The Tradwife Epidemic: A personal choice or profitable brand?
At the beginning of 2024, while scrolling Instagram, I came across the profile of Estee C. Williams. Presenting as a 50’s housewife and labeling herself a homemaker, I was intrigued by her Marilyn Monroe-ish bleach blonde hair, long patterned dresses and ruby red lipstick framing a pearly white smile.
Upon a further deep dive, I began to discover just how extensive her dedication to the housewife image went. I found myself ingesting post after post about how a good wife dolls herself up for her husband. A good wife believes in “for better or worse, not divorce.” There are different posts where she both supports and denies how a good wife should submit to her husband, and as the cherry on top: a post about how she is “proud to stand by Donald Trump.”
My first thought was, unsurprisingly, “Wow, that’s some controversial stuff she’s promoting.” But somehow, her controversial posts had hundreds of more views than her other posts where she was simply posing for the camera.
Online, it’s what’s bizarre and controversial that becomes famous. People view this content and then share it with their friends, or repost it with their opinion. This quickly turns into a domino effect, and more people end up flocking to the content to see it for themselves.
The content creator profits off of this. More viewers translates to more interaction, and the more interaction the more money creators get. Even if a creator doesn’t agree with something they say, they will still gladly publish it, especially if it’s controversial. Who cares about promoting a hot take (that you may or may not agree with) if it means you make money?
But what about cancel culture, something that has been tailored to ruin the careers of these profit seeking influencers? Many have fallen victim to the cancel culture uprising, defined by dicitonary.com as “the phenomenon or practice of publicly rejecting, boycotting, or ending support for particular people or groups because of their socially or morally unacceptable views or actions.” But it isn’t the end for all creators. Some have backup plans, which means that they can say practically anything they want to make money.
The more I scrolled, the more female influencers I found that were similar to Williams. I saw a common term among all of their comment sections and hashtags: “tradwife.” Curious, I researched this term more: the definition of tradwife as a noun is “a married woman who chooses to be a homemaker as a primary occupation and adheres to or embodies traditional femininity and female gender roles, often associated with conservative or alt-right political values.” And of course, Williams fit this definition.
The more I looked, the more of these so-called tradwives I saw. I learned that this was no coincidence, and that there has been an upsurgence of women like this on the internet recently. And then I found that there was a term for this uprising of women following their traditional callings: the “Tradwife epidemic.” Controversy after controversy surrounds these ladies who call themselves homemakers.
Many women hate the idea of being a homemaker, associating it with a loss of freedom. I personally believe that to be untrue, and that with the rise of feminism it is a woman’s choice to do whatever she wishes. Some women wish to follow traditional values, or at least the glorified versions of them. For some ladies, following the path they want to occasionally entails giving up their dream of being a ballerina at Julliard … to live on a farm in Utah as a homemaker with her husband and eight kids, like Hannah Neelman.
On July 20, an article published in The New York Times stirred up a different kind of controversy surrounding tradwife influencers. The article, which focused on Neeleman (@ballerinafarm), painted her as a bird caught and caged by her husband, Daniel Neeleman. The internet went insane, labeling her husband as an abuser who cut her Julliard ballet career short because he wanted to keep a beautiful woman for himself. Shortly after the article was published, Neeleman went on her feed saying that she and her family were shocked at how negatively it painted her life and marriage.
Although the truth about what Neeleman truly experiences once the camera stops recording is a mystery, she serves as another example of how we, as viewers, only see the parts of these influencers that are given to us. How much can we truly know about someone from a single article?
Many of us fail to keep in mind that influencers only show the parts of their lives that they want us to see, and say what people want to hear. We can never be sure if what they’re saying is something they actually believe, or if they are just saying it to please viewers or sponsors, which eventually circles back to money and profit.
While finding information about how much influencers profit off of social media is difficult, Business.com claims that the general rule of thumb Instagram follows to pay influencers is $100 for every 10,000 followers. Based on this rough rate, Hannah Neeleman makes around $100k from her following. This number doesn’t include her side business made popular by her social media, any PR packages she receives or any salary and other accounts.
Profit drives all influencers, tradwives being no exception. The controversies surrounding them are no slip of the tongue, and they build a profitable brand. It’s important to remember that at the end of the day, these women have lives outside of their online persona. We can’t truly know them or their experiences based solely on what they present. At the end of the day, we only see the version of them that they want us to see.
