Tradwives & The Tumblr  

Its my goal to out-submissive my wife. As the man of the relationship I can not lose at anything, and that includes being the most subservient.

My husband is currently cutting paving slabs for our backyard, and I’m being submissive by not helping him and eating ice cream.

Thinking back on the elder relatives in my family lines who actually were traditional farm wives, I'm laughing at the idea that they were submissive to anyone. They'd survived hell and buried husbands and kids. They took no nonsense from anyone. The surviving men in their lives invariably had places they'd go to hide from them when they'd screwed up. Sure they could be nice and make amazing candies from a few jars of basic ingredients, but their lives were not this froo-froo nonsense from 50's advertising.

Me: *just trying to clean the dishes* Dysphoria: "There is something so innately feminine about doing the dishes"

the trad wife community can say everyone is welcome here but it's so obvious who it caters to. there is a reason they idealize the Jim Crow era

lesbian bloggers being into cottagecore is the 21st century equivalent of medieval lesbians joining a convent

"I don't want your gender roles, I want your fresh bread" is a quote I need on a throw pillow

I love how there's just a random image of the onceler in the tradwife tag. Nature always finds a way.

I refuse to believe this isn't a kink thing, like this is someone taking their mommy kink to it's logical conclusion Edit: I did not expect my silly little observation to gain so much traction, what the actual fuck

My aceness aside, I'm clearly not a man these trad gender roles are thinking of. I would be so incredibly uncomfortable if someone said they "lived to serve me", like yo, I suggest getting your own life too because mine is not interesting enough for two people.

A lot of these posts seem like they're about the desire to own property and have fulfilling labour, which... yeah feminism ain't what's standing in their way there

The one thing that always comes to mind with those anti-feminists, trads and girl defines is that they don't seem to realize that they have a platform THANKS to feminism. If not for it, they would not be allowed to have social media at all.

Seeing some women be this aggressively heterosexual is validating in a roundabout way…I will never be this into men and it solidifies the fact for myself that I’m only into women

The tradwives' hyperfixation on shit like SUBMISSION and OBEDIENCE just convinces me that it's 100% a fetish thing. Dom/sub as well as just fetishizing the whole 50's housewife aesthetic, which. The skirts are very cute, I will give them that. But "obey him" and all that? Definitely a fetish thing.

getting beaten by my husband because i did his steak medium rare instead of rare but it’s okay because it’s true to the tradwife femcore 50s aesthetic

I found a trans trad-husband on Tumblr quite recently so...that sure is a new type of guy. Trans inclusive radical misogyny? I want to study that guy from a distance like a weird creature I saw in the woods.

Imagine thinking your domestic dom/sub fantasies are universal and also what God wants so you make a blog about it.

This is what not having p*rn on Tumblr is doing to these ladies. Someone introduce these people to safewords.

I think cottagecore fits with the queer community not because of the "traditional values" aspect but more the commune in the woods - run away from capitalism - wild with women aspect

As an edgy queer who has a farm, I think you nailed it on the weird dichotomy of the cottage core aesthetic. I got into homesteading and self-sustainability because to me it seemed like a way to escape from society(tm) and be able to fend for myself when others would not help me. It's weird getting advice on how to milk your goats from a video of a tradwife with her 4 kids running around in the background, but it's the what you gotta do sometimes.

I love how tumblr decided to make blaze and it was unironically one of the best things they've done for the site in years

I actually sympathize with the woman who wanted to be badass but didn't feel fulfilled. I was a tomboy for most of my childhood, but during puberty, I realized that I actually really liked wearing dresses and being femme. I didn't dive head first into Christian gender roles. I came out as NB, changed my name & pronouns, and wore dresses. It ain't that hard.

you cannot imagine the whiplash the word "pregnancycore" gave me

"something so feminine about cleaning dishes" me in my dorm with my $1 target pink plate dropping it in my sink every 2 seconds in my tiny ass windowless dorm bathroom. mmmm so feminine

