Sometimes I long for the life of a tradwife. Then I remember it’s a reactionary fantasy; The reality is so much darker (“anti-vaxxing, decrying contraception and woke liberal modernity”)

The Guardian ^ | February 4, 2024 | Emma Beddington

[DoodleBob]

…But I’m fascinated by tradwife life, why it appeals and what it’s selling.

It’s less the campy, colour-saturated, submissive 50s-housewife cosplay (if you aren’t familiar, check out @esteecwilliams and prepare to hear that “God designed two genders for different purposes”). That feels like fantasy or fetish, designed, I suspect, to appeal mainly to men. (Some of the women who yearn to surrender to a male provider could be, as one astute TikToker put it, “mistaking wanting to be a trad wife with wanting universal basic income.”)

But the other kind – families forging a wholesome, homesteading existence – taps into a longing for things it’s objectively reasonable to long for. It’s stuff I long for: a slower, simpler, more intentional way of life, making do and mending, a hands-on relationship with nature, the seasons and food production. …They make it look so lovely, this 19th-century drudgery. The reality of homesteading is precarious and not pretty: … But the gorgeous aesthetics can also lull you into not noticing, what – apart from sourdough starter kit – it’s selling.

At the extreme margins, that’s white supremacy: a fringe of tradwives enthusiastically repopulating the world with blond babies. Others sit along what’s been called the “crunchy to alt-right pipeline”, where granola-fuelled enthusiasm for organic farming, fermentation or home schooling (none of which – obviously! – is inherently alt-right) elides into anti-vaxxing, decrying contraception and woke liberal modernity.

But even when it’s just a homesteader saying feminism makes them sad or suggesting scrubbing dishes glorifies God, it tends to celebrate a narrow vision of life: white, straight, Christian, cleaving to traditional gender roles and family structures.

[DoodleBob]

“ A tradwife (a neologism for traditional wife or traditional housewife) in recent Western culture, typically denotes a woman who believes in and practices traditional sex roles and marriages. Many tradwives believe that they do not sacrifice women's rights by choosing to take a homemaking role within their marriage. Some may choose to leave careers to focus instead on meeting their family's needs in the home. The traditional housewife aesthetic has since spread throughout the Internet in part through social media featuring women extolling the virtues of behaving as the ideal woman.”

At the extreme margins, that’s white supremacy

If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black…There are few things that scream lily white and supremacist more than Contestant #1…

After leaving university, Emma Beddington practised as a lawyer. Today she is a freelance writer, who has contributed to ELLE, Red, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, Condé Nast Traveller and O Magazine. She is also the author of the acclaimed blog Belgian Waffle. She lives in Brussels with her husband and two sons.

[EvilCapitalist]

She has a man-ish face.

[Carriage Hill]

“Tradwife” — had to look that one up.

Also found “Crunchy Tradwife” ... heh.

[Shadow44]

They have no solution to the problem that young people feel miserable and that everything is worse than it was in the past other than to tell people, “actually no one was ever happy until the present.”

[stanne]

“Some may choose to leave careers to focus instead on meeting their family’s needs in the home.”

That would require humility.

I wonder if it would help Humanity in the western world get itself out of this eddy of virtue-less spiritual, cultural, self destructive depression…

Nah.

[PGR88]

Emma for a moment thought about trying to attract a real man, but realized it the chance was vanishingly small, and gave up.

[lastchance]

Someone pass Emma the smelling salts.

[DoodleBob]

Per the Atlantic, “Crunchy, coined as a pop-culture reference to granola, has come to refer to a wide variety of cultural practices, including avoiding additives and food dyes, declining or spacing out childhood vaccinations beyond what pediatricians recommend, and more extreme actions in pursuit of health, independence, and purity.”

In truth, many homeschoolers overlap with Crunchy. There are many kids (and parents) who have terrible food allergies, and sending them to school potentially exposes them to death. Nut allergies are NOT imaginary. Lesser issues are still biggies: Gluten really does bring about brain-fog and worse, while soy is the devil IMHO.

