When the world is a disaster, people want nostalgia, even if it's a false nostalgia. And this nostalgia for a quote unquote better time when women were quote unquote traditional is really obscenely misplaced.
There are no girls on the internet.
As a production of iHeartRadio and unbost creative, I'm bridge tat and this is there are no girls on the internet. If you are a woman, listen out, because I need to tell you something kind of important. It turns out we have all been tricked.
Oh.
Yes, feminism was alive, and it was just a scam to get us working outside of the home so we could provide more taxable income to the government.
It turns out that we were much.
Better off back in the fifties as traditional housewives. Think about it, we didn't have to work outside of the home and becau it's been all of our time raising our kids and running a household. And we were so much happier back then too. You know, back when we as women couldn't own property, couldn't vote, couldn't take out a credit card.
Oh, and it was also legal for our spouses.
To rape us. So if you spend any time at all on TikTok. You're probably seeing an influx of this kind of content, which is commonly called trad wife content short for traditional wife, deposits that women weren't just happier, but also we were more empowered when we stayed at home and embraced more traditional gendered roles in the household.
And I believe that this.
Is not a coincidence against the backdrop of some pretty scary and heavy political and social happenings, things like economic instability, impending climate crisis, which always disproportionately harms women more, the gutting of Roe versus Wade, and the loss of the right to control our own bodies. I think content like this does two things. One, it responds to and exploits the understandable fear and anxiety that a lot of women are feeling, particularly in the absence of any kind of
a meaningful institutional support. And I also think it's kind of meant to sue us in a way. You know, don't be too angry, ladies, you were much better off without rights anyway. But all of this content is just the depiction of a fantasy life that never even really existed, And it's yet another way that social media is trying to sell women on a dangerous lie.
I'm Joe Piazza, and I'm an author, journalist, and podcaster, most recently the host of the podcast called Under the Influence.
On Joe's great podcast Under the Influence, she chronicles how the business and culture of influencing social media and the Internet has impacted women and right now, a lot of what she's seeing includes trad wife content. So your podcast is amazing, and that was one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you today, because you know, I've been scrolling social media a lot lately and I can't seem to get away from this, like
I guess, trad wife content. That's content made by women that is sort of giving us this idea that being a traditional, stay at home wife and mother is the path to power.
And happiness for women. Have you seen this content on your feed?
Yeah? Not only have I seen this content on my feed, but it has been dominating my feed for some reason. I don't Maybe sometimes I'm like Instagram knows I'm pregnant and wants to force me to stay home in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant forever.
And it's you'd be happier if that's how you lived your life, and.
They think I'd be happier, and you know, so my gut reaction to this is and it's the same as it is with most things. If you want to stay home and be a quote unquote traditional wife and you know, take on all of the trappings of domesticity that were popularized by mass media in the nineteen fifties, and this is what you really want, fucking awesome, You do it, you do you. And my feminism is mostly centered on
women choosing what makes them happy. I do not necessarily think that this is the path to empowerment for the majority of women, but I do think that this is becoming so popular. And we know that Instagram surfaces things that they think will soothe people's aduled brains as they make them more aduled, because the world is kind of a disaster right now, and when the world is a disaster,
people want nostalgia, even if it's a false nostalgia. And this nostalgia for a quote unquote better time when women work quote unquote traditional is really obscenely misplaced.
Yeah, it almost seems like it is painting a fantasy portrait of a time that did not exist because it you know, even for white women back in the day, I'm not necessarily quick to say that they were so happy.
You know, it was like legal for your spouse to rape you.
You couldn't own property, you couldn't you know, take like have your own money, like I don't.
You couldn't have a credit, you couldn't have a credit, right, And yeah, so I mean it's most let's be honest, it's mostly can't having a credit. It's mostly not having a credit card. And rape, marital rape, right.
And so I think it like it harkens back in a way that that paints these times as like really rosy and yeah, it's it's like a fantasy world that never even existed even during that time.
Yeah, exactly exactly, and not to mention the fact that it absolutely, one hundred percent never even existed in media for black women and women of lower economic statuses and immigrant women. So yeah, it's a completely completely false nostalgia.
