Let’s take a break from boring talk of continuing resolutions and debt ceiling and such for a moment to talk about that dress. You know the one, or you will soon enough, because everything’s political now — and this is intentionally so.
So the tradwife fashion magazine Evie released a fashion collab they branded as “The Raw Milkmaid Dress” to much pot-stirring reaction from their usual critics:
The dress drew critiques from some of the more conservative pro-trad factions as well, though, who were turned off (or rather, uncomfortable with being turned on) by the huge tracts of land on display. Evie editor in chief Brittany Hugoboom and her team seemed to love leaning into this on X and Instagram, announcing that it had outsold their prior drops, branding it as “the dress that broke the internet”, and emphasizing that it looks good on all women — off the shoulder, too! Their photoshoot even deployed the Wojak meme in real life form:
There was an interesting (and too brief) panel at Hereticon this year on the phenomenon, which particularly focused on Ballerina Farm, the controversial depiction of the tradwife lifestyle that graces the cover of Evie’s latest print issue:
In our third print issue, we’re thrilled to feature Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm on her first magazine cover. Hannah brings a timeless vision to life on her homestead in Utah. At just 34 years old, with eight children, over 20 million followers, and a rapidly growing business, she reminds us of the joy and fulfillment that can come from living close to the earth and embracing your unique calling.
The conflagrations around the whole tradwife thing seems to be driven by a debate about whether what we’re watching here is just a fashion LARP by right wing influencers, a meaningful and helpful representation of pro-natalist culture, or just one more kink that’s gone mainstream. (Why not all three?) For a solid defense of the best aspects of the trend, here’s Inez Stepman in The Spectator:
The tradwife smiles as she feeds her sourdough starter, wearing a long dress and a baby and wrangling the occasional toddler underfoot. She beams at her husband as he comes in from a long day on the ranch, or from the hedge-fund trenches. She makes salt-dough modeling clay for the little ones, whether her stove is from Lowe’s or La Cornue. The Cut describes her Instagram account as both “dangerous” and “stupid.” CNN experts lament that too many girls are turning to her as a “Band-Aid with ideological cover,” and fret about the sourdough-starter-to-White-Supremacy pipeline. Tradwives, both self-identified and smacked with admiring or hostile labels, are the latest cultural phenomenon in media crosshairs.
And no one agrees whom they’re arguing about in the first place. The term is online shorthand for “traditional wife,” which translates to a woman who performs all the tasks your grandmother once did but with access to infinite camera filters and no shag carpet. Most seem to be selling an aesthetic family ideal rather than sex, although some of the bouncing is, let’s say, a little too calculated…
The latest tradwife flap involves the popular Ballerina Farm account (nearly 9 million followers on Instagram and 7 million on TikTok), run by Hannah Neeleman. Mrs. Neeleman seems to be a fashion-model beauty married to a wealthy man who dares to apply those gifts to her eight children and a homestead rather than eight yachts in Capri. She’s further enraged everyone by looking good enough twelve days post-partum to participate in beauty pageant activities (Neeleman is the current Mrs. American, which I was surprised to discover is Miss America for the married set).
Pop trad content seems to set people off in a way that the similarly unattainable “normal” lifestyles of the rich and famous do not — beachside villas in St. Barts do not inspire the wrath homemade bread seems to. Nobody thinks that Ferraris set up impossible expectations for your Kia-driving experience. Everyone knows the pasta-snogging models aren’t actually eating that way. It’s illusion all the way down — and the viewer is in on the con.
But I suspect there’s more to the specific vitriol toward the tradwife niche than the haters are letting on. It’s not the fact that tradwife accounts are presenting an aspirational vision, as most influencer accounts do, but exactly what they and their followers consider aspirational that is causing the backlash. A more plausible explanation is that people intuitively sense this kind of lifestyle somehow ought not to be expensive and out of reach — that having a family, a home and food that isn’t chemical slop on the table ought not to be a luxury product in a wealthy society. There’s a misdirection of anger toward wealthy homesteaders when people realize that they can only afford what the average medieval peasant, for all his other travails, considered fairly standard.
Inez mentions the bouncing, and that’s probably what’s driving a lot of the backlash to the dress. Evie didn’t just choose any model for their dress, they chose Penny Lane, the British Sports Illustrated phenom and Gerard Butler squeeze who goes her own kind of viral — for a very different audience than Ballerina Farm! — every time she walks the runway at Miami Swim Week.
The point is: the dress is fine. But if you put that dress on a “typical” trad wife, who isn’t blessed with the God-given genetics of a childless bikini model and doesn’t have the time between cooking sourdough and changing diapers to dedicate herself constantly to nothing but looking great, you’re not getting that Tex Avery level va va voom or the internet sensation that comes with it.
