The thorn in feminism’s side: black feminist reconceptualization and defence of #tradwives and the #tradwife movement

Tradwives have been the thorn in feminism’s side ever since they exploded onto the social media landscape in 2013, attracting considerable media attention post-COVID. With their growing popularity in the online influencer space, the movement has been a critical focus of feminist academic discourse, given their promotion of ‘traditional’ values. Adopting a black feminist lens, this article traces the construction of the tradwife as anti-feminist populism and given the complexity of defining tradwives, offers a typology to better understand sub-types of content creators. Three clear sub-types of tradwives are identified: 1) the nostalgic tradwife, 2) the former feminist and finally 3) the Southern Belle. It also examines the unassuming hyperfeminine aesthetic within the tradwife persona that allows tradculture to perpetuate alt-right ideology to an everyday audience. This article argues that some tradwives bury their heads in the sand by failing to consider how nostalgic constructions of ‘traditional’ femininity reproduce colonialist discourses, as well as modes of oppression through gendered, ethnic and class lines.