University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The women #homemaker left behind

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The women #homemaker left behind

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Content Copyright 2024 Jordyn Paul-Slater
The Women #Homemaker Left Behind
by
Jordyn Paul-Slater
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATIONS AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
May 2024

ii
Acknowledgments
Thank you so much to my thesis committee, Professors Gabriel Kahn, Allison Trope, and
Diane Winston, for reading every version of this story (no matter how long past the deadline)
and challenging me to improve. I also want to thank Professor Oscar Garza and Dr. Allissa
Richardson for helping me through the early stages of reporting and editing this story.
Thank you to my family and friends for encouraging me, listening to my ideas, and
picking me up whenever I fell. I could only have done this with your understanding and support.

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... iv
Body Text ....................................................................................................................................... 1
The Women #Homemaker Left Behind...................................................................................... 1
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 20

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Abstract
Gen Z has deconstructed many societally accepted concepts through their online
interactions, and one of those ideas has been the gender norm. With the hyperawareness of
nonbinary and queer folk, gender has been expanded beyond the binary. Though, conservatives
haven’t taken well to this idea, as we all know, and have responded in many ways. One of the
more unusual ways is the platforming and supporting of “tradwife” influencers.
Many online subcultures moving back towards traditional femininity have proliferated.
One of the most fascinating are the traditional wives, “tradwives” for short. These women
emulate the 1950s housewife aesthetic from retro dresses to enforcing traditional gender roles.
Tradwives say this relinquishing of power “works” and leads to a happier and healthier life. But,
many viewers don’t believe this is the case.
Tradwife is shorthand for traditional wife, and these women profit from emulating the
1950s housewife ideology and, most importantly, rejecting modern ideas of gender and gender
equality. This story is about homemakers and tradwives navigating the intense backlash towards
their online communities from narratives created by a monolithic, white view of traditional
femininity.

1
Body Text
The Women #Homemaker Left Behind
Being a traditional wife came naturally to Victoria Yost, but becoming a tradwife
influencer brought a blessing to her family.
“Once I started getting a couple of product offers and people willing to pay me to make
little video advertisements, I realized that I could do this on the side as well, benefit my family,
and be a bit of a blessing,” Yost said.
When she found cleaning videos on YouTube, everything changed. After viewing the
content, she thought she could make her own videos, so she opened her YouTube channel,
Thyme and Tenderness, in 2018. It would be a small passion project to help with her motivation.
She didn’t expect much out of it when she started.
The next few years, though, were a whirlwind. Yost drew audiences of thousands to her
YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok accounts. She received partnership opportunities and gifts
from brands she’d always admired. She made friends with other homemaker influencers
worldwide. Best of all, she built a profitable platform based on her values: modesty, community,
and faith.

2
“Once I started getting a couple of product offers and people willing to pay me to make
little video advertisements, I realized that I could do this on the side as well, benefit my family,
and be a bit of a blessing,” Yost said.
What she had become was a tradwife, short for “traditional wife,” influencer. Tradwife
influencers are women who romanticize their lives in traditional gender roles, where the husband
goes to work, and the woman stays home, cooking, cleaning, and raising their children.
Yost seemed to be at the right place at the right time. When she started posting online in
2019, the social media tradwife movement became more popular. The same handful of popular
tradwife blogs ballooned to hundreds of YouTube channels. Yost rode the wave.
But, as the community has grown over the years, videos drifted into a gray area. Vlogs
centered on homemaking, or the acts that define tradwives like cooking, cleaning, and childraising, were still prominent. But, these activities shifted to the background.
Some stayed in an educational territory, while others ventured into right-wing talking
points. Videos discouraging birth control, abortion, and feminism became more frequent. The
most shocking was the promotion of white supremacist ideas, like the prominent tradwife blog
Wife with a Purpose white baby challenge, encouraging families to participate in the “white baby
challenge,” citing a “falling” birth rate of white babies to encourage white families to procreate.

3
Yost, who is Puerto Rican, had realized her homemaking videos had become a part of
something bigger.
Hashtags “tradwife” and “homemaker” categorize everyone, from sourdough bakers to
Alt-Right commentators, in the same community. Suddenly, Yost and other tradwives who sit in
the middle, proud homemakers without political commentary, swim in a bigger pond than they
initially expected.
Still, the increase in content didn’t matter to Yost. Everything changed with one article.

