Can the allure of a perfectly baked sourdough starter lead you into the clutches of far-right ideologies? On this episode of the Toxic Cooking Show, we navigate the seemingly wholesome world of the "trad wife" movement, a growing online trend that romanticizes a return to 1950s domesticity and traditional gender roles. Lindsay McClane along with her trusty side kick, Christopher Patchet, LCSW, we unpack how these meticulously crafted videos subtly promote a more sinister agenda, including white supremacism and the glorification of a past that wasn’t as idyllic as it seems.
Our conversation doesn't stop at just analyzing the facade of the trad wife lifestyle; we critique its sustainability and the unrealistic promises it makes. We also delve into the darker implications for women who buy into these narratives, often finding themselves in precarious situations with little room for escape. Listen in as we challenge the glossy, curated images of trad wives and expose the dangerous, underlying messages they propagate, encouraging listeners to stay critical and informed.
Can the allure of a perfectly baked sourdough starter lead you into the clutches of far-right ideologies? On this episode of the Toxic Cooking Show, we navigate the seemingly wholesome world of the "trad wife" movement, a growing online trend that romanticizes a return to 1950s domesticity and traditional gender roles. Lindsay McClane along with her trusty side kick, Christopher Patchet, LCSW, we unpack how these meticulously crafted videos subtly promote a more sinister agenda, including white supremacism and the glorification of a past that wasn’t as idyllic as it seems.
Our conversation doesn't stop at just analyzing the facade of the trad wife lifestyle; we critique its sustainability and the unrealistic promises it makes. We also delve into the darker implications for women who buy into these narratives, often finding themselves in precarious situations with little room for escape. Listen in as we challenge the glossy, curated images of trad wives and expose the dangerous, underlying messages they propagate, encouraging listeners to stay critical and informed.
Hello and welcome to the Toxic Cooking Show, where we break down toxic people into their simplest ingredients. I'm your host for this week, lindsay McLean, and with me my fantabulous co-host.
Christopher:Christopher Patchett, LCSW. So right before we started recording I did ask you if you knew, if you had heard of the topic for today, and you said that you hadn't.
Lindsay:No, I had not, so I want to start off, then, by describing a video to you generic video. So imagine you're. You're scrolling instagram, tiktok. You, christopher d patch, lcsw now, because you are christopher patchett.
Lindsay:You've been scrolling for a while, which is how you've ended up on this side of the internet, but as you scroll, you come across a video, and in this video there's a woman. She's slender, she's got medium to long hair, maybe a little bit of waves, some body or some light curls to it. It's probably blonde, although she could be a brunette. She is white. She's dressed very feminine, probably a dress or a skirt, but it could also be jeans on the top. In any case, it's not anything revealing or slutty. It's definitely what you would call like modest clothing. She's got a beautiful house, a loving husband, a small pack of little crotch goblins roaming around, and everything in this video is vaguely sepia toned, and it's kind of hard to tell if it's like that because of all of the beige and grayish tones that she has painted her house with the fact that she's got three filters on this video, or if it's just dirt that hasn't been washed away. You keep watching the video and she's introducing you to herself and her family and her life. That's what her videos are, and she's probably cooking something in the video or making something, and whatever it is, it's free of pesticides, toxins, excess sugar, red 40, the list goes on. Because everything that she makes in her home is from scratch, wholesome, natural, because she cares Patches, she really cares, she loves her family, she loves God, she loves her husband and being a good wife and caring for her family. Because the world's a scary place out there. There are people and corporations that want to hurt you and your family and your values. So you have to fight back because you're a tough mama bear.
Lindsay:This is the life you want, right, like you want to have this beautiful life that she's living Again. The beautiful house, the pretty cottage core dresses, the cute little kids this is what you want. The husband, who's kind of there in the background but I don't really see much of him because he's off working. You want the home-baked bread right, it's home-baked bread. You're going to say no to that. You want the meals made with love in a kitchen at home by somebody. You want god in your life. You want the live, laugh, love signs. The little cut flower garden out front to make artfully whimsical bouquets. That's what you want, right. Well, you can sign up for my starter ebook now that includes 30 plus healthy, mama approved recipes that children and husbands, teehee, will love. You have stumbled across a trad wife. How are you feeling?
Christopher:I, oh God, yeah, yeah. This is the internet, and what does it come down to?
Lindsay:Have you, have you ever seen any of these videos?
Christopher:Um, I haven't seen those, I think mostly because I'm a I'm a guy and I do know what you're talking about, because, like, yeah, I mean, mean you kind of see that with with men trying to sell their things yeah, yeah, it's a special type of video.
Lindsay:Um, I'll send you some after this. I didn't want to spoil it. I wanted to describe, like, what these videos look like. They are very well edited and put together and we'll cover that in a little bit.
