There Are No Girls on the Internet - Why trad wife content is taking over social media right now — BEST OF TANGOTI

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Have you been seeing a lot of content on social media romanticizing women not working outside of the home?  Jo Piazza, host of the hilarious and insightful podcast Under the Influence, breaks down why we're seeing so much trad wife content right now.   #TradWives: sexism as gateway to white supremacy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/tradwives-sexism-gateway-white-supremacy/ Listen to Under the Influence: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-influence-with-jo-piazza/id1544171101See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes. makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. people want nostalgia, even if it's a false nostalgia. And this nostalgia for a quote-unquote better time when women were, quote-unquote, traditional is really obscenely misplaced.

There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. If you are a woman, listen out because I need to tell you something kind of important. It turns out we have all been tricked. Oh yes. Feminism was alive, and it was just a scam to get us working outside of the home so we could provide more taxable income to the government. It turns out that we were much better off back in the 50s as traditional housewives. Think about it. We didn't have to work outside of the home, and we could spend all of our time raising our kids and running a household. And we were so much happier back then, too. You know, back when we as women couldn't own property, couldn't vote, couldn't take out a credit card.

Oh, and it was also legal for our spouses to rape us. So if you spend any time at all on TikTok, you're probably seeing an influx of this kind of content, which is commonly called tradwife content, short for a traditional wife, that posits that women weren't just happier, but also we were more empowered when we stayed at home and embraced more traditional gendered roles in the household.

And I believe that this is not a coincidence. Against the backdrop of some pretty scary and heavy political and social happenings, things like economic instability, impending climate crisis, which always disproportionately harms women more, but gutting of Roe versus Wade and the loss of the right to control our own bodies. I think content like this does two things. One, it responds to and exploits the understandable fear and anxiety that a lot of women are feeling, particularly in the absence of any kind of a meaningful institutional support. And I also think it's kind of meant to soothe us in a way. You know, Don't be too angry ladies. You were much better off without rights anyway. But all of this content

is just a depiction of a fantasy life that never even really existed. And it's yet another way that social media is trying to sell women on a dangerous lie. I'm Joe Piazza and I'm an author, journalist, and podcaster. Most recently the host of the podcast called Under the Influence. On Joe's great podcast Under the Influence, she chronicled, how the business and culture of influencing social media and the internet has impacted women. And right now, a lot of what she's seeing includes trad wife content. So your podcast is amazing. And that was one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you today because, you know,

I've been scrolling social media a lot lately. And I can't seem to get away from this like, I guess, trad wife content, this content made by women that is sort of giving us this idea that being a traditional stay home wife and mother is the path to power and happiness for women. Have you seen this content on your feed? Yeah. Not only have I seen this content on my feed, but it has been dominating my feed for some reason. I don't, maybe sometimes I'm like Instagram knows I'm pregnant and wants to force me to stay home in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant forever. And it thinks you'd be happier if that's how you lived your life. And they think that'd be happier. And you know,

So my gut reaction to this is, and it's the same as it is with most things, if you want to stay home and be a quote unquote traditional wife and, you know, take on all of the trappings of domesticity that we're popularized by mass media in the 1950s, and this is what you really want, fucking awesome. You do it. You do you. And my feminism is mostly centered on women choosing what makes them happy.

I do not necessarily think that this is the path to empowerment for the majority of women. But I do think that this is becoming so popular. And we know that Instagram surfaces things that they think will soothe people's adult brains as they make them more adult. Because the world is kind of a disaster right now. And when the world is a disaster, people want nostalgia, even if it's a false nostalgia. And this nostalgia for a quote unquote better time when women were quote unquote traditional

is really obscenely misplaced. Yeah, it almost seems like it is painting a fantasy portrait of a time that did not exist because, you know, even for white women back in the day, I'm not necessarily quick to say that they were so happy, you know, it was like legal for your spouse to rape you. You couldn't own problem. you couldn't, you know, take, like, have your own money.

Like, I don't. You couldn't have a credit. You couldn't have a credit card. Right. And. Yeah. So, I mean, it's most, let's be honest. It's mostly can't having a credit.

