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 My Heart Radio and Unboss Creative, I'm bridget tout and this is there are no girls on the internet. If you're 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 because's been 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 known 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 a traditional wife, that posits 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 soothe 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 a 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 traad 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. This content made by women, but it's 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? I'm not only have I seen this content on my feed, but it has been dominating my feed for some reason. I don't know. 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 its 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 we're 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 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 adult brains as they make them more adult 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 were quote traditional is really obscenely misplaced. Yeah, it almost seems like it is painting a fantasy portrait of a time that did not exist, because even for white women back in the day, I'm not necessarily quick to say that they a, we're 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
ocurred it. You could have a credit, right, And yeah, so I mean it's most it's lest be honest, it's mostly can't having a credit. It's mostly not having a credit card and rape marital rate. 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 like it's like a fantasy world that never even existed even during that time, exactly exactly, and not to mention the fact that it absolutely a hundred percent never even existed in media for black women and women of lower economic status is and immigrants women. So yeah, it's
a completely completely false nostalgia. And I think you hit on something interesting, which is that these TikTok's, 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 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, 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's 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 housewife 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
fifties sitcom. And we are talking June Cleaver, We're talking daddy father knows best, Daddy nes Best. I mean the shows we saw in Nick Knight as kids, really and it was mass media telling us that this is what the world looked like. But 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 nine. Don't they look so happy in their Gengham dresses with their beach aimes that they
never could have really gotten in nine? They do that ship with the Dyson hand one. Yeah, I love your point that or 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 all Ball even she wanted to be on the show in it or being in Ricky and um Dasis 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 um 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, glanced at one episode of the show, but she really did. And Lucy all Ball in real
life is a goddamn baller. She owned her brand, she owned her ship, she owned her show, so that she 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 knaptresses and calf hands, and frankly, I'm just in the mid for some fucking calf memes I don't want to see in trade. Let's take a quick break
at her back. To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with not working outside of the home or finding enjoyment in 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 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 trad life stuff for me is like a little annoying, a little I think 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 it would take us three steps to get there. And I think we're kind of just teetering on the edge of of 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 childcare 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 is 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 like extremest 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. Um, 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 two I don't this is this is my opinion. I don't necessarily see a lot of people demonizing women who stay,
who who aren't working outside of the home. I think that like, frankly, if 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. Yeah, 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
buyin area. 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 and that that innately makes you better. I just think it like it negates the reality of just like being a person who has to make choices that are right
right for their lives. Totally, totally, absolutely and also a lot of the child wife 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 child wife 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 needs strawberries. This water doesn't have enough ice up. There's something weird and 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 it 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 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 TikTok's, it's like, I live a slow life if part of me wants to be life. 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 a lot of the tiktoks that I see on that are like probably involved an incredible amount of like work to put together. And I'm like, God, 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. Um yeah, those beach waves, that wasn't slow to a lot of work. Those eyelashes, you're all worried, you've all get fake eyelashes on. There's nothing slow and intentional. Actually it's intentional. There's nothing slow about putting on the thake 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, 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, no meaningful institutional support or help selling, continuing to sell moms this polished up lie. It's 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 that's that's frankly, that's harder work for me than having a dozen meetings in a day trying to make a zucchini bead. Okay, Like it's just like I'm not good at that. It's not innate to me. It's not to say someone 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, the big, my biggest issue is always that we just don't call things done in the home work, But neither do the tread wives. They're 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 or any of that. And I don't know, it's just another way to lie to win in 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. It just 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 humans. I think I think the 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 I mean the parenting book that I want to write, and then know what I'll let me write because cancel culture. Uh is a parent Like it's four man. Put him
in the way back of the car. Let's find some candy cigarettes, right and just and PLoP him in front of the TV and give him 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. Um, even if I had a cigarette now, would probably die. But sometimes I still think about it about how wonderful it would be. UM, and I feel like I turned out fucking great. And I was a latchkey kid whose parents chain smoke two packs of Cools a day in
front of me. I would have an even 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 I don't care anymore. Um, I just don't take my kids away, Okay, Like I'm gonna 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 childler off at our first day 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 a car there if they could drive me the four blocks home to drop me off, like, oh, I don't know if I have enough seats, and it was like a massive super like what is piled 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, it's the way back,
It's okay. I'm like we you know. I mean, like again, like I'm not gonna 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 created. This is a whole other episode. It's creating up kids. It's creating kids who don't know how to live in the goddam 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, Carcie, We're going to blotts. It's fine. Yeah, I don't know. Again, Like I think so many corners on 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 and be scrolling the internet and looking at Instagram and I'm just happy that I'm an old mom at this point, who's just going to let a third child fall out of my body and probably sleep in
a cardboard box. And I said, 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 guys of I'm telling you this to help you. This is this is just for 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 and a one Miss Laura Ingles Wilder, if you don't know who that is. She was the writer of the series Little House on a 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 bad asspect she was? Yes, I I love me sim Laura engles Wader. I read all the books growing up, but I'm not as much of an obsessive as my dear friend Clennis McNichol, who co hosted Under the Influence with me um And who also married my husband and I in front of us
Sphinx seven years ago. Uh. I mean, she's like a freak about Laura Ingles Wilder and 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 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 Ingles Wilder homesteads and revisiting what her legacy means to America,
what she got wrong, and she didn't everything right. She sucked up a lot of stuff, like she really here'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. That's she was so ahead of her time in terms of being a wild child who just wanted to explore the world and those sort of the things we reported out um 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, UM. The darker side of that UM, many of the internment camps forced people to read the laur Angles 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 bus loads of Japanese tourists visiting them every year. But to their like, the towns love it and it is actually opened the town's eyes to different cultures that they never 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 during her enduring legacy on our Lives. Oh my god, please, I am obsessed with Judy Bloom. 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 the fourth
or fifth grade. It was for we thought it was like the most grown up, like you know book about our bodies and our are the way, you know, we would like like trade it to each other, like have you read this? I don't know, I know that one and then also Danye and Forever. I'm like, this is the dirtiest sex I've ever read about. Um, yeah, great, you're gonna come on that show. I'm trying to get that green light right now, so you're coming on it. I'm gonna tell everyone that you're I'm in. I'm in.
I cannot wait, right, Joe, 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 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 a 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 life. Well, everyone will have to check in on your Instagram to see which way it goes. Which awesome. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our March store at tangodi dot com. Flash Store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, you can we just at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls on the
Internet was created by me Brigittad. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative, edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amata was our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on our Apple podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.