{"id":475,"date":"2024-03-04T19:07:15","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T19:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/the-naked-financial-hypocrisy-of-tradwife-influencers\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T18:51:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:51:58","slug":"the-naked-financial-hypocrisy-of-tradwife-influencers","status":"publish","type":"essays","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/essays\/the-naked-financial-hypocrisy-of-tradwife-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Naked Hypocrisy of Tradwife Influencers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cI\u2019m teaching my daughter that it\u2019s perfectly acceptable to depend on a man,\u201d the video<\/span><\/a> begins, as a tan, slender woman twirls a gingham-clad girl dangerously close to a whirring KitchenAid. \u201cThat being a home maker [sic] is the number 1 career she should strive for.\u201d My breath catches, not because I\u2019m moved by her message, but because every time she spins, it looks as though her waist-length hair is going to be sucked into the rapidly rotating spindles of the stand mixer. <\/p>\n

As a (female) personal finance writer who thinks constantly about women\u2019s financial rights and plights, this material is like watching an open bag of flour topple to the ground in slow motion. Please be satire<\/em>, I silently plead as I scroll through her feed. \u201cSubmission simply means to trust,\u201d the text-on-screen declares in another video over footage of her dreamily stirring something on the stove. Sigh<\/em>. Not satire. In this worldview, a woman exists to serve; to be seen and not heard (demonstrated literally by the way the creators often rely on text-on-screen to communicate). <\/p>\n

This distinct brand of domestic servitude fetish content comes from what\u2019s known as a \u201ctradwife\u201d\u2014or traditional wife\u2014influencer. The Kitchenaid video, which has 109,000 \u201clikes,\u201d is overrun with comments from horrified onlookers, but many of her other videos are met with glowing praise from men championing this \u201creturn to the natural order\u201d and women begging for outfit details.<\/p>\n

In the last few weeks, the tradwife trend began entering more frequent mainstream thinkpieces, like this one from Time<\/span><\/a> and this one from CNN<\/span><\/a>. And for years now, the tradwife movement has presented something of a familiar philosophical boobytrap for feminists. Tradwife defenders in the commentariat tout that their movement is \u201cabout choice,\u201d ignoring that the limits of this worldview are well-documented<\/span><\/a> (namely, that it sidesteps a commitment to true progress in favor of claiming that any<\/em> choice is, by definition, a liberating one).   <\/p>\n

Upon just slightly closer inspection, you\u2019ll find there\u2019s much more to this mirror world of traditional bliss and knee-length linen dresses than meets the untrained eye. There are different strains of the virus: Many are biblically driven (\u201cWives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord\u201d), and others employ \u201canti-hustle culture\u201d rhetoric to legitimize the desire not to work outside the home. This is what all variants have in common, though: The videos themselves may be hashtagged #tradwife, but the \u201clink in profile\u201d betrays a different story. These women aren\u2019t actually<\/em> financially submissive at all. In fact, many of them are making bank. <\/p>\n

This runs in direct opposition to one of the hallmarks of the tradwife ethos: a glamorized financial subordination to a male partner. \u201cDependence\u201d and \u201csubmission\u201d receive a cutesy, feminine rebrand, as if there were something demure about not having your own checking account. The husbands are frequently referenced but rarely shown; a sort of paternal Wizard of Oz-like character who must be consulted for any and all decisions, consequential or not. (\u201cI don\u2019t leave home alone after dark,\u201d says self-described tradwife<\/span><\/a> Estee Williams in one of her videos, \u201cI always ask my husband before I leave home\u2026I\u2019m safest at home and with my husband. This is all about safety,\u201d she reassures, ignoring the fact that most women need<\/em> to leave their house to make money). <\/p>\n

In another video<\/span><\/a>, she clearly outlines the tradwife’s financial philosophy: \u201cThe money he makes is OUR money,\u201d the text on screen begins innocuously, before driving straight off a cliff, \u201cbut as the head of the house HE gets the final say on the big purchases and investments. Let him lead\u2026this will benefit you I promise .\u201d Not the wink, <\/em>Estee! Have you seen what the boys are investing in these days? <\/p>\n

It would be easy to see some of the tamer videos outside of their broader context\u2014those that bemoan the way we don\u2019t support moms (agreed!) without overtly referencing submission and dependence (yikes!)\u2014and assume they\u2019re merely celebrating the domestic work that\u2019s so criminally undervalued. <\/p>\n

In fact, for a while, I couldn\u2019t quite put my finger on why the trend enraged me so much. I believe domestic work <\/em>is work, don\u2019t I? <\/em>I believe stay-at-home parents deserve financial and legal protections. Their labor has long been denied its due importance, something I mostly chalk up to a general devaluing of women\u2019s time; if unpaid domestic labor were quantified with a monetary value, it\u2019s estimated it would constitute between 10% and 39%<\/span><\/a> of GDP. <\/p>\n