And I think you hit on something interesting, which is that these tiktoks, especially that I see that really seemed to be trying to convince women that we've been lied to into thinking that having a job and you know, working outside of the home is empowering. It really, for that narrative to work, you basically have to ignore non
white women. You have to basically say, like, I'm a white woman talking to other white women in a world where people who are not white, if they exist, we're not speaking to them, We're not thinking about their experiences, We're not interrogating.
That at all.
No, No, exactly, the whole idea of a happy woman who enjoyed an idyllic life in the home, tending to her family while her husband did the wage earning labor is just kind of a fantasy. Obviously, it certainly did not exist for non white women, and it kind of didn't even really ever exist for white women either or not the way.
We've been led to believe anyway.
In fact, Joe says, the entire happy house white thing was a creation presented by a few specific pieces of mass media that made its way into the culture and just kind of stuck.
I mean, the whole trad wife aesthetic really does come from a very narrow sliver of nineteen fifty sitcoms.
And we are.
Talking June Cleaver talking daddy father knows best, Daddy knows best. I mean the shows we saw on Nick at Night as kids, really, and it was mass media telling us that this is what the world looked like when it didn't look like that for the majority of white women. It never looked like that for black women, women of a lower economic status, immigrant women, And I think, look, we're desperate, we are desperate to cling to something because the world isn't working right now. I don't think that
the concept of women working outside the home. I think work has failed all of us, not just women. Work has failed to empower us as a human race right now. And so there is this small set of people saying, well, what if you didn't have to work? Look at these women who didn't have to work, These like three women who didn't have to work in nineteen fifty four. Don't they look so happy in their Gangham dresses with their beach gas that they never could have really gotten in
nineteen fifty four? They do that shit with the Dyson hand one.
Yeah, I love your point that we're even if you're thinking about math media from the fifties, the trad wife stuff from that was shown there. It's only a small like subsection of shows like Lucy Olle Ball even she wanted to be on the show in it or be in Ricky in Deasy's show back in the day, So like they're not even demonstrating that, like it was a dominant, you know, a dominant culture.
Never Lucy wanted to work. Lucy was messy, Lucy was I mean, I love Lucy, and I just said I love Lucy because she was delightfully fucked up in so many ways, and she kind of bucked the trend of the trad wife that was on TV in so many ways. You don't see that if you just, like, you know, glance at one episode of the show, but she really did. And Lucille Ball in real life was a goddamn baller. She owned her brand, she owned her shit, she owned her show, so that she was not a trad wife
in any way, shape or form. But just the fact that we keep getting served this on Instagram and this is not what I want to be seeing right now. I want to be seeing more nap dresses and kaftans and frankly, I'm just in the mid for some fucking CAF memes. I don't want to see a trad.
Wof Let's take a quick break at our back.
To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with not working outside of the home or finding enjoyment and the domestic.
But what can be scary are the ways.
That trad wife content can present a palatable pipeline for women to be led into extremist ideology.
Yeah, and I think that you make a.
Good point about the way that it's definitely being like surfaced right now for whatever reason. And I think that's what I think can be kind of almost harmful, right, Like tread life stuff for me is like a little annoying, a little I thought it a little bit smug, But I know that a lot of that content can really
be a pipeline into like more extremist thinking. You know, you are saying like, oh, well, the world was much better in the fifties and the forties, when you know people of color quote knew their place and women knew their place. It's like a hop, skip and a jump away from some pretty nasty extremist you know, ideology.
I wouldn't even say it's a hop, skip and a jump. That's giving it too much credit. That's saying that it would take us three steps to get there. And I think we're kind of just teetering on the edge of this dangerous territory. It also it's also for me, very dangerous because it pits two groups of women against each other.
It pits the woman who does stay at home for whatever reason, to take care of her children, to take care of her home because she fucking has to, because there's no goddamn child care in this country, against the woman who either chooses to work because she wants to,
works because she has to. And it's setting up this dichotomy that says, oh, like this life is better than this life, or this woman is so different from you that you are at odds with her, when at the end of the day, we're all doing labor, raising children as labor, making meals, cleaning the house, it's labor. Like neither of these things is necessarily better than the other one.