Lindsay:So trad wife stands for traditional wife, and I debated about if I wanted to build up to this main point and I said instead I'm going to give you all the information ahead of time and then go back and give my reasoning. And the main point is that trad wives are the female version of our good friend, the tater tot. They're absolutely tied to white supremacism. It's yeah, it's, it's really bad. So the trad wife movement really pushes us to go back to the good old days, and in that case the good old days means the 1950s, and that's not by mistake that it's the 1950s in America specifically that they really hearken back to. This is 1950s America, so it's post-World War II. The men's are back from war. They're ready to take back those jobs that women took over for them while they were off fighting. You've got a booming economy. Things are going really well for some people in the US.
Lindsay:Keyword some people. I feel like I should clarify that not everyone was having a great time, but this was a time period when you could have a single income family. You could have just the father who was working and the wife basically stayed home. Now she might have some small jobs on the side, but one dude working could support a wife and kids and a house at home. Like, our economy was set up to allow for this type of family and it meant that, as a result, dad was off working.
Lindsay:Mom's job was the house, because it is a fucking job and men know it. They don't always want to admit it. But the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the dishes, the childcare that's all the big visible stuff, plus all of the mental labor that comes from managing a household. That's what women took on, was all of that, and men were the providers. I go out, I do my job, I come back home at the end of the day. Yeah, the stereotypical 1950s. You know man comes home and the wife has, you know, nice hot dinner on the table and the children are all freshly scrubbed and sitting there quiet.
Christopher:you know that that type of you know I I remember watching nick, nick and night and things like that, where it was in the early 90s. Nick and night would be your shows from like the 1950s, donna reed and things like that where she's cleaning the kitchen and the poodle dress type thing. I was puffed out and oh yeah, I mean to me, I find that disgusting.
Lindsay:But I mean I I love that you bring that up, because that is actually my next point is that, in addition to this, like you know, woman go at, go at home, woman do her things. We've talked about this before when we talked about like women's body trends through history. But the 50s is when we see this kind of swing back towards hyper feminine. So we had a period where I mean, there was a war going on, there was rationing, and before that there was the Great Depression and kind of coming out of that, you know 30s and 40s, and now you've got late 40s to 50s. Things are going great, and so we have money for fabric again, we have money to be spending on stuff, and so you do have this like the silhouette, the Marilyn Monroe, the hourglass figure, and if you didn't have that, you could make it like that out of clothing. It's hyper feminine. It is definitely meant for the male gaze. That is what that's going for. Changed that. That's not the world that we live in anymore.
Lindsay:As time went on, women re-entered the workforce bit by bit, because there was this big push that obviously during the 40s or during world war ii, the men went to war like somebody has to keep the stuff going.
Lindsay:So women suddenly, like, went out and joined the workforce in mass numbers, and then, when the men came back, there was this weird kind of push of like and back to the home. You go, which is again linked to the whole like, and now you're wearing, you know, the cute little dresses and you're just you're baking cakes, taking care of the children. So, as time's going on, though, women are going back into the workforce, but they are not giving up those home duties, and so you hit this point where women now have two jobs. They work their nine to five, because you can really no longer have a single income family at this point. Our economy is just not set up to have one person working supporting a spouse and children of any number at home. Unless you have a really nice job, you're not working in a factory supporting people that way in 2024, and you haven't been able to for a while now.
Lindsay:So women have to go. They work that nine to five and then they are coming home and they are picking up and doing all of the housework. They're doing the work that was at home the cooking, the cleaning, the kids that is still falling to women. They are now managing two jobs. And the other thing we should talk about in the 50s is it wasn't just women sitting at home doing this. Because of how much stuff cost back then and the way it worked, you were far more likely to be able to have hired help of some sort, Whereas now, if you have a nanny or a cleaner certainly for a nanny, like damn, I mean a cleaner maybe.
Lindsay:But even that, if you said like, oh yeah, I have a cleaner, come every week, be like what do you do for work, and that was something that was a little bit more accessible back then. So, even though it was still a job for the women to be doing all of that, you had access to this. Help that you could afford. Now it was on the backs of other people. Help that you could afford Now it was on the backs of other people.
Lindsay:I can't win it all, can you? I know it's great. So women are now managing these two jobs and there's this idea being sold that you can have it all. This is when you see boss babe kind of appear. It's like you can have a family, you can have work, you can have a life, you can do all three. Spoiler alert you can't. You cannot have a full-fledged career, be fully present for your family and have time for yourself to go out and do things and, like you know, go take girls weekends and go get your nails done and hair. Really no, that is a lie that has been sold to us.
Christopher:Oh, I, I'm, I'm already seeing where this is going, and yeah it's not good.