It was only recently that I recognized the blatant hypocrisy hiding in plain sight: I tapped the profile link of a popular Aussie tradwife and was met with a barrage of links urging me to transact: an Amazon storefront, affiliate codes, a mailing list\u2026even an e-book<\/em>. I tapped through her website<\/span><\/a> and discovered MLM-coded language: \u201cAre you a stay-at-home mom looking to grow your Instagram and earn extra income while juggling the joys and challenges of motherhood?\u201d Oh, no.<\/em> The \u201canti-hustle\u201d lifestyle is, in fact, a thinly veiled mega-hustle\u2014one much more convoluted than the Tupperware parties that came before it.<\/p>\n

I perused her site. Oh, look<\/em>, I thought, a lead magnet!<\/em> (In digital content marketing, a \u201clead magnet\u201d is a free downloadable item you give away in exchange for an email address.) Hers just so happened to be iPhone backgrounds featuring affirmations like, \u201cWith humility, I embrace my role, upholding traditions as the keeper of our cherished home.\u201d What struck me about her website was how familiar it felt: This was pretty transparently a content creator\u2019s monetized hub, no different from the courses, e-books, and affiliate codes distributed by the boss-babe influencers the tradwives claim to disavow. Oh my gosh<\/em>, I whispered to no one, She\u2019s girlbossing all over us!<\/em> The call is coming from inside the housewife!<\/p>\n

I have to hand it to them: what a diabolical brand strategy! Build a career teaching other<\/em> women how not<\/em> to have a career. Make money assuring women that their husbands should be the sole breadwinner. (If you think most reasonable adults who\u2019ve spent at least 12 minutes in the real world wouldn\u2019t fall for these bizarre enjoinders, consider that a full 25%<\/span><\/a> of TikTok\u2019s 1.7 billion users<\/span><\/a> are under the age of 20, and the majority are women.)<\/p>\n

Of course, using the freedoms that feminism has afforded you to protest feminism is not new<\/span><\/a>. Anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly famously spearheaded a movement that historians say single-handedly derailed the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, traveling the US on book tours that directed other women to stay home. <\/p>\n

But perhaps the funniest (derogatory) silk ribbon running through the tresses of the tradwife ethos is the perplexing claim that it\u2019s somehow anti-hustle; anti-capitalist<\/em>. Amazon storefronts and discount codes aside, the very existence of the \u201c1950s ideal housewife\u201d they so emulate was invented in Cold War America<\/span><\/a> as part of a larger, consumerism-driven marketing machine intended to strengthen capitalism against the perceived threat of Communism. Then again, a selective memory is a prerequisite of romanticizing this time period: Women wouldn\u2019t have unobstructed access to their own bank accounts for 20 more years; Black Americans were still legally second-class citizens.<\/p>\n

The ideal housewife\u2019s role was seen as Chief Consumption Officer of the home, and it was an indefinite unpaid internship. In this way, the tradwife doesn\u2019t reject capitalism\u2014it embodies<\/em> it. How else would you classify performing labor that enriches someone else who controls how and when you get access to the resources you created? Sounds a hell of a lot like a job to me (albeit one that requires sleeping with your boss). <\/p>\n

Still, I keep returning to the little girl in the KitchenAid video: Is a child whose mother teaches her it\u2019s aspirational to be financially dependent on a man even capable of choosing<\/em> that path for herself as an adult? <\/p>\n

Maybe my cynicism is statistically driven. Women are three times<\/span><\/a> as likely as their male partners to end up in poverty after a divorce (tradwives like Estee have a simple solution for this pesky issue: \u201cJust marry the right man!,\u201d ignoring the truth that any man who\u2019s chomping at the bit to financially control you is, by definition, not the right one). One in six women<\/span><\/a> have experienced financial abuse. One in three<\/span><\/a> admitted remaining in a relationship because they were financially unable to leave. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re taking your cues from the fleet of fringe tradwife influencers, you might hear something about how this is just part of \u201cyour role.\u201d But that\u2019s easy for them to say\u2014if things don\u2019t work out, they\u2019ll have the cushion of affiliate income and a personal brand to soften their fall. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m teaching my daughter that it\u2019s perfectly acceptable to depend on a man,\u201d the video begins, as a tan, slender woman twirls a gingham-clad girl dangerously close to a whirring KitchenAid. \u201cThat being a home maker [sic] is the number 1 career she should strive for.\u201d My breath catches, not because I\u2019m moved by her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2487,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","essays","type-essays","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feminism"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Naked Hypocrisy of Tradwife Influencers - Money with Katie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/essays\/the-naked-financial-hypocrisy-of-tradwife-influencers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Naked Hypocrisy of Tradwife Influencers - 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