GUIDE TO BECOMING A TRADWIFE
How many Beethovens will we continue to lose, as unnamed women bend over to pull a roast from the oven for the umpteenth time to feed their family?
Imagine waking up before sunrise without needing an alarm, heading to your bathroom where your hair falls perfectly into place as you take down the rollers that you put in last night. You then put on a white cotton sundress before heading to the kitchen where you make breakfast from scratch (with all organic produce of course). Before waking up your children, you put the food in an oven that costs over ten thousand dollars. By 8 AM you are presentable, fed and bathed your children while your husband gets ready for his ‘big boy’ job. Sounds like a dream, for the most part, doesn’t it? This is what most of my Instagram algorithm ended up with when I started being ‘interested’ in viewing tradwives content and took five years out of my life to fix it back to ‘normal’ afterwards.
But to a great degree, I get why one would want to become the internet’s version of a ‘tradwife’ especially in times of uncertainty. A tradwife does not have to worry about money, taxes, and the ever-ending emails that you are forced to look at before you even wake up. So, if you came here expecting to read yet another piece of why being a tradwife seems naive and why would anyone want to be one, then unfortunately this is the wrong article for you to read. My issue runs a bit deeper than that, I am more concerned about a capitalistic girl boss being repackaged and distilled down to being pretty and effortless to sell gender norms.
Hannah Neelman popularly known as ballerinafarm to me seems like the perfect example for this. Like many, I was introduced to her by The Times interview article in 2024. I remember raising my eyebrows, leaving audibly huh-s, and feeling pity for the most part when reading it for the first time. However, I want to specifically discuss Hannah’s brand Ballerina Farm, which sells products such as bone broth hot cocoa, farm protein powder and the hallmark of every tradwife video a sourdough kit. There is nothing necessarily wrong with creating a brand and selling products, if anything it is feminism that provides a landscape for women to be in business. However, what often gets me is the hypocrisy that we do not tend to acknowledge. At this point, tradwives have been uploading content regarding their lifestyle and are sourcing income from it, which seems to set an unfair precedent specifically to young girls.
I reject the notion that young girls are gullible but that does not mean that they are not impressionable. Becky, an intelligent girl in her 20s, might be exhausted from the five hundred job rejections and wants an alternative where everything might be easier and brings joy to her. At that time, marrying and becoming a tradwife seems like a better option, where she is still working, but it becomes unpaid and most of the time unpraised. Without milking content out of it, unlike the ones she was influenced by, it is harder to have a stable source of income and be financially independent. This is where the crux of my issue begins, what happens to wives and mothers who do not have pre-existing resources like Hannah Neelman, who can buy and invest in land, and is able to make sourdough from scratch without any worry about how much the electricity bill will turn up this month. What happens to the individuals when they cannot follow the guide of being a tradwife anymore? Including being unable to buy a new cotton dress every month, exhaustion catching up to them and the house not smelling like an apple pie. What happens when through this extension a woman cannot sell the dream of being ‘perfect’ to a partner who controls all the finances and is at the risk of being bored by her?
I wonder while I am making final edits with the help of my sister and emailing this to Sarah, how many girls and women have we lost to the glamourisation of being a tradwife? How many of them will wake up at 5 am and bake bread for the sake of it, while carrying her new-born and the toddler hugging her leg, without a camera in front? How many Beethovens will we continue to lose, as unnamed women bend over to pull a roast from the oven for the umpteenth time to feed their family?’ How many Water Lilies will remain unpainted because the artists of our generation are busy mopping the floors which would be blackened by evening? How many times will women sit at the end of the table (i.e., if they are lucky) with starved eyes and hearts, while the house chirps and becomes a funeral of her ambitions? How long can we survive with the deprivation of women’s curiosity, artistry, and discovery?'
