If you have been on social media for the past few years, you might have encountered a particular type of content that transports us right back to the 1950s: a blond, attractive, feminine woman in a floral dress making some kind of artisanal food (read: sourdough) from scratch or attending to her home and children with a surreal sense of calmness. These influencers are called ‘tradwives,’ a label abbreviated from the phrase ‘traditional wives.’ Some tradwife influencers, such as Hannah Neeleman and Alena Kate Pettitt, focus more on cultivating the aesthetic of a traditionally feminine woman serving and flourishing in the domestic realm. Other tradwife influencers, such as Gwen Swinarton, deploy the aesthetic appeal of traditional femininity as a means to make alt-right political ideologies and fundamentalist religious doctrines more palatable. As one of the earliest and most well-known figures in the tradwife movement, Pettitt comments, “It’s become an aesthetic, and then it’s become politicized.” In this post, I will set aside the issue of the relationship between alt-right ideologies and the broader tradwife movement (for an interesting analysis of right-wing women’s moral responsibility in the far-right political movement, see Katie Peters’s post). Instead, assuming that some tradwife influencers and tradwives genuinely disavow alt-right political ideologies such as white nationalism, I examine the experience of being a tradwife through a Beauvoirian lens and raise some moral and political concerns with being a tradwife, as well as some responses to these concerns, without conclusively settling whether the practice is morally impermissible all things considered.
If we view the tradwife trend solely through the lens of appreciating a retro aesthetic, it seems innocuous. After all, watching people making bread from scratch and meticulously sprucing up their living environment is soothing, especially when many of us do not have the time or energy to do so. Yet readers who are familiar with Simone de Beauvoir’s work may notice a striking similarity between the life of a tradwife and Beauvoir’s description of the life of a woman as the Other in The Second Sex. Since Beauvoir’s phenomenological analysis of women’s lived experiences in The Second Sex can enrich our understanding of the lived experiences of tradwives and enhance our moral and political evaluation of the tradwife phenomenon, in the following paragraph, I provide an overview of one of the central concepts in Beauvoir’s analysis of women’s situation: namely, the Other.
In The Second Sex, the Other describes a person who lacks existential freedom due to her failure to exercise a particular kind of subjectivity, namely existentially apt subjectivity. Since Otherness is both prescribed to and attributed to womanhood, women systematically lack existential freedom. On my interpretation of Beauvoir, a human subject can exercise two kinds of subjectivity: basic subjectivity and existentially apt subjectivity. To exercise basic subjectivity, we conceive of ourselves as distinct from the external world and self-determine by imposing our wills onto the external world. To exercise existentially apt subjectivity, we exercise basic subjectivity to pursue meaningful projects. For Beauvoir, meaningful projects are typically creative production, such as writing a novel, and consist in transcendent activities, i.e., activities that do not solely contribute to one’s physical survival or the replication of one’s biological life. Our existential freedom, as the normative ideal in the existentialist tradition, is realized through our consistent and constant pursuit of meaningful projects. In contrast, Beauvoir views most domestic activities, such as housekeeping, childbearing, and childcare, as immanent activities that only contribute to one’s physical survival and the replication of one’s biological life.
As most humans have the capacity for existentially apt subjectivity, most people in principle can lead an existentially free life. However, as many existentialists argue, there is a tendency for humans to flee from their freedom since it is difficult to come up with meaningful projects and engage in creative production. For instance, it is a lot easier to watch TV than to write a novel. Those who flee from their freedom are often in what existentialists call ‘bad faith’ by refusing to take responsibility and risks for their lives. Beauvoir contends that we cannot adequately explain women’s historically rooted and systematic embodiment of Otherness with a purely individualistic approach. Instead, she argues that given the persistent social conception of woman as the Other, individual women are shaped to become Others through a combination of gendered socialization, relevant social reward and social punishment, and humans’ natural tendency to avoid the painful task of striving for existential freedom. As Others, women live vicariously and attempt to affirm their subjectivity by providing recognition and assistance to men. Their duties as Others include serving men both emotionally and sexually and taking on men’s share of immanent activities. As a result, men are freed from the mundane affairs of immanence and are able to fully dedicate themselves to their pursuit of existential freedom. Since the duties of Others render it extremely difficult for women to gain financial independence and opportunities to explore transcendent activities that can potentially amount to meaningful projects, women who have already taken on the duties of the Other are likely to remain oppressed.
