I mean, essentially, whether it's from like spending too much money, being around too many people, all of those things, just kind of recuperating. And it does, as Annie and I talked about earlier, I was like, I feel like January and February ends up being the longest months of the year. Like we did an episode and I was like, it's still January. I really thought we had hopped into at least February and we're still nowhere near. And I'm like, why is it feel like we're in the middle of the year, but we just started?

It is dragging. Maybe it's the sobriety. Maybe it's dragging. I don't know about that life, then, yes. Yeah, no, well, we have done several episodes about how neither of us are big fans of New Year's. So we're right there with you. Because I feel like it's so anti-clamatic. You're like, yes.

And then you're like, oh, this is kind of depressing to look back. on your past year and be like, I got to change all this. And then you're like, well, I can't really. Right. Totally. That takes money and time. Yes. And then once the kind of, so you have the holidays and you're kind of like, oh, boy, I could really go for this being over. The holidays end. And then you're like, okay, now I'm feeling back to the grind. Like holidays are over. There's just a thing that happens after the holiday wind down kind of wears off that just is so, it's just such a slog. It's a slog of a month, I think, for everybody. So for folks who are listening and maybe feel like they're a little off, feeling a little weirdzies,

I think we're all in the same boat. It's true. And it's also dark. And again, as you said, cold. And who likes the cold? It's not me here in the South. I prefer gold to hot, but it is dreary. It's like a, and there's not like anything really coming to look forward to. I don't look forward to like Valentine's Day. Like, there's no, It's just like, okay, I'll wait a couple months for something. Sunshine. Just hold on to St. Patrick's Day. Or Arbor Day.

When is that? I don't know. Arbor Day. Yes, I'm a huge celebrator of Arbor Day. Well, I have to say, you really came in swinging with this topic. And I have been thinking about this, because I'm actually not on social media a lot, but I have seen I feel like I'm one of the only people I know and this, I'm sure it's not true,

but in my circle that watches a lot of YouTube. And YouTube, there's something going on with YouTube ads that I've been trying to make into an episode, but I can't quite nail down what it is. But they've become so gendered in a way that isn't new, but feels like, wow, we've gone this far back.

But it'll be something like, especially around the holidays, is like, well, my wife loves me, so she got me this thing that she can use to make my life better. Or like, it'll be from the wife's perspective and it'll be, oh, I got this because my husband's been so tired and I can make his life easier. So it's like gifts that are all about him. But it's painted as if she wants it to and she likes it to and I'm just confused by the whole thing. I don't understand. I feel you.

I feel like lately the internet and social media has become this weird marriage of gender roles and gendered expectations and commerce and capitalism all kind of like blended into one where the only kind of online experience you could ever really hope to have around that is like, buy this thing for your husband to like be a good wife? It's very weird. It's bizarre. And I've had moments where I'm like, is this? generated by AI. There's like the voices are strange. It's very strange. It might be AI. It could be. Like there's one in particular. I'm like, I need to look into, I want to investigate what is going on here. But yeah, I've just sort of seen it. And so when I saw this topic, I was like, oh, maybe Bridget can illuminate something that I'm seeing in my specific space, but from what you're

seeing on social media. So what are we talking about today? So if you've spent any time, at all on social media, you have probably seen what is called trad wives' content, right? Have you, I guess, Annie, you're not really on social media, but it does sound like you're getting a little of this on YouTube. Sam, have you encountered any of this in your time on TikTok? So, yes. So we've had media conversations on the show about the crunchy wives movement that quickly kind of devolves into being a trad wife, as well as talking about religious trauma and how that plays into the tradwife culture, as well as the Red Pill episode that we talked about,

because that actually jumps into tradwives as well. Of course, white supremacist and white feminist culture also goes into that. There's so much to this. So definitely had a little bit of research beforehand, and I definitely get it, of course, because of my For You page, FYP, any, just in case you needed to know, it does feed me the satire of tradwives and or stitching the problematic things with tradwives.