Lindsay:See, I figured, figured. I was like I might as well. Just you know, start off strong and be like this is this is awful, because you're going to pick up really fast. So of course you know, as trends do you start swinging back this other direction, and so this is kind of a couple of things kind of happened at once. A you have this movement back that's been happening for a while of women being like why am I working two fucking jobs, why am I having to be the homemaker and work in the workplace? Like what's going on here, like this is this is really not fair, it's really stressful. You also have the rise of Christian nationalism and the pandemic everyone's favorite thing. So during the pandemic because this is when this really came to the forefront and people realized that this was a thing there was this huge burst of stuff like cottagecore. Do you know what cottagecore is? I figured I said it and I was like wrong audience here. So cottagecore, you know what like core at the end of something means, though?
Christopher:I mean it would. To me it's not.
Lindsay:It's like the core of the idea kind of yeah, so when you have like a whatever core, like now I'm blanking on various names, but in the instance of cottage core, it's this aesthetic basically. So it's the idea of, like there are these really pretty flowery dresses. There's a very specific type that I'm not going to bother just explaining to you because you're not going to get it.
Christopher:For those of you who do know milkmaid dresses Okay, okay, yeah, oh, really yeah, I, I, I kind of think of the, the German type white plane. Yeah, it's just kind of like kind of flows out a little bit, not not as much as the puffer, but like um no.
Lindsay:So these are like. The bodice is fairly fitted.
Christopher:Okay.
Lindsay:And then they've got this really accentuated like boob part that just kind of like sits right up under there and it gives the impression that maybe you're wearing a corset but you don't have the restriction of like being tied into something, um, but it puts the boobs on display a little bit and then it comes obviously down and looks like a regular dress for it. For the rest of it they're very pretty. You saw a lot of those. There was this huge aesthetic of flowers and being outside and nature and just really pretty princessy dresses. It was like a big thing during the pandemic that exploded was like a big thing during the pandemic that exploded.
Lindsay:You also had a lot of stuff of people doing things at home, doing crafts, doing stuff like baking bread, gardening, sewing, crochet, crafting, playing with your kids, because we were stuck at fucking home. And so some of it was what am I going to do? And some of it was hey, this is something I've been interested in. I've got time, I can do this. I can start baking bread, I can start learning how to sew. What else am I going to do? That you saw everywhere. So this was I think that was like the last piece that kind of came together along with the Christian nationalism and this swing back towards women being like I don't want to have to be in the workplace if I'm also having to do all the work at home. Like, why have the two jobs?
Lindsay:So we see the appearance of the trad wives on tiktok and that's where they really appeared is on social media. People know them now from their tiktoks and instagrams. I mean, there are a couple big names like nara smith, hannah neelyman, but there were actually people who came before them, who walked so that they could run, like all of these. So one of the great examples that I'll give here, because it helps explain the pipeline, is it's called farmhouse on boone. Her name's lisa bass. I think her youtube channel was started in 2016, but before that she had a blog and if you ever are like you know what I want to get into making sourdough bread yeah, because it's it's a thing. Do you know how sourdough bread works?
Christopher:I actually. It's funny. The one person I know that actually is all about sourdough bread is a Navy friend of mine.
Lindsay:Nice.
Christopher:And it's funny because he was really getting into it there for a short time and he would just post videos of, like you know.
Lindsay:It's like a religion, how the dough is growing.
Christopher:It's like a religion. How the dough is growing.
Lindsay:I mean, you do have to. For those of you who, for whatever reason, don't know how sourdough works, you have to have a starter, so you start it off and you've got flour and water that you let sit and ferment. It gets wild yeast on it and so you have to stay on top of it. That's. Another key thing about sourdough is that you have to keep using it. You can slow it down, you can occasionally like stop it, but people who start getting into sourdough, it's a pipeline to more sourdough, because now you have this like living thing that you have to use. And so if you were baking bread every day for your family or you're making other things, it's fine. But if you just want to make like bread occasionally, sourdough is not the way to go. But yeah, if you ever want to get into sourdough and you look it up, you are highly likely to stumble on her videos, because that's one of the things she has done is a lot of stuff on sourdough. And so you start watching that and you're like, well, this is fine, right, and back in the day when my sister and I found her, she was doing a lot of stuff of like you know, renovating a farmhouse that she and her husband had bought.
Lindsay:Back then there were fewer signs At this point. If you look her up, she does have eight children, which is a sign. It's a sign that maybe this is not the person we should be following. You know, back then you didn't have that, you didn't have that clue. But that's a really easy way she's. A great example of how you can get sucked into this is that there are so many little gentle pipelines leading in of like sourdough, and then you start watching and then you get invested in the family and you're like what's happening here, what's happening there? And before you know it you were balls deep in christian nationalism. You're like, oh whoopsies.
Christopher:Whoopsies. I was going to say, and this is kind of one of those things where it kind of goes back to the show that we've done about toxic platforms, when, yeah, you know what, there's little cutesy things here and there, but if the overall message is a toxic message, then not by choice we're. We're now feeding force, feeding ourselves everything that comes in with the this cutesy little thing.
