the movement which advocates a return to the housewife model of the 1950s

While a march against abortion was held in Paris on Sunday, we are interested in this ultraconservative movement which is exploding on social networks. It encourages women to return to a stereotypical model of the married woman as a housewife.

After the march against abortion in Paris on January 21, we return to the “tradwives” movement, for traditional wife in good French. A “tradwife” is a woman, most often sexy as hell, with always impeccable makeup and blow-drying, married, mother of a family and who is fully accomplished in her natural place, that is to say in her kitchen.

In a neckline and apron, the “tradwife” chose the ironing board rather than the meeting room, because her happiness comes first through that of her husband. To sum up, she is a sort of stereotype of the housewife of the 1950s. After all, if there were fewer divorces at the time it was obviously because the marriages were happier and not because the women had no way to make a fresh start.

“Make Traditional Housewives Great Again”

Appearing first in England, then in the United States, these traditional women espoused the political thought of the evangelists, the American ultra-right and Donald Trump, from whom they also took up and transformed the famous slogan “Make America Great Again” to “Make Traditional Housewives Great Again”, i.e. “restore the greatness of housewives”. Estee Williams, a 25-year-old American, is one of them, she reveals to her thousands of subscribers on TikTok and Instagram how to become a “tradwife”.

Today, even in France, influencers, not necessarily very numerous but very organized, advocate traditional femininity on Instagram and Tiktok, explaining that being a gentle woman does not mean being a weak woman. The “tradwives” claim to be “feminine, not feminist”. Feminism having invented this strange concept of mental load and advocating emancipation, while they campaign for women to belong to their spouse. Reactionary ideas that they put forward using the power of digital tools.

Activists against abortion rights

So obviously we could think that everyone is free to flourish as they wish and that this movement on social networks has little importance. Except that the “tradwives” have fully accompanied a decline in the right to abortion in the United States. And in France we are once again seeing men and women demonstrating against this right, while a study reveals, Monday January 22, that one in three young French people believe that it is normal for a woman to stop working to take care of the children.

The neckline, kitchen apron and impeccable blow-dry combo could well prove to be a formidable weapon of war which, in the name of “it was better before”could well take women back years, when being a “tradwife”, in her place in the kitchen, was absolutely not a choice.