I don't follow any and I would not recognize any by name necessarily. And I know you're going to talk a little bit, but like Joe Piazza actually was on the show and we talked very briefly with her about some of the things that she has seen and she is a dress. Also her because she was coming around like Halloween after Halloween and her precious amazing costume of playing Tradwife as well. But yeah, there's definitely a lot of content. I get a lot, and we've talked about the family content stuff, which, again, aligns with that when a lot of moms of TikTok use their family content as moneymakers and to get viral. And then, of course, the Ruby Frank case, which is, Annie, just so you know, just recently a woman was convicted for child abuse and so much more after it was. released that she was abusing her kids and she was using that content with somewhat a business partner to make money off on TikTok and she was severely abusing her kids. So horrible. And she's just,

I think she might have like, I know she was in prison for or in jail for a while and then she was released and I think flipped on her business partner and was like, oh, she was the mastermind. Yes, they flipped on each other, obviously. But it was intense. And the whole content is about how she is very cruel to her children and how she punishes them by not letting them have dinner was the beginning of everything. But this type of content, which you have talked about before using children as moneymakers for content creation, but on that same line with tradwives that have been popping up so much. Totally. So it is interesting that I think that, you know, we're talking about this mix of gender and commerce that is so ubiquitous on social media.

And I think you've really nailed something that the depiction of motherhood and romantic partnership that were shown as women on social media is highly commercial. Like somebody is probably making money from that depiction in some capacity. So for folks who don't know, trad wives is short for traditional wives. And it's these content creators who make content about, ostensibly about the bliss that they find. in doing traditional domestic labor, you know, cooking, cleaning, sewing, running a household. So I should say right off the bat that like not all trad wife content is created equal. Some trad wife content creators just seem to be sort of showcasing their lives. We'll talk about some of those.

But others seem to be more directly and explicitly romanticizing and advocating for like this bygone time when women were happier primarily in the home. So I did an interview with Joe Piazza, who I'm so glad that she stopped over on y'all's pod too because she is incredible and hilarious. She has a podcast called Under the Influence All About Influencing and Women. So Joe actually makes it very clear that this bygone era where women were so happy to be staying in the home actually kind of does not exist, right? It's like a throwback and a romanticization of a time period that like did not actually really exist for women. because truly, can you really romanticize the choices made by white women at a time when they, like, could not even own bank accounts, right? Like, it's a little hard to be like, oh, well, our grandmothers were just choosing to be in the household because that was what was better.

And it's like, well, she couldn't have her own money legally. So maybe choice isn't the right word. So I say white women because I'm a black woman and we are explicitly not talking about black women. like myself, black women historically pretty much have always done wage-earning work outside of the home. Even if we wanted to stay in our homes and not do that, that really wasn't an option for us. Rose M. Kreider and Diana B. Elliott note in their report called historical changes in Stay-at-Home M.S. 69 to 2009 that even black mothers with young children were in the workforce following World War II when many of their white counterparts had withdrawn from a labor force. And in places like

South Carolina, they even had laws on the books that were requiring black women to have consistent employment outside of the home. So I just wanted to say that because I feel like when we talk about conversations about who works and who didn't work and what is a throwback to you, I just think it's important to note that we are talking about like one specific subset of women, not all women. So I should say I'm not an expert on trad wise. I did do a lot of reading for this episode. However, I do consider myself a bit of an expert on the internet and social media. And I think there are a few key parts of the conversation around Treadwives and that kind of online content that get a little overlooked. I just want to make sure that we are all

keeping in mind when we're consuming this content and talking and thinking about this content. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygle and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan, to Bob Odenkirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group? The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change.