For my money, the best depiction of what’s actually aspirational about the tradwife isn’t “The Raw Milkmaid Dress” one way or the other, but, as Amber Duke suggested recently, the rediscovery of a Martha Stewart-like dedication to homemaking as a skill to be enjoyed and refined:
Even if women didn’t always have the time to recreate Martha’s dreamy tablescapes or homegrown bouquets, there’s a reason why Martha’s content resonated with them just as much as tradwife videos do now. They are meant to be aspirational, not disparaging. We’d like to have a cleaner house, a home cooked meal every night, fresh bread on Sundays. Why would we be angry at the person who shows us what is possible and how to get there? We may never be as a good as Martha, but if she helps us get 5 or 10 percent better, take it as a win. And if that makes you feel bad, then that’s on you, not the person on your television or phone screen.
Isn’t it possible that what the tradwife trend really says about America right now is something deeper than just the broken relationships between men and women? That we feel lost in a bland, unsatisfying technological age where we are surrounded by distraction, mentally exhausted, constantly told there is some new thing we should need or want? That we long for connection that is more human and less digital — where homes aren’t clogged with bric a brac, but things we want and enjoy — that are meaningful, useful, or chosen for a purpose?
As we close out this year, maybe one of the lessons is that what Americans want isn’t to be a tradwife or find a tradwife in such terms, no matter how often they trend. Maybe what we really want this Christmas season is to find the path to a wide door and a warm hearth, seeking “the peace of the spirit in each cottage home”, a place where our children may find “happiness in a world of storm.” Maybe the pursuit of happiness for Americans now is just the dream of a well-ordered life in a chaotic age.
Or maybe the American dream is a bikini model who likes to wear a milkmaid dress — good luck, go for it friend, there’s no shame in dreaming big.
Democrats Believe Harris Lost Because of Race
The Manhattan Institute has a new poll and report about the state of the country which is well worth your time. There’s a breakdown by topic area which is definitely bookmark material for future reference — including a twenty point gap in support for online gambling, 62 percent support for recreational marijuana legalization, and a whopping 65-19 gap on keeping sports to the gender you’re born to (Democrats are divided 38-37 — that’s a real problem for them). But this part was particularly stunning:
Voters’ explanations for Kamala Harris’s decisive loss reveal a striking disconnect between Democrats’ interpretation of the election results and the broader electorate’s concerns—one that could threaten the party’s ability to recover and rebuild.
When asked why Harris lost, voters pointed to failures in messaging and leadership, as well as economic mismanagement. The most commonly cited reasons were that her campaign did not have a message that resonated with Americans (39%), that she was too closely tied to Joe Biden (38%), and that inflation was too high (32%). Among independents—who played a decisive role in Trump’s victory—the pattern was nearly identical: 44% said Harris lacked a compelling message, 39% blamed her association with Biden, and 34% cited inflation.
Democrats, however, offered a sharply different diagnosis. The top reason they cited for Harris’s defeat—selected by a 59% majority—was that the U.S. is not ready for a black woman president, reflecting the party’s focus on identity rather than substance. By contrast, just 42% of Democrats pointed to her ties to Biden, and only 24% acknowledged inflation, an issue that consistently ranked among voters’ top concerns throughout the campaign. Notably, none of the top three explanations offered by Democrats place responsibility on Harris or her campaign, instead assigning blame to voters, Biden, and economic conditions—in that order.
Feature
Interview: LaCivita and Fabrizio on The Black Swan Election.
Items of Interest
Foreign
The free world abandoned Hong Kong.
Domestic
Johnson, Trump discuss new stopgap plan.
Speaker Johnson’s possible escape hatches.
The WSJ reports Joe Biden’s decline began as early as 2021.
Fetterman vs. AOC over the Democratic future.
Luigi Mangione extradited to New York.
Dozen gang members busted in kidnapping, torture plot in Aurora, CO.
Fani Willis disqualified from prosecuting Trump.
Media
Neil Cavuto to exit Fox News after 28 years.
ABC News settlement backlash, new deal for Stephanopoulos.
Tech
GOP hawks want Trump to thread needle on TikTok.
Odds against TikTok at SCOTUS.
Ephemera
Paris Hilton gives thought to entering politics.
Paul Walter Hauser to play Chris Farley in biopic.
Teaser trailer for James Gunn’s Superman.
Watching Home Alone with Macaulay Culkin.
Quote
Perhaps they reap our roses In an antique jelly jar. And maybe they are happy there, And do not know they are.
— A.E. Stallings, “Lovejoy Street”