Tracing the Evolution of Tradwives in India: A Study Based on Cultural Content from Kerala

Tradwife culture has gained considerable traction on social media and in the alt-right environment in recent times, with the trend picking up across the world. Since the age of globalisation, and with the proliferation of television channels, tradwives began to be presented as conservative women in the world of soap operas in India, in the serials commonly known as saas-bahu serials (Mother-in-law-daughter-in-law). They remained popular in the new millennium, even as they were trolled and used for creating memes, in the age of social media. One of the cookery talk shows in Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerala, falls into this space. Celebrating the ideal of the traditional woman and reiterating this concept of traditional femininity, this show has a former actor, Annie, as the host, and it is called Annie’s Kitchen . The show, currently in its third season, is a popular yet controversial one because of the comments and discussions that foreground the idea of a kulastree , the Indian or the State’s version of a tradwife. This work examines select YouTube videos of the program, based on the controversial nature of the chat and its repercussions on social media, and uses a discourse-analytic framework to explore the concept of a kulastree or a tradwoman as it unfolds in the show, and the context in which it is shaping itself through consent and dissent from digital public space.