<
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/mar/29/serve-smile-procreate-yesteryear-author-caro-claire-burke-on-the-rise-of-the-tradwife>
"Gingham dresses, linen aprons; toddlers smiling toothily out from their perch
on a perfectly cocked hip. And the mothers holding these babies? They’re
beautiful, obviously. They speak in a whisper. Their skin tone is varied in the
exact range and spectrum of honey.
Tradwife. It’s a frilly word, the kind that holds a gun to your head and
demands you say it in sing-song. The media coverage of the phenomenon has been
as breathless and decidedly feminised as the term itself. I have yet to find an
article on the topic that was not written by a woman, which feels ironic, given
that the term – as well as the vision therein – was originally coined and
circulated by men, born out of the dank, murky caves of online “incel” forums,
where anonymous usernames set forth the deeply unoriginal vision of a wife who
would do everything the real women in their lives refused to do: manage the
house, give birth to children, have sex on command, and most importantly, ask
nothing in return.
Most people don’t know about these grubby origins, though. Instead, they
associate
tradwife with the day-bright social media presence of influencers
like Hannah Neeleman and Nara Smith, two women who have managed to balloon
their pre-existing wealth into eight-figure empires by broadcasting home births
and making cereal and bubblegum from scratch while dressed in couture.
In the two years since tradwives burst on to the scene, I’ve had countless
conversations about them – first as a member of the media, speaking with
experts; then as a debut author, speaking to members of the publishing and film
industries about the world I have created in my novel
Yesteryear, which is
being made into a film by Anne Hathaway, about a tradwife who wakes up in the
past. In those conversations, one question has been posed to me more than any
others: How long will this cultural trend last?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
