Tradwives, stay-at-home girlfriends and the dream of feminine leisure

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

t’s always inspiring when citizens of the vast and disparate internet find something to unite them, and in late March, the unifying force was hatred for an essay, published in the Cut, called “The Case for Marrying an Older Man.” It was written by a woman who had done just that: Grazie Sophia Christie spent her undergraduate years at Harvard sneaking into receptions for MBA candidates where she hoped to bag a more established male before her “fiercest advantage” — her youth — disappeared and rendered her common. After some trial and error, at the age of 20, she made off with a 30-year-old whose defining characteristics seemed to be that he was French and rich.

The essay’s alleged offenses ranged from the kind that would irritate Greta Thunberg — the casual way Christie’s byline notes that she lives in “Miami and London” — to the kind that would irritate Gloria Steinem. “I’ll never forget it,” the author writes, “how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it.”

Christie was taking a cosseted, retro archetype — the gold digger — and presenting it as something intellectual and liberated. She hadn’t wanted to marry a fixer-upper, she writes, citing her younger brother who still left his towels on the floor. She wanted a man that some other woman had already fixed up, and who could, in turn, fix her. Not a partner, she writes, but a “mentor.” Specifically, one who could fulfill a promise that feminism had allegedly failed to deliver: “I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal,” writes Christie, “and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.”

That last sentence was the only one in the whole piece that made me stop in my tracks. It was breathtaking in its transparency: I’m not doing this out of principle or based on a worldview. I’m doing this because life seemed hard and this seemed easy.

[Maeve]

1. Every generation has to find out sometime--there is no free lunch

She'll pay for that ease when she ages. If her husband decides she's too much work, what then? What does she give up now that she'll want later---including a sense of self-worth?
All choices have prices; some hit later and the bill is much higher than anticipated.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Repulsive when gold doorknob artists snot up

The difference between rewarding upper crust leisure and Reagan's welfare Queens is what, exactly?

[sop]

3. Melania comes to mind.

[ExciteBike66]

4. Rich, eligible bachelors are not common...

Hope they're aren't too many women trying to fish this pond...

[rampartc]

13. no shortage of those who will claim to be rich and eligible

[getagrip_already]

5. Reminds me if the new yourube and tiktok queens...

They are mistaking their youth and beauty for skill and assume longevity will follow.

It won't.

When they get old, the views will fade away and the money will stop. Hard.

Then they will blame everyone but themselves. And because they assume the ride will go on forever, they will have spent everything on nothing.

[rampartc]

6. tradwife? more like traditional gold digger.

this is how our culture and society are set up.

women are paid less to keep them dependent, and abused mentally and physically until they fit into their roles. they are isolated from their families and children by employment "gold digger" seems like an effective, if predatory, coping mechanism. in such an environment.

m y question. why do all of these christian tradwives have weird wide open eyes? is it a make up they prefer or merely a window to their soul?

disclaimer. mrs rampart is a more traditional woman who worked for decades at the grocery and has earned every bit of "ease" that i can provide as we decline.

besides. she cooks just like my mom. lemme wake her ass up and ask politely for breakfast. ............

[ProudMNDemocrat]

9. I can think of one in particular.

Who enjoys the lifestyle for which she has become accustomed.

[rampartc]

12. lololol

i've run across a few ( but mostly ive been "run acrossee&quot

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. This column doesn't address the fascist-adjacent messages/symbiology found in a lot of tradwife content, which is a

mistake, IMO.

[harumph]

11. I agree WG.

It's baked in the cookies as it were.

[shrike3]

8. I read the original essay. Drew a lot of interesting comments.

Including a few from men who were glad she'd seen the light. She struck me as lazy. Sounds harsh, but she didn't want to do the hard work of growing up and so found someone to tell her where to put her feet when she walked.

Some of the language was howlingly funny. She and her husband sharing the fact that they'd spent their "best years" together. She was 27 at the time.

[yardwork]

10. There used to be different terms for "stay at home girlfriends."

Both real life and fiction are full of cautionary tales about what happens to women who are essentially escorts while they're young, only to be discarded as they age.

The column makes a good point about how U.S. society makes to very difficult for most people to get enough rest and relaxation. In turn, this leads to people making poor choices that prop up patriarchal norms.

If we provided more time off, child care, affordable higher education, affordable health care - then being subservient to another human would be less appealing.

[NanaCat]

14. My nan used to say

To be yourself to get a man, because, otherwise, the faked way you get him will be the real way you lose him.

In this case, a man who revels in playing Svengali to a pliable woman will grow tired of her when she 'dries up,' and seek someone more pliable for a new project.

And then this shameless gold-digger will be in pieces, with only herself to blame for her vacuity.