I've been reading Toni Morrison's "The Source of Self-Regard" lately and so far, I've read two essays which definitely echo your points/sentiments: "Women, Race, and Memory" and "Cinderella's Stepsisters." In both essays, Morrison is unpacking (and admonishing) the way women will willingly dominate and subjugate other women in an attempt to "be male-like" and/or climb their way up in the patriarchy; they're both great reads.
Yes, great read for women and how right she was! We need to create our own agenda and that begins at birth…. I was so fortunate that I was raised by strong independent women and loving respectful men and I owe them my happiness.
the thing that’s concerning about the trad-wife trend is the type of christian fundamentalism that’s being pushed - and that people are falling for it - but to criticize that, you also have to criticize the choices these women are making. sure, it’s possible they’re abused behind the scenes, or have chosen their lives bc of what they were taught, it’s hard to tell that from the outside. but i do know that i was raised in the kinds of churches that push women towards marriage and teach them that their only purpose is to be a mother, and none of those women would choose/be able to have the kind of platform these women have. that’s part of what frustrates me about the conversation around trad-wives - none of these women are what they claim to be.
on another note, this reminds me of the conversation around taylor swift. she’s a billionaire, but somehow is made out to be a victim at every possible opportunity.
I don’t think that anyone is being pushed towards anything because we each have our own freedom to choose what we want in this life and to demean anyone about how they want to live their own life is wrong. This is why there’s so much of a division like honestly who cares! We get to love and support each other instead!
The idea that anyone could be considered “traditional” (conservative) when her living is made via the internet and adult beauty pageants in Vegas is cognitive dissonance at it’s finest.
true - but the ones who ARE on socials are the salespeople, the ambassadors, the cheerleaders who make it all look so perfect that it reels young women in. they are the hype team for the traditional evangelical movement. and it works.
I was having this conversation with my son the other day. I have no empathy left for women so much more powerful than I who continue to make these very conscious choices to participate in oppression.
This was originally about the women who make money cosplaying “traditional” roles while spouting white supremacy and sexist oppression. But it’s more than that…
So, you know the Thought Experiment where you’re given a button, and every time you push the button two things happen: you get a large sum of money and somewhere you can’t see, a random person dies? The CEO who was killed did that. Exactly that. That’s how he became that rich. Why should I have empathy for his wife, who benefited from that?
This piece adds so much to this topic. Well done. The ya-ya sisterhood line is spot on. We need to come to terms with the fallacy of that perspective. Shoot, we know antebellum wives would standby and watch their husbands beat the enslaved women they fathered children with and sell off the children - no sense of sisterhood whatsoever then but we still pine for such a state of being.
Yes! And more than just stand by! White women were active participants in Slave-Holding and the abuse of enslaved people, including enslaved children 'serving' in the house.
HEAVY ON THIS ! I fall for, even yearn for, the ya-ya sisterhood. It’s important to remember that - just because they are women - they are not like me and they will make different choices even with the same information
I agree with your points overall, but your "imagining" of Hannah's home birth as some torture fest akin to something from a previous century is outdated. Birthing at home is a legitimate reproductive choice—assuming it was some sort of awful travail infantilizes her, too. Happy to provide some reading and imagery about out of hospital birth, if that's something you're interested in.
As a progressive black woman who chose home birth, because the outcomes for us in hospitals aren't great, I agree with this. For me, it was fine. Not bad, even. I only did it once, though.
Yeah I came here to say this. The ignorance and misogyny is really jarring. Jax, I would recommend you read Robina Khalid's substack as a helpful intro to the long history of feminist resistance to the explicitly colonial, explicitly racist discipline of obstetrics.
This is such a thoughtful piece. I totally agree that the "we need to save them!" mentality deprives these women of agency. They are conscious adults making questionable decisions. We can reserve our sympathies and energy for the many women who are actually being coerced or abused, living in poverty, etc.
Excellent points. I didn't know who this woman was until people began chattering about the article, but when I read it, all I could think was that it sounded like huge grift...which is what all these 'trad' people are doing.
I also had the uncharitable thought that she might see the error of her ways when he starts stepping out on her with her young Mormon replacement, but then she'll just position herself as the victim. I'm sure she signed a prenup, because these ww are always smarter than they present themselves. And don't get me started on Usha Vance.