Lindsay:Yeah, and it's. It's such a hard line to walk to be like, okay, is this person safe? And I find myself having to do it all the time. If you look up anything with, like, women-related crafts, you have to be so careful because you will end up with stuff like this. Because it yeah, it does, it normalizes these ideas and it makes it more normal in your head. The more you watch it, the more you see like, well, she's just staying at home, she's got like her life, her kids, her fucking sourdough starters everywhere, like her husband's working. This is normal, right, like look, there's her.
Lindsay:And then, of course, you know the algorithm feeds you more and you start seeing more people who are doing this and you're like this is there's stay-at-home moms, and this is the key is that a lot of them don't sit around and call themselves trad wives. Some of them do, absolutely, but not all of them do. They may kind of present themselves as I'm a stay-at-home mom. Okay, there's a difference between a stay-at-home mom and what you're doing, because this flavor of stay-at-home mom is dangerous and it is a lie. The whole thing is a lie, because what they're presenting to you is this idea that fits really nicely into the far right of the man is the provider and the woman stays at home, cooks and cleans and has children. That is the idea that they sell you.
Lindsay:But you have to look, like, how are they selling you this idea? Like, how are you finding out? Because they're using social media. They use it to present this idea to you, and not just the idea. They've got products. All of the good ones have products Essential oils, ebooks, worksheets for your kids, printable design packs on Etsy and Canva, busy mama workout plans. They've got their wellness stuff. Know, the teas, the, the tinctures, um, they've got discount codes. They've got sponsorships on instagram and tiktok and they, they sell you this idea that their job is being a mama. No, it's not. Your job is to sell me bullshit. That's how you make a living oh god it.
Christopher:It brings back this, this the one video that I absolutely fucking love where the girl is I'm about to turn 20 and I'm about to make my first million dollars. I'm about to turn 20 and I'm about to make my first million dollars, and you can do it too. The way I did it was my dad's the CEO of, and it's like okay, you know what You're, you're trying to sell this. This idea of you can just be at home and have the husband be the foot provider. Well, no, I mean, if you're selling something, then you're doing a business as well.
Lindsay:You have to remember everything you watch on Instagram is trying to sell you something One way or another. Ain't nothing for free out there in this world. It's a sad reality of our life, Even the cute animal videos, I know.
Christopher:No, not the cute animal videos.
Lindsay:Some of the cute animal videos.
Christopher:Yeah, yeah.
Lindsay:So, yeah, that's the big thing there. The other thing about trad wives is that they're good at what they do with their videos Like this. This is hard work. They are Instagram influencers or TikTok influencers, because the amount of time it takes to film all of this stuff, to edit all of it, to put it in there a lot of them may have nannies hidden in the background. I wouldn't be surprised if you've got this many children running around and you're filming two to three TikToks a day, or you're putting out two to three TikToks a day. That's a lot of work, Like filming all these different videos and putting them together and staying on top of trends and doing all of the editing. It's a lot of work. Now it can bring you in a lot of money. Oh yeah, One of these days we're going to get cool on TikTok.
Lindsay:I say as somebody who refuses to take videos. So the other way that this is a lie and a scam is that they're actually setting you up for no financial independence. You're sold this idea that like, oh, this beautiful life with God, with your husband, like you serve your husband, you follow the Bible. It's very heavy influence of Christianity. It is no surprise that a lot of these families are Mormon, Latter-day Saint. It fits right in with that that this is a lifestyle that you would have. But what they're not telling you is what happens if your husband divorces you? What happens if there's an accident and he can't work or you can't work? What if there's abuse and you decide to leave? You have nothing. You have no backup. You have no safety net, no security Like it's not there. You present this like, oh, everything's beautiful, but is it?
Christopher:Well, I mean for them, yeah them, yeah, you know, because they do have that backup, they do have that backup income, they do have that ability to say fuck this, I'm out they do they do influencer trad wives do, and they're selling it like you'll also have this, but you won't, because you're not going to have the Instagram follower that's bringing you in money.
Lindsay:You're going to be stuck at home with three small children Eight While your husband yeah, god.
Lindsay:I worked for a family here teaching English and they had nine children and I taught the three oldest English. And wow, at one point the mom was supposed to call me back when we were setting up, like when I was going to come teach and I knew I was teaching three kids. I didn't know how many kids there were in this family yet and I could hear a small child in the background. When she called she sounded like a little bit hairy. I was like, oh, they must have a younger sibling, okay. And she was a little bit behind on getting back to me and I had to reach out to her a couple times. I was like, okay, and then I got there to their apartment on the first day to teach the the oldest child and I realized just how many kids there were and I was like, I see why you were a little fresh, I get. Now, you couldn't pay me to have that many kids.