It's mostly not having a credit card and rape, marital rate. Right. And so I think it, like, it harkens back in a way that, that paints these times as, like, really rosy. And, and, yeah, it's like a fantasy world that never even existed even during that time. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And not to mention the fact that it,

absolutely. 100% never even existed in media for black women and women of lower economic statuses and immigrant women. So, yeah, it's a completely, completely false nostalgia. And I think you hit on something interesting, which is that these TikToks, especially that I see, that really seem to be trying to convince women that we've been lied to into thinking that having a job and, you know, working outside of the home is empowering. It really, for that narrative to work, you basically have to ignore non-white women. You have basically say, like, I'm a white woman talking to other white women in a world where people who are not white, if they exist, we're not speaking to them, we're not thinking about their

experiences, we're not interrogating that at all. No, no, exactly. The whole idea of a happy woman who enjoyed an idyllic life in the home, tending to her family while her husband did the wage-earning labor, is just kind of a fantasy. Obviously, it certainly did not exist for non-white women, and it kind of didn't even really ever exist for white women either, or not the way we've been led to believe anyway. In fact, Joe says the entire happy house white thing was a creation presented by a few specific pieces of mass media that made its way into the culture and just kind of stuck. I mean, the whole trad wife's aesthetic really does come from a very narrow sliver of 1950s sitcoms. And we're talking June Cleaver,

We're talking daddy, father knows best, daddy knows best. I mean, the shows we saw in Nick at Night as kids, really. And it was mass media telling us that this is what the world looked like. What it didn't look like that for the majority of white women, it never looked like that for black women, women of a lower economic status, immigrant women. And I think, look, we're desperate. We are desperate to cling to something because the world isn't working right now. I don't think that the concept of women working outside the home, I think work has failed all of us, not just women.

Work has failed to empower us as a human race right now. And so there is this small set of people saying, well, what if you didn't have to work? Look at these women who didn't have to work, these like three women who didn't have to work in 1954. Don't they look so happy in their gingham dresses with their beach waves that they never could have really gotten in 1954? they do that shit with the Dyson handwashed. Yeah, I love your point that we're, even if you're thinking about mass media from the 50s, the Tradwife stuff from that was shown there,

it's only a small, like, subsection of shows. It's like Lucille Ball, even she wanted to be on the show in, or be in Ricky, in Desi's show back in the day. So like, they're not even demonstrating that like it was a dominant, you know, a dominant culture. Never. Lucy wanted to work. Lucy was messy. Lucy was, I mean, I love Lucy.

I just said I love Lucy. Because she was delightfully fucked up in so many ways. And she kind of bucked the trend of the trad wife that was on TV in so many ways. You don't see that if you just like, you know, glance at one episode of the show, but she really did it. And Lucille Ball in real life was a goddamn baller. She owned her brand. She owned her shit. She owned her show.

So that, she was not a trad wife. in any way, shape, or form. But just the fact that we keep getting served this on Instagram, and this is not what I want to be seeing right now. I want to be seeing more nap dresses and caftans. And frankly, I'm just in the mid for some fucking cap memes. I don't want to see it travel. Let's take a quick break.

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And we're back. To be clear, there is absolutely no. nothing wrong with not working outside of the home or finding enjoyment in the domestic. But what can be scary are the ways that trad wife content can present a palatable pipeline for women to be led into extremist ideology. Yeah. And I think that you make a good point about the way that it's definitely being like surfaced right now for whatever reason. And I think that's what I think can be kind of almost harmful, right? Like treadwife stuff for me is like a little annoying.

a little, I find it a little bit smug, but I know that a lot of that content can really be a pipeline into like more extremist thinking. You know, if you are saying like, oh, well, the world was much better in the 50s and the 40s when, you know, people of color, quote, knew their place and women knew their place. It's like a hop, skip, and a jump away from some pretty nasty, extremist, you know, ideology. I wouldn't even say it's a hop, skip, and a jump. That's giving it too much credit. That's saying that it would take us three steps to get there. I mean, I think we're kind of just teetering on the edge of this dangerous territory. It also, it's also for me, very dangerous because it pits two groups of women against each other. It pits the woman who does

stay at home for whatever reason to take care of her children, to take care of her home, because she fucking has to, because there's no goddamn child care in this country, against the woman who either chooses to work because she wants to, works because she has to. And it's setting up this dichotomy that says, oh, like, this life is better than this life or this woman is so different from you that you are at odds with her when at the end of the day, we're all doing labor, raising children is labor, making meals cleaning the house, it's labor. Like, neither of these things is necessarily better than the other one. Yeah, that's actually my biggest, other than the like extremist ideology.