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Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama,

the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters, to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action, with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlice on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Okay. For listeners maybe like me who have seen some weird YouTube ads, but maybe don't know what is happening on social media, specifically, what kind of content are we talking about here? So as I said, it is content that is like women baking or sewing. You know, sometimes

it's just like a woman demonstrating what her life is like. So it's like her with her kids making food, da-da-da. But some of that content is a little bit more sinister. In this kind of treadwife content, women are explicitly comparing their lives and their choices to the lives and choices of other women. I transcribed a TikTok that I think demonstrates what I am talking about. So this is from influencer Emily Allison,

who describes herself on Instagram, as counterculture thinking, child raising. I just want my kids to grow up in a free country. So I'm going to read what she says in her TikTok and just kind of imagine that, like, they're sort of cute, smarmy guitar music playing under this because that's what the TikTok is like and that my narration is synced up to videos of me wearing prairie dresses

and, like, cooking and playing with my kids. Okay, here we go. Our culture tells women that it's honorable to sacrifice everything for your job, but it's unfair to sacrifice everything for your family. That it's liberating to be sexually used by men who are not committed to you, but it's oppressive to love and respect a man who is. That it's somehow empowering to rely on the system to educate your kids, feed your family, and keep you alive, rather than have the skills to do it yourself. I say that culture is full of lies. So that's just me, like, reading a word-for-word transcript of what this person has to say.

First of all, you might think from that transcript that this person does not do wage-earning work because she is too busy, like, focusing on her family. However, according to her Instagram bio, it says that she is a writer for the far-right website, Epoch Times. So she actually does have a job, but she just wants to let us know that she has a job in a way that is, like, different and better and everybody else who has a job. Like, I don't know what y'all are doing, but like when I have a job, it's better. When you have a job,

you are making a mistake and turning your back on your family. So just so you know, I'm doing it right. Y'all are doing it wrong. So I think this content is a good example of what I'm talking about, right? Like, if Emily is so content with her life, you know, I don't think that somebody who is super content would feel the need to really compare their choices and their life to the choices in life of somebody

that they don't even necessarily know, right? Like there is something about the content that I think is meant to enrage, meant to make people feel a certain kind of way. Do you all see this? Or am I way off base here? Well, the minute you said that she was

a writer for the far right news article, I think that, again, kind of coming back to what we were talking about with red pill slash white supremacy, this level of indoctrination is the MAGA world. I doubt we have any MAGA listeners, but if you're offended, fuck you. Essentially, if it sounds offensive, but it's actually true because there's this whole underlying level of

creating more white babies, and I'm assuming this woman is a white woman. And in this whole culture of go against the zeitgeist, which now the zeitgeist is too liberal, which is that, you know, in their, in their mind, of course, in this conversation. which is, again, what we were really, like, every time I would go down this rabbit hole of anything, trad wives, anything, crunchy moms situation, it is very succinct to this ideal of moms protecting white children or the white community in itself. And this level of that has to be also meaning that we're rebellious against the norm. And those are the devils who, you know, this level of conversation.

It's like, yeah, this makes perfect sense. And that guitar playing is you're supposed to think this is a Midwestern family out in the cornfields, in their dresses, having the perfect little dinner at the tables, but that they have obviously garden themselves because they don't trust the government or the fertilizer and wore these clothes that they have made themselves, as well as the fact that, you know, they don't do doctors in that.

This level of ideal of the perfect life that kind of also insinuates, but the perfect light means you have to be white. A thousand percent. And something that you picked up on that I really want to pull out is how so much of this content also sort of has this almost like

faux persecution angle to it. Like they don't want me to be submissive to my husband. Who? Like they don't want me making homemade meals. It's like, who are you talking about that is preventing you from doing this? This is something that I've noticed a lot.

