Nara Smith and the “Tradwife” Lifestyle

Does cultivating domesticity always deem a woman a “tradwife”? 

by Chanel Thorpe

Graphic by Katharine Albert

Since Nara Smith, a model gone viral for her cooking videos, saw overwhelming growth in popularity, many creators, critiques, and videos have surfaced in opposition to her content. Most of which are trying to make the point that she is promoting a “tradwife” lifestyle. Tradwife is the shortened version of “Traditional Wife.” It is defined as a married woman who has embraced traditional gender roles such as being a homemaker, staying at home, cooking, cleaning, and raising children. At the same time, their husband is the breadwinner of the family. As Smith’s content continued to get more popular within the past year, many began to criticize her content’s focus on cooking and taking care of her children. This emulation of a tradwife lifestyle has received a more negative connotation.

But here’s the thing: Nara Smith is not a tradwife, nor is she living a tradwife lifestyle. Smith is a working mom who likes to share her cooking with people online. Smith makes her food from scratch for her family (and sometimes skincare) while dressing up, influencing people to believe she is pushing this lifestyle. 

Many have said that she has become the face of tradwives, however, she does not meet any of the criteria for being a tradwife besides cooking. And even then, whether or not it’s true, Nara Smith has said that her husband, Lucky Blue Smith, cleans up after she cooks. Smith is busy with work, so stepping away from that and doing something she loves—cooking for her family—is probably a breath of fresh air. 

The idea that she is only creating content of her cooking while dressing up to promote a traditional lifestyle is ridiculous, especially because she posts other types of content, like going out with her family, going to dinner with Lucky, and ordering takeout.

Something else that people seem to forget is that Nara Smith has disclosed that she has lupus and eczema. Lupus is a disease where the immune system attacks its own healthy tissues and organs, leading to inflammation. Being diagnosed with Lupus and having her eczema flare up motivated Smith to change the way she ate.

Nara Smith’s “brand” gets confused with the Ballerina Farm, Mormonism, and other tradwife content creators that have gotten continuous negative criticism and, as a result, makes her content seem like it relates to all these other declared tradwives. The Ballerina Farm recently got a lot of attention because of an article where Hannah Neeleman talked about her life before marrying her husband and now. Many people took that as her dreams being taken away from her when, in reality, she could have wanted to be where she is now. In a later TikTok, Hannah opened a gift that she thought was a trip to Greece. It turned out to be just a blue and white egg apron, adding to the media fire that, according to critics mentioned on People.com, “that Hannah’s life may not be as fulfilling as it appears on social media.”

In reality, we, as the audience, will never know what is happening in any of these content creators’ lives. Not Nara, not Hannah, not anyone else. It is not our lives to know. As we progress as a society, people mistake women choosing to be homemakers as women who wish to promote that lifestyle to others or support gender roles for everyone. People often question if the life they chose was their choice and if they are happy which is both ironic and incredibly unfair to the women who choose to share their day-to-day life as supposed “tradwives.” These content creator’s at the end of the day, are making content. Content in which we as consumers are certainly allowed to question, however we shouldn’t expect an answer every time.