"And indeed, though the fashion and decor have changed, flipping through the pages of Entertaining feels superficially similar to scrolling through the tradwife corner of Instagram. The queen of the tradwives, Hannah Neeleman, shows off her many pigs and chickens. Nara Smith cooks elaborate meals from scratch. Estee Williams dresses modestly and immaculately in the comfort of her own home. And of course, all are beautiful, thin, and shapely."
"But tradwives sell both a lifestyle and an ideology. Martha Stewart's performance served as a prototype for the lifestyle: Her ability to capitalize on domesticity has been a blueprint for these internet influencers. Unlike today's tradwives, though, Stewart did not preach about traditional gender roles, submission, or operating only within the domestic sphere. She did not pretend to adhere to the politics of feminine dependency."
"Before starting her catering business, Stewart worked as an institutional stockbroker. It wasn't a desire to be a small, submissive wife that led to her decision to leave the traditional workforce; it was the size of her ambition fueled by an entrepreneurial spirit. Much has been written about the hypocrisy of contemporary tradwives, how they, too, are motivated not by meekness but by blazing ambition, how they often become the family breadwinners via their monetized platforms."
Martha Stewart is reissuing her 1982 book Entertaining, a work that cemented her status in lifestyle and decor. Her aesthetic and domestic skills resemble the modern tradwife aesthetic on social media, including animal husbandry, elaborate cooking, and immaculate modest dress. Stewart’s public persona functioned as a prototype for monetized domestic branding but differed politically: she did not advocate traditional gender submission and had a background as an institutional stockbroker before launching a catering business. Contemporary tradwives often market both a lifestyle and an ideology while monetizing domestic labor and concealing entrepreneurial ambition behind a facade of meekness.
Read at Slate Magazine
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