Yeah, that's actually my biggest other than the extremist ideology, that's one of my biggest problems with this kind of tread wife content is that it really, I think a lot of times hinges on this aspect of comparison, and that's part of it that I don't like. I think there's like a smugness to it that's like I figured something out that other women are too stupid or too shallow to see. And I just feel like if people like I think people should do whatever makes them happy, whatever.
They can afford to do, you know.
I also think there's a kind of in some of the content, there's a kind of persecution complex, like, oh, I don't want to be on Tinder or in the office or away from my child or having my children in public school, and I'm demonized for it. And I think in twenty twenty two, I don't this is my opinion. I don't necessarily see a lot of people demonizing women who stay, who aren't working outside of the home.
I think that like, frankly, if in my opinion.
If you can, if you figured it out, how to make that work for you, Like I'm jealous, if anything, like, I think that's great.
God bless, Yeah, yeah, godless.
And I think, yeah, I think you're right.
It sets up this dichotomy of two different groups of women, where one is better than the other, or one's choices are better than the other or more real than the other. And I just think it's not really a binary. Plenty of people, especially parents, will work, will leave the workforce, come back to the workforce. It's not this binary thing where if you are able and enjoy not working outside of the home, that is like a that innately makes
you better. I just think it like it. It negates the reality of just like being a person who has to make choices that are right for their lives.
Totally, totally, absolutely and also a lot of the chadwife content, much like most of the content on Instagram, is a glossified version of reality. And it's also a lie. You know, a lot of these traditional wives claim that this childwife lifestyle is about paying homage to a slower, more intentional lifestyle. There's nothing slow about being at home with two toddlers,
are you kidding? Like, give me my work day any day where I'm like sitting at my computer and drinking coffee rather than getting up every two minutes to be like, I need's jawberrys. This water doesn't have enough ice. There's something weird being between my toes. What the fuck? That is not slow and intentional? That is being I say this all the time. I love my kids, like I
really really like them. I like being a mom, and I also don't really want to be alone one on one with them for longer than three hours at a time. I don't.
I'm not.
I think I'm exhausted. I need a break, and I just for me striking a balance between doing meaningful work and caring for I also don't want to come home at night and have them already in bed, right, So meaningful work with caregiving, I mean that's the goddamn sweet spot for me. And I think everyone has to find their own sweet spot.
Yeah, I think you're right, And I think you know that's for at least for me, Like that's what feminism is about, like people like women being able to make the best choices for them and that being okay. And I think, you know, every time I see one of those tiktoks, it's like I live a slow life. Part of me wants to be like, what part of a slow life involves setting up a tripod?
You know what I mean?
Like, if I'm living a slow life, I'm not like a lot of the tiktoks that I see on that are like probably involve an incredible amount of like work to put together. And I'm like, oh, it doesn't look so slow and soft to me. It actually looks like a lot of work went into this. On top of being around your kids, which we know is exhausting and draining.
Awful. I mean, it's just, let's be honest, a lot of it is awful. Yeah, those beach waves, that wasn't slow. It took a lot of work. Those eyelashes, you'll work. You've all get fake eyelashes on. There's nothing slow and intentional utterly, it's intentional. There's nothing slow about putting on fake eyelash.
Oh no, it's incredibly time consuming and like, yeah, and I think like that's I don't know. Part of me wonders if like there's just something about this content that is tailor made for social media and that it invites comparison, and it can it is an easy way to sort of polish up a lie. You know that, like you're living a slow life, you're so centered and in touch with your kids and YadA, YadA, YadA, But in fact
it can be none of that. But you're presenting this very pretty package to women and moms, a lot of whom are frankly at their limit. They've been doing remote learning, they've been through this pandemic. We've gone through like tampon shortages and baby formula shortages.
And no.
Meaningful institutional support or help selling continuing to sell moms this polished up lie is almost kind of cruel to me.