In 2020, Yost received a news notification. It was an alert about a new BBC video story
highlighting her online friend, Alena Kate Pettitt. Pettitt runs a blog called the Darling Academy,
which was at a peak of popularity.
“To reignite your fairytale love story, or set yourself up for one as you navigate the
courting stages with a potential spouse, then one truth you must adopt as you head into marriage
or turn a new leaf is this,” Pettit wrote in a post on her blog. “Your husband must come first; he
needs to know he does.”
In her online career, she has received a few hate comments now and again. She realized it
came with the territory, but the hate became more severe for weeks after this article came out.

4
She did a deep dive and found a little bit of truth. She saw accounts, usually anonymous
ones, that used photos of women dressed in 1950s attire preaching about submission and images
she found to be “concerning.” But, it was only a minority, and she wasn’t one of them. The
people in her comment sections didn’t understand that, though.
However, the coverage of the tradwife lifestyle didn’t address these differences. A
column in the Guardian said that tradwife influencers were “fighting their insecurities” through
hyper-traditionally focused content. Vice interviewed experts who said this movement has ties to
a “sinister, extremist movement.” Business Insider aligned the tradwife movement with pushing
conservative ideals to a more impressionable audience of young girls.
“I’m torn because I don’t want to be part of something with such horrible, negative
connotations or connections,” Yost said. “But at the same time, I am a traditional wife. That is
who I am, and that is not a dog whistle for having secret evil beliefs about other people.”
Now, Yost is left in this uncomfortable space. Each new article brings a wave of backlash
against this community, forcing her to choose a side.
As creators in the middle of the tradwife identity crisis scramble to find their place, many
more subcommunities form, seemingly by the day. This makes the traditional wife movement
extraordinarily massive and complicated to cover.

5
Although algorithms put a black-and-white filter on this community, the reality looks
more like a spectrum, with many creators falling into the gray area. At the center are proud
tradwives, like Yost, who don’t post political commentary content. A bit more to the left are
tradwives who label themselves as “progressive” or “progressive-leaning,” where creators will
lean into the 1950s housewife aesthetic but promote ideas of feminism and gender equality.
There is also the “modern homemaker” side, which refers to tradwives who don’t believe in the
1950s aesthetic but still focus their content on domestic labor tasks like cooking, cleaning, and
child raising.
Further away are communities like “CleanTok,” an exclusive TikTok community of
homemakers who only post cleaning and organization advice, and “stay-at-home girlfriends,”
bloggers who live off their partner’s income and repay with domestic support.
At the extreme right are the political female commentators who dip their toes into the
manosphere, a men’s rights movement that campaigns against “woke” ideas about gender
equality and asserts men’s biological dominance over women. A step away are tradwives who
promote biblical womanhood.
Scrolling through the tradwife hashtag, videos begin to look alike. One popular video
shows a white creator, Ashley from @herblessedhome, in a linen dress and floral apron
preparing dough for two loaves of bread. As the video plays, the creator reads a section from
Elisabeth Elliot’s book ‘Let Me Be a Woman.’

6
‘It’s a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the
things that men do,” Ashley reads. “This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to
prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine
criteria?”
Most of the top content on TikTok and Instagram looks like this, depicting white women
baking or cleaning a cottage-looking kitchen. But, the algorithm also fails to capture the racial
diversity within this community.
Natasha Boclair, a Black modern homemaker, is known for her handle @homebynatasha.
She found her way to social media content creation in January of 2022. At the beginning of the
year, Boclair was in a career transition. Her company had just been acquired, and she was
deciding between continuing the corporate climb or becoming a stay-at-home mom and
homeschool teacher to her now 10-year-old son. After long talks with her husband, she decided
to leave her position. But, she found herself in a space where she needed more resources to help
her begin her homeschooling journey.
So, she turned to social media. Along with the information she needed, she found an
opportunity.