When Mrs DoodleBob and I were in a HSing coop, many of the free-range kiddies had one or two things “off” about them. Being “crunchy” wasn’t a political act: it was an act of survival. These kids didn’t turn out to be bigots, unlike like their leftist brethren who were often drugged into not being “off.”

Buying meat and produce from a local farmer is also part of the crunchy and, so it seems, “Tradwife” culture. I do agree, it’s mighty tough to look like June Cleaver when you’re bringing in groceries from the farmer and you have a phalanx of kids. But it’s hardly racist. Indeed, the little DoodleBobs met more people unlike us on a natural, sincere, unforced basis by being homeschooled than what they’d get at school.

[Jamestown1630]

Over analyze much?

[nwrep]

There are more Christ haters in England than there are in Pakistan.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- " white supremacy"

Malarkey from this liberal. She has a history, the article doesn't mention:

"Being bald has its upsides. I am one of the few who has not suffered from a year without access (mainly) to hairdressers. My wig – professionally cut about 18 months ago – has protected me from the wonky fringes and clipper crimes perpetrated in my house, or from ending up looking like an overgrown escaped sheep. The rest of me may be a natural disaster, but my hair (well, someone else’s hair) is holding it together.

"So would I reverse 26 years of leaving plugholes unmolested if I could? Yes, absolutely. I still wake up sad, sometimes, having dreamed my hair grew back, passing my hand over my head in the hope of feeling patches of silky baby hair, or stubble. I want the chance to cry at a bad haircut or unwise dye job; I would love to know if I have gone grey."

After 26 years of baldness, I still miss my hair. But I have new hopes of a cure By Emaa Beddington, Guardian UK, 6 April 2021

She blamed her baldness on stress, or as she wrote, "an exceptionally savage period of stress". Now maybe it's "white supremacy" stress.

26 years ago from 2021 brings us back to 1995. What was up in Britain then to cause her such "savage" stress. Doesn't say. But one finds from her as well:

"My husband has seen me at my worst – blind drunk, going bald, losing my mind and leaking bodily fluids (not all at once). He tolerates my least attractive qualities – cold, uncommunicative, recycling-obsessed – daily. I’ve watched him fill our home with technology I can’t operate and listened to thousands of his shouted work calls on speakerphone. We sometimes operate like a single organism: several times a week one of us says out loud exactly what the other was thinking; I sense tiny shifts in his mood in the way animals sense changes in barometric pressure. At other times we feel incomprehensible to each other." I still love my husband after 30 years. But I have no idea how we’ve stayed together Guardian UK, 11 February 2024

[Governor Dinwiddie]

It's a tranny, NOT a woman. That picture is proof postitive. It has a fixation on "aga" whatever that is.

[DouglasKC]

She sounds like she would be funloving and pleasant to be married to.

[EvilCapitalist]

That’s what I figured. Why I said “Emma” has a man-ish face.

[Dr. Sivana]

prepare to hear that “God designed two genders for different purposes”

He didn't make two genders. He made two sexes. "Gender" is a language construct, handy for the French and Latin languages. When used as a substitute sex in a human person, is either a jocularity or a blunder (Fowler, Modern English Language Usage)

[jdsteel]

Sounds like what AI would write in response to:

Write gibberish using woke catchphrases to complain about a wholesome lifestyle led by others.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

It's a tranny, NOT a woman. That picture is proof postitive. It has a fixation on "aga" whatever that is.

[Cowgirl of Justice]

I am a traditional wife.

It is an amazing life and we have a wonderful, loving, respectful marriage.

[one guy in new jersey]

She might have missed the fainting couch and bonked that lily white self-hating head of hers.

[PGR88]

“Some may choose to leave careers to focus instead on meeting their family’s needs in the home.”

its sad and ironic how "modern" leftist women are perfectly happy to sell their youth, beauty and energy to corporations and governments for "careers" in which they have zero guarantees of promotion or success, and will be tossed out on their asses when the first budget reduction, sale of assets or bankruptcy occurs - with zero guarantees to provide for them in their dotage.

This is "freedom."

And a family, which offers love, life-long mutual support, and protection is considered "slavery."

They same applies to men, by the way, only with slightly less negative consequences on the downside

DUMBASSES.