Given that the tradwife lifestyle echoes and mirrors the “ideal” womanhood as the Other, it seems natural to critique this lifestyle on the basis that it is anti-feminist and reinforces an oppressive conception of womanhood and, arguably, women’s oppression as well. However, some tradwives publicly deny that their lifestyle choices reinforce the oppression of women. In an interview with Daily Mail, four tradwives unanimously describe their domestic life as a beneficial and preferable choice—they either choose to quit an unsatisfying and distressing job or choose to focus on their family life. One of the interviewees, Laura Lightbody, states that “true feminism is about choice and, as a Tradwife, that’s what I have.” Pettitt also claims that “I’m certainly not an oppressed little woman at home. I’m actually quite feisty and this is my choice.” These claims can be interpreted as implicitly arguing that women can genuinely choose to be tradwives and should not be subject to the feminist critique that they reinforce the oppression of women.
However, it is not immediately clear in what sense women choose to be a tradwife. One of the central debates in the feminist autonomy literature is about whether women can autonomously prefer to comply with oppressive gender practices, such as the practice of always deferring to one’s husband. As the tradwife lifestyle involves many gendered practices that are arguably oppressive to women, it is reasonable to question whether one’s participation in these practices can be autonomous. In recent scholarship, philosophers have also interpreted Beauvoir’s understanding of women’s embodiment of Otherness differently. In We Are Not Born Submissive, Manon Garcia argues that women who fully embody their Otherness are best explained as passively consenting to the destiny of becoming Others after a cost-benefit analysis: although women are neither naturally nor essentially immanent, for many women, the social cost of pursuing existential freedom is far too high, especially in comparison to men’s costs. On Garcia’s interpretation, women who are cornered into passively consenting to Otherness do not actively choose Otherness. In contrast, Charlotte Knowles argues that some women, in addition to passively consenting to their destiny of becoming Others, also actively choose to treat Otherness as essentially binding and constitutive of their identity even when there is no substantial social cost to pursuing existential freedom. This is because it is much easier to actively embody the existing social script of womanhood as the Other than to face the anxiety and distress of engaging in transcendent activities without a social script.
I think that both accounts are necessary to capture the distinct and complex motivations that prompt women to become tradwives. Some tradwives, such as Lightbody, are initially against traditional family values. However, after attempting to juggle work and domestic life, they conclude, often with their husbands, that being a tradwife is better for the family and also for themselves. In cases like this, women are primarily motivated to embody Otherness due to external factors such as the social reward for surrendering to existing social practices. Other tradwives, such as Pettitt, share an interest in homemaking from a very young age and believe that their womanhood binds them to traditional feminine values and roles. In cases like this, women are primarily motivated to become Others due to internal factors such as their active identification with traditional feminine values and norms. Although in both kinds of cases, women may (mistakenly) think that they do not have any other options other than their current choices, their choices remain genuine from their own perspectives.
Even if we grant that feminism is at least partially about supporting women’s choices and that many tradwives make genuine choices in the absence of coercion and manipulation, it still remains unclear whether the choice of being a tradwife is morally objectionable all things considered. Assuming that both the impact of individual tradwives and the cumulative impact of the tradwife community are in general not significant enough to reinforce women’s oppression and the oppressive conception of women as Others, some may still argue that tradwives are complicit in their own oppression by genuinely choosing to be Others, and that complicity in one’s own oppression is always morally objectionable. In response to this argument, I argue that although we can appropriately criticize some tradwives as morally liable for complicity in their oppression, it is unclear that all tradwives are morally liable for their complicity and are appropriately subject to moral criticism. As Beauvoir herself acknowledges, some tradwives do not have realistic alternatives to being a tradwife due to their physical and social conditions. Given the plausible “Ought Implies Can” thesis that one does have the moral obligation to do what one cannot do, tradwives without realistic alternatives cannot and should not be held morally liable for their complicity in their own oppression.
