Show notes
This week, we discuss two of the great homemaking influencers: Ballerina Farm (an unassuming tradwife Instagram icon), and Martha Stewart (a ruthless perfectionist and corporate mogul). In the midst of their recent moments in the cultural conversation — thanks to some high-profile interviews and a Netflix documentary, respectively — we were struck by how much overlap there is between these two women’s brands, and what has changed and stayed the same since Stewart’s time on top.
Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman has been on a media tour. She’s been posing as a blonde milkmaid on the old frontier for the cover of MAGA women’s mag Evie, and meanwhile she’s been telling the New York Times and Glamour that she’s actually not a traditional woman but an ambitious and successful entrepreneur. In the Evie photos she’s a reactionary’s wet dream, a model of how the future could resemble an imagined past when men were men and women were subservient. In the pages of center-left mainstream outlets, she’s basically a girl boss.
Martha Stewart has never entirely lost cultural relevance since she gained it decades, but the recent Netflix documentary “Martha,” directed by R.J. Cutler, provided an opportunity to consider her her carefully crafted brand and the context in which she rose to unparalleled fame as a tastemaker. When we were growing up, “Martha Stewart” was synonymous with the kind of perfect housewife who would put your homemaking and hosting skills to shame. She was also the richest woman in the world. The Stewart who emerges in the documentary is not exactly surprising — for one thing, she’s just as harsh and unforgiving to her staff as has long been reported — but the documentary does an excellent job drawing out how the feminized space of homemaking instruction provided a fertile space for a brilliant and ambitious woman to grow a lucrative multimedia empire.
Neeleman and Stewart are both beautiful, tall blonde women who married in the midst of getting degrees at prestigious colleges, then went on to build careers by depicting household skills like baking, gardening, and floral arrangement as fulfilling and aspirational. The exact lifestyles they model are distinct: for Neeleman, a blissful mom of eight with a deliberately homespun aesthetic meant to convey laidback authenticity; for Stewart, an unenthusiastic mom of one who wore high-end business casual attire while turning out absolutely flawless pastries and tablescapes.
But what they have both peddled is a version of a fantasy many burned-out women, working hard all day only to come home and put in a second shift caring for a home and family by themselves, have longed for over the past half-century. This is the fantasy: You can have it all. The ideal home life, the enviable career — it’s all possible for you. You can be the perfect homemaker and the kickass boss. You just have to turn the home into your career.
The political valences of their brands could not be more different. It’s an ambivalence, and a yearning, that clearly crosses the partisan divide. But right now, the tradwives are ascendent; they’re controlling that audience. And, it’s pretty clear, that’s a big fucking problem.
We discuss all this — plus the insidious figure of the self-proclaimed career woman whose career entails encouraging other women to give up theirs — in this week’s episode. Hope you enjoy! xo
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