A tradwife, or traditional wife, is a woman who prefers to take a traditional, or ultra-traditional, role in the marriage. In other words, they believe that a woman’s place is in the home and completely submissive to their husbands. Likewise, in this scenario, the man provides for the family and the woman becomes the homemaker, whose main objective is to please her husband.
As a consequence of this relationship, there is an imbalance in the correlation dynamics, which tends to create a dysfunctional environment. This “trend” is heavily inspired by the 50’s post-war aesthetic and tends to romanticize the female reality at the time.
The tradwife movement was first heard of in the “Red Pill Woman Forum” in 2013. After that, the movement has had a boom since 2020, with the popularization of TikTok, and a whole new marketing strategy based on cute videos of women in floral dresses baking from scratch for their families.
Although it looks like a cozy and peaceful way of leading your life, this trend leads to the dissemination of extreme right-wing ideas and anti-feminism.
The male dominance in this relationship can become a problem in multiple aspects. To start, becoming a full-time homemaker perpetuates the primary mechanism for entrenching gender roles in housework responsibilities, and creates a career gap that is difficult to overcome if there is a desire to go back to the job market.
Furthermore, it’s possible to end up in a homesteading existence, based on social isolation, where your whole identity becomes your family, and losing your singularity.
In the sociologist and writer Bell Hooks’ book, All about love: New perspectives, she explains that “To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bounds”. That can be interpreted as an indication of a disbalance in the relations that permeate one’s life.
In summary, the existence of only one provider creates an imbalance in the power dynamic, leading to female submission and the abnegation of their own lives.
In addition, social media platforms, like TikTok, have been used as a regular source of news, which has a major role in the polarization of content. Because of the use of algorithms, there is a massive segregation of content, depending on what you interact with. This way, it gets harder for content that diverges from what you believe to reach you. For example, if you don’t appreciate rock music it will be difficult for it to be suggested to you, and the same works with political subjects.
TikTok’s algorithms make it arduous for you to understand all points of view, and that lack of understanding the whole creates extremist people. Being a traditional wife is an extreme response to the anti-feminist movement, which is promoted by the polarization of content.
To conclude, TikTok’s tradwives can be considered an anti-feminist expression because they argue that women should be submissive to men and serve them. Therefore, it proposes a male-dominant relationship, not a partnership. It would be considered as a post-feminist expression if their discourses were based on gender equality and liberty do choose to be a homemaker.
The article above was edited by Isadora Mangueira.
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