In with more than 1.6 million views, influencer Estee Williams explains what the buzzy term means. “We believe our place.
..our purpose is to be homemakers,” she says.
“It doesn’t mean that we are trying to take away what women fought for.” But then Williams calls upon a popular bit of tradwife rhetoric that upholds the exact framework women fought to dismantle. “Tradwives also believe that they should submit to their husbands and serve their husbands and family,” she says.
Williams is not the only woman to embrace the with its patriarchal undertones and flowing dresses. Tradwives—at least in their TikTokified image—bake homemade bread with perfect manicures and keep spotless homes. It takes a lot of work to run a household in this way, but tradwives suggest that their lives are characterized by feminine leisure and dependence on their husbands.
If it sounds performative, it’s because...
well, it is. Tradwives also proudly declare themselves anti-feminist. In one TikTok clip—which appears on but has —an apron-clad TikToker tells viewers “don’t tell the feminists but I would rather stay home and cook and clean.
” To some, this type of message seems purely retrograde. “The language that they’re using about submission to their husbands reminded me a lot of the legal frameworks that I studied in the late 18th century, which has serious implications,” says , a historian of early-American women and gender. She goes on to list what happened to women .
