TikTok’s “For You” page is full of women with hundreds of thousands of followers in flowy gingham dresses, surrounded by steaming loaves of unprocessed sourdough and a baby on both hips, paying their mortgages by telling other women that they don’t need jobs—they just need a husband who provides.
These influencers are colloquially known as “trad-wives”: women dancing around their farmhouses with raw milk and biblical diets, preaching that the “Divine Feminine Energy” which allowed them to quit their jobs did so by attracting a “provider” who embraces his masculine.
It starts with a few stay-at-home moms turned influencers, preaching about how they’ve finally stepped out of their “masculine energy” (Because god forbid you’re a little masculine) and have now stepped into their divine role as a nurturer. It’s the cortisol, or the chemicals, or processed food, or birth control or the system—whatever that means—that’s forcing women into their masculine and teaching them to be independent.
Then, it becomes: “Because of biology, women are meant to handle the household duties, we thrive through nurturing. He doesn’t know what presents are under the tree, but he pays for them.”
Why bother getting a job—your husband will give you a monthly allowance! It’s his biological urge, of course! If he’s truly embracing his masculine energy, he won’t cheat on you with a younger woman and leave you alone with your eight children—soon to be nine, because you can’t use birth control, silly, its chemicals suppress our feminine energy!
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(She gets a cut of the profit from each flat-tummy-tea or gluten-free collagen gummy sold).
If she was really a traditional wife, she’d be selling barbiturates—or “Mommy’s little helper.”
But upon seeing enough of these videos, you begin to realize:
None of their husbands have a name! They exist only as a mannequin for the viewers to dress as their own husbands.
He is shapeless, He is moldable, He is never named. Because Brian, Stanley and Scott just aren’t relatable enough. The “trad-wife” business hinges on its ability to connect with the average woman with an average husband with an average job. He only exists as a concept:
The loyal, all-providing, family-oriented, traditional man.
It’s a business and they’re selling ideas. They want to show off the “good” parts of being a traditional wife. They purposely omit the abuse, financial, physical, sexual or otherwise, that was all too common in traditional marriages.
It convinces young women that they have some sort of control over their subjugation: co-sign your own disenfranchisement, because it was your choice—not theirs—all while arguing that unpaid home labour is biologically inherent to being a woman.
And it’s no surprise that these ideas are so appealing to young women, especially since half of Canadian households are living paycheque to paycheque.
These videos paint a picture of a world where you can afford a $7,500 vintage stove with a built-in crockpot. A world where you can have dairy cows and goats on the side, without some institution (Your HOA) forbidding it. And a world where you can get all the perks of being a “trad-wife” without any of the drawbacks—like potentially being one argument away from homelessness.
But all of the perks only exist if your husband stays loyal; if he’s smart with money, if dinner’s always on the table.
And hopefully, if your husband is benevolent enough, he’ll keep giving you your allowance.