“I started following all these different types of women, and I told my husband, ‘You
know what?’” Boclair said. “‘I think it'd be cool to start a page, a channel, or something to

7
show, as a black woman, what it looks like to homeschool or stay at home.’ There just wasn't
much of that online, just a tiny group.”
In just over a year of content creation, she has amassed over 100,000 TikTok followers
and received sponsorships from the biggest corporations in the domestic space, including Tide,
Downey, and Fabuloso. Turning her life as a homemaker into an online business has been
financially rewarding for her, as she averages an income of around $12,000 to $15,000 a month.
Other homemakers in her community make double the amount.
“Many of us have side hustles and businesses that make money, especially the women
sharing this stuff online,” Boclair said. “I know many of these girls make over 30 grand a
month.”
Boclair sticks to the “modern homemaker” pocket of the community but has found
herself in the middle of this cultural war with the tradwife identity. Suddenly, negative criticism
seemed to push her out of the community she once loved to be a part of. Surprisingly, the
criticism hasn’t been coming from conservatives or white women. The backlash is coming from
her community, other Black women who called her “white washed.”
“I've had people say, like most of that critique, I hate to say it will be has been from
[Black] people,” Boclair said. “And it'd be like, ‘Oh, you sound like a white woman.’ And I
mean, it's crazy. Nobody else says that to you but your people.”

8
So, she has to leave. Boclair doesn’t want to be associated with the conservative, white
stereotype that her community has been taken over by.
“We use tags that put us in our niche,” Boclair said. “We were like, ‘They do not
represent us.’ We don't have the same mindset. We don't have the same thought. A lot of our
reasons for homemaking are different.”
– –
The idea of being a tradwife influencer came to Victoria Doss through a dream.
Victoria's husband, Henry, was already an influencer in some sense. For a couple of
years, he was the face of their shared account, @henryandvictoriadoss, active on Instagram and
Facebook, using these platforms to share their mutual beliefs about traditionalism, faith, and
marriage. Victoria had been taking a back seat, occasionally posting and helping Henry with any
long-term projects.
But, around December of 2022, she felt something in her shift. She met her biological
father after 31 years of separation, and with the weight of processing, she grew stronger in her
faith. She began reading the Bible and praying daily. And, as she grew closer to God, she kept
getting signs through her dreams.

9
Every dream was the same. Victoria was helping people. Sometimes, she would be
building a small shelter for a family. At other times, she’d be helping a middle-aged person with
their daily tasks. Each dream ended the same way, too. She wasn’t able to finish what she
started. She woke up every morning frustrated that she never benefited from her hard work. After
a month of having these dreams, it clicked. God was sending a message.
“The more I read God’s word, the more I realized these dreams were about a mentality to
make these videos,” Doss said. “I had so much to tell the world. I used to worry about if we
would run out of content. But now, it’s the farthest thing from my mind.”
Doss started posting more frequently on their shared account and, eventually, branched
out to form her Facebook community. Doss knows her commentary videos are “controversial,”
and she doesn’t understand why people are upset.
“Most of the time, I feel like we get called ‘Pick Me’s,” Doss said. “Isn’t that the point?
Isn’t it the point to get married? Everyone wants a husband, but they don’t want the
responsibilities that come with it.”
Doss suggests that those responsibilities involve strict obedience to gender roles related
to biblical womanhood. In this structure, the wives are supposed to be quiet and meek and not
bring excessive attention to themselves. They also wholly submit to their husbands by taking
responsibility for all homemaking tasks and allowing their husbands to make all significant
financial or social decisions. Posting about these ideas has gotten Doss a lot of hate online.

10
“People hate the ‘s-word,’ Doss said. “Older women are supposed to teach younger
women how to love their husbands the right way and how to act modestly. It’s a shift away from
where the modern world is going.”
For women deeply entrenched in the tradwife lifestyle, like Doss, the “modern woman” is
the example of all that’s wrong with the world. The modern woman is addicted to the “girl boss”
lifestyle: brazen feminists obsessed with climbing the career ladder. When women choose the
“modern” lifestyle, they continue to fall into a circle of hurt and unhappiness.
“We’ve been so desensitized to the modern life versus trying to isolate,” Doss said. “You
have generations of women focused on climbing the career ladder at whatever expense. A lot of
them don’t want a family, and a lot of them don’t want a man. Some of them try to have both,
and it’s a struggle.”
As you go deeper into the tradwife influencer space, Doss’s opinions about the modern
world and trad lifestyle are commonly shared. Modern womanhood is an enemy of happiness.
This is where extremist researchers and journalists like Seyward Darby start seeing red flags.
“Performance is such an essential part of extremism,” Darby said. “It’s about signaling.
It’s about getting people to believe in what you believe and getting people to become a part of
the community.”

