the tradwife is a myth — but she makes good content
a closer look at Nara Smith, Ballerina Farm, and the politics of domestic womanhood
Ever since I was a little girl I fantasized about being an adult. I would have an amazing career as an attorney or a journalist. I would live in New York City and most importantly, have a lot of money. What was never in the frame? A wedding dress or a crib. I come from a long line of young mothers with unrealized dreams. I often wonder who the women in my life could have been if they had just waited a few more years. That legacy made me deeply suspicious of womanhood’s most expected role: The Wife.
This suspicion has only grown in the last few years with the rise of the so-called "traditional wife." Perhaps it’s a resurgence of 1950s marketing tactics, or maybe it’s just the same old mumbo jumbo in a Pinterest font. Women aren’t robots designed to chase around children, cook and clean. At a politically unstable time, such as the one we currently reside in, these narratives feel tone-deaf at best, dangerous at worst.
Traditional wives are exactly what they sound like, but vary in extremes depending on who you ask. They can cook everything from scratch like Nara Smith, or they can be like Ballerina Farm who also cooks everything from scratch, but has eight kids despite only being 34. Social media is such a fascinating demon to me because once you put yourself out there for public consumption, people can do with you what they please.
Hannah Neeleman (@BallerinaFarm) had a profile in The Sunday Times that came out last Saturday and the Internet went nuts over it. While I agree with most of the critiques, I feel like people are making extreme assumptions about her and her husband. My sympathies for a rich white woman can only go so far, but I do feel for the idea of "what could have been." Hannah wanted to be a professional ballerina but sacrificed her dream when she met her husband. She claims he also gave up his career ambitions, but like the author of the article, I’m not convinced. It’s clear in their content that the decisions they make are because he wants to make them.
Despite the cooking from scratch and the children, I would hardly call her a traditional wife. She runs multiple businesses, farms, competes in pageants, and manages a large online following. If you add child-rearing and homesteading to the mix, she’s probably busier than any corporate employee I know.
Also, she’s absurdly wealthy. The casual insensitivity from her husband makes me sad for her, but is it really something sinister? A lot of men are just inconsiderate like that. In a TikTok video, he hands her a birthday present: an egg apron he didn’t even bother wrapping. She jokes (three times) that she hopes it’s tickets to Greece. It’s a tiny moment, but one that stuck with me. She could’ve logged onto Etsy herself and ordered the apron. Her ballet studio was turned into a homeschool classroom. Her pointe shoes are in the garage. Why not build her another studio on all that land? Men aren’t socialized to be thoughtful; they have to be taught by the women around them. I think her husband is just a man. I don’t know if that makes him a villain, even if he does dress like Doug Dimmadome.
Nara Smith seems to catch way more flack than Ballerina Farm and I often wonder if it’s because she’s visibly Black. She gets accused of promoting tradwife content even though her lifestyle doesn’t really align with that label. She cooks from scratch because she has an autoimmune disorder. She and her husband are both supermodels. She doesn’t even identify as Mormon despite her husband’s faith. She’s not out here telling women to stay home and bake bread. She’s just vibing.
The political environment we’re in is part of what makes all of this feel so loaded. COVID pushed everyone online and now we’re trapped in podcast culture. You have grown men with $40 microphones telling 15-year-old boys that women are sluts and idiots, and their only value is in what they can provide. Watch any clip from the Fresh and Fit podcast. These guys are just insecure man-children. It’s the Madonna-Whore complex in real time. They invite women on the show they claim to hate—because they want them. Big boobs, big lips, big butts. It’s what they crave, but also what they resent. The kind of wife they say they want? They can’t sexually desire her.
On screen, we have examples like Carmela Soprano—the tragic endgame of the traditional wife. She gets the house, the clothes, the lifestyle. All she has to do is stay silent. She tries to leave Tony but can’t. She has no skills beyond being a homemaker. And even the smallest thing, like forgetting to buy hand soap, becomes a crisis. That scene always stuck with me. It reminds me how invisible women’s labor is. Someone has to remember to buy the damn soap.
None of these viral women are traditional wives. They’re businesswomen, content creators, and influencers. Their lives are a brand. I don’t know anyone in their tax bracket. The real traditional wives? They’re teenage girls forced to carry pregnancies they don’t want. They’re women living at the poverty line, with no transportation and no way out. They’re the ones who suffer most from the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Women like Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman are one in a million. And they seem happy. Who are we to judge?
Maybe the point isn’t to condemn the lifestyle, but to be honest about who can actually afford to choose it.