Making a Wife From Scratch
How can we love if it seems as if the only option for a fairytale romance includes a white-picket fence, two kids, and an apron?
Kenza Bajjar, BA Politics and International Relations 09/12/2024
Sprawling green pastures, gorgeous farmhouses, multiple kids running around as dinner is being made, while your husband works hard to provide. Video after video, it seems that after ‘brat summer’, the world has reactionarily decided that the traditional, nuclear family is what we should yearn for.
Nara Smith, a former model and now social media Mormon celebrity, stands at the forefront of this cultural shift. With her pristine designer clothes and immaculate hair, she kneads and fries, mixes and sears. Married to Lucky-Blue Smith, and mother of three children, Nara has been documenting and curating her ‘tradwife’ (traditional wife) image for some time now.She propelled to virality for her ‘making XYZ from scratch’ TikToks, where she makes everything from roast dinners to moisturizers from scratch. Occasionally, she also shares personal details: her struggles with eczema, how she handles motherhood, and even a mini-vlog showing the birth of her youngest child. Throughout, she stays poised and elegant, never a flyaway strand of hair nor a chipped nail to be seen. As she narrates her recipes, her voice at a soft monotone, she shows how much of a traditionally picture-perfect wife and mother she is. While most of the attention she’s received has been disbelieving awe, she has also garnered a cult following of women who see her as the end-all-be-all wife.
The rise of the tradwife has been a long time coming. Seemingly harmless niches such as — ‘coquette’ with its pink bows and lacy frills, the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic, ‘natural makeup’, and the ‘very demure, very mindful’ trend have shifted the standards of the ideal woman with ever increasing rules.
Behind each of these trends, as goes for most of pop culture, lies a promotion of malicious femininity. Each one continues to nourish the idea that to be beautiful and to be desired, you must be a perfect doll, waiting to be whisked off your feet.
The discourse on tradwives cannot be isolated - it is deeply influencing contemporary dating culture. How are we meant to love when marriage is reduced to the acts of service we can provide for one another? How can we love if it seems as if the only option for a fairytale romance includes a white-picket fence, two kids, and an apron? Sure, there are men out there who want nothing more to see their partners succeed and grow, but what about those who wish nothing but the opposite? With the rise of right-wing attitudes within male circles, pushing for the relocation of women to the domestic, how can we focus on love when our lives are at stake? Every day, conservative voices seem to get increasingly louder, imposing rules on how women ought to act, look, move, and breathe.
Of course, it is not Nara Smith’s fault that she has gathered a following of women who want to be like her. However, to be promoting a stay-at-home mom lifestyle – one that is infamous for the physical, emotional, and financial effort it requires – while being ridiculously wealthy and supposedly voting Republican in the US election, it feels disingenuous . Influencers hold a lot of cultural power, affecting hundreds of millions of young people. As the world seems to increasingly turn to conservatism, Nara Smith’s promotion of the porcelain tradwife seems to do nothing else than accelerate such eerie developments.