I feel like most of these women aren't married and fantasize over a life that simply is unattainable. They want to be stay at home mothers who dote on their children and husband, without having to worry about work or the world around them. There is no conflict in that world to them. The imaginary husband treats them well, leads their household, and they are happy together. But real life rarely turns out like that. Not to mention, women who actually live on homesteads contribute just as much as their husband's in terms of actual menial labor. When you live on a homestead and are self sufficient, everyone is getting down in the dirt and caring for the land. It's not a pretty pinterest post. It's hard work.

maybe i just have severe brain rot but does some of this feel vaguely fetishy to anyone else? like the constant reinforcement of unquestioning obedience, serving someone who has more power, the fixation on pregnancy, ect.. like im not saying that these women are trying to make it that way but it low-key feels like they have some type of kink wrapped up in outdated gender norms. if anything it just feels off nonetheless.

Great, now I have to clarify that when I say I wanna be a cottage core wife, I need to specify that I mean the bisexual in a poly relationship raising chickens and breaking bread in a hobbit house and only seeing people to play dnd once a week and not in a I belong to my husband let’s go to church kinda way.

The aspects of cottagecore that feel like they come out of a Studio Ghibli movie are my favorites. Or out of a story with cute little animals living in mushrooms and having tea and stuff like that. No gender roles. Just everyone vibing with nature. I don’t necessarily long for it, but I do like the aesthetic and think it would be incredible to see irl

10:28 the second I saw "nesting fever" I was like *oh no, we've gone too far, we're entering the omegaverse*

here's my hot take: tradwife life is a kink. hear me out. i grew up in a conservative christian community and then later got involved in BDSM. at one dungeon i frequented, the owner and his wife engaged in a style of BDSM called 24/7 which means that instead of their dom/sub relationship being confined to one aspect of their lives (ie the bedroom, the scene, etc), it was maintained 24/7. i was surprised to recognize this relationship dynamic as being the same one i saw modeled by the good christians back home (except with better costumes). the biggest difference, and the reason i have a problem with tradwives, is that the tradwives tend to try and push their relationship dynamic on others, including their children, while BDSM folk generally don't do that. but i don't kink shame and i support the tradwives in engaging in whatever consensual fetish gets them off.

im a member of the coquette aesthetic community and from my experience it's very populated by wlw/nblw who want to reclaim hyper feminine expression but not for the male gaze or to conform to female gender roles. the community is FULL of white women who try to push the idea that only thin white women can be a part of the aesthetic but there are many groups that are very open and against this idea; also from what I know the aesthetic was also started by black femmes who wanted to embrace femininity despite society portraying them as more masculine then white women. in a way it is similar to the hyper feminine subculture of lolita in japan where femme individuals used their hyper feminine expression to push back against the gender roles placed upon them

"I don't want your gender roles, I just want your fresh bread!" - My husband buying a sourdough bread kit without having any idea how to bake.

It's horrifying yet fascinating to see this combination of catholic guilt + submission kink come together online

Okay but like the trad wife thing just seems like BDSM through a soft lens? The idea of obedience and doing everything for your man and waiting until he gets home smacks of pet play... I'm sure they'd be horrified with that connection but that's essentially what it is: a kink.

I feel like a lot of these women are closeted BDSM enthusiasts, talking about being quiet and submissive, a lot of this reads like BDSM erotica its so funny

...y'know, I remember when I was growing up, when I first started learning about sex, it was explained in a way that kind of made it sound like this was the way... it HAD to go? Sort of? Like... there were specific aspects of sex that were tied explicitly to one gender or the other, but it was Okay Actually, because being that gender meant that you would like it that way. If not now, then eventually. Sooner or later, You Will Want These Things. And that scared the SHIT out of me as a young girl, because I couldn't think of anything I wanted less, but it sounded like this was Simply Part Of Growing Up and sooner or later I wouldn't have a choice about letting someone treat me this way or not. Because I was a girl, it was just my lot in life. The asexual community saved me from losing my mind, because that was the first time I'd encountered people older than me saying 'It isn't an automatic part of growing up. Sex is something some people enjoy, but it's not actually REQUIRED. If you want to have sex at some point that's totally fine, but if you don't, _you don't have to.'_ The idea that I would never have to train myself to be okay with people touching me in ways I didn't want, or controlling me in ways I didn't like just to be normal was a huge fucking relief. And then, later on, I learned that sex- even hetero sex- doesn't automatically have to look like this. Sure, this might be traditional, and it might be the way a lot of people like it, but being a woman doesn't automatically mean you're required to take the submissive roles. Some even prefer the woman to be dominant! (This was a huge fucking revelation at the time) I guess the reason I'm thinking about it is just... I grew up thinking rules like this only applied to sex, and it still messed me up a little. If I grew up being told that this was supposed apply to _every aspect of my life as a female?_ I can't even imagine. Fucking terrifying.