It's almost like these people want to be persecuted or, like, victimized in some way. And they really, they're so committed to wanting to feel like they're going against the grain and challenging norms that they have made that into an identity. And they've kind of like built it up that everything they do is like being challenged. Everything they do, like they don't want me to grow my own food. And it's like, who? Like, who is preventing you from doing this? if that's what you want to do. I've seen so many people say, like,

make it seem as though there's some sort of feminist conspiracy to keep women from staying at home and not doing wage-running work. And I mean, if I could afford to comfortably do that, I think I would love to do that, right? I think a lot of people would love to do that. But, like, what people are saying is, like, yeah, you should have the choice to do whatever you want to do. And what they're hearing is, like,

they're not letting me stay at home. Where are these people who are preventing women from, like, staying at home with their families if that's what they want to do? That's called capitalism, babe, and it sucks for everybody. Yeah, we're all dealing with the same harsh. We're all suffering. You know, I think that's that conversation, again, this whole, like, they won't let me do this thing or they won't let me do that thing.

And it's kind of that conversation you were talking about earlier where black women were pretty much excluded from the white feminist movement because they did not listen to the fact that black women have been working, women of color have been working the entirety of their existence from jump because they had no other choice, that the fact that they want to go to work and women should be, they're not listening to the other side of what feminism should look like. And that conversation is that it's the choice. It's the choice to do what you, whether it is to be a stay-at-home mom and to have whatever balanced life that you want, if you agreed upon it and everything is fair. for you two and there's respect, then wonderful. That's the thing. That's the choice. To have that choice is the feminist ideal. But yeah, the more I see like looking with the tradwives, they're going to a 1970s tactic of the fear mongering of feminism. Right. They want to take away men. They hate all men. They want to kill men. A. B, the fact that they can't wear, you can't wear bras as if you do, you're not a feminist and you can't wear, like,

whoever said these things? Who said this? What is happening? This fearmongry that has come back and that they have not only taken this on, they're pushing it so hard that those who always hated the ideal of something absolutely are gripping to this.

It's like, yes, they are trying to take away these things from me or make me do these things that I hate the feminists. Yes. It is such a strong. man. Absolutely. And so this actually is one of the three major points that I want folks to think about and really know in terms of coming to this content with a critical eye and with a little bit of media literacy is that this kind of content is often specifically engineered to make us have a big reaction, right? So in the example that we were just talking about,

you know, that influencer does not have a huge following. She has like 20K on Instagram and I think around 40K on TikTok, which is pretty small. in the ecosystem of trad wife influencers. And so, you know, because some of these people have like millions and millions of followers. So I suspect the reason that she has to frame her video in such a smug way where it's like, my choices are good. Other women's choices, not good, is because she is trafficking on our big reaction to get engagement. If she just said, I like to homeschool my kids, I like to play with my kids, I like to cook for my husband,

I have a relationship where I wrested back to my husband. Who would care? Nobody would care because it's like, oh, good for you. She has to tweak it to be like, I'm doing it in a good way and everybody else is doing it wrong, intentionally because it gets our blood boiling to get more engagement, to get more views, and to ultimately boost her profile

where it's very clear she wants to have a big one, right? And so in some ways, this is just a good old-fashioned engagement grift where you say things in a way that is intentionally said to be a little bit inflammatory to get more engagement. Right. Gosh. That took me on a rabbit hole of like a dark time in her company where that was like, you should make people mad they'll engage with you.

And I'm like, please don't make you do that. Cool. This is a bit of a side note, but this is my new, like, media literacy battle cry, which is that we should understand how many places on the internet and how many places and influencers and people and contact creators that make up our internet discourse are doing that. They are trying to get one over on us because it is effective. We already know that social media platforms intentionally boost content that gets a lot of engagement

and that makes us angry or gets our hearts racing because it is better for their platforms. And so the dynamic where anybody who says something that is inflammatory that gets people upset, that they are rewarded with engagement, that is a bad system. And we need to be looking at it. Like, I can't tell you how many stupid TikTok skits I have gotten sucked into where I'm like, wait a minute, why do I care, like, what this fake scenario says it's happening? Like, this story time of a woman doing her makeup telling me a made-up story about a friend that doesn't exist. Like, why am I giving this my attention? And we need to put a wrench in that entire system, that entire machine that continues to crank out content like that because it's not good for us.