That's one of my biggest problems with this kind of trad wife content is that it really, I think a lot of times hinges on this aspect of comparison. And that's part of it that I don't like. I think there's like a smugness to it that's like, I figured something out that other women are too stupid or too shallow to see. And I just feel like if people,

like I think people should do whatever makes them happy, whatever they can afford to do, you know, I also think there's a kind of, in some of the content, there's a kind of persecution complex, like, oh, I don't want to be on Tinder or in the office or away from my child or having my children in public school and I'm demonized for it. And I think in 2022, I don't, this is my opinion. I don't necessarily see a lot of people demonizing women who stay, who aren't working outside of the home. I think that like, frankly, if, in my opinion, if you can, if you figured it out how to make that work for you, like, I'm jealous, if anything. Like, I think that's great. God bless you. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think you're right. It sets up this dichotomy of two different groups of women where one is better than the other

or one's choices are better than the other or more real than the other. And I just think it's not really a binary. Plenty of people, especially parents will work, will leave the workforce, come back to the workforce. It's not this binary thing where if you are able and enjoy not working outside of the home, that is like a, that innately makes you better. I just think it like, it negates the reality of just like being a person who has to make choices that are right for their lives. Totally, totally, absolutely.

And also a lot of the tradwife content, much like most of the content on Instagram, is a glossified version of reality. And it's also a lie. You know, a lot of these traditional wives claim that this Chad wife lifestyle is about paying, homage to a slower, more intentional lifestyle. There's nothing slow about being at home with two toddlers. Are you kidding? Like, give me my workday any day where I'm like sitting at my computer

and drinking coffee rather than getting up every two minutes to be like, I need strawberries. This water doesn't have enough ice. There's something weird in between my toes. What the fuck? That is not slow and intentional. That is being, I say this all the time. I love my kids. Like, I really, really like them. I like being a mom. And I also don't really want to be alone one-on-one with them for longer than three hours at a time. I don't.

I'm not, I'm exhausted. I need a break. And I just, for me, striking a balance between doing meaningful work and caring for, I also don't want to come home at night and have them already in bed, right? So meaningful work with caregiving. I mean, that's the goddamn sweet spot. for me. And I think everyone has to find their own sweet spot. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think, you know, that's, at least for me, like, that's what feminism is about, like, people, like women being

able to make the best choices for them and that being okay. And I think, you know, every time I see one of those TikToks, it's like, I live a slow life. Part of me wants to be like, what part of a slow life involves setting up a tripod. You know what I mean? Like, if I'm living a slow life, I'm not, Like a lot of the TikToks that I see on that are like probably involve an incredible amount of like work to put together. Oh my gosh, it doesn't look so slow and soft to me. It actually looks like a lot of work went into this on top of being around your kids, which we know is exhausting and draining. Awful. I mean, let's be honest, a lot of it is awful.

Yeah, those beach waves, that wasn't slow. It took a lot of work. Those eyelashes, you all wear, you all get fake eyelashes on. There's nothing slow and intentional. Actually, it's intentional. There's nothing slow about putting on fake eyelashes. Oh, no, it's incredibly time. consuming. And like, yeah, and I think that's, I don't know, part of me wonders if like,

there's just something about this content that is tailor made for social media and that it invites comparison. And it can, it is an easy way to sort of polish up a lie, you know, that like you're living a slow life. You're so centered and in touch with your kids and yada, yada, yada. But in fact, it can be none of that, but you're presenting this very pretty package to women and moms. A lot of whom are frankly at their limit. They've been doing remote learning. They've been through this pandemic. We've gone through like tampon shortages and baby formula shortages and no, no meaningful institutional support or help. Selling, continuing to sell moms this polished up lie is almost kind of cruel to me. It is cruel. It's absolutely cruel. And I think it's just,

it's a very patriarchal view of the work of motherhood. of saying, oh, look at these beautiful pictures of these beautiful houses. This is so easy. This is a slower life. No, that is work. That is so much labor. And I've dabbled in the domestic arts at times.