I'm beginning to think that the TradWife core is just an aesthetic-ised Sub / Dom kink with role-play and bows attached. You know, with all the "happily submitted" and "discipline" tags.

Ah yes, traditional marriage. I personally was sold off at age 14 for 12 cows and 20 bushels of grain. Great system.

with all of the tradwife and coquette stuff there is a romanticization of mental illness, like you said, but also there is a major romanticization of eating disorders, too. a lot of the stuff explored in this video reminds me a lot of pro ana tumblr and ed tumblr.

Just reading a tradwife post next to a onceler without acknowledging it… You’re a real veteran

I truly forget about the trad christian/tradfem/tradwife community on tumblr but remember they exist maybe every six months. Between the troll blogs and the clashing of being chronically online that requires being a regular tumblr user and.... Catholicism... truly creates the wildest takes ive seen in a while.

I’m not a tradwife, but I wash dishes nightly as a nanny, and there’s nothing gentle and feminine about dishes and cleaning lol. You gotta put your elbow grease into it.

I'm so insulated from that part of tumblr I fully believed girlblogging was a tag funny trans women came up with because that's the only context I see it in

I feel like grandmacore is so highly varied, it’s can go from trad to kitsch, from heavily Christian overtones to thinly veiled sexual references, I feel like it’s a whole spectrum in itself.

"All babies are good babies"--but if your baby grows up to have a mind of her own, you'll reject her or pester her until to goes "no contact" with you.

"I don't want your gender roles I just want your fresh bread!" Is such a mood

10:20 I CANT FOCUS ON THE TEXT YOURE READING WHEN I CAN SEE HIM STANDING THERE

The ‘coquette’ tag is my nemesis. I had to unfollow SO many tags because I kept getting these weird posts on my dash that were tagged with tags I followed along with shit like ‘coquette’, ‘nymphette’, ‘girlblogger’, etc. The worst culprits were in the ‘Jennifer’s Body’ tag. I followed that tag because I’m a lesbian who loves horror movies, not because I want to see sad Lana Del Rey lyrics! Edit: also a lot of ED shit! Like A LOT.

Coquette is the bane of my existence as someone who likes ballet. Like I just wanna see people rant about Giselle not aesthetic borderline ED posts Blocking the tag Lana del Rey has increased my enjoyment of using Tumblr immensely

I actually experience nesting fever a lot. I get the sudden urge to go outside and gather sticks and leaves to go and make a nest for my eggs. Sometimes I also just make a mound of mud and rotting vegetation like a crocodile or will bury them in the sand like a turtle. Occasionally, I will also become a brood parasite like a cuckoo or cowbird and will place my eggs into the nest of another and let them raise my children. But that’s rare. And by eggs I of course mean the thousands of plastic multicolored Easter eggs that I have been collecting since childhood.

as a cottage core fan, part of why I like it is not only the LGBT separatist vibe (I've done a lot of philosophy readings from the lesbian separatist movement, as has my ex girlfriend who is a lesbian separatist still) its the idea of a community. I grew up Mormon (cringe I know) and even if it was essentially church sanctioned communal living, that's what it felt like. everyone cooked for each other and everyone knew who could sew and mend clothes, cookies were a common bartering chip. when I left the church, they acted like I'd died and aggressively mourned me and my family for almost a year. they weren't all good people mind you, I left because they were often violently racist and homophobic (the Mormon church also still practices modern colonialism by sending aggressively missionaries into low income communities and underprivileged countries for the sake of conversion) I don't regret leaving in the slightest, and I wouldn't have been happy among the women who I know that stayed who are often trad wives. I want to, and have begun to, take my positive memories of that community and build it again, with my rag tag group of LGBT trail mix friends. we learn how to cook and bake, we learn to sew and crochet, we learn cultural practices from each other and each other's families, I've even started keeping chickens and sharing eggs in exchange for access to my neighbors vegetable garden. cottage core doesn't have to be a haven for colonial trad Christians. we just have to make it the way we want it to be.

