Kendel Kay seems to be like a whole lot of TikTok influencers. She’s obtained the icy-blonde hair, the peerlessly tanned pores and skin, the filter that makes it appear like she’s not sporting make-up, simply dewy and “pure.” And like a whole lot of influencers, she’s discovered her 500,000-plus following posting TikToks detailing the mundane particulars of her twentysomething life. The distinction, as she posted in a video of her morning routine, is that she is showcasing the lifetime of a self- professed “stay-at-home girlfriend.”
She and her boyfriend have an settlement: He’ll make the cash, and he or she’ll “care for the home.” And that’s what Kendel movies herself doing. She makes the mattress. She pops large ice cubes out of a kind of silicone trays and into her Stanley cup, then fills it with filtered water. She meditates, runs the dishwasher, and makes a smoothie. She ice-rolls her face, places on a whole lot of serums, then attire in train garments and does a energy exercise on the balcony of her luxurious condominium. The highest touch upon one video: “I really like your life.” Kendel does all of the belongings you’re purported to do to look the best way ladies are advised they’re purported to look. However in contrast to most ladies her age, Kendel does all these items and he or she doesn’t should work. Or, extra precisely, if there are some ladies who’re working two, three, and even 4 jobs—some paid, some unpaid—Kendel is simply working one. The job of highly regarded girlfriend to a really wealthy man.
You’ll be able to see how alluring that is likely to be—and why accounts like Kendel’s are so well-liked, even when among the ladies behind them live much less of the luxurious stay-at-home-girlfriend life, like Kendel, and extra of the homesteading, mother-to-6-to-10-children, quoting- Bible-verses life. Many of those ladies, referred to as #tradwives, adhere to a inflexible set of rules governing modesty in gown, meekness in demeanor, and a willingness to go away the variety of kids you will have “in God’s palms.” And but, like Kendel, they handle to make the “one job” of homemaking (whereas creating sufficient content material to be an influencer!) look easy and joyful. All you need to do is be prepared to wholly rely on the person in your life.
When my editor at ELLE requested me if I might be sport to “check out” dwelling like considered one of these influencers, I balked. Initially, I’m not married to my associate—we dwell collectively in sin—which suggests I might neither be a #trad nor a #spouse. I’ve no children (on objective!). I additionally left Christianity behind a very long time in the past, so I don’t imagine in submitting to God’s will for me. However I used to be sport to do what I usually did over the course of the week—solely I wouldn’t work for pay, and I’d tackle all of the labor “for the household” that I normally cut up with my associate.
However I wanted extra specifics on what this #tradwife life would truly appear like. I requested my Instagram followers for his or her favourite tradwife accounts, and the solutions poured in: a mixture of the mildly satirical and probably not tradwife in any respect (@maryorton, whose account seems to be like a Laura Ashley advert got here to life, however who works as an investor); the bucolic (@ballerinafarm, a Juilliard-trained ballerina who married into the JetBlue household and who now lives on a farm in Utah along with her seven kids); and Christian twee (@call_mejewels, who, like most “actual” tradmoms, adheres to the rules of biblical womanhood—and who posted a reel sequence this previous spring referred to as the “7 day homemaker gown problem,” about committing to sporting a gown whereas doing housekeeping).
On TikTok, there have been stay-at-home girlfriends like Kendel, however there have been additionally crunchy, natural-birth, “sluggish, easy dwelling” mothers like @sarah_wildmothering, and Estee Williams (@esteecwilliams), who appears to be doing a little very acutely aware Marilyn Monroe cosplay. For Estee, being a “conventional spouse” means wanting a partnership like her grandparents’—which incorporates not going to the fitness center by herself (in order to not entice undesirable advances); not leaving the home alone after darkish; avoiding opposite-sex friendships; ensuring her husband “doesn’t should raise a finger” whereas he’s residence; cooking him “the meals he needs to eat”; sporting the garments he likes; styling her hair the best way he enjoys; and asking her husband’s permission for bills outdoors of these wanted for day-to-day upkeep of the house.
I dwell on an island of slightly below 1,000 individuals, so it was simple to keep away from going to the fitness center on my own (our “fitness center” is the Peloton within the basement). I might keep away from leaving the home after darkish (in the summertime, it stays mild till 9 or 10 p.m.). My associate, Charlie, and I each earn a living from home, so did that imply I used to be purported to….make him lunch? And breakfast? And likewise dinner? Tradwife life says: Sure. Was I purported to placed on a gown and do my hair and make-up, even when I wasn’t leaving the home? Additionally sure. To be a tradwife, not only a stay-at-home girlfriend, I’d additionally should ditch all leggings and shorts, let him choose the nightly tv viewing, do all of the errands, and be accountable not only for returning all of my on-line orders, however all of his. I’d must submit a bunch of images of us collectively the place I discuss how scorching he’s, but in addition make sure that to run the caption previous him forward of time. Annoying, positive, however doable. I used to be additionally purported to cease taking contraception and let God be in command of my womb, to which I stated: No method.