No. And I think a lot of it is so, and I know you're going to talk about this a little bit, but it's so dishonest and the time it takes and perhaps the production it takes to just make these videos. I always kind of laugh when I see like ring lights in their eyes, and it's clearly supposed to be like, oh, I just woke up. I'm like, no, you did it. But you do have another example of somebody who has a lot of engagement, yes. Yes. And that is. So if you don't know who Ballerina Farms is, her name is Hannah Neelyman, and she is a follower of the Church of Latter-day Saints, aka a Mormon. She married into the family that owns the airline JetBlue, so girl married very well.

She is probably not living like a rural kind of dependent on the land lifestyle. However, if you looked at her content, you might think like, oh, she's living a very humble, rural existence because that's what she wants you to think. She spends a lot of time on TikTok cooking with her eight kids on her farm. And when she's not doing that, she is competing in beauty pageants. She has almost 10 million followers. So a huge, huge footprint in the landscape. I would say ballerina farms, I would describe her as like a source of a lot of skepticism and frustration. Like she competed in a beauty pageant just, I think a few days after she gave birth, for instance.

And people were like, you know, like you're probably. not in your best shape when you just have given birth. People felt some kind of way about the fact that she was competing in a beauty pageant. But as a recent piece in glamour points out, you really would never know that her content is controversial or is a source of frustration or skepticism for people. The piece reads, Neelyman has never wavered.

She doesn't publicly address her haters. She doesn't engage with the discourse. And she doesn't try to clear the air on, for instance, whether her wealthy father-in-law bought her ranch for her family. She just continues to make bread, post videos of her dancing, and live her life. She seems to be, at least online, completely unbothered and content, which of course is its own kind of privilege when you have eight kids. But on the other hand, we have no idea what her reality really looks like, do we?

And so she does not have to engage in the kind of rage baiting that somebody who might be a less successful tradwives influencer might have to, right? Like, her thing is, like, I just make my bread and, like, smile weird and, like, pretend to be living a rural rustic life, even though I'm very wealthy. Right. Right. And there's a lot of romanticizing of, like, that kind of work and that kind of life that I think I see happen a lot in general conservative movements where, like, let's get back to the land.

I'm like, do you know how to get back to the land? Yeah, I was talking to, so my partner grew up on a farm in rural upstate New York. When I say a farm, I don't know, like I'm not a country girl. So when he was like, oh, my, I grew up on a farm, my parents live on a farm. The first time I went to visit his parents who still live on that farm, I was like, oh, I don't know what I had been envisioning, but like it is a farm farm, like a real farm. And so he grew up like tending to animals as part of his chores and they would, you know, butcher and package

steaks you know for it to eat and to sell so like a real farm and it's always so funny to him and his family how people online have convinced themselves

that farm life is this like route to a soft, slow life that is only true for people who are wealthy who are not actually farming as a source

of their existence as a source of sustenance as a source of their financial security anybody who actually lives on a farm a real farm where that farm where like you live or die

or you eat or don't eat based on how that farm is doing will tell you that it is a ton of work. People who have farms are always tired. Their schedules are wild. Like this idea that oh, you know, we're just going to buy a land and start a farm and that that's going to be an easy,

slow life. Absolutely not. That is just a fiction, a fantasy. Talk to anybody who's ever done farming. That's not true. Have they not seen that little house on the prairie? They're waking a at 4 a.m. and going to bed at 9. And they're... I know that's my reference. But no, like, to know that they actually have to wake up at the crack of dawn to make sure whether it's snowing or raining and all of that to make sure they have to take care and tend to all the

things, the living things that are on there, including any crops. And if they have, like, workers on there. And I'm assuming, because I don't know anything about this Ballerina Farmer, that if they are that wealthy and they do actually own a farm that they do hire workers and how little she's active on that farm. Maybe I'm just out of you know

speaking up too much but just like it doesn't seem like a thing that she would be doing while she's also posting pretty little pictures of herself dancing with their kids. I can confirm that they have like a pretty big staff like a paid employee who work for them. I should also say like side note. I have heard some horror stories about what is actually like going down on that farm.