Lindsay:So another lie that you're being sold is that this is a great life that only benefits you. This is what God wants for you. This is how you're going to be the happiest, this is how you're going to be protected, because they're championing these right-wing causes of like oh, there's a scary, scary, scary world out there full of unknown things and we can protect you, but do they Not really? Not really, not really. And you know, we're starting to see this a little bit of women on the right kind of realizing that's like oh God, this is, I'm not actually protected. Look at abortion Not to you, because this is not a political podcast, but just looking at that, really briefly Republicans were obsessed with getting a, you know, outlawing abortion in every way. But more often than not, like when it ends up on the ballot, you see that people back access to it. And yet publicly, these women are like oh, this is terrible, this is awful, again with this whole lie thing.
Christopher:And then when you're the one who's actually in that situation, it's like oh shit yeah, that's kind of one of the biggest things that I I keep on saying is that when we see about and this works both ways, and and again, you know this is not a political podcast but I remember I took a camping trip to what we call pentatucky and and so it's that whole area in between philadelphia and pittsburgh, and I remember I wanted to make like more. So I was like, okay, you know, I'll, I'll make a stop at this like local convenience store. And I asked guys like hey, you know like where, where the marshmallows and everything. And the guys, well, what you want to do, you want to go down the hall there. I was like, wait, wait, when the fuck did I get to alabama?
Christopher:And so, like you know, like the thing is, is that I, you know when I did the camping trip and seeing streams that you can just drink straight from, you're seeing eight-year-old kid with a rifle and all these different things, and and the thing is, is that okay, somebody who's living there is not seeing the gun violence that happens in Philadelphia? They're not seeing the Schuylkill River, where it is completely polluted. So, when the whole topic of clean energy and things like that, well, why the hell do we need clean energy? I, I can drink straight from the stream, like you know.
Lindsay:like what is wrong with these?
Christopher:people in the in the cities and the same thing, like you know, like when you talk about like gun control and things like that, people in the city are just thinking straight up, like you know, like crime and things like that, whereas in the countryside it is more of a bonding moment with your dad going out hunting. So, yeah, it's hard to see the other person's perspective of things.
Lindsay:Yeah, and when you're living this kind of sheltered lifestyle, it's really easy to be a pick me, as we've talked about, and be this mouthpiece and be like oh yeah, this is, this is really terrible. Like you know, we should do this because it doesn't actually affect you, you're safe, you know that you could have access if, like, if you really wanted to, because your husband has money. You have money because you're an influencer. Like you do actually have that income and so you feel okay advocating for stuff like, yeah, let's go back to the 50s, when it was simpler. But if we actually went back and you were suddenly in that position, it's like, okay, no credit card, no bank account, instagram, no, ma'am Then I think you would change, but people don't want to look at that. So the other kind of lie that they sell you and this is less so a lie, but more be interesting to see how this turns out is that your future is a bit of a ticking time bomb as a trad wife.
Lindsay:So you do have this older generation that has kind of started it farmhouse on boone. Again, she does have eight children, so you know they're fucking stair steps. You just see it like every two years a new one comes. Um, you know they're starting to get older and and when you have older kids, you can't use them in your videos Like little kids can't run away from you when you want to dress them up. A 16 year old can A 16 year old can say, no, I'm not doing this. And so now suddenly your content does not want to perform. You don't have that anymore.
Lindsay:You know people are not talking about what are you going to do in 10 years and 15 years and 20 years? Are you still going to be on here? Probably not. Are you going to make the jump, you know, to the next platform and then the next platform after that? I mean, think about how my farmhouse and being again she's had to go from a blog to youtube to I assume she has instagram and tiktok and all that.
Lindsay:That's clearly not her main thing. Like she's never shot to fame on that. Like you have new people who have taken over, which means that then the next generation you know after will be on something completely different and these ones will be forgotten. You don't have any like real set future for you. Again, you see my previous one. If things go wrong, what are you going to do? It's not the influencer's job to talk about that. Because they're fine, they're making all the money right now. They've got a fat bank account sitting back there, but what are you, the person who's following them, going to do if you get involved in this trad wife lifestyle?
Christopher:Yeah, yeah.
Lindsay:No. So in case it wasn't clear, I think this is a really shitty thing and it's really dangerous because it's very much a slippery slope. There's so much that you can accidentally run into these women on Again. For me, I like sewing, baking, gardening, all this type of stuff, and so many times I have accidentally found these videos because you're watching someone and you're like is this is interesting? And at this point now I'm very aware and you pick up on the signs and you're like nope, I'm telling instagram, I am not interested, we're moving on to the next one, because you can see like she's wearing this, like cutesy little apron, and you see the house again in the like white and beige and gray tones, the the ship lap, the farmhouse, chic. You just you see it and it smells of trad wife no no, I know what's coming.
Lindsay:It starts with baking and it ends with we hate trans people no not gonna do it, because you don't even have to get all the way into full trad wife territory to get really fucked up. All you need to do is pick up some of those ideas, because they are so full of just like really hateful things and misogyny and all that. Remember we're talking about like 1950s. America is what we're going for here. So 1950s, you have this. You know Christianity was a big thing. That, in 1954, was when we added under God into the pledge of allegiance and that was to differentiate the U? S from the Soviet union because there was no religion there. That's why we added that from the soviet union because, there was no religion there.
Christopher:That's why we added that. I mean, you know, and that's kind of the thing is, you know, the algorithm doesn't know the difference between baking and how to become the next hit. Yeah, you know, all I was picking up is that you like the certain group for one reason or another and here, try out this video and, just as you said, it's kind of like a stepping stone. You might go from baking to how to have a happy marriage, and then you go from have a happy marriage to how to have happy friends, and how to have happy friends to people you need to exclude in your life. And then, oops, people that you need to exclude are this group of people this entire list of people and the next page.
Christopher:So so, yeah, it is. It's just as you said. It's a very slippery slope and, you know, the more you kind of get involved into it, you're force feeding yourself this, this hateful message, and all you want to do is fucking bake sourdough bread I just wanted the bread recipe.
Lindsay:And now here I am. You're like eight kids is good, oh no. But I mean, also during the 50s too, you've got this big push for like. I mean that was when the civil rights movement was was in full swing, or like coming up into it starting. You know, we had just come out of locking up a whole bunch of japanese people in internment camps during world war ii and that was that was great. We didn't get in any trouble for that. Just do that again. You know, there were the 50s.
Lindsay:Were I said before, not a great time for a lot of people, for white people? Yes, and that's why it was so key, because in addition to all of the hate that we were allowed to do, especially for men, you had all the guys who came back from war. So that whole culture kind of got introduced into society again, this idea that men were allowed to just kind of say whatever they wanted and treat women however they wanted, and they just went to work and smoked and drank, and that was fine because they were men doing men things. Went to work and smoked and drank, and that was fine because they were men doing men things. I want to point out that this was a horrific statistic. Are you ready for?
Lindsay:this 1993 was when marital rape was made a crime in all 50 states.
Christopher:I've been around for a long time I was gonna say that that, oh that, that fucking kills.
Lindsay:I mean the first state I think was like Nebraska in 76. So it was, you know, states were doing it. But again, it wasn't until 93 that that became a thing in the whole US.
Christopher:No, that's really kind of well, not kind of, but it's really just fucking sickening.
Lindsay:Yeah, and so when you consider that it took that long for that to happen, this type of thing was just so normalized. And so, yeah, I get it that men want to go back to that and be like I could say and do whatever the fuck I wanted. What were you going to do? It was a great time to be a white man. And so of course, I mean the women aren't going to come out and say like, yay, all of this stuff, like they're not going to be really open about it.
Lindsay:But if you firmly believe something, it will show in the way that you carry yourself, it will show in the people who you associate with that. This is something that's very key to you. So you know, if you are a Christian, certainly you can be a Christian and not talk about it. But inevitably if you're making videos and you're a Christian, at some point out of 100 videos that will come up. If you're Muslim, if you're Buddhist, whatever it is, it will start to come out, little mentions, little mentions here or there, like things will come up. People will see stuff in your home and ask questions about it, like, oh, you know what's that painting or this.
Christopher:I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, how would anybody ever notice that I believe in Buddhist ideology? I mean, who could possibly?
Lindsay:Certainly not by the giantha painting above your head right now. It wasn't that, but that that's a prime example. Right there's. You can have stuff, decorations, like in your house that just clue people in to certain things, or somebody sees it and asks you about it in a live and you're now answering questions, and now this becomes a thing, and so you're talking about it more. So, whether you want to or not, this has now become out in the open, and maybe that attracts more people to you. Maybe it doesn't, but if it's something that you already believed in and you felt was really important, you're probably not going to shy away from it too much.
Lindsay:That's what you see with trad wives is that they may not come straight out and be like fuck non-white people, get rid of the gays. But if somebody's like they're not going to go to a pride parade you know there are going to be some signs it's like we're avoiding that. You know we may mention like oh, we would never like have our children do that. Or like we don't hang up rainbow flags. We don't, you know, do anything in rainbow colors, cause like the gays are coming. Oh, no. So, as I had said at the beginning, I think that trad wives are essentially female versions of Andrew Tate or Tater Tot, because they are so hateful and they are everywhere on the internet. But I did also want to tie this in with the previous episode about pick me's, because I think that he's a little bit the same way too, because I think that he's a little bit the same way too. You're specifically saying that you are pandering to your audience to make them want to be like you, like I wanna have this too. So trad wives, I think, are a special type of pick me. They appeal to women sometimes by being in logs, like not like other girls, like I don't go out, drinking and partying, I'm cool and stay home. I don't have to dress slutty. And look, I got a man who loves me. You don't need to dress slutty. You don't need to go do this. You don't need to go to clubs, go to church. Look, I found a man.
Lindsay:They reel you in with this aesthetic lifestyle of it's perfect, it's homely, it's cute, it's lovely, it's everything you possibly want. Yeah, how many times did you film that take to get this? We don't see that part. But they're also performing for the alt-right. They are performing as the pygmies there. They are playing that part of you.
Lindsay:Know we're real women, we're biblical women. We'll take care of you. We'll do all of the things that you want. I'm here to have sex with you. I'm here to have your kids. I'm here to cook your dinner. I'm here to clean your house Like I'm not going to talk back to you. I'm not running around having male friends Like I am. I'm yours, I'm all here. And maybe the trad wives, trad wife influencers are less of that, because again see the point of their influencers and so they have their own income. But the women who see that lifestyle and say I also want this and fall into it, no, then you end up with the horrific man who abuses you and you're now stuck at home with no way to get out. It's all a lie.
Lindsay:I, I, I would love to know how much goes into the joint account of their, you know, influence influencers, money. Interesting to see what happens within another, about five years because, again, this is a new-ish concept of the the trad wife influencers. So none of them who are out there right now making their their rounds, have older kids. None of them have, you know, kids who've gone off to college. You know and left and like then what I do for content, because it's great right now when you have a cute little baby that everyone wants to see and you can be puttering around your home making, you know, various purees for the baby out of the vegetables that you grew in your backyard and you know you're cooking up cutesy little meals for your other kids and you're doing crafts with them. Even the big influencers, I'm not sure where they're going to be in five to ten years.
Christopher:I'm not sure how the movement's going to hold up I, I, you know it's unfortunate that that I don't see a end to them, in particular because chances are the people who are watching these videos are in the same age, their children are about the same age, so then it's just, you know, kind of growing with time.
Lindsay:So then, doing those videos of how to make something that is easily sent to your kid in college through college, through the mail or you know, whatever the case may be um I'm just trying to imagine, because one of the things that's like really popular right now is making your own versions of cereal at home. Because why would you go buy a box of cereal that's got like toxins and chemicals and it never mind that literally everything around this is made up of chemicals, toxins and chemicals, so you have to make your own cinnamon toast crunch, like. There's one video that lives in my head rent free, unfortunately of this woman like rolling it out artfully, her dough, and like carefully cutting it into cute little imperfect squares and she sprinkles them with cinnamon and sugar and she bakes them. She takes them out of the oven like I'm sure that tastes like shit and then other things of how to host your own book club and you know like so so it's, it's.
Christopher:you know, yeah, you're to have people kind of stepping in, taking over for what they're doing now, but if they're smart enough to figure out a way to kind of change like during each thing, then and that's kind of the whole idea of being an influencer is changing with the times.
Lindsay:Yeah, yeah, that's kind of the whole idea of being an influencer is changing with the times. Yeah, yeah, I think they I think some of them certainly will manage to like keep it up. Um, I think they're probably honestly going to get more extreme as they go along, kind of how we've seen the in politics in general, everywhere, that like things have shifted and so what was once conservative is now, you know, it's like solidly conservative or even solidly liberal that you said, okay, it's here. It may now be in a different spot, like we're getting further and further apart, and so you get used to, you get people used to seeing a certain thing and they now accept it, that this is normal, it's okay, and so now you can take it one step further. And then people get used to that and you can take it one step further. You know people just keep getting used to and keep following you along for the most part, and then we're going to find ourselves in the place where it's just like white supremacy completely out in the open, like this is just okay to do good times on the internet. So this has been a relatively short overview of trad lives there's.
Lindsay:There's a lot that's been put out there about them because it's a current topic of concern. People have realized that this is not just a a small little movement of you know stay-at-home moms, because people sometimes confuse it as that they're like trad wives or stay-at-home moms. No, trad wives are toxic stay-at-home moms. You can be a stay-at-home mom and be completely normal. The two are not the same at all and people have realized especially people on the left have realized that this is a really dangerous group that has an outsized effect on people because they are so popular, because they have figured out how to work the algorithms, because they're linked to the alt-right, which is great at using the algorithm, which is kind of like set up for them. Unfortunately, they've tapped into that and so they have so many ways to access people.
Lindsay:There are tons of articles that have been written about tradwives. There are a lot of great podcasts about tradwives, Some of them just talking about them in general. Of there's ours, which is the best, but you already knew that. I mean there was one that I listened to that it's a podcast about money and they looked at trad wives like just from the financial perspective of why this is a terrible idea. So I mean, if you're curious to learn more. You can certainly explore all of the different little ins and outs of it out there as it's evolving, but as it is for now, based on what you've learned today, how would you rate this on our scale of toxicity? Do you think that they are? A green potato Will make you sick, but probably not going to do much harm beyond that? Is this a death cap mushroom 50-50 chance of dying and surviving? Or is this antifreeze delicious and lime jello, yet deadly?
Christopher:I'm kind of I would say this is actually a high death cap Because of the way that they do suck you in. It's very innocent and I could see, yeah, you know, if you're talking about somebody who likes to do one of those things, whether it is baking bread or sewing or you know, like whatever, they don't have to necessarily live that life, but just enjoy one part of it and then, just from one part of it, getting sucked into this. You know, world of hatred, yeah, and we've. We've talked about before we're doing what we're doing and seeing, unfortunately, how our algorithm has changed I refuse, I categorically refuse to watch any of their videos for this.
Lindsay:I was like I will not mess up my algorithm so, then, that's part of the reason of social medias that we have now is so that we that's true it's just uh, you know, even with those, I have to remember not to be watching puppy videos but then you would have gone on and been like why am I just seeing women in dresses like?
Christopher:what is lindsey doing? Baby food like? Are you okay?
Lindsay:is there something you need to tell me?
Christopher:you would have been so confused so, but yeah, you know just just anything like you know something so simple, something so small, something so innocent, and then just getting sucked into because, again, algorithm doesn't tell the difference between oh, you like this person because of the sewing versus oh, you like this person because of the hateful messages.
Lindsay:Same thing, right Sewing hatred. So I would argue that this is actually one of our rare thankfully rare antifreezes, because it is so insidious. Is that the right word? It's everywhere, ubiquitous. There we go. It feels like, as a woman, that it's everywhere, and it also feels like it preys on people's fears, on women's fears, especially if you're a mother, that you have kids and you want to take care of your kids right, you want to give them the best life possible, and you're already being bombarded with all these messages of like you have to do this, you have to do that. I don't even have kids.
Lindsay:And I get hit with these messages of like don't do this with your babies, Like you have to make sure they're doing this, you have to make sure they're meeting these milestones and this and this and that, and don't feed them these foods and do feed them those foods. And this just preys on those fears of like am I a good mother? Am I a bad mother? Like I want to be a good mother, like I want to give my kids a good life. And it uses them against you by saying, like well, you wouldn't want your family to eat toxins, right, you want this. Like you want them to eat natural food. And you're like well, yeah, wholesome food. Yeah, buy my ebook about why God is great, why God is great. Well, so I have a personal hatred for it on that level that it preys on vulnerable people and that they know what they're doing.
Lindsay:The people who are running these accounts are fully aware of the message that they are putting out there, that that is not actually the life that they are living. If you want to say, hey, this is my life, like look at me as a farmer and I show you the good, the bad, the ugly, okay, but you're putting it out there. It's like this is my beautiful life or who shows you like the horrific aftermath of an animal that gave birth and died in the process. I'm just showing you the flowers and here are my chickens and my ducks that I got, and my vegetables I'm going to like artfully chop up for my family for dinner tonight. You only see this really curated, beautiful image and, yeah, that's social media, but it completely skews your perspective and you're like, well, this is what I want. Okay, maybe all these other ideas aren't so bad.
Christopher:And then you're, you're hanging out with with tater tot I think that was the only thing that really kind of kept me, because when I was trying to figure out, I was trying to figure out if this is a high death cap or a uh, antifreeze. But you know I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that, one, I'm a dude and two, I. I don't see these videos, so yeah you know what?
Lindsay:just for that, I'm gonna go on our instagram. I'm gonna watch a whole bunch of them and you will never be free of that. Algorithm is gonna follow you. But yeah, it doesn't take long if I look up like anything and I don't even specifically look up stuff, but I'm just, like you know, watching some crochet videos. There's a high likelihood that if I scroll through, like my for you page, I will find something that's like we're one step away from a track line, like that's how quickly you get there I'm definitely gonna have to check this out.
Christopher:Yeah, fuck up your algorithm, I've already seen enough videos of tater tot yeah.
Lindsay:So if you would like to send Patches some lovely Tradwife videos, which he desperately wants, you can follow us on Instagram. What is our name there? Toxic Cooking Show. Is there a space, or like?
Christopher:Oh God, and the thing is is that each one of them are are Slightly.
Lindsay:We probably should have a standardized that.
Christopher:So toxic underscore, cooking underscore show.
Lindsay:Yes, you can follow us there and send us any delightful videos that you think we should react to, or if you have any cottage core videos that patches needs to watch, send them our way. You can also contact us by email at toxic at awesome life skillscom. Of course, we are also on Twitter. Facebook threads, threads, tiktok Look up some form of Toxic Cooking Show and we're there. We'd love to hear from you. This has been the Toxic Cooking Show and we'll see you next week.
Christopher:Bye, bye, thank you.