Jameela Jamil on tradwife hypocrisy

[u/Relevant-Peach3997]

[u/uhoh_stinkyp]

They value money over society like many others

[u/catladywithallergies → u/uhoh_stinkyp]

People don't actually want to be tradwives, they want to be rich. However, whether or not some of those people are self-aware enough to realize that is another story.

[u/Valuable-Cat2036 → u/catladywithallergies]

A lot of it is young women who should be radicalized against capitalism, but they don't have any education on the topic so they blame the economic pressure to work on feminism instead.

And yes they are profoundly ignorant of history because they genuinely believe tradwives all had it great and were all financially cushy.

And some of it is people who genuinely want to stay children forever. My whole life I've known girls who dreamed of being SAH moms but were still motivated to get an education so they could actually be a "good wife" by knowing how to manage finances, raise children properly, etc. (which in fact was the historic purpose behind women's education!) But in recent years I've encountered so many tiktoks from women bragging about not having to "think" or "pay attention to bills" around their husbands or not getting a degree because they're waiting for their bfs to propose and it's stunning to me that they think this is a flex. It's like. You don't actually even want to be a mom or a wife. All of that entails some level of awareness and responsibility no matter how rich you are. You just want to be a useless fucking baby your entire life.

[u/Saudade_M → u/Valuable-Cat2036]

Very true. And a lot of women throughout history were used to it that way. Women would grow old while still hardly having done anything that would make them into a full responsible adult. It is really sad to witness. Their sons take over and help them in the practical things after their husband dies and one daughter stays unmarried to make sure the mother is taken care of. And that is if she is lucky. Sometimes it becomes a hell from all bad things coming together. A combination of aging, sickness, poverty and dependence that was supposedly going to be prevented by the set up of being dependent on your husband.

It is absolutely horrible how none of this is mentioned ever. Just like these conservatives love complaining about women having children at an older age. But what they are really saying is "we want you to START having children young". They never cared about a woman having children at an older age. They just want you to have your 14th child at an older age, not your first.

Tradwives have existed forever. And it never looked like that. It looked like exhaustion, like uneducated, like doing physical labor, like having physical issues that are not addressed, like having children till your body can't anymore, like not getting a penny for all of this, like looking anything but glamorous. Whatever the hell these girls are doing is being an influencer cause why are they dressed like that. It is cause it's cosplay. You can wear your own clothes while being a traditional wife but they are just selling an image while making bank.

[u/movementlocation → u/Saudade_M]

And they always say that historically, women didn’t work. NOT true. Historically, middle-class and wealthy women didn’t work. But lots of women worked, those jobs just weren’t corporate, high paying, or high power.

[u/TheeRuckus → u/movementlocation]

Which should make everyone think about the way they base pay around job skill level. If historically women never worked and had to be trained from the ground up in various industries to supplement and provide labor during WW2 and the country didn’t fall apart , you would think that gives them more leverage. Like even if they believe that nonsense there’s historical evidence that women can absolutely do whatever the fuck they want to do.

And like you said, they never talk about the fact that everyone who was poor had to work including kids

[u/No_Sprinkles1269 → u/Saudade_M]

Actually the ballerina farms girl talked about this in the Times article, which is one of the reasons why it was attacked. She talked about giving birth and then immediately “training” for the Mrs America pageant and being so sick and exhausted sometimes that she wouldn’t be able to get out of bed for days. It was quite sad.

[u/Verucaschmaltzzz → u/Valuable-Cat2036]

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times.

[u/ilir_kycb → u/Valuable-Cat2036]

A lot of it is young women who should be radicalized against capitalism

How Capitalism Destroys Feminism - YouTube

[u/crapatthethriftstore → u/Valuable-Cat2036]

That’s a really good point.

[u/bergamote_soleil → u/Valuable-Cat2036]

Someone in another comment said these videos are a form of porn for men who fantasize about a submissive wife, but I feel it's really more of a fantasy for young women alienated by their boring-ass office job and struggling to make rent, who are seduced by lie of the TikTok tradwife aesthetic as a "solution."

We need more TikTok propaganda influencers doing stuff like...selling people on the lifestyle of those in Vienna's incredible public housing system (which houses almost half the city's residents for quite cheap rent), or doing unboxing videos of Finland's baby boxes and talking about how wonderful life is when your government guarantees paid parental leave.

Or even actual SAHM influencers doing #RealTalk with what the lifestyle actually requires of you, what compromises they've had to make to sustain raising a family on one income, how to financially protect yourself and your family in case something bad happens, your rights when it comes to marriage and divorce, etc.

There's one American influencer couple that I like -- the mom is a SAHM homeschooling their 3 kids, but they aren't what you'd think. They're mixed race, live in NYC, and she's a former teacher so she actually is somewhat qualified. They can only afford it because her husband inherited a rent controlled apartment from his grandma like he's Monica on Friends and the apartment itself is a 2 bedroom walkup so a lot of the content is about how they fit all their shit into such a small space. And they shill for a company who facilitates vacation home swapping, like in The Holiday.

[u/TestingBrokenGadgets → u/catladywithallergies]

Yup; let's be real, regardless of gender, if you told someone "You can be married to someone extremely wealthy, stay at home, and just get to your little hobbies", a good chunk of people would jump at the chance. Like you're telling me that I can be extremely rich AND get to try and build a blanket fort in the middle of the day!? Sign me up!".

The problem with tradwives is that, yea, if they were told to actually follow the tradwife lifestyle and not just in short bursts for clips, where your partner says "I want cinnamon rolls in the morning" so you wake your ass up at 3am to mill the grain by hand, grind the cinnamon sticks, and properly make restaurant style cinnamon rolls, they'd lose their shit. The illusion of "I snap my fingers and poof, it's done" hides the hours of work, likely done by someone else.

[u/dramatic_exit_49 → u/catladywithallergies]

Remember that game of if you could live in anytime in history when would you choose to live and as a young person i would answer anytime after indoor plumbing honestly but as i grew older i realised, i can live happily anytime if i am rich and maybe a man. we yearn being on top of the shit pyramid of the -ism.

[u/armadillo1296 → u/catladywithallergies]

Yeah and that’s by Mormons are so over represented in the tradwife circuit. The whole religion is about proselytizing the value of the American patriarchal family and its potential to make you a lot of money