The first is consumer capitalist logic, or how they operate as branded identities and use their platform to promote products. Next is the fantasy idealization aspect of their accounts, or how they present their idealized lifestyle without showing the inevitable drawbacks, fails, and bad days that happen as part of life.<\/p>\n Third is their promotion of alternative wellness and health, that is making food, sometimes even ingredients, from scratch. And last is their assertion their values are under attack, or that society believes they shouldn\u2019t be mothers, religious, or stay at home.<\/p>\n \u201cThey present their content in a way that makes sense to the average viewer. If you\u2019re not thinking about it too deeply, it\u2019s presented in a way that depicts the homemaker role as the most natural, fulfilling, even morally correct, path for women,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s only when you take a step back that you see how easy it is for people to get caught up and uncritically romanticize being a homemaker.\u201d<\/p>\n Andronowitz, a double major in English<\/a> and sociology<\/a>, says she started to see posts from tradwives, a term for \u201ctraditional housewives\u201d that was popularized around 2020, show up in her social media feed and questioned their promotion of traditional gender roles and denunciation of feminism.<\/p>\n Such influencers typically adhere to beliefs that were popular in the 1950s, namely that women stay home to raise children and keep house while men serve as breadwinners, Andronowitz explains. Oftentimes, tradwives go as far as saying they should be subservient to their husbands and are depicted in classic dress, with busts pushed up and waists cinched, while performing everyday tasks around the home.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s certainly valid for women to feel undervalued or caught up in the hustle of a capitalist society,\u201d Andronowitz concedes, \u201cbut inspiring women to say to themselves, \u2018I\u2019m going to choose to step back into a slow life and leave it to the man to make the money,\u2019 flips the script to an individual solution and turns on collective feminist aims.\u201d<\/p>\n Her project, being completed as part of a 2024-25 undergraduate research fellowship<\/a> through the UConn Humanities Institute<\/a>, looks at Instagram accounts with between 50,000 and 500,000 followers that predominantly feature white women generally without the male head of household anywhere near the camera.<\/p>\n On these accounts, viewers find beautifully shot videos of zinnia-filled flower gardens, bubbling sourdough bread starter, and homemade beeswax candles that entice them to continue scrolling, she notes.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir identities are complicated by the fact that they are content creators and entrepreneurs, so they display a lot of creativity and agency, which is an interesting contrast to how homemakers are typically perceived,\u201d she says, adding she worries nonetheless about its aestheticized appeal.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung women can be influenced from an even earlier age, long before they make decisions like whether they want to go to college or whether they want to get married,\u201d Andronowitz says. \u201cThese very traditional roles can put women in situations that are very repressive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Project looks at whether ‘tradwife’ content can set back feminist gains in society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":223686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2076,2431,99,2235,2458],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-223670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-research","category-sociology","category-student-life","category-today-homepage","category-undergraduates"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 16:32:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223670"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223927,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223670\/revisions\/223927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/223686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223670"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=223670"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=223670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Kathryn-Andronowitz-300x212.jpeg\")