‘Business wives’ were the hot topic online in 2024 – but offline, women are more independent than ever
I was Really excited about the next TikTok ban, but now I have another reason to be happy about it: the site’s mini-trend of women “pranking” their husbands “I can’t pay my mortgage this month,” he said.“The joke is that the husband reacts with confusion because his wife doesn’t contribute to the house. But the point is not humor, it’s bragging. The woman posting this content wants us to believe she’s sexy.” She has stumbled upon a man who is willing to pay all her bills. What has been ignored is the whole history of women’s financial dependence on men, which is actually about men’s dominance over women, not women’s sexual power over men. The ways in which women who do not have money of their own are often trapped, abused, or left in the lurch. The clutches of poverty.
Commercial women are a ridiculous online fantasy and, in many cases, publicity stunts.
The “I can’t pay my mortgage” meme is the latest in a series of social media trends that romanticize women’s submission to men. there And also “soft girls” and “girlfriends at home,”“Working in the same ‘too hot to work’ style.” (The old-fashioned term for this role, of course, is “kept woman,” especially if your beloved father has a wife to come home to after visiting you in his side apartment.) The biggest of all are the “merchants”: Influencers who promote idyllic images of the housewife, in which women’s equality is rejected in favor of servility and exaggerated domesticity, such as Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Ranch, avoid explicit condemnations of feminism, They present their lifestyle simply as a “choice” among other, more overtly political, things. Making rants about how feminists must all be miserable cat ladies. But they are all based on the false promise that self-abasement in front of men is women’s happiness.
The ubiquity of this content, especially on TikTok, has created widespread concern that this is a real-life trend for everyday women who reject feminism for “happy housewife” fantasies. But in the real world, women are not turning their backs on the decades of progress women have made. The data shows the opposite. More women than ever are embracing financial independence, delaying motherhood, and choosing single lives over unsatisfying relationships. Commercial women are a ridiculous online fantasy and, in many cases, publicity stunts.
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A 2023 study from the Pew Research Center shows In 45% of marriages, the wife earns as much or more money than her husband. Women on TikTok may pretend that men handle most of the household finances, but in reality, women do. Most studies show that 90% of women in relationships make most of the financial decisions or Divide this duty in half with a partner. Ironically, one of the reasons women dominate the family checkbooks is that paying bills is a household chore, and women, unfortunately, still do much more of these tasks than men. But he shows that the stereotype of the housewife with a bubble whose husband gives her an allowance has little to do with the reality of most women. They are more likely to be the ones to sign the mortgage check than their spouses.
on Half of the women are unmarriedwhich is a record number. Single women are more vulnerable than single men To own their home. Single women without children have the same amount Wealth is on average the same as their male counterparts. Young women complete college at higher rates than young men, with 47% of women between the ages of 25 and 34 earning a bachelor’s degree, compared to 37% of men of that age. the The birth rate has reached a record low Pretty much driven Due to the collapse in teen pregnancy rates.
There is no real world trading trend. It is best understood as cyberfiction, which attracts a lot of attention precisely because it is so foreign to people’s lived experiences. Not a small amount of traffic on tradwife accounts is directed by hate monitors or hackers. Like most reality TV shows, it is more of a freak show than an attempt to reflect the experiences of the average person. It’s very similar to the “big family” trend on social media, where influencers with 8, 10, or twelve kids get huge amounts of traffic because of that WTF factor. It’s also no coincidence that this content appears more prominent on TikTok than on other platforms. One reason the US government moved to ban TikTok is that it has a close relationship with the Chinese government, which has strong motives to plant politically divisive content among American audiences. Certainly, sparking a culture war through heated debates about “traditional” lifestyles is one way to do this.
The fact that most women’s lives have nothing to do with “traditional” Internet-supported fantasy doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous propaganda. Much of this content is deceptively seductive, either aesthetically pleasing or sexually provocative. He exploits people’s emotions to sell them dangerous right-wing ideas. For example, while Neeleman pretends to be apolitical in her feeds, she He was recently posed for the cover of Evie magazinewhich is funded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel and pumps a A constant stream of misinformation stigmatizes contraception As unnatural and dangerous. Women are less likely to encounter commercial content and decide to leave their jobs to become submissive housewives. But unfortunately, it is very likely that some people will see false information that misrepresents birth control and skip taking the pill, leading to unwanted pregnancy.
The good news, as I mentioned in a deep dive earlier this year, is that increasing numbers of people are resisting “traditional” advertising, often in the same social media spaces that gave rise to the trend online. Some feminist critics expose sexism and dishonesty. Others criticize Christian nationalism, pointing out how “traditional” content is often intertwined with fundamentalist Christianity. Some of them are escaping “traditional” lifestyles, whistling violence and ugliness behind the bright and happy veneer.
The anti-trade issue got a big boost in 2024, when British journalist Megan Agnew published a profile in The Times To Hannah Neeleman and her husband, JetBlue heir Daniel Neeleman. After extensive visits and interviews with the Neeleman family on their farm, Agnew reveals that Hannah Neeleman’s life is nothing like the rural fantasy she portrays online. Instead, readers met a woman who was thrown out of her ballet career, rushed into marriage, and repeatedly pressured into giving birth without even the benefit of painkillers. Although Neeleman’s husband is incredibly wealthy, he doesn’t even allow her her own space on their sprawling dance estate, as her studio has been converted into a classroom for her eight children.
the Neelemans angrily denounced Agnew’s articleAlthough she did produce the audio interview that demonstrated the painstaking precision of her portrayal. Their protests were unsuccessful. The article unleashed a torrent of rhetoric about the lack of anything romantic about the commercial lifestyle because it relies on women giving up their identity and selfhood to serve as props in the male fantasy of female submission. It created an opportunity for feminists to educate young audiences about how the “happy housewife” had always been a myth, and that women in the 1950s often suffered from depression and drug abuse due to the self-effacement expected of women in that era. It’s starting to dawn on more people that the “business wives” they see online, like Neeleman, aren’t even housewives at all. They are professional content creators who make money by selling fiction. In some cases, their husbands appropriate the money they earn, highlighting how this is not a romantic dream, but rather sexual exploitation.
With TikTok having to find an American buyer or be banned in the US, the merchandising concept may have a short shelf life. The Chinese company’s algorithm is known to be mysterious, but it seems to favor commercial content more than American platforms. Even if the Chinese government were not in control of the algorithmic scale — which is highly unlikely — there is good reason to believe that this content would not be widespread in other areas. Even image-based platforms like Instagram don’t quite rely on circumventing the rational parts of the brain like swiping TikTok does. Commercial content relies on audiences absorbing it uncritically, and without TikTok, that would be much harder to achieve.
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By Amanda Marcotte