let's talk about trad wives, part three

I took a brief hiatus from writing personal essays and turned my limited free time to décor projects this summer. In May, our home was featured on Apt Therapy’s website and then later, their Instagram page. I’m always happy and honored when an outlet decides to share photos of our house. In comments I expected a few questions, maybe complaints about how I decorate with too many neutrals, but this experience surprised me because almost immediately commenters started calling me a trad-wife.

This is a fraught, probably overly discussed term at this point that I am hoping has reached its pinnacle of popularity. As my dad would say, “we’ve worked it to death.” I don’t call myself a trad-wife, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Like an image coming into focus, more ends up revealed in these conversations about the accuser than who we’re pointing the finger at. I have long held the belief that the reason why this conversation remains so kindled is because it bumps up against the very core of our identities as women: motherhood, sexuality, class.

I’m post 2020 wary of generalizations, but still, I could not help but notice some common traits of these angry commenters. Almost all were white, liberal women and their open accounts revealed their political-social performances. One photographed a defaced statue of Christopher Columbus with red paint to symbolize blood. Another stood arm encircled her child, a single mother, her purple hair cut into a neat bob on an unfixed face. A barista that admitted to living down the street from me, who called our four-bedroom house a “mansion,” had a profile photo of herself in riot gear, a bandana covering her face, holding a sign declaring ACAB. As Seth and I drove home from a doctor’s appointment for our youngest, the skyline of St. Paul becoming smaller in our rearview, I held up each profile to him. I admit I was amused by how archetypal it was.

I too, had met these types— at the 2017 protests against the exoneration of Philando Castile’s killers. They had loved me then, but in the light of day and in a different time I had now become a problem. I’d been a problem when I’d advocated for school choice alongside other people who didn’t like the achievement gap, or when I’d admitted to being pro life, citing the long heritage of eugenics within the abortion industrial complex. The most offensive, though, was sharing images and musings on homemaking.

Is it perhaps you who desires to be a trad wife? I wanted to ask.

One morning last winter I learned that of all the art at the Louvre, Madonna images, those depicting Mary and Jesus, remain the most popular. The writer who discovered this had made a thesis that it was this very kind of imagery: mother and child, that causes us to connect with and see the Divine. While mom influencer and trad wife content is not the same, imagery of mother and child remains popular all the same. The algorithm is accused of favoring the nuclear family, but I’m not sure who wants to look at a statue with red paint resembling blood? Like a siren’s song that cannot be turned down, the appeal of trad wifery is telling us something more about this moment in time. The rub is in the appeal of it, not the actual thing. I don’t know these commenter’s stories, and they don’t know mine, but I can suss out deep wounds disguised as sarcasm, wit, and cruelty. The scabs reveal something more real and frankly interesting. I believe beneath these harsh critiques of domestic life and the women who enjoy it is this:

grief.