That coquette stuff reminds me a Japanese fashion magazine called Larme, the overarching theme was girly and sweet with a touch of poison. Lots of soft but not pastel pinks and delicate femininity with barely concealed self destructive tendencies and the feeling that something darkly banal and exploitative was happening behind the camera. That's what I recall about it anyway, I haven't seen it since around 2018 so might be misremembering it.

It’s ironic how lgbtq+ ppl reclaimed cottagecore and have the complete opposite ideals associated with the dream. Like being a servant to your husband in just a different setting is not a dream, Chloe.

I'm 90% sure this tradwive stuff is just an extreme form of bdsm for people who don't know they have a fetish.

as the writer of the washing the dishes post (porcelaineyess) i just wanna say how much I'm totally fangirling over this, commend everyone on their replies on tumblr, and note that the only way i could do any chores for a while was to satirize the tradwife lifestyle and post about it so that was born from it

I heard "nesting fever" and the absolute worst part of my brain jumped to ABO

As a trans person who follows a lot of trans people, I've seen "girlblogging" used in a whole new way. Trans women tend to use it to blog about...loving how they are a girl. I didn't even know the other connotations of girlblogging until now tbh.

When I'm gushing over cottagecore, I'm always imaging myself as a witch in the woods.

This is a right wing extremism pipeline. It’s no different from how counterculture normalises fringe conservative norms amongst most cis men

I think that at the bottom of most of the "weird" tumblr communities, there's just a lot of trauma. And then tumblr is the perfect place to cope with it in unhealthy ways.

I feel like Cottage Core for a lot of communities just innately hits the idea of self sufficiency in a world where you are forced to rely on outside factors so much that it feels like you have no control over your life, and the idea behind having a cottage with animals, away from civilisation fulfills that desire of being in control of your own life.

Yes, as a queer, I love grandmacore. Mostly cuz it started with making my own things (crochet, knit). And also it gives me assurance that old age is not as dreadful as I thought it'd be.

I can shed some light on the nymphet/dollete/coquette group and their associations with a sexualized image of girlhood. A large portion of the people under these tags are using it as a trauma coping thing, people who were abused as young girls or sexualized too early, the kind of kid who was constantly told to cover up because [insert grown man who shouldn't be worried about a tween's bra strap] was coming over. There's also a lot of overlap with Lolita (the book, not the fashion) and people who relate to Delores and her story. Basically it's a microculture surrounding reclaiming the feminine childhood that was stolen by abuse or being forced into sexual contexts as a kid.

This "emotionally validate your man in every way! Also make sure your makeup is always good and have lots of babies!" is clearly some kind of kink masquerading as chaste religious duty.

Instead of using audible, go to your public library and get an audiobook from them! It's free, and you can come back months or even years later to sign it out again! Also it supports your public library!

This just makes me think of the time that a girl I know from high school that is the daughter of a pastor posted, “If god didn’t send you, I’m unavailable.” And it is still one of the funniest fucking things I’ve ever read. Problem being, it was completely sincere, but this is something I would say ironically T o T

There’s no problem with wanting to become a house wife, but that doesn’t mean you should be some mindless slave to your husband or anything. You still need the communication and your own identity

I'll be honest, as much as the tradwife lifestyle seems like a kink thing, the post at 0:38 kind of made me 'get it'. For a lot of people the idea of a family means permanence, security, meaningful purpose, and being part of something that is bigger than yourself and will outlive you. In short it promises all the things that many people don't get from working under the precarious conditions of modern neoliberal capitalism, where people feel more and more disposable and exploited, where we find no fulfilment in our work and feel like our jobs provide no benefit to the world, where we are obliged to act out enthusiasm we don't feel for the 'vision' and 'purpose' of brands and managers, and where we get bombarded with fake authenticity propoganda trying to convince us that the workplaces where we are disposable parts are just as important an fulfilling as friends an family. Sure, the fantasy isn't very realistic and ignores all the tensions that exist in even very happy families, but most fantasies aren't realistic and now I kind of see where the tradwife crowd is coming from.