I advised Charlie about this plan. Perhaps I anticipated him to be enthusiastic about all these meals? Or suppose it was humorous? However other than insisting that I make clear that he was not encouraging this habits in any method, his actual query was the identical as mine: Was I prepared to lose cash to jot down this story? I write an e mail e-newsletter that exhibits up twice every week, each week; I tape a podcast that goes darkish simply 3 times a yr. No matter I made scripting this story wouldn’t cowl what I’d quit by insisting on taking that point off. And probabilities had been very excessive I’d simply find yourself with a bunch of simmering resentment for him, even when this was a stunt.
As a result of right here’s the reality: Tradwife behaviors aren’t one thing you may check out like a brand new morning routine. They appear to require a wholesale ideological conviction {that a} girl’s major function is to be the helpmate of her partner. They demand a subsumption of non-public will, an unquestioning eagerness to bend to a person’s wishes—and a perception that those that don’t are sinning towards God. Whenever you’ve spent practically a decade of your present relationship and everything of your grownup life striving for monetary and emotional and home labor–associated fairness in partnerships, making an attempt to undertake this mindset doesn’t simply chafe. It offers me hives.
Submission and ease might be most tasty throughout instances of duress. Individuals have traditionally glommed on to charismatic religions when it feels just like the world is altering in ways in which make it really feel unfamiliar—they usually crave one thing, something, regular. It is sensible, too, that among the ladies who develop into followers of non secular sects that preach the gospel of biblical womanhood could also be escaping some type of private or familial trauma. To surrender management can really feel very very similar to attaining it.
However there are such a lot of methods to seek out the kind of steadiness that these accounts, biblical or in any other case, appear to supply. If nonbelievers are interested in them as a result of they appear to vow a life the place you get to cease scrambling to do all of it, the place there’s truly time to do issues like bake a cake, or make clothes you want, or simply be along with your kids with out an agenda—that doesn’t imply you must develop into a #tradwife. It simply signifies that we’ve normalized the substitution of ladies’s labor for a functioning social security internet, and nonetheless arrange society as if each household has an grownup who doesn’t work outdoors the house, when that’s not the fact for 80 p.c of American households.
That additionally doesn’t imply feminism has failed us. It signifies that legislatures largely managed and influenced by males—lots of whom imagine in some model of biblical womanhood—have labored actually laborious to make a lifetime of submission this engaging, and a lifetime of company this difficult. They’ve rolled again reproductive rights, after all, however they’ve additionally stood in the best way of the kind of childcare reform that may make parenting simpler—not only for working mothers, however for all dad and mom. They’ve busted unions and suppressed the kind of labor protections that may put boundaries on the workday. They’ve ensured we’re the one developed nation on the earth with out obligatory paid household depart. And it’s all very purposeful, if not often articulated.
Nonetheless, in 2021, a legislator from my residence state of Idaho stated the quiet half aloud whereas defending his option to reject federal funding for early childhood training: “Any invoice that makes it simpler or extra handy for moms to return out of the house and let others elevate their youngster, I don’t suppose that’s a great path for us to be going.”
Over many years, these males have managed to make household life more durable than it ought to ever be for tens of millions upon tens of millions of Individuals. And in our white-hot rage, our bone-deep exhaustion, we discover ourselves doomscrolling social media—or, a decade in the past, flipping by actuality TV—solely to seek out ourselves beguiled by a imaginative and prescient of cheerful docility. It’s a superb distraction, actually. It permits males’s continued accumulation of energy, their management over ladies’s our bodies and futures, to go unquestioned.
As I used to be gearing up for my doomed-to-fail experiment, my beloved canine died unexpectedly and traumatically. Deep in grief, I did what I might have finished for my #tradwife week: I ended working, and took care of my household and my residence. I walked for miles with my different canine, and spent hours crying and comforting and simply speaking with my associate. I gardened for hours. I made easy dinners and cleaned up after them. I didn’t have to alter the best way I dressed, or change my relationship with Charlie, or preserve a spotless residence to be a great caregiver for my household. I simply needed to present up. And we discovered a semblance of steadiness amid these storms. I didn’t should be a #tradwife to seek out it. I simply needed to be a great associate.
This text seems within the September 2023 problem of ELLE.
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Previously a journalist with BuzzFeed Information, Anne Helen Petersen now writes Tradition Examine on Substack, and is the creator of three books, most just lately Cannot Even: How Millennials Turned the Burnout Technology. She lives in Missoula, Montana.