I really like this article and the points you make. As my grandmother once told me, "You always have a choice and your values are defined by the choices you make". I'm definitely worried by the surge in Christian fundamentalist rhetoric we are seeing now, especially in the US but also in Europe. They are gaining a worrying amount of traction and have found how to use social media to their advantage, e.g., tradwife influencers. However, I think that there is another key aspect to consider. Deep down, many left-thinking women (members of the "Ya-Ya Sisterhood", as you say) are drawn to this kind of "homestead" lifestyle (whether it's real or not) because the mother/girl boss corporate dream we were sold hasn't turned out the way we thought it would. It's easier for wealthy corporates to sell an idealized housewife dream than to contribute to a fairer society - one that truly supports women and mothers. They wouldn't make the same kind of profit! I wrote about this in one of my previous articles: https://femmefactale.substack.com/p/i-want-to-hate-tradwives-but-i-dont
I read every word of this post in hopes the tides of your tone would change towards women making life decisions based on values that differ from your own. Unfortunately, it only intensified and I'm sorry to see so many mirroring your feelings in the comment section.
Hannah and her husband are Mormon. Prioritizing a marriage and family over a career is a natural path for many of them that we should respect as we would any other religion. She never victimized herself - the author victimized her. Her husband never "thwarted" her path as a ballerina. She chose to start a family with him, and I don't doubt the obvious work ethic ingrained in a Julliard student gave rise to her successful with Ballerina Farm.
Who could know, but when you have eight children, content to create, and a dairy farm to run I don't believe there's much time to read the comments. My guess is Hannah posts a video and puts the phone down to live her life. A life we were invited into that Megan Agnew poorly painted after less than a day with the family. Why? Because (sadly) that's what the people want to hear. Negativity gets more attention than positivity - it's evolutionary and the reason our news channels are so pessimistic.
Point being that I'm tired of women bashing women over whether they chose the trad life or living in the corporate world etc. etc. It's tired. And unproductive, no?
Lastly -- only because you chose to get political -- Usha's parents are legal law abiding immigrants, NOT illegal ones crossing the border and being housed, given insurance, and three meals a day with our tax dollars. Big difference.
Thank you! I was looking for this kind of comment here. Unfortunately I found only one - yours.
We don't have to agree with everything some other people choose for their lives. Why is the way this "trad-wife" lives "problematic"? It's her own choice to have as many children as she likes and birth them the way she likes. It's pure speculation, that she is brainwashed by religion or otherwise. Aren't we all "brainwashed" by some kind of culture?! Everything the author of this article or the readers agree on can be seen as another kind of cultural norm (e.g. the use of painkillers for birth).
And it's just as problematic how this community brandmarks "those people" (trad-wifes etc) as it is for example when some racist despises the way of life of some immigrant - a thing this community would surely condamn.
As long as they don't harm anyoy, why should they not live according to their values? Why do we have to judge and condemn?
This is so well done and needed. I am tried of us infantilizing adult ass women who marry into rich, powerful families. They know their choices, beside the religion part, they aren't brain washed. And they are perfectly free to wear their disgust and disappointment with those choices on their faces and at every public appearance. They aren't being help captive.
I don’t think you can just ignore the religion aspect and then claim she isn’t brainwashed. It doesn’t do good to ignore the effects of indoctrination.
I didn't say ignore. I am saying they are adults. I went to Catholic school and converted to Mormonism, and yet, thanks to resources available to nearly everyone, I lifted the veil and I'm not in a cult.
You said she isn’t brainwashed *besides* religion which means you’re not taking it into account. Her experience is not yours, she didn’t even have any formal education up until Juilliard. It’s not so easy to get to adulthood and realize you were raised in a cult and undo all that indoctrination, like you’re saying, that’s all.
I think you're spot-on in your analysis here. One point that always gets missed in pieces about Neeleman (and for good reason, because professional ballet is such a tiny world) is that her ballet career was unlikely to have reached a high enough level that she would ever be something besides a starving artist. I'm a former professional ballerina myself, and what others outside the field usually don't know is that if your goal is to join one of the professional ballet companies in the U.S., you must be recruited from one of a few very selective training programs while still in high school. Almost without exception, only those who didn't have the chops by 18 will go on to college dance programs, as Neeleman did. People hear 'Juilliard' -- a famous arts college -- and justifiably think "elite." But for ballet, it's not. That said, college dance programs can lead to good employment in contemporary dance, or Broadway, or other places. I am speaking here of professional ballet. The competition is so incredibly fierce and intensive training begins so young that it is clear by age 15 or 16 (and often earlier) who is going to be a candidate for placement in any of the top companies in New York or San Francisco or Seattle. I've seen photos and videos of Neeleman from her Juilliard days. She was absolutely lovely, an angel in human form. But she was only moderately talented in that field. She was not ever going to be a star, which is the only way to make money in ballet, and of course she knew that, otherwise she'd already have been recruited by one of the ballet companies in New York or elsewhere, probably years before she ever met her husband. (It's possible to take alternative paths to wealth in ballet, like becoming a choreographer and/or company director, but that's a very hard and narrow road that requires outlandish talent. My take is that wasn't her.) I think your perspective, that she began to see a different path to wealth and fame upon meeting her husband, with the added layer that she knew ballet was a dead end for her, is the correct one. She strikes me as nothing if not pragmatic. And definitely not a girl-victim whose childhood dream of becoming a ballerina was stifled by her patriarchal husband. By the time she met him, the writing would have already been on the wall for several years.