Sometimes I think about that one tumblr post that said it's very likely these kinds of "Every woman should want to be submissive to her husband and love it because I do!" Very Obviously have some kind of dom/sub fetish and 1. Think it's universal, and 2. Don't realise it, and will never admit that they said fetish.

In my opinion, wanting to do "traditional feminine" things isn't bad, it's when you essentialize it, say it's inherent to women, and that all women should do it, that's the problem. It's fine to want these things, it's just weird to bring gender into it. In my opinion, this dynamic is not limited to women, and nor should it be. Wanting to be the one who stays home and does the dishes and cleaning is not inherently something only girls can do, not at all. The wanting to be submissive to your partner isn't limited to just girls as well-dom/sub and kink is a very queer thing a lot of times, and it's okay to want that too-even if I find it concerning to want 24/7, tbh. Again, it's just this idea that this is how things SHOULD be, instead of just one way you can choose to live your life, and tying it to gender that's the problem.

Hahaha this is your reminder that "domestic discipline" and "taken in hand" means their husband beats them. Best case scenario they're into submission in the BDSM sense except of course, liking kinky sex is UnGodly. Very common scenario, it's full on self-blaming victimization.

As a queer man I low key feel like I kind of missed out on the era of cleaning the house all day, taking Obetrol in the morning (Google what was in that lol) and barbiturates at night, and just focusing on making other people happy. I’m just sick of being stuck between masculine gender roles I can never fulfill and feminine gender roles that are inaccessible to me. I know how problematic it is but I can’t help but view going to dinner parties with the Joneses and looking pretty for a masculine husband and not having to worry about making money or having a career with envy.

One of the tags was “obey him” and I don’t even read it but all I could think of was the “obey me” manga. Now in my mind they’re forever associated with a story about holding people hostage and gay sex.

When i was 14 they said emotions were for girls now I'm 24 and a tumblr tradwife is telling me doing dishes is also just for girls, lol gender roles are kinda hilarious when you're not worried about following them.

6:08 I HOLD THE OPINION THAT NOT ALL MEN ARE WORTHY OF SUBMISSION that quote will live out of context rent free in my head from now on

accidentally got a little drunk watching this and simultaneously had so many realizations abt my own trans experience whilst the tumblr ecosystem breakthrough was occurring. needless to say i am going to have the most insane headache.

Something else interesting is that the coquette/girlblogging side of Tumblr is also intertwined with edblr and bipolar tumblr, which means theres probably some overlap between the tradwives and edblr.

okay does anyone else remember the "art hoe" aesthetic on tumblr? i feel like it was big around 2016/17 and it was a lot of van gogh and peaches and those rectangular backpacks ? bc i feel like cottagecore has some art hoe roots and i've never seen anyone talk about the connection

the tradwives read as a bunch of people who are convinced that their kink has to be everyone else's kink.

8:14 after doing dishes as a job for 8 years, There is nothing feminine about dipping your hands into a soapy food stew and dozens of dirty dishes by your side, for hours at a time lol

pretty sure if i say i wanna be a submissive boywife to my husband they won't be as positive as they claim to be

Honestly, I think Lilibethrose (or whatever the blog’s name was) deserves more credit. I think it’s nice that she acknowledged how it’s her choice, and she doesn’t project those expectations on other women, etc. Reminds me of the “Christian girl autumn” lady that turned out to be really lovely, and donated to help the trans kids who made her a meme

"I don't want your gender rolls I want fresh bread..." Is probably the greatest pun I've heard this year

It's worth mentioning that there is a wave of younger people (mid-late teens I think) that are coming to Tumblr from TikTok It's funny because they don't realize that tumblr doesn't censor people for saying words like kill/die. I've also seen posts like "reposting, hopefully the tumblr algorithm picks it up this time!" even though... there really isn't an algorithm on tumblr unless you tag stuff.

