Traditionalism

In the sinister annals of the men's rights activist internet back in 2017, an alt-right personality called Matt Forney popularized the term, or depending on your outlook, slur, “tradthot.” According to Forney, a “tradthot” (a portmanteau of “tradwife” and “thot”) was a woman who entered the alt-right pretending to believe in traditional gender roles but, in reality, wanted to exploit a male-dominated audience by catering to their fantasies.  Forney, although not well-known for his charitable views about women at the time — he's since repented, naturally — may have been onto something.

Estee Williams was studying meteorology at college when she dropped out to follow her dream: being a stay-at-home housewife. Now, while spending her days packing her husband’s lunchbox and scrubbing the skirting boards, she films videos for TikTok in flowy dresses where she promotes a return to "traditional" values. Think Betty Draper minus the melancholy. She is the figurehead of the #tradwife movement. If you’re not familiar, the online tradwives are the product of a marriage between Instagram models and Fifties TV moms. They reject however many waves of feminism there are now and long for a return of the traditional nuclear family that once existed in America (for maybe forty years).

‘A woman’s place is in the House and the Senate’, read the shirts assembled by slave labor in Myanmar, the messaging likely dreamed up by graduates of a small liberal arts school whose annual tuition would make a generous stimulus package for a city in any developing country. I like seeing women in the Senate, don’t get me wrong. I just see the former option, the house, as much more preferable for myself for a variety of reasons. I went through my Girl Boss phase in my late teens — my hard working immigrant parents, the descendants of a long, long line of ‘tradwives’, wanted different things for their only daughter.