I’d never listened to Call Her Daddy (I think that’s what it is called) but the algo is feeding me trad wife content so I figured why not give a listen.
My main takeaways, tell me if you agree:
The areas of traditional work where women can thrive might be shrinking, social media is an area where women create their economy. I don’t think I could ever slam another lady for having hustle.
She spoke of what the division of labor in her home actually looks like, and of course, there is so much more than we see on camera.
Girlfriend is living the life she wants. Can we step away kindly if it’s not for us?
You may take this as an uneducated/anti-feminist/return to the 1950’s view. But I actually think it’s quite progressive.
Tamara might be a bit too intense, but the meme made me laugh and it’s, could we even say, iconic?
Years ago I was in the Ukraine cleaning up a Jewish cometary that had been left to shambles as the country moved further away from WW2. Cool cool. What’s the morid ass point here? This was the first time I was ever asked if I was a feminist, and to be completely honest, the 20 year old me had no idea what I was being asked.
My response, as I remember it now, 20 years later was something along the lines of “I support women in living the lives they want. Really, I don’t think it’s my business how others are doing it. I know I’m not actively pushing any movement back in time. That counts, right?”
A few caveats here: I love deeply, and part of the love is accepting the people in my life for who they are. Also part of the love is me not really caring about what or what you aren’t passionate about. If you aren’t hurting anyone, and you are finding meaning in your way…I’m all for it. Also, I’m not the feminist-police over here.
I see women on women crime all of the time. When I returned to PRN work when my first was 8 months old, I was working overnight shifts in an emergency room doing mental health evaluations. As I was still nursing, I was thus pumping at work. I wasn’t going on vacations during my shifts. I was making sure my colleagues didn’t need me for the next 15ish minutes and I would go pump. One particularly special colleague (I roll my eyes as I say this) said to me, verbatim “It must be nice taking so many breaks during your shift.” AND SHE WAS A MOM OF THREE. That’s some woman on woman crime if I’ve ever seen it.
I’ve never claimed to own the conversation around married life, the mental load, what traditional wiving (100% not a word, I promise you’ll get one of these at least once with each letter) even is, or who/what/how a “good feminist” is made. I prescribe to a more “I support everyone’s personal freedoms, critical thinking and mothering in a way you believe in.” Maybe this is naive of me, I don’t really care. I like to assume the best of people.
To me, feminism was never supposed to be a script telling women what a “correct” life looks like. It’s about choice, full stop. The freedom to build a life on your own terms, even if that life includes staying home, cooking dinner, and letting your husband be the primary earner.
But, we can’t ignore the nuance. I’m not looking for someone to tell me how to live, for to strive for a lifestyle I don’t want. I’ve seen behind the social media curtain and trust me…OZ isn’t that cute.
Even if that life includes posting thirst traps and building a content empire off it. Even if it looks nothing like what you or I would choose. If we only support women’s choices when they happen to match our own, that’s not feminism. That’s a viewers desire for control.
And honestly, that’s the part that gets me. The real anti-feminist move isn’t a woman choosing a traditional home life, or a woman choosing to build her income online instead of climbing a corporate ladder that may not even want her anymore.
The real anti-feminist move is the pile-on in the comments sections. Sometimes I feel like we’re living in ideocracy…particularly online. It’s women tearing apart other women for daring to want something different than whatever’s trending as “empowered” this week. We did it to stay-at-home moms in the 90s. We did it to girlbosses in the 2010s. Now we’re doing it to trad wives. Same mean girl energy, new outfit.
Professionally and personally: judgment is often just discomfort. When someone else’s choice makes us uncomfortable, it’s rarely actually about them. It’s about the questions their life raises about our own, the paths not taken, the trade-offs we made, the things we told ourselves we wanted. It’s a lot easier to critique her division of labor than to sit with our own.
So no, I don’t actually think this take is regressive. I think actual progress looks like women being allowed to disagree with each other’s choices without needing to destroy them publicly. You can think something is genuinely, deeply not for you and still not need her to be wrong in order for you to be right. Those two things can coexist. We just don’t practice it much.
Like I’m NEVER making homemade Cheez-It’s. Take it for what you will.
These online phenoms are not asking for your permission. They’re not asking for mine either. Their just living life, on camera, on their own terms, in front of millions of people who all have opinions about it.
We can allow this without making it about us.
A clinical footnote, because being the therapist I am, I can’t help myself: what I’m describing above has a name. Psychologists call it social comparison theory where we evaluate ourselves relative to others, and when someone else’s choices sit close enough to our own life to feel relevant, but different enough to feel threatening, our brain doesn’t process it as neutral information.
It processes it as a referendum. That’s why “she stays home and I don’t” or “she monetizes her life and I won’t” can trigger something that feels a lot bigger than it should. It’s not really about her parenting or her paycheck. It’s proximity plus difference, and our nervous system reads that combination as a threat to our own identity. Naming that mechanism doesn’t make the discomfort go away, but it does make it easier to catch yourself before you turn discomfort into a comment section takedown
I’d love to hear your thoughts. I know this is a nuanced one, there are undoubtedly pieces of the conversation I’m missing. I’m okay naming the blind spots. That’s how we learn. And no, I haven’t read Yesteryear. I might, I might not. I’m more of a non-fiction type of gal.
Talk Soon
xox, Erin
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