The ex-Mormon YouTubers Jordan and McKay just put out a great video that analyzes what the Neelemans said in their interview through a culturally Mormon lens, helping explain the origins of their views.
Great piece, I especially appreciate how you refuse to look at Hannah as purely a victim.
Here’s a good quote from the video: “Despite him being who he is, we want people to understand that he did not just become this way. There are a lot of things regarding Mormonism that informed his behavior, his beliefs, and…how he sees the world.”
“That ultimately is what we think is the real villain behind these things.”
Thank you for this! I have been bullied and mistreated by women in power several times in my work life. When discussing a wretched female boss with my friends, however, her behavior is rationalized/explained away as a result of sexism. That leaves me not only without support, but is induces guilt that I'm not "supporting a sister." Assholism is an equal opportunity trait, friends.
oh lord, I could write a whole other piece on how mean women can be to one another in business settings, especially bosses to subordinates. I kind of chalk it up to a petty "I had to suffer to get here so you should too" mentality.
I've been reading Toni Morrison's "The Source of Self-Regard" lately and so far, I've read two essays which definitely echo your points/sentiments: "Women, Race, and Memory" and "Cinderella's Stepsisters." In both essays, Morrison is unpacking (and admonishing) the way women will willingly dominate and subjugate other women in an attempt to "be male-like" and/or climb their way up in the patriarchy; they're both great reads.
thank you so much for these recs! I adore Toni Morrison but have never really ventured outside of her fiction, I'm excited to check these out
Yes, great read for women and how right she was! We need to create our own agenda and that begins at birth…. I was so fortunate that I was raised by strong independent women and loving respectful men and I owe them my happiness.
Right wing women by Andrea Dworkin is also on-theme
the thing that’s concerning about the trad-wife trend is the type of christian fundamentalism that’s being pushed - and that people are falling for it - but to criticize that, you also have to criticize the choices these women are making. sure, it’s possible they’re abused behind the scenes, or have chosen their lives bc of what they were taught, it’s hard to tell that from the outside. but i do know that i was raised in the kinds of churches that push women towards marriage and teach them that their only purpose is to be a mother, and none of those women would choose/be able to have the kind of platform these women have. that’s part of what frustrates me about the conversation around trad-wives - none of these women are what they claim to be.
on another note, this reminds me of the conversation around taylor swift. she’s a billionaire, but somehow is made out to be a victim at every possible opportunity.
yes!!! beautifully put
🤡
I don’t think that anyone is being pushed towards anything because we each have our own freedom to choose what we want in this life and to demean anyone about how they want to live their own life is wrong. This is why there’s so much of a division like honestly who cares! We get to love and support each other instead!
Echoing this.
The idea that anyone could be considered “traditional” (conservative) when her living is made via the internet and adult beauty pageants in Vegas is cognitive dissonance at it’s finest.
The real trad wives aren't on IG.
Ooooooooh… I’ve always said this.
true - but the ones who ARE on socials are the salespeople, the ambassadors, the cheerleaders who make it all look so perfect that it reels young women in. they are the hype team for the traditional evangelical movement. and it works.
I was having this conversation with my son the other day. I have no empathy left for women so much more powerful than I who continue to make these very conscious choices to participate in oppression.
agreed.
Wow you sound pathetic
This was originally about the women who make money cosplaying “traditional” roles while spouting white supremacy and sexist oppression. But it’s more than that…
So, you know the Thought Experiment where you’re given a button, and every time you push the button two things happen: you get a large sum of money and somewhere you can’t see, a random person dies? The CEO who was killed did that. Exactly that. That’s how he became that rich. Why should I have empathy for his wife, who benefited from that?
And what about that makes *me* the pathetic one?
