“While the world condemns traditional women, I will continue to live my truth,” she says. estee williams‘tiktoker’ that, with 80,000 followersserves as a spokesperson for ‘tradwife’ movement‘, women against the advances of feminism and that they intend to go back to the time when ladies were a male complement. In the video, accompanying the text, Estee shows her day-to-day, dedicated exclusively to caring for the family: she prepares the food, irons the clothes, cleans the house and does all those housework that make it a hollywood caricature of women from the 50s.
@esteecwilliams
In her videos, she also highlights how happy she is serving her husband and even talks about her life before having discovered “the virtues& rdquor; of the “traditional woman & rdquor ;: she was a university student who went to the gym and tried to balance a schedule full of the demands of urban life that was burning her. She now, she says, she is happy and at peace, the result of the supposed tranquility that domestic confinement brings with it.
Although her speech may seem somewhat marginal or anecdotal, it has reached millions of people – literally, her visits are counted with nine zeros – and she is not the only one to bet on this content. The ‘tradwife’, or those ‘influencers’ with whom she shares values, even if they do not identify themselves as such, have extensive platforms on which to spread this reactionary discourse that flirts with the ultra-right. In fact, in the US they have already become a female arm of the so-called ‘alt-right’ (alternative right).
From Lidia Bedman to Verdeliss
In Spain, for example, we have Lidia Bedman, wife of Santiago Abascal. “Your account [con 230.000 seguidores] ‘tradwife’ is a bit of a fantasy& rdquor;, comments the journalist Noelia Rodríguez, one of the voices of ‘Friend, realize’, by Radio Primavera Sound. Also Estefi Unzu, known as Verdeliss on her networks and famous for her large family of eight children, she has a million and a half followers on Instagram and shares a vision of domestic life that also flirts with this ideology.
@verdeliss_oficial
It’s not just about ‘influencers’. Columnists and thinkers such as Ana Iris Simón, author of ‘Feria’, and the Catalan Montserrat Dameson have written more or less obviously approaching the ‘tradwife’ line of discourse, giving their opinion on the fantasy of staying at home, stopping the frenetic urban life and dedicate themselves to being mothers and caregivers of the home, like previous generations. “They are ‘influencers’, thinkers and politicians who make the agenda of this movement. Perhaps they don’t use the word ‘tradwife’ as such, but they do share those traditional, conservative and nostalgic values of rededicating themselves to home care,” adds Rodríguez.
reaction to feminism
For the journalist, that these movements now appear has an explanation. “With the new feminist wave, a contrary reaction appears that wants to recover the values of the past & rdquor ;. something the feminist Susan Faludi already documented in ‘Reaction’, where he portrayed the conservative response that was activated as a result of the feminist wave of the 80s.
“Nostalgia, looking back, makes the body rest, relax,” says Rodríguez. And when progressive movements push for change and reconsider the spaces that women occupy in their intimate and professional lives, when the future is so difficult to imagine, “people appear who feel comfortable in the past, in that fluffy past. that offers an order& rdquor ;, he continues.
“24 hours in the life of…”
Janira Planes, Wuolah’s communication director and specialist in digital culture, agrees, stating that “in a world with more voice for feminism, faced with the threat of traditionalism and its privileges ceasing to exist, the remnants that they remain from that more outdated society, from the traditionalism that confines women at home& rdquor ;.
@twinmelody You are not alone or alone ❤️ God is always with you! God is always with you 🙏🏻 #God loves you #God is good #God bless you #let’s makejesusviral #God is first ♬ Hurricane – Hakuna Group Music
The ‘tradwife’, to proselytize, use the codes already established in the ‘apps’. For example, videos of “24 hours in the life of…”, that show how people with all kinds of origins, jobs and social positions live almost in a documentary way. In this context, many ‘tradwife’ have done the same, but projecting a bucolic and idealized vision of domestic life, depicting it as a solution to the horrors of digital capitalism.
Women saved from the world of work
The writer and columnist Zoe Hu already warned him: “Many ‘tradwife’ are young women who hate work and they celebrate those agreements where men save their women from the world of work & rdquor ;. In an article for ‘Dissent Magazine’, she recovers a tweet from a ‘tradwife’ who romanticizes the phrase that a friend’s husband used when they started dating: “Stay with me, marry me, and you will never have to work& rdquor ;. In the end, for Hu, what these traditional ‘influencers’ do is feed on discomfort and frustration with the aim of promoting far-right values.
It is something that Rodríguez and his ‘podcast’ partner, Begoña Gómez Urzaiz, pointed out in ‘Amiga date cuenta’: this type of content can resonate in those young women worn out by the wheel of capitalismbut who live disappointed with the celebrity feminism, that #girlpower (girl power, in English) that only appeals to rich women like Beyoncé and Hillary Clinton, but does not see itself as capable of solving their daily problems, but rather uses it as a pop and even commercial element.
speaker by polarization
Of course, in addition to generational frustration, the ‘tradwife’ use the algorithm of the ‘apps’ to spread their messages. Planes recounts it: “The ‘tradwife’ movement is somewhat minority, but it has a lot of loudspeakers since it is easy for it to go viral by generating a lot of polarization. Seeing a woman advocating to return to the ‘origins of femininity’ (at home, following the rules of patriarchy to the letter) provokes comments that are very in favor or totally against. In TikTok, which is where this movement re-emerges and gains strength, the polarization is detected by the platform and its algorithm which, seeing a lot of ‘engagement’, gives it much more ‘push’, so that more people interact& rdquor;.
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In the end, that is the recipe for the proliferation of their messages: social despair and polarization that activates the algorithm. And it’s not just the ‘tradwife’ movement, it’s also the Christianity uses the same techniques to evangelize in the XXI century. ‘Influencers’ like Twin Melody, participants in the 2023 Benidorm Fest and who have 18 million followers on TikTok, have Catholic messages where they assure that Jesus and God are the answer to this generational malaise experienced by young people, lost in the face of Lack of expectations for the future.
As Hu points out, the ‘tradwife’ movement is yet another step in the right-wing’s agenda to promote its conservative values, acting through various foci of action, from religion to traditional wives. And Spain is no stranger to the popularization of these discourses: in the end, our country has not managed to get rid of the traditionalism of Francoism, which still survives. As Rodríguez concludes: “Spain is a country of ‘tradwifes’& rdquor;.