It is cruel. It's absolutely cruel because and I think it's just it's a very patriarchal view of the work of motherhood, of saying, oh, look at these beautiful pictures, of these beautiful houses. This is so easy. This is a slower life. No, that is work. That is so much labor. And you know, I've I've dabbled in the domestic arts at times, and frankly, that's harder work for me than having a dozen meetings in a day trying to make a zucchini bread. Okay, Like it's just like
I'm not good at that. It's not innate to me. That's not to say someone else doesn't wildly enjoy it. And I do think that we have sidelined we've sidelined work in the home right And the big, big, my biggest issue is always that we just don't call things done in the home work, but neither do the treadwives. They're blowing off that work. They're saying this is a slower and easier lifestyle and not recognizing that everything that a woman does in the home is actual work.
Yeah, I think that's a good point that like, if you are a mom or a parent who is engaging in the pretty exhausting work of raising little humans, to have someone go on social media and be like, actually, this isn't labor, this isn't work. This is just something that you know, you shouldn't that you should always enjoy, that should come naturally to you as a woman. That should just be really pleasing and nice and happy and
gentle and slow. I think a lot of parents the work of raising a child does not feel happy or slow.
Or any of that.
And I don't.
Know, it's just another way to lie to women about the work that we're all doing, that we are doing in a sort of this burden that we all have, this that we're all shouldering, and telling us that we should enjoy it all the time. This is like another added way that we're just not supported.
No, it's really it really is. It's another way of putting it down and putting down the labor that we put into a life to make a life, to raise human I think I think that raising human beings is one of the hardest things that I do in this portfolio of many things that I do in our economically precarious society. But it also it's just it remains undervalued
in the traditional wives movement. While they claim that they're elevating it, are continuing to undervalue it by saying this is an easier way of life.
Oh that's so true.
I really want to see like the seventies eighties era completely checked out mom who has not seen her kids all day, and when they come home, she's like, Oh, I hope you've been bed because.
I'm not making dinner. I want that mom to come back and de vogue.
But yeah, I mean, I the parenting book that I want to write, and then no one i'll let me write because cancel culture is a parent like it's nineteen eighty four. Man, put them in the way back of the car. Let's find some candy, cigarettes, right and jazz and PLoP them in front of the TV and give them all the sugary cereals because you know it, and smoke, I guess smoke and drink in front of them too, because that was my life even though I had a cigarette.
Now i'd probably die. But sometimes I still think about it about how like wonderful would be. And I feel like I turned out fucking green. And I was a latchkey kid whose parents chain smoke tupacs of cools a day in front of me. I don't have an asthma.
It's honestly so funny to see the different like I don't want to say trends, but waves of parenting, because yeah, I was parented like that. I was. I feel like I was the last generation of kids whose parents were like, go outside, I don't want to see you for several hours, and like, if you did that today, you'd be arrested.
Well, it was funny. I have a story which will probably get me arrested, and I'm I don't care anymore. Just don't take my kids away, okay, Like I'm a good mom. But it's pouring fucking rain yesterday at school pickup, and my husband hates using a car because we live in the city, until like, obviously they could drop my chiddler off at our first day of preschool pick her
up again in the pouring rain. I'm seven months pregnant, by the way, I'm huge, And I asked another parent and had a car there if they could drive me the four blocks home to drop me off and like, oh, I don't know if I have enough seats, and it was like a massive super room, Like what is pile onto the way back? It's four blocks. They wouldn't do it. They're like, there's no seatbelts back there, and I was like, but it's the way back, It's okay.
I'm like we you know.
I mean, like again, like I'm not going to do it for like a three hour road trip with my kid, but like we're just so afraid of everything anymore. And I think it's it's creative and this is a whole other episode. It's creating fucked up kids. It's creating kids who don't know how to live in the goddamn world as the world bringing it around us. But that's another podcast that no one will let me do.
I had that same experience on a family trip recently where my sister in law we were piled into a car and she was like, I'll just hold her on my lap car.
See, we're going to blots. It's fine.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Again, Like I think so many corners of the Internet are dark and terrible for women, and the ones that are dark and the most dark and terrible are the ones that look the prettiest.
That's such a I mean, I think you're right, because you know, I'm not a parent, but I can imagine if you're a new mom, it's scary. And then you go to these social media places or spaces that are sensibly supposed to be about support and helping you, and they just make you feel that much more inadequate and alone and terrified.