11
That performance, she thought, was points of exaggerated happiness. The tradwife
lifestyle has been packaged as a way for women to find a more profound satisfaction within their
lives away from hustle culture and being a girl boss. Some of the most prominent tradwives of
the community, like Estee C. Williams, cited being overwhelmed as a reason to dive into a
traditional lifestyle.
“I didn’t want to see myself struggle that way, and I didn’t want to see myself struggle in
school and work,” Williams said in an interview with CNN. “I wanted to figure out what my
purpose was. When I became a strong spiritual woman, I figured out myself.”
Recent studies show that women globally are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with
their lives. Data from Morning Consult showed that half of employed women feel burnt out at
work. A Girlguiding poll published last year found that only 1 in 10 young women find
happiness in their lives.
“It’s hard to be a person who identifies as a woman in the United States,” Darby said.
“Our systems are not set up to support women in terms of equity, payment, and advancement in
jobs or in both being a mother and a person holding a job. We’re awful with paid time off, we’re
awful with health care and all of these different things.”
Sometimes, tradwives portray their lifestyle as the light within the darkness. It’s the
“easy” option to cultivate happiness. They allow their husbands to make the big decisions,

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leaving time for them to build their social media and bake sourdough bread. And to women who
have found unhappiness in hustle culture, this lifestyle can sound like a great escape.
“What’s interesting about Trad as a message and a movement is that it’s saying to ignore
the systems,” Darby said. “The real problem is the utter failure of late-stage American
capitalism. But, this community suggests that you’ve gone off a path, and if you could come
back to this path, life could be ‘easier.’”
Social media works well to portray the tradwife lifestyle as aspirational. Researchers like
post-doctoral fellow Jane Hu say that tradwife influencers create a sense of longing and nostalgia
in some women for “easier” times with their content.
“I think this sense of nostalgia is appealing at an aesthetic level, especially a practical
one,” Dr. Hu said. “The online community is a productive state and appropriate form of this
lifestyle because it is tough to do now. It’s the fact that it is a kind of fantasy.”
This is where things can get slippery. In 2020, Darby published her debut novel, Sisters
In Hate, which detailed three stories of women in white nationalist movements. One of them,
Ayla Stewart, is a tradwife. Darby suggests that the online trad lifestyle and white nationalism
are much closer in proximity than initially imagined.

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“Trad and white nationalism intersect a lot,” Darby said. “White nationalism has a very
similar appeal where instead of looking at the actual causes of dissatisfaction, it points to the ad
hominem of people like feminists or immigrants and points to them as the problem.”
Watching one of these videos one moment doesn’t mean immediate indoctrination into
alt-right extremist groups the next. However, researchers like Charlotte Finney argue that
constantly viewing this content can “soften” reactions to more extreme ideas.
“I'm not saying that if you watch a trad wife video, you are going to become a member of
the far-right,” Finney said. “I'm also not saying that if you watch 100 of these videos, you will
become a part of them either. I'm trying to say that they are putting many far-right ideas into the
mainstream public discourse and that, over time, people become more softened to those ideas.
They don’t have as big of a reaction.”
However, tradwives criticizing modern womanhood don’t represent most tradwives and
homemakers online. Some creators are caught in the middle and have been carving out their own
space, seeking to educate people about the history of homemaking, traditionalism, and its
intersections.

Danita Platt is one of these creators. Platt is a creator of “CleanTok,” a smaller
homemaker community focused on cleaning and organization. Coming from a background in
home economics, Platt found it easy to transition into this online community. Her content ranges
from cleaning to organizational tips, demonstrating how having a “system” can make home tasks

14
like cleaning easy. Using systems to help her do tasks helped her overcome her own insecurities
around motherhood. So, teaching that to her audience is something she takes pride in.
“I know the greatest challenge that I faced was the sensation that I was not doing a good
job as a mom, and I wasn't doing a good job because I didn't keep things ‘perfectly,”’ Platt said.
“The first thing I had to do was get over that. My first thought when I saw TikTok videos of
people who were like, ‘I'm really struggling. I’m horrible. I'm just not doing a great job.’ With
my videos, I responded with, ‘Nope, the system you have is failing, but you're not failing.’”
To other content creators, though, Platt has been a source of thoughtful analyses about
intersectionality in domestic care tasks and the homemaking community. Platt mainly suggests
that the tradwife aesthetic was historically just that – an unachievable and falsely constructed
aesthetic.
“This traditional presentation [online] is in neutral colors,” Platt said. “It's apple picking,
precocious children, and precious moments. Everything is happening with little effort, which is
simply not true.”
This historical precedent makes it difficult for other modern homemakers to settle in the
tradwife community, even if their content appears under the hashtag. Rosa Picosa, home
engineer and content creator, says she could never identify with the “tradwife” trend.