And frankly, that's harder work for me than having a dozen meetings in a day, trying to make a zucchini dead, okay? Like it's just like, I'm not good at that. It's not innate to me. That's not to say someone else doesn't wildly enjoy it. And I do think that we have sidelined, we've sidelined work in the home, right? And the big, my biggest issue is always that we

just don't call things done in the home work. But neither do the trad wives. They're blowing off that work. They're saying this is a slower and easier lifestyle and not recognizing that everything that a woman does in the home is actual work. Yeah, I think that's a good point that like, if you are a mom or a parent who is engaging in the pretty exhausting work of raising little humans, to have someone go on social media and be like, actually, this isn't labor, this isn't work. This is just something that, you know, that you should always enjoy that should come naturally to you as a woman, that should just be really pleasing and nice and happy and gentle and slow. I think a lot of parents, the work of raising a child does not feel happy or slow or any of that.

And I don't know, it's just another way to lie to women about the work that we're all doing, that we are doing and sort of this burden that we all have to, that we're all should should enjoy it all the time. It's just like another added way that we're just not supported. No, it's really, it really is. It's another way of putting it down and putting down the labor that we put into a life, to make a life, to raise human. I think, I think that raising human beings is one of the hardest things that I do.

do in this portfolio of many things that I do in our economically precarious society. But it also, it's just, it remains undervalued in the traditional wives movement. While they claim that they're elevating it are continuing to undervalue it by saying this is an easier way of life. Oh, that's so true. I really want to see like the 70s, 80s era completely checked out mom who has not seen her kids all day. And when they come home, she's like, oh, I hope you've been fed because I'm not making dinner.

I want that mom to come back into vogue. Yeah, I mean, the parenting book that I want to write and then no one will let me write because cancel culture is a parent like it's 1984, man. Put him in the way back of the car. Let's find some candy cigarettes, right? And just, and plop them in front of the TV and give them all the sugary cereals because, you know what, and smoke, I guess smoke and drink in front of them too, because that was my life. even though if I had a cigarette now, I'd probably die,

but sometimes I still think about it, about how, like, wonderful it would be. And I feel like I turned out fucking great. And I was a latchkey kid whose parents chainswove two packs of cools a day in front of me. I don't even have asthma. It's honestly so funny to see the different, like,

I don't want to say trends, but waves of parenting. Because, yeah, I was parented like that. I feel like I was the last generation of kids whose parents were like, go outside. I don't want to see you for several hours. And if you did that today, you'd be arrested. Well, it was funny. I have a story which will probably get me arrested,

and I don't care anymore. Just don't take my kids away, okay? I'm a good mom. But it's pouring fucking rain yesterday at school pickup. And my husband hates using a car because we live in the city. And so, like, obviously, like, I drop my toddler off at her first day of preschool.

Pick her up again in the pouring rain. I'm seven months pregnant, by the way. I'm huge. when I asked another parent and had a car there if they could drive me the four blocks home to drop me off. I'm like, oh, I don't know if I have enough seats. It was like a massive super. I'm like, what is pile on to the way back? It's four blocks.

They wouldn't do it. They're like, there's no seat belts back there. And I was like, it's the way back. It's okay. I'm like, you know, I mean, like, again, like, I'm not going to do it for like a three-hour road trip with my kid. But like, we're just so afraid of everything anymore. And I think it's created, this is a whole other episode, it's creating fucked up kids. It's creating kids who don't know how to live in the goddamn world as the world is burning it around us.

But that's another podcast that no one will let me do. I had that same experience on a family trip recently where my sister-in-law, we were piled into a car. And she was like, I'll just hold her on my lap. Carsey, we're going two blocks. It's fine. Two blocks. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.

Again, like, I think so many corners of the Internet are dark and terrible for women. And the ones that are dark, the most dark and terrible are the ones that look the prettiest. That's such a, I mean, I think you're right because, you know, I'm not a parent, but I can imagine if you're a new mom, it's scary. And then you go to these social media places or spaces that are sensibly supposed to be about support and helping you. And they just make you feel that much more inadequate and alone and terrified. Terrible. I would never want to be a new mom again. and be scrolling the internet and looking at Instagram.

