Much has been written about the tradwife. Too much, perhaps, the discourse now leaking bloodily from our ears, from the sides of our mouths, our appetite for the stuff worthy itself, I think, of discourse. We have been mesmerised by all of it – by the rural body horror, by the time-machine quality of a woman who lives on the internet yet refuses to acknowledge the past 70 years, by all the wet dough being kneaded by manicured fists and the contradictory feelings they stir in us, of anger, desire, fear, shame, I could go on. I do go on. But one aspect of her life is rarely considered, much less discussed. Lingering behind the camera of every tradwife’s exquisitely edited afternoon is a ghostly figure, urging us to ignore the perfect irony of the modern “tradhusband”.
Last month an article investigated the contradictions inherent in being a tradhusband, the invisible head of the tradwife’s household. Despite the oceans of attention paid to their wives, these men have attracted so little scrutiny that when interviewing academics and influencers for her story in Vox, writer Anna North had to stop to explain what a tradhusband is. Just as the tradwife’s sudden visibility during the pandemic pointed towards a shared economic and emotional fantasy that women could choose to opt out of modern life, so does the tradhusband’s invisibility reflect (wrote North) “a larger vacuum when it comes to men’s roles in debates about family policy and culture”. Conservative politicians continue to preach noisily about keeping women in the home, where they’re encouraged to have as many children as possible. But it’s less clear “what these new traditionalists believe men are supposed to do”.
Will more men appear in the kitchens of our most clicked wives, stirring jam, arranging peonies?
The only tradwife content I allow myself these days is the soothing bewilderment of Nara Smith, whose viral videos (her liquid voice narrating the process of making Coca-Cola from scratch while wearing couture) are Marina Abramović-quality performance art. Watching them feels like coming up on a downer, or the euphoric moment just before you fall. Since announcing her fourth pregnancy, it appears she’s decided to allow her husband, Mormon model Lucky Smith, significantly more airtime. Though she disputes her tradwife status, three months ago she presented a video with Smith detailing the “unspoken rules” in their marriage, the first of which was that she always scans the menu in a restaurant for him “so he doesn’t have to choose”. The second was that he’s uncomfortable unless she stands to his left (much like Ant and Dec), so he can open doors for her. I’ve watched this I can’t tell you how many times, her pregnant stomach emerging from a white lace bandeau top, his skin lit as if by internal candlelight, and thought about how the tradwife’s focus on fertility is so encompassing that in their performance the husband is also the child.
Which makes, actually, perfect sense? As has been meticulously documented by novelists and filmmakers throughout the 20th century, while the life of a housewife might have been discredited as lobotomised and limited, the life of a businessman is soulless and grey. Even when weighing up the solid patriarchal benefits of husbandry, immense pressure comes with providing for a family when work is unreliable. Far more enjoyable (and profitable) surely, to acknowledge your influencer tradwife is both breadmaker and breadwinner.
Are we about to see a shift, then, towards the tradhusband? Will more men appear in the kitchens of our most clicked wives, stirring jam, arranging peonies? Will they change the nappies and clean the surfaces and care for the grandparents? Or does the tradhusband’s presence threaten our fantasy? Will it contradict the lie one must buy into in order to enjoy the tradwife? The illusion that we have simply stumbled upon this pretty lady as she prepares lunch, elated in a state of financial dependency, and so expose the sordid reality – that we are paying to watch a beady entrepreneur perform regressive conservatism using the tools of linen and curds.
The tradhusband’s absence is noteworthy because it’s necessary. We don’t see him because we can’t. For the tradwife illusion to work her husband needs to show his dominance by staying out of the kitchen. We must believe her job is to prepare for his return; if he hasn’t left, he has nowhere to come home from, and if he is at home, then he’s not at work, which reveals (like Toto pulling back the curtain) that she is the one earning the money right here, in this studio kitchen with its buttery light, her power refracted through a rinsed milk bottle.
Photograph by Vogue