15
“Usually, when I see traditional wife content, it is making bread, raising chickens,
dressing a certain way, and homeschooling…the parts of truly enjoyable homemaking,” Picosa
said. “None of those things are wrong, but those are always the things that are glamorized.”

Picosa has never outright said she was a “tradwife,” but the TikTok algorithm puts
CleanTok, homemaking, and tradwives in the same category. Picosa is a strictly cleaning and
occasional lifestyle creator on multiple platforms, with her largest audience being over 800
thousand followers on TikTok. Like many other content creators, she believes the tradwife
aesthetic is aspirational at best.
“The images I was seeing associated with this term were people who idolized the 1950s
housewife and lived their lives as such,” Picosa said. “But according to mostly black and brown
creators in the domestic space, the 1950s housewife was a myth. She never really existed
because she had the help.”
– –
The black-and-white view of the tradwife community ousts not only creators of color but
also other white women. Political divides within this community are also very apparent, with
tradwife influencers intersecting the housewife aesthetic with progressive values.
Like Lisa Pontius. Pontius never planned on being a traditional wife; it happened out of
necessity. She got pregnant shortly after starting her catering business. Money and time became

16
scarce. She got overwhelmed and burnt out, so she left her career aspirations behind and became
a stay-at-home mom. And now, she finds so much joy in her traditional life.
“It just kind of made sense financially for me to stay home,” Pontius said. “And it took
me several years to kind of grow to love my new job in a way…You know, it wasn't like my
life's dream to be a homemaker. I had different aspirations. Now that I've been doing this for so
long, I think it was such an amazing blessing. And I love doing it.”
She posts about her life and worldviews on TikTok to an audience of 590,000 people.
After two years of steady content creation, Pontius has amassed over 17 million views on her
account, scored brand partnerships with organizations like the CDC and Paper Cranes for Peace,
and is pursuing other projects, like her podcast “It’s Called Life, with Lisa P.”
Pontius visually fits in with many popular tradwives. She does have a vintage, 1950s
fashion sense and leans into the aesthetic. However, her content is in direct contrast. Pontius is
an outspoken feminist who is very critical of the tradwife movement. She says that the
movement as it is “weaponizes” the nature of traditionalism.
“When you talk about traditional family values, it leaves out many people who have
wholesome family lives,” Pontius said. “But families may not look the way you know, man plus
woman equals family. So I think especially in the climate that we're in, where people are fighting
for trans rights and LGBTQ+ causes, I think you have to be careful when you paint one thing as
the right way.”

17
That’s why she holds onto feminism so tightly. For her, feminism has given her the range
to express herself fully. Feminism isn’t trapping her into a stereotype but gives her freedom to
choose. Pontinus thinks for the tradwife community to move forward, there should be an
acceptance of feminism.
“Feminism is about opening up all choices,” Pontius said. “There's a huge difference
between choosing to be a homemaker and a mother in a climate and in a world that offers so
many other options and being a homemaker and a mother in a world where that is the only
option.”
Another progressive homemaker, Jennifer Brallier, agrees. Brallier stumbled into the
online influencing space as she wanted to share her experience of leaving behind legalism, a
high-control denomination of Christianity, and managing her chronic illness. She was shocked
by the positive reception to her openness.
“A lot of my platform has reached people in those high control groups,” Brallier said.
“It's made them question things and start searching for things. That encourages me because
content creation has made me realize that I have a much bigger influence than I could have had if
I hadn't had [a platform].”
Renegotiating the only things she knew about her womanhood and faith was no easy
ordeal. But, she drew strength from social media.

18
“It brought me to the point of saying, I’ve got to figure it out for myself, Brallier said in a
phone conversation. “What do I believe? Why do I believe it? And, in that process, I started
following influencers at the time and saw what they were doing.”
At first, Brallier only made content relating to her faith. But, then, she wanted to branch
out to other areas. The most straightforward transition was lifestyle content, which put her in the
tradwife category, but she doesn’t resonate with the conservative direction the community is
going in.
“I have a very different opinion than many traditional wives,” Brallier said. “I think many
people have twisted that, and now it stands for something that’s not what it should be. It's not
how I believe the Lord has designed [life] from a Christian worldview.”
On her platform, Brallier often talks about deconstructing gender barriers. Brallier says
homemaking or the everyday actions of home management tradwives usually spearhead, should
not be viewed within a strictly gendered lens.
“I think homemaking should be for anyone and everyone, whether you're married or
single,” Brallier said. “It doesn't matter. Your relationship status doesn't matter. Who you are,
your gender, or any of God. It should be if you want a steward of your home well. If you want to
take care of what you have. It goes beyond just a home and your life in general.”

