Tradwives: A Valentine’s Day Guide to Right Wing Femininity

By Kevin Howley, February 13, 2023

Love is in the air. Either that or toxic fumes from the bomb train wreckage in eastern Ohio have gone to my head.

Regardless, my heart is full this Valentine’s Day with word of a new trend, you might even call it a “movement,” that’s captured the fertile imagination of the MAGA crowd.

No, I’m not talking about posting selfies on social media with your assault rifle of choice aimed skywards, locked and loaded to take out a Chinese balloon. I refer to the rise – or is that the return of? – the repressed: “traditional wives.”

Nostalgia for a Mythical America

It’s not easy keeping up with American culture these days. Fads come and go, like so many George Santos fabrications. Thank goodness for right wing culture vultures, like Patrice Lewis, WND editor and contributor to the “Real America” column. Writing from the frontlines of the culture wars, Lewis’ recent post “The Rise of ‘TradWives’” caught my eye. Before long, my head was spinning.

“The tradwife movement embraces the nostalgia of the 1950s, complete with suburban home and white picket fence, when life seemed simpler and families seemed happier, when children were raised with love and stability, when society in general and schools in particular reinforced family values rather than undermined them. Some claim the tradwife movement would be a cure-all for many of America’s social ills if universally adopted.”

Apparently “some” people have been binge watching Father Knows Best and The Donna Reed Show. And when they’re not waxing nostalgic for a mythical America that never was, they’re extolling the homely virtues of traditional motherhood on TikTok. Won’t the CCP be surprised! I sure was when I ran across this lifestyle itemin the New York Post: “I Used To Be a Raging Feminist – Now I’m a Traditional Stay-At-Home Mom and Loving It.”

The story profiles Madison Dalstrup, whose @thereservedwife TikTok account has over 70,000 followers. According the Post, Dalstrup “has become one of the leading figures in the ‘tradwife’ movement, which sees young women ditch their careers to stay at home and support their husbands cooking, cleaning, and tending to their children.”

The latest backlash to “woke” gender equality and public school “indoctrination” of impressionable young children, traditional wives, and their feminist critics, have made TikTok’s #TradWives a forum for reactionary politics and progressive pushback.

MAGA Cosplay

With over 41,000 TikTok followers, self-proclaimed “tradwife” Estee Williams lists “femininity,” “cooking” and “homemaking” as her interests. Come for the Betty Crocker sensibility, stay for the Betty Boop sexuality.

An attractive, full-figured woman who knows a thing or two about flirting for the camera, Williams posts videos with titles like “What We Practice in Our Marriage” (Parts 1 & 2), “Spicy Venison with Curry” and “Christian Veiling.”

Scrolling through her page, the clip “More Acting” is the tell. Williams lip syncs dialogue from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the Marilyn Monroe vehicle showcasing the bombshell’s comedic talents, among her many attributes. Only Williams isn’t playing it for laughs, she’s indulging in a bit of MAGA cosplay when she intones, “If a girl is spending all of her time worrying about the money she doesn’t have, how is she going to have any time for being in love?”

Like other tradwives, Williams has her priorities straight: find a provider, cook his meals, clean his house, raise his kids, and be certain to look good while you’re doing it. The love will follow.

Who says romance is dead?

Naked Communists Beware!

Tradwives aren’t simply rejecting feminism, they’re waging a war against a radical left agenda that promotes reproductive rights, critical race theory, gender affirmative care, and an assault weapons ban. You know, the sort of “social engineering” you’d never get from the radical right.

Citing W. Cleon Skousen’s 1958 tome, The Naked Communist, tradwife skeptic turned true believer, Patrice Lewis trots out familiar conservative tropes about the left’s “war with families,” adding, “Never underestimate the hostility of the left toward anything traditional and time-tested.”

Is it any wonder that tradwives are making their mark now that “Parental Choice” is the GOP’s post-Trump calling card? Reason enough for right wingers to celebrate tradwives, and their sisters in arms, stay-at-home moms (SAHMs), who cling to a Christian conservative vision of America: land of (white) hopes and (bourgeois) dreams.

Kevin Howley is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Social Movement Studies, and Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture. His most recent book is Drones: Media Discourse and the Public Imagination.

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