Hashtags and Homemaking: Exploring Tradwife Identities on TikTok
Talk by Professor Kaitlynn Mendes of Western University on Tradwife representations on TikTok. In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in “tradwives,” or “traditional wives.” Tradwives’ popularity has been most observed on TikTok, a platform that facilitates identity-laden performances. Far from a harmless TikTok trend, pundits have decried tradwives as mainstreaming far-right and neo-fascist political ideologies that would limit women’s participation in the public sphere. However, little empirical research has sought to tease out what exactly is underlying the tradwife phenomenon. In our work, we explored 262 TikTok videos using #tradwife. We find that tradwives elide any singular conceptualization. Tradwives contain a varied set of aesthetics and narratives, from “homestead wives” who embrace an “off-the-grid” lifestyle of self-sufficiency, to “alt-wives,” who sport non-traditional body modifications, like tattoos and piercings, but reject the promises of modern feminism. This work signals that we ought to think of tradwives as a diverse group with heterogeneous methods and reasons for contesting contemporary gender roles.