Across a range of platforms, Tradwives curate and commodify traditional heteronormative ideologies and ways of living devoted to faith and family. As time has passed, a group of women rejecting Tradwifery has also evolved, a term we call De-Tradding. Drawing on a wide range of social media content from Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Reddit, alongside traditional media sources such as online interviews, feature articles, and podcasts, we captured a snapshot of the what, why, and how of De-Tradding. We identified that De-Tradding was happening in two different ways. The first, “ Rejection of the Trad-label, ” involved women living traditional lives characterized by heteropatriarchal gendered roles, but who rejected the Tradwife label and/or brand on grounds of ideology, politics, and faith. The second way, “ Rejection of the Trad-life, ” included women who exited Tradwifery, largely in response to domestic violence, infidelity, and unequal power arrangements in intimate relationships. De-Tradding is thus both conceptual and material, it is personal and political. Using Feminist Storytelling, we explored the psychological, relational, and sociocultural circumstances through which women “De-Trad,” and in doing so, demonstrated processes of identity transformation, disaffiliation, and boundary (re)negotiation within evolving expressions of online femininities and digital subcultures.
Hopner et al. (Fri,) studied this question.