I Watched Hours of Tradwife TikTok Content So You Don't Have To
Much (digital) ink has been spilled about the “tradwife” influencer trend, but for the uninitiated: TikTok and Instagram are full of videos from beautiful, very young women extolling the virtues of traditional marriage and submitting to their husbands. Some of it is obviously kink; some of seems like it could be parody; and some of it is awfully sincere.
A lot of these influencers are just… people, who grew up documenting their lives on social media and are continuing to do that as they get married—very young—and have kids (I’d love to see a follow-up on some of these women in about a decade). Others have obvious ties to conservative groups. But there are a few things they all have in common. One of these is that they hate hormonal birth control. On that front, their content shares eerie similarities with a very different group of women: wellness influencers.
That’s right, even if you haven’t stumbled into the tradwife corner of the internet, you’ve probably seen an Instagram post from a wellness influencer touting the benefits of “cycle syncing” or making alarming claims about the dangers associated with common birth control methods. Unwittingly or not, these influencers are participating in a high-stakes conservative disinformation campaign about contraception, designed to drive women back into traditional gender roles and reinforce the sexist and transphobic idea that gender is rigid and biologically determined.
I watched hours of these bizarre videos so you don’t have to. The resulting article is part of a big package we did at Rewire called “Panic! At the Pharmacy.” The articles and visuals are fantastic. You should read them all, not just mine! You can also listen to me talk about the piece on Feminist Magazine from KPFK.
Part of the reason dis- and misinformation about birth control is so high-stakes at the moment is, of course, because abortion is becoming harder to access in much of the country by the day. That’s exactly what drove hundreds of people to order abortion pills from a new service called MAP_US. Following up a tip I received from a reader, I reported exclusively on the dissolution of this service, which failed before it really got off the ground. I reviewed hundreds of heartbreaking messages from people who either didn’t get the abortion pills they ordered or got them very late, and I’ve heard from more users of the service since we published the article.
Some other things I’ve covered recently via social media:
- The (temporary) blocking of a total abortion ban in my home state of Wyoming, by a judge who happens to be the daughter-in-law of my childhood orthodontist;
- This general Mountain West repro news roundup, including the Wyoming ban plus bad news for pregnant people in Idaho and a mixed bag in Utah—furthering my personal goal to teach East Coasters that the Mountain West is a region and that the Midwest does not, in fact, take up 85 percent of the country;
- And Tennessee’s alarming plan to give $100 million to anti-abortion fake clinics as it backs out of a federal HIV prevention program.
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