This piece adds so much to this topic. Well done. The ya-ya sisterhood line is spot on. We need to come to terms with the fallacy of that perspective. Shoot, we know antebellum wives would standby and watch their husbands beat the enslaved women they fathered children with and sell off the children - no sense of sisterhood whatsoever then but we still pine for such a state of being.
Yes! And more than just stand by! White women were active participants in Slave-Holding and the abuse of enslaved people, including enslaved children 'serving' in the house.
HEAVY ON THIS ! I fall for, even yearn for, the ya-ya sisterhood. It’s important to remember that - just because they are women - they are not like me and they will make different choices even with the same information
Gee, almost like women are separate independent entities.
I agree with your points overall, but your "imagining" of Hannah's home birth as some torture fest akin to something from a previous century is outdated. Birthing at home is a legitimate reproductive choice—assuming it was some sort of awful travail infantilizes her, too. Happy to provide some reading and imagery about out of hospital birth, if that's something you're interested in.
this is actually a totally fair point and really politely communicated, thank you!!
I agree with Carrie, but your imagining of Hannah’s birth is exactly how Hannah would want you to imagine it.
As a progressive black woman who chose home birth, because the outcomes for us in hospitals aren't great, I agree with this. For me, it was fine. Not bad, even. I only did it once, though.
Yeah I came here to say this. The ignorance and misogyny is really jarring. Jax, I would recommend you read Robina Khalid's substack as a helpful intro to the long history of feminist resistance to the explicitly colonial, explicitly racist discipline of obstetrics.
Super late to this but as a full spectrum doula I agree!
This is such a thoughtful piece. I totally agree that the "we need to save them!" mentality deprives these women of agency. They are conscious adults making questionable decisions. We can reserve our sympathies and energy for the many women who are actually being coerced or abused, living in poverty, etc.
Excellent points. I didn't know who this woman was until people began chattering about the article, but when I read it, all I could think was that it sounded like huge grift...which is what all these 'trad' people are doing.
I also had the uncharitable thought that she might see the error of her ways when he starts stepping out on her with her young Mormon replacement, but then she'll just position herself as the victim. I'm sure she signed a prenup, because these ww are always smarter than they present themselves. And don't get me started on Usha Vance.
I really like this article and the points you make. As my grandmother once told me, "You always have a choice and your values are defined by the choices you make". I'm definitely worried by the surge in Christian fundamentalist rhetoric we are seeing now, especially in the US but also in Europe. They are gaining a worrying amount of traction and have found how to use social media to their advantage, e.g., tradwife influencers. However, I think that there is another key aspect to consider. Deep down, many left-thinking women (members of the "Ya-Ya Sisterhood", as you say) are drawn to this kind of "homestead" lifestyle (whether it's real or not) because the mother/girl boss corporate dream we were sold hasn't turned out the way we thought it would. It's easier for wealthy corporates to sell an idealized housewife dream than to contribute to a fairer society - one that truly supports women and mothers. They wouldn't make the same kind of profit! I wrote about this in one of my previous articles: https://femmefactale.substack.com/p/i-want-to-hate-tradwives-but-i-dont
I read every word of this post in hopes the tides of your tone would change towards women making life decisions based on values that differ from your own. Unfortunately, it only intensified and I'm sorry to see so many mirroring your feelings in the comment section.
Hannah and her husband are Mormon. Prioritizing a marriage and family over a career is a natural path for many of them that we should respect as we would any other religion. She never victimized herself - the author victimized her. Her husband never "thwarted" her path as a ballerina. She chose to start a family with him, and I don't doubt the obvious work ethic ingrained in a Julliard student gave rise to her successful with Ballerina Farm.
Who could know, but when you have eight children, content to create, and a dairy farm to run I don't believe there's much time to read the comments. My guess is Hannah posts a video and puts the phone down to live her life. A life we were invited into that Megan Agnew poorly painted after less than a day with the family. Why? Because (sadly) that's what the people want to hear. Negativity gets more attention than positivity - it's evolutionary and the reason our news channels are so pessimistic.
Point being that I'm tired of women bashing women over whether they chose the trad life or living in the corporate world etc. etc. It's tired. And unproductive, no?
Lastly -- only because you chose to get political -- Usha's parents are legal law abiding immigrants, NOT illegal ones crossing the border and being housed, given insurance, and three meals a day with our tax dollars. Big difference.
Thank you! I was looking for this kind of comment here. Unfortunately I found only one - yours.