I'm just happy that I'm an old mom at this point who is just going to let a third child fall out of my body and probably sleep in a cardboard box next door to. But I just, yeah, I don't have time for it. But thinking if like I was so terrified about new motherhood, which all new moms are, and then they see these kinds of pictures and they're like, I'm failing. Well, women, we think we're failing every day.

I wake up and feel like a failure, even though, like, rationally, I know that I shouldn't. I write good books. I make good podcasts, but, like, I still feel like I'm failing every day. We don't need another person to tell us that we're failing. Especially not doing so under the guise of, I'm telling you this to help you. This is just for your own good that you need to know this information about how much you're failing as a mom. Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

So, I don't, again, like, women working in the home, raising children. doing domestic labor, good thing. Women that say that we, women have failed by being in the workforce, work force, fuck you. Fuck you real hard. More after a quick break. 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, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's 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. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to you. Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's point game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level they would. we've never seen before.

And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard

guys like Nas Reed. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too.

Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, I said, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it.

I do have one last quick question for you. So speaking of all things, throwbacky and traditional, especially for women, I happen to know that you have a particular interest in a one miss, Laura. If you don't know who that is, she was the writer of the series Little House on the Prairie, which became a TV show and was massively influential. Can you tell us about that interest and where it might take you next? What a badass bitch she was. Yes, I love me, Simaererangels Wilder. I read all the books growing up, but I'm not as much of an obsessive as my dear friend, Clinness McNickle, who co-hosted under the influence with me and who also married my husband and I in front of a Sphinx seven years ago. I mean, she's like a freak about Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And but we're both obsessed with how this woman's real life stories of growing up on the prairie have become the most read books, probably among the most red books in the entire world and also have shaped how we view the American West. And we are doing a new podcast called Wilder, which, comes out in March where we spent a good chunk of this summer traveling around the United States going to the Laura Ingalls Wilder homesteads and revisiting what her legacy means to America, what she got wrong. She didn't get everything right. She fucked up a lot of stuff. Like she really, there's a lot more that she could have included in those books about what was happening in black

America at the time, what was happening with the indigenous people whose land that her family was constantly moving on to. That said, she was so ahead of her time in terms of being a wild child who just wanted to explore the world. And the things we reported out while doing this podcast have been so fascinating. My favorite is that Laura is really huge with Japanese tourists. Huge. She's huge in Japan.

Who knew? And it's for a couple of reasons. One, Japanese schools often use the Little House books to teach English. The darker side of that, many of the internment camps forced people to read the Laura Engels Wilder books here in America. And then the television show was wildly popular. So these little towns, these little very white rural towns where Laura's from get bust loads of Japanese tourists visiting them every year. but to their, like the towns love it and it has actually opened the town's eyes to different cultures

that they never would have experienced were it not for Laura. And so, and that's just like one of the little tidbits that we loved when we were doing this. And yeah, that podcast is coming out in March. I'm also hoping to work on a podcast about Judy Blume and her enduring legacy on our lives. Oh my God. Please, I am obsessed with Judy Blum when I was a kid, the book,

Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret. Are you there, God? It was, we, like, trade. I mean, this is, we used to trade it. Like, when I was in, like, fourth or fifth grade, it was, like, we thought it was, like, the most grown-up, like, you know, book about our bodies and our, our, the way, you know,

we would, like, trade it to each other, like, have you read this? Mm-hmm. I know, I know. That one, and then also Dini in forever. I'm like, this is the dirtiest sex I've ever read about. Yeah, all right, great. You're going to come on that show. I'm trying to get that greenlit right now.

So you're coming on it. I'm going to tell everyone that you're right. I'm in. I'm in. I cannot wait. Right. Joe, thank you so much for being here. Where can folks keep up with all the cool work that you're doing?

Unfortunately, the fucking Instagram. At Joe Piazza author. Like, I spend all of my days trashing Instagram and saying how much I hate it. And then I'm like, this is really the easiest place to find me. So thank you, Instagram. At Joe Piazza author is the easiest place. I'm going to have this baby in like two months, so I'm either going to go dark or I'm going to become a traditional life. Well, everyone will have to check in on your Instagram to see which way it goes.

Which way it goes. Awesome. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangoody.com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative. Edited by Joey Pat. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts.

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