recently read
Yesteryear, by
Caro Claire
Burke, the story of a modern-day mother and social media influencer who presents her well-curated life as a Tradwife (short for "traditional wife") to millions of followers. It’s a fascinating study of fame, wealth, women’s roles, and more. Natalie’s picture-perfect (literally) life falls apart in ways you couldn’t predict, and in ways you see coming all along, but what I can’t stop thinking about is the way that “women’s work” is considered both unattainable in its perfection and humble, worthy of Instagram admiration, and yet somehow not worth our time.
And both things are true.
In the 1990s, when I was figuring out how to “make house”—starting with roommates and then with my first husband—Martha Stewart’s Omnimedia was in full swing. The “Upscale Domesticity” phenomenon was everywhere, and Martha was the walking, talking, flower-arranging face and voice of the brand. I was a devotee. I subscribed to Martha Stewart Living, saved recipe cards, collected cookbooks, and pored over seasonal offerings like Martha Stewart’s Homemade Christmas.
In the Netflix documentary, Martha, her rise from stockbroker to lifestyle mogul is presented as the complicated story it was. She was a perfectionist, but she got beautiful results. Notoriously, she was difficult, if not impossible, to work with and was considered ruthlessly ambitious.
Tradwife she was not.
If anything, Martha Stewart represented a woman who transformed domestic labor into power. She wasn’t retreating from ambition; she built an empire from it. I always felt she was targeted because she flew too close to the sun for the boys she beat at their own game of Monopoly in publishing, branding, and media. Martha wasn’t selling submission. She was selling mastery.
And honestly, I understood the appeal immediately.
I still do.
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