We don't have to agree with everything some other people choose for their lives. Why is the way this "trad-wife" lives "problematic"? It's her own choice to have as many children as she likes and birth them the way she likes. It's pure speculation, that she is brainwashed by religion or otherwise. Aren't we all "brainwashed" by some kind of culture?! Everything the author of this article or the readers agree on can be seen as another kind of cultural norm (e.g. the use of painkillers for birth).
And it's just as problematic how this community brandmarks "those people" (trad-wifes etc) as it is for example when some racist despises the way of life of some immigrant - a thing this community would surely condamn.
As long as they don't harm anyoy, why should they not live according to their values? Why do we have to judge and condemn?
Preach.
thank you for this. agreed.
This is so well done and needed. I am tried of us infantilizing adult ass women who marry into rich, powerful families. They know their choices, beside the religion part, they aren't brain washed. And they are perfectly free to wear their disgust and disappointment with those choices on their faces and at every public appearance. They aren't being help captive.
I don’t think you can just ignore the religion aspect and then claim she isn’t brainwashed. It doesn’t do good to ignore the effects of indoctrination.
I didn't say ignore. I am saying they are adults. I went to Catholic school and converted to Mormonism, and yet, thanks to resources available to nearly everyone, I lifted the veil and I'm not in a cult.
You said she isn’t brainwashed *besides* religion which means you’re not taking it into account. Her experience is not yours, she didn’t even have any formal education up until Juilliard. It’s not so easy to get to adulthood and realize you were raised in a cult and undo all that indoctrination, like you’re saying, that’s all.
👍
I think you're spot-on in your analysis here. One point that always gets missed in pieces about Neeleman (and for good reason, because professional ballet is such a tiny world) is that her ballet career was unlikely to have reached a high enough level that she would ever be something besides a starving artist. I'm a former professional ballerina myself, and what others outside the field usually don't know is that if your goal is to join one of the professional ballet companies in the U.S., you must be recruited from one of a few very selective training programs while still in high school. Almost without exception, only those who didn't have the chops by 18 will go on to college dance programs, as Neeleman did. People hear 'Juilliard' -- a famous arts college -- and justifiably think "elite." But for ballet, it's not. That said, college dance programs can lead to good employment in contemporary dance, or Broadway, or other places. I am speaking here of professional ballet. The competition is so incredibly fierce and intensive training begins so young that it is clear by age 15 or 16 (and often earlier) who is going to be a candidate for placement in any of the top companies in New York or San Francisco or Seattle. I've seen photos and videos of Neeleman from her Juilliard days. She was absolutely lovely, an angel in human form. But she was only moderately talented in that field. She was not ever going to be a star, which is the only way to make money in ballet, and of course she knew that, otherwise she'd already have been recruited by one of the ballet companies in New York or elsewhere, probably years before she ever met her husband. (It's possible to take alternative paths to wealth in ballet, like becoming a choreographer and/or company director, but that's a very hard and narrow road that requires outlandish talent. My take is that wasn't her.) I think your perspective, that she began to see a different path to wealth and fame upon meeting her husband, with the added layer that she knew ballet was a dead end for her, is the correct one. She strikes me as nothing if not pragmatic. And definitely not a girl-victim whose childhood dream of becoming a ballerina was stifled by her patriarchal husband. By the time she met him, the writing would have already been on the wall for several years.
The ex-Mormon YouTubers Jordan and McKay just put out a great video that analyzes what the Neelemans said in their interview through a culturally Mormon lens, helping explain the origins of their views.
Great piece, I especially appreciate how you refuse to look at Hannah as purely a victim.
oooo this sounds really interesting, thank you for the rec!!!
Here’s a good quote from the video: “Despite him being who he is, we want people to understand that he did not just become this way. There are a lot of things regarding Mormonism that informed his behavior, his beliefs, and…how he sees the world.”
“That ultimately is what we think is the real villain behind these things.”
So well done! I find it so hard to swallow the unsisterhood pill but it’s real :(
Oh thank you so much, Jo-Ann! I'm a longtime big fan of your work so this means a lot <3
❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for this! I have been bullied and mistreated by women in power several times in my work life. When discussing a wretched female boss with my friends, however, her behavior is rationalized/explained away as a result of sexism. That leaves me not only without support, but is induces guilt that I'm not "supporting a sister." Assholism is an equal opportunity trait, friends.
oh lord, I could write a whole other piece on how mean women can be to one another in business settings, especially bosses to subordinates. I kind of chalk it up to a petty "I had to suffer to get here so you should too" mentality.
this. this is the take.