If you were interested, there are Reddit rabbit holes, but like I cannot confirm any of that myself, so like don't have anything to say about it. But that is out there about some of the allegations of how the animals are treated on that farm, but like do your own research there because I don't know either way. But yes, she definitely has paid staff to do the actual labor. And again, there's something wrong with that. That's like if that's how you're going to do it. But then don't go on TikTok and make it seem like you are doing this work yourself. And it's actually not that hard.

And you actually have a slow life, a soft life. Because that's not true. Right. And so I think that's sort of like my biggest point is that I think that some of these creators are just not being totally honest in the way that we understand that most online content is probably not honest in some way. But there's something about the like, trad wife, slow life, rustic vibes, content creators,

that I think makes it harder to see when someone is basically lying to you on the internet about what their life actually looks like. And so ballerina farms might not have to like engagement farm the way that the other influencer does, but that doesn't mean that she's being totally honest about what is going down in her life or that we're getting an honest view of it because, you know, what do you call somebody who makes content to make their life look a certain way, maybe not totally accurately, to sell commercial products? A marketer, right?

Like, that is marketing. Ballerina Farms, I would argue, is a business, and her social media stick is just part of the marketing arm of this business. Like, their farm is a farm where you can buy boxes of meats from it online. Like it is a corporate entity. And so she is just like marketing her consumer goods to try to get us to buy not just the product, but into the whole lifestyle that her product

revolves around. And what's also kind of interesting is there's this creator, Caro Claire Burkey on TikTok, who has really made a thing out of doing some media analysis around Ballerina Farms as a brand. And she basically is like, we don't actually know or see the actual real person behind ballerina Farb's Hannah. We don't really see a real view of her life.

What we're seeing is the way that her corporation or her company wants us to see her for marketing purposes. She compares it to the Kardashians who, you know, we know have become literal billionaires from leveraging a highly curated peak into their personal lives to get us to buy into them as a brand. But the difference is, she says, that the Kardashians are maybe even more up front. about this dynamic than these trad wife influencers. I don't think anybody would be like, oh, the Kardashians are just trying to give us an honest look into the lives of billionaires and, like, they're just being so authentic. I don't think anybody would say that.

Anybody would know, like, oh, they want you to buy the makeup, the lip kit, the skims, the whatever, the this, to that. And they're leveraging, showing a curated look at their lives to do that. I think with these trad wife influencers, they're just not being honest about what the dynamic is. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman,

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I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered.

SportsSlice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slicelife 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. It feels like it's going backwards. Because for a long while, there was a lot of parents who were truly honest. Like, this is what it looks like to get to our videos here where they're doing the video. and doing it behind the scene, and they were being more open and transparent.

It feels like it's going back to, again, where Instagram started, and everything was so pretty. All the pictures were so perfect. And they had to show the perfect life in order to get the more ads and more views. So it feels like it's going backwards again, just like our society,

in how they are trying to romanticize, as you were saying, a lifestyle. I think that's a really, good point. And I do think that this has something to do with that. I think for a while, what popped on social media when it came to making content about motherhood was authenticity. Like, oh, I'm a mess just like you. Like, my kids are filthy and I'm exhausted and I haven't washed my hair just like you. And I think that that authenticity maybe became leveraged where like it almost felt like a curated authenticity. And so I almost wonder if

this trad wives kind of perfection is a response to this authenticity that kind of typified motherhood content on the internet of a certain era. Like if it was cool to be authentic, then now what's cool is like being like, isn't my life perfect? Like we're just coming back around. Coming back in that circle. And just as a reminder, with her having that many followers and that many views, she's making lots of money just off of her TikToks.

lots of money. Yes, like, that is my thing. There's no shame in it, but like, this is a business. And in my interview with Joe, she puts it really well that if you're somebody who is setting up a tripod, setting up lighting, putting on a face of makeup, putting on a particular outfit to film content that you then edit, publish to millions of your followers, and have built up a social media platform that might involve navigating, like, brand deals or sponsored posts, you have a job. That is employment. That is labor. So you have a situation where some of these women are making content about how they do not do wage earning work, but the strategy in which they are doing that is work.