Terrible. I would never want to be a new mom again and be scrolling the internet and looking at Instagram. I'm just happy that I'm an old mom at this point, who just going to let a third child fall out of my body and probably sleep in the cardboard box and I start up, but I just yeah, I don't have time for it. But like thinking if like I was so terrified about new motherhood, which all new moms are, and then they see these kinds of pictures and they're like,
I'm failing. Well, women, we think we're failing. Every day I wake up and feel like a failure, even though like rationally I know that I shouldn't. I write good books, I make good podcasts, but like I still feel like I'm failing every day. We don't need another person to tell us that we're failing.
Especially not doing so under the guise of I'm telling you this to help you. This is this is just your own good that you need to know this information about how much you're failing at the mom exactly exactly.
Yeah. So I don't again like women working in the home, raising children, doing domestic labor. Good thing. Women that say that we women have failed by being in the workforce. Workforce, fuck you, fuck you real hard.
More. After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
I do have one last quick question for you. So, speaking of all things throwbacky and traditional, especially for women, I happen to know that you have a particular.
Interest in a one Miss Laura Ingles.
Wilder, if you don't know who that is. She was the writer of the series Little House on the Prairie, which became a TV show and was massively influential. Can you tell us about that interest and where it might take you next.
What a badass bitch she was? Yes, I love me some Laur Engelswelder. I read all the books growing up, but I'm not as much of an obsessive as my dear friend Clinas McNichol, who co hosted under the influence with me and who also married my husband and I
in front of us think seven years ago. She's like a freak about Laura Ingleswilder, but we're both obsessed with how this woman's real life stories of growing up on the prairie have become the most read books, probably among the most read books in the entire world, and also
have shaped how we view the American West. And we are doing a new podcast called Wilder, which comes out in March, where we spent a good chunk of this summer traveling around the United States, going to the Laura Ingelswilder homesteads and revisiting what her legacy means to America.
What she got wrong. You shouldn't everything right. She fucked up a lot of stuff, like she really there's a lot more that she could have included in those books about what was happening in Black America at the time, what was happening with the indigenous people whose land that her family was constantly moving on to. She was so ahead of her time in terms of being a wild child who just wanted to explore the world, and those the things we've reported out while doing this podcast have
been so fascinating. My favorite is that Laura is really huge with Japanese tourists. Huge. She's huge in Japan. Who knew? And it's for a couple of reasons. One, Japanese schools often used the Little House Books to teach English. The darker side of that, many of the internment camps forced people to read the lore Engo's Wilder books here in America.
And then the television show was wildly popular. So these little towns, these little very white rural towns where Laura's from, get bust loads of Japanese tourists visiting them every year. But to their like, the towns love it, and it has actually opened the town's eyes to different cultures that they ever would have experienced were it not for Laura. And so and this is like one of the little tidbits that that we loved while we were doing this.
And yeah, that podcast is coming out in March. I'm also hoping to work on a podcast about Judy Bloom and her her enduring legacy on our lives.
Oh my god, please, I am obsessed with Judy Blue. When I was a kid, the book are you there, God, It's me Margaret. It was we like trade. I mean this is we used to trade it, like when I was in like the fourth or fifth grade. It was we thought it was like the most grown up, like you know book about our bodies and our art the way you know, we would like like trade it to each other, like who have you read this?
I don't know, and now that one and then also Denie and Forever. I'm like, this is the dirtiest sex I've ever read about. Yeah, great, you're gonna come on that shell. I'm trying to get that green lit right now, so you're coming on, and I'm going to tell everyone that you're I'm in.
I'm in.
I cannot wait, right, Joe, thank you, thank you so much for being here. Where can folks keep up with all the cool work that you're doing.
Unfortunately, the fucking Instagram at Joe Piazza at Joe Piazza Author, Like I spend all of my day's trashing Instagram and saying how much I hate it, and then I'm like, this is the really the easiest place to sign me, So thank you Instagram at Joe Piazza author. It is the easiest place. I'm gonna have this baby in like two months, so I'm gonna I'm either gonna go dark or I'm gonna become a traditional one.
Well, everyone will have to check in on your Instagram to see which way it goes, which way it goes awesome. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our mark store at tegodi dot com, slash Store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, you can be Just said Hello at tegodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
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