Imagine being in a family in the glorious decade of the 1950s. You have a lovely spouse who does half of the work, whether it be cooking and cleaning, or earning money, and you have three or four kids, ideally boys that can carry on your wealth and name. This was the norm of the 1950s, men work and earn money, women stay home and act as housewives. As of recently, adult Americans are striving to reignite nostalgia from the 1950s, starting by bringing back the strict gender roles from the period.
While the craving for that nostalgic feel is fine on its own, the individual issues this movement brings about more problems than expected, as the sentimentality is rooted in a time of inequality and injustice for a number of groups, including people of color, those on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and, yes, women. The conformity to these rigid standards have caused a rise in anti-feminism in both men and women, alongside a scary increase in glorification of the 1950s.
Many likely know about the terms “toxic masculinity” or “fragile masculinity,” as they are often tossed around. They describe the set of beliefs and insecurities instilled in men, causing a dangerous amount of misogyny, or the hatred of all things deemed feminine, such as playing with dolls or the color pink. For women, however, the terms become a bit more specific and a bit slang-like. The first is a “pick-me,” a girl who disowns feminism in favor of finding a man. While these girls tend to just put other girls down, many actually reject feminine stereotypes, such as liking pink or even other girls. One specific category of pick-me girls that is an exception to this rule is the “trad wife.” The trad wife is a married woman who conforms to traditional roles and bends to her husband’s will, trapping her in a state of financial dependency.
Toxic and fragile masculinity are built upon the foundation that men displaying anything considered remotely feminine is plainly wrong, shaming the enjoyment or indulgence of anything a woman would be perceived to do, even if the behavior is genuinely healthy. Associate Attorney Hayley Lawrence, in her study on the relationship between toxic masculinity and gun violence, wrote about how “Men are socialized to believe that confessing vulnerabilities is a demonstration of weakness and confers a potential advantage to other men,” as having vulnerabilities is often perceived as a feminine trait. Pushing down emotions instead of venting, in turn, reduces a person’s ability to healthily control their emotions. This, along with the encouragement to feel the “masculine” emotion of anger, increases the chances for a man to act out violently towards the people in his life, including his wife and kids. When paired with the recent push for men to work more rigorously to mimic the 1950s, the higher risk of domestic abuse comes back as well.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to take care of your children instead of working a job outside of home; however, a trad wife uses these concepts as a way to promote conservative views and manipulate their audience into falling backwards in society. Megan L. Zahay did a study by following two trad wife influencers who were kept anonymous for the safety of all parties. She found that “YouTube viewers may easily encounter ‘The Radiant Wife’ and other anti-feminist channels through keyword searches for terms like ‘feminine’ or ‘femininity.’” The ease in which trad wives can be found for people who just want makeup tips throws thousands into a pit of far right propaganda they weren’t looking for. The change trad wives look for isn’t exactly what they advertise, which is the concept of traditional femininity and modesty, but is actually the slow breakdown of the feminist agenda that has brought women to where they can be now. They look for a future where women are back to being servants to their husbands by prioritizing the opinion of their husband over their own, dictating what they can wear and do. Not only is this harmful for young and impressionable girls, but also for men cherry picking for information, which advertises that the majority of women want to be slaves to their husbands.
Self-proclaimed trad wife Alena Kate Pettitt stated that “It isn’t racist or overtly conservative to want to be a good housewife and mother, it’s just common sense!” And while this may be true because wanting to raise your children and live traditionally is your own choice, by spreading the concept as trad wives do, they push a different agenda that is poisonous to the fight feminism has to win to grant women their basic rights while also pushing subtly far right-wing propaganda that tries to encourage discriminatory action.
Regressing society back to a state of discrimination doesn’t just impact the roles men and women are forced to play, but also impacts a number of other statistics and communities. In Lawrence’s study, she found that “what distinguishes male and female gun owners is that: (1) men are almost twice as likely to own a gun, (2) men are more likely to socialize among other gun owners.” She mentions that men often hold a gun as a sense of duty, as gender roles have convinced men that their job is to protect. By merely owning guns, the threat of gun violence is dramatically increased, especially as the main reason gun laws haven’t been implemented in America is because people are too attached to their firearms, and implementing restrictions would cause a nation-wide uproar, despite the casualties blatantly seen in public places, such as schools.
Additionally, the general push for people to conform to traditional gender roles is harmful to the genderqueer community. People who don’t fit into the binary standards of “man” and “woman” tend to be seen as anomalies, purely because of how they choose to identify and express themselves. A very large reason for the hatred directed at them, or transphobia, is because of stereotypical gender norms. With the federal focus on revoking trans rights after an entire time period focused on bringing equality to minorities in the 1960s and 70s, the time period being regressed to is the years before, the 1950s. Many people treat genderqueer people as though they have a mental illness to be cured via conformity to their assigned gender, despite the concept of a gender spectrum dating back to ancient times, the Ancient Greeks having a god dedicated to gender fluidity.
Trad wives and much of transphobia and gun violence stem from toxic masculinity. By teaching kids healthy habits without designating certain things as “feminine” or “masculine,” we can eliminate the majority of the effect toxic masculinity creates.