It's like a mind. I feel like they forgot the mom blogs, which was the beginning, honestly, of all of this. And the way that it was created, it was stay-at-home moms trying to figure out how to make money to help assist and figuring out this is profitable and has now ventured into this. and as where the blogs were curated in a way that it was written and entertaining,

this is an entertainment on a different level, which is a show, is a show. Pretty much, yeah. Like, in some ways, this is just like entertainment. Like, it's like, curating a version of your life for entertainment value, right? And I've actually even heard the theory that at least some of this content is fetish content, like sexual fetish content, that it's not actually meant to be speaking to women at all or saying anything or making any kind of comment about women and what we should be doing with our lives

or not doing with our lives, that it's meant to appeal to horny men and their submissive wife sexual fantasies and that these creators have just sort of found a way to make fetish content in a way that does not trigger, you know, TikTok or whatever's not safe for work content sensors. And so like, if that's what's going on, like, more power to you, you know, do your thing.

But we need to come at this content with a little bit of like media, literacy and criticism because people would then take that content and then use it to make some kind of a point or a statement or turn it into a way to understand our own lives. And it's like, well, how would you be doing that with fetish content? Like, I don't think it's meant to help you understand how you should be living your life or making your choices. Yeah. It's going to be accidentally fetish. Right. Well, there's a, um, we passed over it, but there was a note you had in your outline that I was, I thought was interesting. It was the, um, sort of like,

cosplaying a certain type of life. Right after the insurrection happened on January 6th, I read this really long article about, like, a lot of people there were cosplaying, like, the idea of, okay, I'm going to take back our country. And then they get into trouble, and all of a sudden they're in court, and they're like, oh, God, but my whole, like, the consequences come and it just falls apart. So it does have these sort of implications that I don't think people think about when people watch that and it gets in their head and they get this idea of like, oh, I can live that life. I can live off the land or I can do all these things, but the reality is not there. And it can become a really toxic soup that infects all of us. And it sounds

like, based on my experience and what you're saying, that we're getting a lot more of this content right now. That is such a good way to put it. And something that I didn't have, but I just want to say is that I want to make it clear that I think that everybody should be able to do what they want to do. Like, my feminism is about letting people make choices for themselves. If that choice is to, like, rage bait other women online for their choices, eh, don't love that. But, you know, in terms of if you want to stay at home or work, that should be your choice. However, one thing I will say is that I have definitely seen an uptick in people giving younger women the advice that they should just marry and start having kids really young. And I don't generally get down

for one-size-fits-all advice, but for someone really young to tell them that they should not know anything about having their own money or managing their own money, that they should not try to have any kind of employment history, should this marriage fall apart, should something happen to their partner, whatever, I think that is really dangerous advice. Even if you're somebody who wants to get married young, wants to have kids young, wants to have a submissive traditional marriage, do all of those things, but make sure that you know how to take care of yourself and live your own life because nothing in life is guaranteed. Like you could be happily married forever and get married very young and then have your partner die unexpectedly or something, right? And so I think

that we're giving young women advice based on a fantasy that does not come to fruition in reality. And I think you're right, Annie, that we are seeing more. more and more of this kind of content. And I just don't think we can talk about the rise of this kind of online tradwife content without looking at where we are as women right now, which is not great. You know, we've experienced this major rollback of our rights.