However, the attitude such tradwives take towards their situation may still be subject to moral evaluation. Filipa Melo Lopes argues for an interpretation of Beauvoir in which women’s attitudes towards their embodiment of Otherness are subject to moral evaluation. Consider two women who both live in an ultra-conservative community in which the only possible role for a woman is to be a tradwife. One woman disapproves of the norms of her community and finds them oppressive. Although she cannot escape from her social environment physically, she does not view herself as only capable of house-making; she is eager to learn about anecdotes of women living different lives outside of her community. In contrast, the other woman does not reflect on the norms of her community. Although she occasionally feels trapped by her social environment, she has no interest in interrogating her situation; she’d rather spend her time on thinking about what is for dinner. According to Lopes, the first woman embodies her Otherness authentically by facing the fact that she is “tormented, in the throes of difficult conflicts between [her] femininity and [her] subjectivity.” The second woman embodies her Otherness inauthentically by stubbornly “seeing the social world as fixed and absolute, even while [she] experience[s] it as relative and questionable” (See also Knowles 2019). On Lopes’s view, neither woman is morally criticizable for being complicit in her oppression. Yet the first woman is morally laudable for holding an authentic attitude towards her situation whereas the second woman is morally criticizable for holding an inauthentic attitude towards her situation.
However, some may point out that inauthentic tradwives are not more morally criticizable than other inauthentic individuals, especially those who live inauthentically despite their social privilege. Moreover, the critique of women’s embodiment of Otherness as inauthentic does not adequately address the problematic political implications of the tradwife lifestyle as a relatively long-standing social media trend. It is noteworthy that although real-life tradwives live similar lives as Beauvoirian Others, modern tradwife influencers are not comparable to Beauvoirian Others as they engage in transcendent work. A typical tradwife influencer, such as Neeleman or Pettitt, does not merely ensure the physical and biological survival of her family and herself; the artisanal sourdough and cheese made from unpasteurized fresh milk are arguably products of creative production, along with aesthetically pleasing social media content. Also, tradwife influencers who do not fully do what they preach may remain financially independent from their husbands by making a good living from their content, merchandise, and affiliated products. Beauvoir notes that financial independence is in practice a precondition for existential freedom since it allows one to pursue meaningful projects without being under the mercy of other people. This means that tradwife influencers who are financially independent and engage in creative production live qualitatively different lives compared to real tradwives who are financially dependent on their husbands or families.
I imagine that Beauvoir would be troubled if she could witness the trend of the tradwife aesthetic. She would probably insist that although tradwife influencers might meet the minimal criteria of exercising existentially apt subjectivity and having financial independence, the very project of aestheticizing and rationalizing a life of the Other is morally objectionable. First, many tradwife influencers live inauthentically, as they do not truly endorse the values of being a tradwife and have other viable career paths. Second, the tradwife aesthetic glamorizes the social conception of woman as the Other and falsely advertises what it means to fully embody Otherness. Many tradwife influencers are married into affluent families and possibly have help when it comes to attending to their children and families. Real tradwives, however, are far less likely to have financial independence and to engage in creative production after finishing their housework. By falsely promising that returning to “the good old days” is a preferable choice, tradwife influencers may be complicit in the oppression of women who are lured to embody Otherness.
Last but not least, as many feminists have argued, feminism is not only about supporting individual women’s choices; it is also about changing oppressive social structures and practices so that a myriad of choices and opportunities are equally available to anyone regardless of their gender and other social identities. It is unclear how supporting women’s choices to be tradwives or tradwife influencers contributes to the feminist political goal of changing oppressive social structures and practices like the gendered wage gap and the sexist norm that women are expected to balance their careers with family life while men are not. Some may even argue that large-scale support for women’s choices to be tradwives is politically inexpedient for the goals of destabilizing the existing gendered social structure and overwriting oppressive norms of femininity. Although there are good moral and political reasons to object to the popularization of the tradwife lifestyle, it remains an open question whether a particular woman’s choice to be a tradwife is all things considered morally and politically objectionable.
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Alida Liberman or the Associate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.
Ella Zhang
Ella Zhang is a PhD student in the Philosophy Department at the University of British Columbia. Her research lies at the intersection of feminist philosophy, social ontology, and existentialism with a special focus on the intersectional nature of oppression and the impact of oppression on the authenticity of agents’ choices.
