This is Nara Smith, the newest Alix Earle or Charli Damelio. Except she’s famous for the exact opposite reason that the other two got famous. See Alix Earle got famous for her party lifestyle and Charli Damelio got famous for doing TikTok dances …Nara Smith is famous for being a tradwife.
What is a tradwife you may ask?
A tradwife is slang for a traditional housewife. And you’re probably thinking, isn’t this similar to a stay-at-home mom? I thought so too, but then I looked into the term more. A tradwife believes in the ‘traditional’ roles a woman should play; wife and mother who stays home to take care of the children, cook and clean.
These tradwives actually believe that they are less than their husbands. See, stay-at-home mom is a broad term, because the mother could have worked before and made the decision to stay home or they can acknowledge that they have value outside of raising their kids. I fully support stay-at-home moms. The part that separates the two groups is the belief system.
In a TikTok video from @esteecwilliams, who claims to be a tradwife, she labels things that a tradwife does.
- Submit to their husbands
- Don’t buy $8 lattes
- Don’t shame their husband, we lift them up
- Have simple birthday parties
- Believe in “for better or for worse” not divorce
I wish I could insert a picture of my face after watching this video. How on earth can she sneak things like “Submit to your husband” inbetween “Simple birthday parties!” and “Lattes!”?
Women can make their own conscious decision to stay home for whatever reason without completely throwing away their values and dedicating their lives to submitting to men. I’ve seen so many comments on Nara Smith’s videos talking about how this is the dream life. Have we lost our minds?
If you look up tradwife online, there is a fair share of women who lived that lifestyle and are adamantly against it, talking about how it was so great to stay at home until their husbands decided to leave them, cheat on them, or simply divorce them and they were stuck without any work experience or education as a single mother. They are left without money because tradwives believe that men should run the bank accounts. These women literally were left with all of their children and no money. This lifestyle is essentially locking women into one that they feel that they can not be free from.
“These young women belong to a small subculture called “tradwives.” Short for traditional wives, tradwives aren’t your average stay-at-home moms. They sneer at what they consider to be modern-day feminism, with its girlbosses and its ungratifying grind, and wax lyrical about the value of traditional gender roles. Crucially, they promote submission to one’s husband, sometimes evoking fundamentalist Christian principles in their beliefs,” a quote on tradwives from CNN.
I’ve seen plenty of people arguing that being a tradwife is okay because feminism is all about giving women a choice to do what they want. Right. That’s why I’m a pro stay-at-home moms. Not women who have been manipulated by men or religion into thinking that they are worth less than the men in their lives.
Feminism is not just about choice, but also about the values we are trying to get people to understand. Women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals are not less than white men, no matter what religion seems to say so, and for people to argue that tradwifism is feminist even though it degrades women is disgusting.
There is a difference between saying “I choose to stay at home” and “A woman must stay at home.” Or “I choose to bake” and “A woman’s job is to bake for her husband.” “I like to garden” and “My job is to garden.”
This is a ridiculously stupid lifestyle and trend and I want nothing more than to get rid of the term. It’s Women’s History Month for the love of god.