The Journal of the American Medical Association actually put out a report just this week that found that since Roe fell, rape has led to an estimated 58,979 pregnancies in states that ban abortion without exception for rape. That is staggering. You know, we also are facing rising costs of things like groceries and housing. Bloomberg found that on average U.S. households will have to spend an extra $5,200 this year

just to be able to enjoy the exact same standard of living that they did last year. Add to that, things like climate instability, political instability, all things that historically women have really bore the burden of. And so I just can't help but think that we're seeing this rise in content that romanticizes and glorifies times when women had even less rights than we do right now is related to what's happening currently. Which brings me to the last thing that I want people to really keep in mind when they encounter this content online is that I believe that tradwife content is responding,

albeit oftentimes in a very distorted way, to very, very real issues that we're facing as women. You know, we're kind of being served a crap sandwich right now from being honest with you. Like, we don't have paid leave, we don't have affordable child care, we don't have any real social safety net. Women are burdened with more and more of the labor than it takes to keep a family stable with very little social or institutional help. And it just doesn't surprise me that we're seeing this online glorification of stay-at-home parenthood in a particular kind of way right now as a reaction to it. And I think that something that gets left out of the discourse is that the reasons that women are staying home are not necessarily like, to deprogram their kids from government instruction or whatever the fuck. A lot of times it's because child care is so fucking expensive

that it does not make financial sense to work outside of the home anymore. Or maybe on the flip side, both parents are working and they're just like figuring it out and just squeezing by. A lot of people are just doing what they have to do based on financial circumstances that are not great. And so that is a very different thing from choosing to work because feminism and woke society says that you have to. It is like some of these creators are creating a straw man

for why women either work outside of the home or don't, and that's actually not a reflection of the reality that most parents are facing right now. Yeah. I mean, especially during the beginning of the pandemic, there were so many articles about that of like women were being forced out of the workforce, like all of the scientific papers from women decreased.

And I think it's interesting, a lot of content like this immediately out the gate, feels defensive for whatever lifestyle. And I could see it being defensive from like women judging you. But I can also see it being maybe trying to find like a reason that it's okay that you didn't have the choice. And so let me make this look prettier. And no, no, I definitely like it. And this is definitely what I want. So I can, I think that totally makes sense, Bridget. And I think people are picking up on it because women are tired and would just love for someone to do it. Like, yes, you go out and work and let me just chill here, which is not the truth at all, but the way they make it look like

while I sit here with these pretty little kids and tell them to go take a nap. Like, if you've been in any child care, you know that's not the thing, and everything's a mess, and everything's a disaster, and cooking is hard, and being a stay-at-home mom is a full-time job in itself and deserves pay, which is the other conversation that they don't want to have trad wives is that a lot of those stay-at-home moms who love it also are like, but we should be paid. Yeah. Absolutely should.

It's labor. I mean, absolutely. Exactly. And so I think you're right. I think a lot of these influencers can really oversimplify and glamorize what is ultimately a dynamic that does not allow for women

to make the choices they want to make. Because being a stay-at-home mom because you cannot afford daycare is not the same thing as choosing it for yourself because it's what you want to do and it's because you can't afford to do it. And I think that ultimately, women deserve to have choices.

You deserve to have better choices to be able to do what we want to do with our lives. Yep. Let women do women. Just be women. Whatever it may be. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. 1,000%. Well, thanks as always, Bridget. Again, I feel like we could go on and on and on. But we will let you go for now. Where can the good listeners find you? Well, you can listen to my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. If you want to hear my full conversation with Joe Piazza, we put it out just recently. She's hilarious. Definitely recommend. can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in D.C. Or on TikTok at Bridget Makes Pods. Yes.

And hopefully we'll be able to do some IRL things. And maybe we can see some of you all there, listeners. Let's hope so. TBD. Stay tuned. Yes, stay tuned. Well, thanks as always, Bridget. And listeners, if you would like to contact us,

you can our email of Stephanie and Momstuff at iHeartMedia.com. You can find us on Twitter at MomStub Podcast or on TikTok. Talk, which we don't post very often, but we might start posting more. And Instagram at Stuff Mom Never Told You. We have a T-Public store. And we have a book. You can get wherever you get your books. Thanks, as always to our super producer, Christina, our executive producer, Maya, and our contributor, Joey.

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