I'd Like to Return My Rights, Please :)
On cosplaying as tradwives, feminism, and The Rockwell Effect
Author’s Notes:
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Before you dive into this essay (if that’s what we’re calling it…IDK), let me be very clear: these are merely my thoughts, not even fully baked, to be honest. But I promised myself I would write, even if it’s not perfect. So here we go.
A few weeks ago, I made a Tiktok asking: “instead of cosplaying as tradwives, why don’t women ask OG housewives what their experiences were like?” I got various responses, ranging from “it’s all marketing” to “they’re living in a fantasy, like Lord of the Rings.” Of course, LOTR cosplayers seldom spew literal white supremacist rhetoric (as I type this, the LOTR fandom is losing its mind because an elf is Black or something, IDK), but they were right—this is just a fantasy.
But why is the fantasy so poignant now? This isn’t the first time the 1950s aesthetic was at the forefront of pop culture; Hell, Grease was just the 70s does the 50s with John Travolta in a leather jacket. What is prompting a willing return to vintage-style subjugation?
It’s simple: idealizing the past is much more comforting than confronting an unsure future.
“America Has a Problem”
If anyone can succinctly summarize the issue here, it’s Queen Bey herself. As a nation, we are at the precipice of change that can make or break this country. Failing infrastructure, climate change, unchecked corporate growth (AKA, greed), faltering social security and education systems. It feels like all at once everything is coming to a head and that’s terrifying. Add a shrinking middle class and outrageous inflation, and it’s no wonder people want to look to the past for comfort. I understand, I truly do.
But here is where I take offense; why are you willing to sacrifice my bodily autonomy and my rights to avoid an uncertain future? And is our current predicament not the fault of prior generations kicking the can down the road? A historically large white male voting population deciding to act solely for the benefit of self is what created this environment in the first place.
Where I would HOPE more white women could see the past for what it really was (terrible for everyone who wasn’t a cisgender white man), I’ve come to the realization that all it takes is some misplaced anger, disinformation, and rose-colored glasses to plunge us back into the dark ages.
The “Norman Rockwell” Effect
Enter Norman Rockwell. If “Make America Great Again” was translated into wholesome artwork, this is where it would come from. Born in 1894, Rockwell’s art, depicting a wistful, traditional and white idealized version of America, first debuted in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. For the next five decades, he would churn out thousands of paintings and illustrations of Americana; Sunday dinner, camping, a trip to the barbershop, etc.
I’m not sure if Rockwell set out to intentionally make propaganda; and I am not suggesting the artist identified with white supremacist values (in fact, later in life he became more progressive; but more on that later), but that’s what he did. Even today, conservatives point to Rockwell’s art as an ode to better days, back when America had “good Christian values.” Like this story published in The Washington Times, a conservative news outlet, in February of this year:
His art gave us hope. He celebrated life in a simpler time — backyard ball games, prom dates, boys dreaming they’ll grow up to become firemen, a child goggle-eyed when he discovers a Santa hat and false beard in his father’s dresser.
His vision of American life — oozing Hallmark sentimentality — never existed, they insisted. They hated him the way they hated filmmaker Frank Capra.
For millions of Americans, the highly idealized version of America Rockwell painted never did exist—it was just pretty pictures in a magazine. But they’re something tangible that people championing this “return to the past” can point to. “Look what we can have if we just got rid of ‘wokeness?’ See?” Tempting isn’t it? A world where the biggest worries are what to make for dinner. In exchange, all you have to do is bring back Jim Crow :)
…and ignoring data (anecdotal and otherwise) that points to a much more sinister picture than the happy nuclear family and white picket fence isn’t doing anyone any favors.
Even Rockwell eventually realized his version of America, full of cherubic blonde children and content housewives, was a facade. In his later life, starting with the pivotal 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With (depicting six-year-old Ruby Bridges’ integrating into an all-white school) Rockwell and his art was increasingly MORE political and left-leaning. A fact many conservatives leave out.
They also conveniently forget to mention just how awful the “American Dream” was for the women (married or otherwise) who had to endure it.
