Tradwife

The Tradwife, or Traditional Wife, is an online female persona that’s been resurrected by influencers.

Some show the women venturing into their backyards, tending to their cottagecore gardens free from pesticides and other corporate contaminants. Institutional distrust notwithstanding, the vibe of the videos are peaceful, cozy, blissful even, emulating a sense of ease and simplicity. The women are graceful, beautiful, stereotypically feminine.

Who Gets to Procreate and Parent? A Black Feminist Critique of the Pronatalist Agenda

PUBLISHED 10/17/2025 by , and

Pronatalism is not simply about encouraging births—it is a political project rooted in racism and control. Its goal is to engineer a future that permits only certain people to bear and raise children while coercing or punishing others for reproducing or parenting.

Adriana Smith’s experience of coerced reproduction is a devastating example: a Black nurse and mother declared brain-dead, yet kept on life support for months to sustain her pregnancy under Georgia’s restrictive abortion laws. This is what pronatalism looks like in practice—the state asserting ownership over a Black woman’s body.

As Black feminists, we understand that reproductive choices are personal, but they are also deeply shaped by structural power. Pronatalist leaders and influencers cloak their agenda in the language of family and morality, but in truth, they seek to restrict autonomy and consolidate control. Reproductive justice, by contrast, insists on every person’s right to decide whether and how to have children, and to parent in safety and dignity.

The Return of the Tradwife Gospel

PUBLISHED 9/24/2025 by

When Erika Kirk took the stage at her husband’s memorial, dressed in white and preaching about virtue, guardianship and motherhood as women’s highest calling, it was not just a moment of personal grief. It was also a sermon drawn directly from the playbook of the 19th-century Cult of Domesticity, which elevated piety, purity, domesticity and submission as the cornerstones of “true womanhood.” While Kirk framed these ideals as a source of women’s strength, history shows that they have long functioned as tools of confinement and control.

The irony, of course, is that Kirk is now CEO of Turning Point USA—a position she could never hold without the very feminist progress she disavows. Tradwife rhetoric may promise dignity and purpose, but as the Cult of Domesticity and later social purity movements revealed, these ideals have always come at women’s expense. They strip away autonomy, enshrine patriarchal power and ultimately sacrifice women—even those who embrace the gospel themselves.

Dying to Be Men: American Masculinity as Death Cult

PUBLISHED 9/11/2025 by

Much as owing guns at home is most likely to injure or kill the people living with those guns than the supposed threats posed by home invaders, the violent discourse espoused by Charlie Kirk and many others has resulted in his murder in front of a crowd of thousands of students.

Kirk built his career on racism and misogyny, encouraging young Americans to the side of a fully radicalized and extremist Republican party that has abandoned any pretense of caring for Americans and instead has become a propaganda machine pathetically flaying to prove that they are all men.

I’m sorry for Charlie Kirk and all the other men like him that have been raised in this America and with these ideals of masculinity. I’m sorry that he decided to adopt this hateful ideology and to profit from it. And as the mother to a boy and a girl, my heart breaks for the America these children are growing up in. Here’s hoping we can save ourselves.

How the Trump Administration’s Conservative Policies and Messaging Are Reshaping Body Image Standards for American Women

PUBLISHED 9/10/2025 by

Body image and beauty standards for women have long shifted like fashion trends—one year in, the next out, often cycling every decade. Recently, Americans have seen a move away from body positivity and acceptance toward the ultra-thin ideals of “heroin chic.” Celebrity, influencer, and everyday social media posts alike are discussing dissolving their BBLs and turning to Ozempic or similar drugs to lose weight.

Women are sacrificing their health to fit into a very narrow standard of beauty. Ozempic, originally meant for diabetes management, has become a weight-loss tool for those who can afford it. “You can spend $1,000 a month and be thin,” says Dr. Caroline Heldman, Ph.D., author, journalist, and executive director of the Representation Project. Its long-term efficacy for weight loss has not been tested enough, yet the pressure to conform continues to grow.

This pressure is intersectional, both classist and racist. “About 300 years ago, we started to see the rise of white, thin purity as a way to differentiate white women from Black women with voluptuous bodies,” Heldman explains. Today, diet culture and society’s obsession with thinness still reflect these historic, racialized ideals, pushing women into unsafe beauty trends and fostering psychological distress.

Birth Control Fear-Mongering Prevents Women From Achieving Informed Bodily Autonomy

PUBLISHED 8/28/2025 by

The Republican attorneys general of Missouri, Kansas and Idaho—recently joined by Florida and Texas—are suing the federal government to restrict access to mifepristone, which is used in combination with misoprostol to terminate an early pregnancy, arguing that the abortion medication has lowered “birth rates for teenaged mothers” and is contributing to a population loss in their states, leading to a loss of political representation and federal funds.

You read that right: They want more teen pregnancies. It would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. 

So where does that leave us? We must continue to fight all of these insidious tentacles as we work to ensure that women and gender non-conforming people of all races, ages, backgrounds and abilities can continue to tear down the systemic barriers that try to keep us from thriving and taking our rightful place in every arena.

Tradwives and ‘The People That People Come Out Of’

PUBLISHED 8/25/2025 by

For the first time in years, the number of U.S. mothers with young children in the workforce is shrinking—over 212,000 women left between January and June 2025 alone.

Childcare costs, in-office pressures, and a cultural nudge toward traditional gender roles are pushing moms out, while men in power nod along.

Meanwhile, the tradwife movement parades its perfect, baked-from-scratch, filtered-life versions of domesticity online, making the impossible look effortless.

It’s absurd. It’s dangerous. And it’s time we stop letting the economy treat raising kids as invisible labor.

In the Ms. Archive: Does Feminism Have a Problem With Femininity?

PUBLISHED 8/21/2025 by and

Femininity has long been the elephant in the room of feminism.

On the one hand, femininity doesn’t just name what it means, culturally, to be a woman—femininity lies at the heart of many women’s own sense of self. And yet, feminists identify femininity as a source of oppression, a straight-jacket imposed on women to keep us in our place.

Why Is the Vice President Sitting Like That?

PUBLISHED 7/25/2025 by

That awkward posture isn’t accidental. When Vance spreads his legs and plops down for an interview, he is directly addressing young men. He wants to prove that he’s just one of the guys, while also issuing a dire warning. “The boys,” he asserts, are under attack.

Advancements in women’s rights have always been followed by countermovements, each one lamenting, “But what about the boys?”

In reality, the cure for loneliness can’t be found in calling your friends the f-word or finding a “trad wife” who will stay in her place. It requires genuine relationships. It’s about having your feelings valued but with the equal expectation of emotional reciprocity. Behold and be held. That’s the deal.

Guys: You all, like all people, deserve to be loved. The problem is, the messengers who claim to be your friends are lying. Those guys don’t love you. They love their power over you.

Historic Cuts to SNAP Deepen the War on Women

PUBLISHED 7/3/2025 by

 Republicans in the House and Senate scrambled to pass legislation that will cut $184 billion from SNAP through 2034—by far the largest cut to SNAP in the program’s history—to finance tax cuts for the wealthy big businesses. They also hope to increase funding for pursuit of immigrants. 

This extremist budget will drive millions of people into poverty and hunger. It also represents a full-throated assault on women—particularly single mothers, for whom SNAP has been a lifeline.

Ms. Global: Climate Change Linked to Increases in Cancer for Women, U.K. Parliament Votes to Decriminalize Later Abortions, and More

PUBLISHED 7/1/2025 by and

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: News from Nigeria, South Australia, Canada, and more.