Unpacking (Alt-Right) Postfeminist Sensibilities: Theorizing the Tradwife Influencer Movement Through Case Study Analysis

Abstract

Tradwives, a portmanteau from the words “traditional” and “wife,” represent a trend among social media influencers who advocate for a return to restrictive gender norms and patriarchal structures of life. Tradwife social media content often showcases aesthetic elements of 1950s culture or homesteading and includes discursive themes of motherhood, wifehood, critiques of modern feminism, and submission to one's husband. In this article, we draw on feminist, social, and critical psychology, as well as critical cultural theory, to argue that the contemporary technology of social media provides a cultural platform for postfeminist ideas to promote, mobilize, and commercialize alt-right and highly conservative ideologies, offering individualized lifestyle solutions to complex sociopolitical issues. We situate our argument within the cultural context of the progress and backlash of Western feminism, outline and build upon the literature on postfeminism, and demonstrate how such postfeminist culture is ideologically and psychologically constructed through a case study of the prominent British Tradwife, Alena Kate Pettitt.