I’ve been seeing the “I used to be a feminist and could never have imagined I’d be a conservative tradwife now but now I know this is the right path” (or something to that effect) sentiment going around lately in conservative circles and the terminology they’re using (like that blogger with “bad ass babe” and unironically “girl boss”)(not even girlboss, girl boss) makes me think it’s literally fake. As if they’re trying to give weight to their argument that this is the “right lifestyle” by saying they used to be a certain way when in fact they never were or their change of heart had nothing to do with personal choice (familial pressure, religious pressure, economic opportunism [I saw this one woman selling nft’s by doing this I’m not kidding], conversion-therapy-type tactics, etc.)

I keep waiting for the moment where the blogs acknowledge that they are functionally just D/S kink blogs, but their lack of self-awareness is outstanding. I kinda suspect that a few of them are fully aware of this, and literally are just writing out their fantasies of being a brainwashed tradwife.

you did it! you broke the tumblr ecosystem down to its bare essentials!!

"I don't want your traditional gender roles, I just want your bread damn it!" - I love it.

i feel like the true center of that chart would be “just girly things” bc of its capacity to be “emo girl edgy” and “latte top bun conservative” and is all over the place with being ironically and genuinely co-opted

I became a housewife with no children begrudgingly (by disability) and while I fulfill some stereotypes (I bake, cook, am fairly handy, sew, etc.) of a "tradwife", I'm not white, I'm in no way conservative in politics, appearance, or decor, I definitely don't sit back and quietly let my husband do whatever, I'm not Christian, and I'm not tidy. One of the things I've found among people who are into the "tradfam" structure is the fact that they are simply naïve or ignorant to what is really needed to live that actual lifestyle - the men who want a "tradwife" can't afford to keep a stay at home mom and multiple children, and many of the girls and women are sold on this idealized "tradwife" "cottagecore" "tradfem" vision and then they get out in the real world and that's not what they find. I am tremendously lucky that my husband's income is able to sustain us and we do not struggle (largely because we do not have kids), but I know that is not the case for everyone.

ColeyDoesThings did a video called “the fandom pipeline” where she connected a lot of the internet’s most prominent fandoms and, Ms. Æons, I think that you could do something similar with the many sides of tumblr

I have just ended a relationship with a catholic who definitely wanted me to be like this. He’d say stuff like “back when people actually cared, it wasn’t uncommon for women to be married and have children at 18” and “the whole point of marriage is to have children and the point of dating is to get married, so if you don’t want children then you should live a ‘consecrated single life’”. He broke up with me saying that he doesn’t think he would be the best husband for me. We were in high school when he told me most of this. He thinks that women shouldn’t have skirts above their knees, and has even criticized what I wore for being too revealing because my bra strap was visible.

Y’know what’s funny is that I actually thought cottagecore was just about being cozy and living in nature lmao, I didn’t rly realize how heavily gendered and Eurocentric the literal aesthetic is, but now that I’m typing it all out it makes sense

Hello Father Strange. My long son and I are pleased to see you on this fine Monday morning.

The good babies are pets. Simply put. My kitten Mothman may wake up and choose violence every single day but she’s still my sweet baby

so happy I've finally found community in Tumblr vets in their mid to late twenties with some sort of superwholock past who have just chilled out entirely and now observe other communities on Tumblr for scientific whimsy

i haven’t been on tumblr much since the Erotica Exodus but a part of me wonders whether an increase of conservatives on tumblr may have been at least partially caused by the porn purge

"The girls are very much on tumblr, along with the sorta-girls and the former girls." God you're so right

Cottage Core really brings to mind Marie Antoinette and her hamlet for me. It just has this romanticization and layer of artifice and of rural life and domestic work. I can see why it's appealing but I also sort of understand that its not realistic and appreciate it for what it is.

"nesting fever" is just my inner magpie emerging whenever i pass a flea market