19
Regardless, progressive tradwives aspire for a future where women can freely decide and
be systemically supported to live how they want to. They recognize that the future is a work in
progress. What that future looks like, though, is uncertain.
Typecasting the tradwife community has created complexities and chaos. As tradwives
and homemakers in the gray area navigate where they fit, many influencers constantly reflect on
how gender is reflected online. Ideas of women’s roles in society vary significantly from person
to person. The online tradwife community is just one of many spaces where women find
community, support, and resources to navigate their lives. This is why some creators, like Yost,
decided to weather the storm.
To her, being a tradwife online is one way where she can give stay-at-home mothers a
voice against the independent, working woman archetype. Despite all the negative attention, the
positives are sources of inspiration and strength.
“I hope to continue to be a voice, to grow, and to shed a spotlight on this lifestyle and
community,” Yost said. “The ‘girl boss’ stereotype has been in the spotlight for a very long time.
Wives, mothers, and those who take care of the domestic duties at home have been left by the
wayside, lacking community and the appreciation they deserve.”

20
Bibliography
“Behind the Rise of the Online ‘tradwife’ Movement.” VICE, 10 Mar. 2023,
www.vice.com/en/article/3ak8p8/online-rise-of-trad-ideology.
Froio, Nicole. “‘Trad Wives’ Are Using Social Media to Romanticize a Return to
‘Traditional Values’ as More and More Women Face Post-COVID Work/Life Balance
Burnout.” Business Insider, Business Insider, www.businessinsider.com/tiktoks-tradwives-are-pushing-a-conservative-agenda-for-women-2022-11. Accessed 8 May 2024.
“Happiness of Girls and Young Women at Lowest Level since 2009, Shows UK Poll.” The
Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 Sept. 2023,
www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/13/happiness-of-girls-and-young-women-atlowest-level-since-2009-shows-uk-poll.
Kaur, Harmeet. “‘tradwives’ Promote a Lifestyle That Evokes the 1950s. but Their
Nostalgia Is Not without Controversy.” CNN, Cable News Network, 27 Dec. 2022,
www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/us/tradwife-1950s-nostalgia-tiktok-cec/index.html.
“Women in the Workforce 2021 Survey.” Women In The WorkForce, Morning Consult,
www.verizon.com/about/sites/default/files/Verizon-Business-Women-in-the-Workforce2021.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2024.
“‘Tradwives’: The New Trend for Submissive Women Has a Dark Heart and History.” The
Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 27 Jan. 2020,
www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/jan/27/tradwives-new-trend-submissive-women-darkheart-history.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Gen Z has deconstructed many societally accepted concepts through their online interactions, and one of those ideas has been the gender norm. With the hyperawareness of nonbinary and queer folk, gender has been expanded beyond the binary. Though, conservatives haven’t taken well to this idea, as we all know, and have responded in many ways. One of the more unusual ways is the platforming and supporting of “tradwife” influencers.

Many online subcultures moving back towards traditional femininity have proliferated. One of the most fascinating are the traditional wives, “tradwives” for short. These women emulate the 1950s housewife aesthetic from retro dresses to enforcing traditional gender roles. Tradwives say this relinquishing of power “works” and leads to a happier and healthier life. But, many viewers don’t believe this is the case.

Tradwife is shorthand for traditional wife, and these women profit off of emulating the 1950s housewife ideology and, most importantly, reject modern ideas of gender and gender equality. This story is about homemakers and tradwives navigating the intense backlash towards their online communities from narratives created by a monolithic, white view of traditional feminity.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Paul-Slater, Jordyn (author)

Core Title The women #homemaker left behind

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 05/21/2024

Defense Date 05/17/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag gender roles,homemaker,OAI-PMH Harvest,stay at home moms,womanhood

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Kahn, Gabriel (committee chair), Trope, Allison (committee member), Winston, Diane (committee member)

Creator Email jordyn.paul2000@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113950053

Unique identifier UC113950053

Identifier etd-PaulSlater-12968.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-PaulSlater-12968

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Paul-Slater, Jordyn

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20240521-usctheses-batch-1156 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu