Tradwife aesthetic collapses as Trumpism curdles into 'unmitigated disaster': columnist

The internet's most famous "tradwife" is running from the label that made her rich, and a New York Times columnist says her retreat is a sign of something bigger: the whole retro-domestic, MAGA-adjacent aesthetic is losing its grip as Trumpism curdles.

The trigger was Nara Smith, the model and influencer who built more than 12 million TikTok followers filming herself making everything from gum to Skittles from scratch in an immaculate kitchen, in prairie dresses, in a breathy voice. On the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, Smith vehemently disavowed the "tradwife" tag, insisting she's "a working mom" in an egalitarian marriage where her husband does dishes and half the child care.

Columnist Jessica Grose isn't buying the timing.

In a piece published Wednesday, she argued Smith spent years happily courting fans of conservative gender roles, telling GQ in 2024 that people could "take whatever they want" from her content, and even joking about rage-baiting followers. Grose said Smith only pivoted once the cultural winds shifted.

She contended the tradwife fad was never a real-life trend to begin with, just content that reliably went viral. What's changed is the backdrop. The second Trump administration has aligned itself with "narrow and cartoonish" ideas of masculinity and femininity, she wrote, and it's proving to be "an unmitigated disaster." Being unapologetically MAGA has itself curdled into cringe; right-wing influencers are hemorrhaging audiences, and young people have soured on the right, as even young MAGA men turn on Trump. The Tate brothers, once kings of the manosphere, are in jail "and nobody really seems to care," Grose noted.

"It’s no longer considered cool, even in an edgelord kind of way, to be tacitly embracing the Trumpian vision. It’s tired, and people are sick of it. It’s not cute anymore to be spending hours making Skittles from scratch when so many people can’t even afford haircuts and toilet paper," she wrote, pointedly.