BREADWINNER OR BREADMAKER: CONTRADICTIONS IN TRADWIVES' CREATOR LABOR, RELIGIOUS VERNACULAR, AND AESTHETICS

Abstract

First emerging around 2015, tradwives represent a nostalgic yearning for a mythic past and white supremacist utopia. Yet, in recent years, tradwife creators have received increased mainstream attention and notoriety for their display of “traditional” gender roles, 1950s aesthetics, and open anti-feminism. This online prominence has led some of them, paradoxically, to emerge as the breadwinner in their family–a development that seems at odds with their professed belief that women should eschew careers in favor of childrearing and homemaking. In this in-progress, mixed-methods project, we aim to understand the tensions between the traditional gender roles tradwives advocate for and the entrepreneurial nature of their online promotion and monetization of said lifestyle. We conducted a computational text analysis of 25 English-language creators’ websites, as well as a qualitative analysis of the creators’ Instagram Story highlights. Our emerging findings show that tradwives’ solution to the tension between their professed ideology and their entrepreneurial activities lies in the obfuscation thereof: Neither housework nor creator labor are discussed as work. Explicit political discussions remain similarly unspoken, except for occasional expressions of opposition to feminism and reproductive rights. Religion, however, features prominently. The obfuscation of labor and absence of explicit politics represents a strategic move towards palatability that allows the current iteration of the tradwife to find greater mainstream appeal than earlier tradwives. Our results suggest that the tradwife is a particular influencer style or vernacular around a coherent ideological theme, thus emerging as a metapolitical branding strategy.