“Happy Wife, Happy Life” is a Modern Notion
Talking points around the current divorce rate inevitably point to one thing: modern marriages are temporary, and the woman of today doesn’t want to stick it out. First of all, why should she? Second of all, divorce used to be a lot harder to obtain. It turns out that being totally financially dependent on someone while rearing young children with abysmal employment opportunities makes people really desperate. Even if you wanted to risk it, you had to prove you deserved a divorce. It wasn’t until 1970 that the then-Governer of California Ronald Reagan signed the nation’s first “no-fault divorce” bill. The introduction of no-fault divorces, coupled with growing economic opportunities, made many women rethink the concept of marriage.
But divorce is simply one of the most notable legal “wins” for women in the 20th century. The others are much bleaker and point to a system that allowed married women to be abused in every way possible (CW: domestic violence). “Wife beating” was outlawed in 1920, but it wasn’t until decades later, after tireless efforts from women’s advocacy and feminist organizations, that domestic violence was more regularly pursued as a criminal matter by the courts. And don’t think being wealthy helped you escape the realities of intimate partner violence; a 1996 article, The Rule of Love: Wife Beating as Prerogative and Privacy discusses at length how after America’s civil war, middle- and upper-class battered women were often left with no legal recourse since many judges believed in “respecting the privacy of marriage.”
There was also the reality of financial and reproductive abuse. A woman could not legally obtain a credit card on her own until the passage of the Fair Credit Opportunity Act in 1974. Do you see where I’m going with this? Even if you could legally obtain a divorce, how would you support yourself and your small children? Because children were definitely a large part of the equation—rather you wanted them or not. Information about contraception was not always readily available for either married or unmarried women (thanks to the 1873 passage of the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use) and spousal r*pe was legal in every state until 1974.
A happy wife was not a requirement in a traditional home.
“Mother’s Little Helper” & The Myth of Women in the Workforce
If nothing else can convince you that this is all a bait-and-switch, think about this: the housewives of yesteryear coped with their “perfect” lives with a myriad of pharmaceutical interventions. Yes, they were on that stuff. Amphetamines for the matriarch of yesteryear were first available as an inhaler called “Benzedrine,” which sold over the counter for decades. In fact, we had our first amphetamine epidemic between 1929 and 1971, according to a retrospective study:
By about 1960, widespread consumption had begun to make amphetamine’s negative health consequences more evident. Amphetamine psychosis had already been observed in the 1930s among long-term narcoleptic users of the drug, and individual case reports mounted during the 1940s and early 1950s.
By the 1950s (the zenith of the tradwife fantasy for some reason), there was even a barbiturate combination on the market called "Dexamyl”; because don’t you just hate when your downer makes you too sleepy to enjoy your upper? The risky combo drug was one of a variety of other medications that promised to deal with depression, restlessness, anxiety, weight gain and any other issues. All highly addictive and largely available without the pesky interference of the FDA.
When the Walter White special simply wasn’t enough, middle- and upper-class white housewives could always turn to “the help.” You didn’t think that was just a feel-good white savior movie, did you? Let’s get one thing clear: women of color have always worked in this country. Always. Which in and of itself disproves the theory of the “good ‘ole days” when the division of labor between mother and father was obvious.
Black women specifically have endured decades of underpaid labor, both in the domestic and service industries. So when you tell me you want to go back in time, all I hear is: “I want to revert back to an era when women didn’t have rights, and Black women were severely underpaid with few prospects for economic advancement.”
Please Come Back to Reality; I am Begging You.
If you’ve read this far (thank you!) it probably goes without saying that I am vehemently opposed to the digital tradwife movement. And you should be, too, because it’s not real. June Cleaver wasn’t real. I Love Lucy wasn’t real. What is real is the harm done against women in severely patriarchal societies when we don’t have voting rights or bodily autonomy. Yea, shit is getting real, but putting your head in the sand and a roast in the oven isn’t going to make any of these problems disappear.
You’re more than free to cosplay as Betty Draper, but I shouldn’t have to suffer for your fantasy.