I’m tired of the Dutch cultural attachments. Late to the party maybe, but I think I can only now put into words that vague feeling of irritation. More and more often I read essays, analyzes or columns and I think: this won’t stay with me for a second longer than the few minutes I just spent on it. This is usually due to a lack of originality.
For example, at the end of last month I read in a national newspaper a column about influencer Jessie Jazz Vuijk, who talks about the terms ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine energy’ on her Instagram account. In this way, “primordial conservative ideas are flowing into the mainstream,” was the comment. I thought about the countless other recent articles about influencers. About how they talk about sunburn (stupid), about the pill (stupid) or about the healing effect of stones (stupid). No, I thought, influencers are usually not doctors and geniuses – I think all newspaper readers have understood it now.
The endless series of pieces about influencers and, by extension, the connection between yoga mothers and the extreme right (‘wellness right’, another recurring term) is just one example. What we can’t seem to get enough of: tradwives – traditional wives, do I need to say it? It started, as it often does, in the English media. They picked up a TikTok hit: young women with 1950s hairstyles and dresses who showed in videos what their life as a stay-at-home mom was like. Actually, it seemed to mainly concern one woman: Estee Williams, an American with 33,000 followers at the time. ‘“Trad wives” are using social media to romanticize a return to “traditional values”’, wrote Business Insider on November 7, 2022. CNN followed a month later: “’Tradwives’ promotes a lifestyle reminiscent of the 1950s. But their nostalgia is controversial.”
And the Netherlands? Six months later, the Netherlands followed suit again like the weak-minded little brother. NRCMay 24, 2023: ‘Once the #tradwife has hammered her painted nails into you, she won’t let you go’. De Volkskrant, August 3, 2023: ‘On TikTok, the videos of ultra-conservative housewives reach millions of viewers.’ De Volkskrant, August 8, 2023: ‘The modern ‘tradwife’ is anti-woke, anti-feminist and anti-career’. Fidelity, September 17, 2023: ‘Long live freedom of choice, but I still have a lot of trouble with tradwives.’ Fidelity, January 7, 2024: ‘“Tradwives” convince Gen Z that women should not work’. Almost all of these pieces are about the same Estee Williams.
Of course, this parroting of the English-language media happens often. Made over a year ago New York Magazine a theme issue about nepobabies. What were nepobabies, why was the whole showbiz full of them and what to think about it? A fun and original subject, we thought so here in the Netherlands too – just a shame that it was no longer so original when all the Dutch opinion makers started writing about it. It was often New York Magazine neatly mentioned, that wasn’t the problem, it was more that as a reader you thought: guys, come up with something yourself.
Also tiring: the endless reporting about the ins and outs of suburban millennials. Why are they willing to pay five euros for a coffee (oat milk! oat milk!) and ten euros for a glass of natural wine. Are they lazy or are they not lazy. Are they hypocritical or not? These pieces try to ride on the success of the Instagram account @havermelkelite. Not a disaster, but at a certain point (sooner than the cultural critic thinks) you start longing for something more original.
Of course, not every article has to be an eye-opener. Some things just need to be said and some things need to be hammered home, refreshing or not, but the ratio between rehashed ideas and sharp sound is a bit skewed. The good news: something can be done about this, as long as those cultural critics and newspaper editors look further than their noses. For example, on the day that some momfluencer announces that babies will get acute cancer from Nutrilon Follow-On Milk (and that day will come), saying: come on, let’s not write about that.
Tessa Sparreboom is a Dutch scholar and former editor of Propria Cures.