It seemed harmless enough, all the mini cow content. I enjoy a reel of a cute animal as much as the next mindless scroller. But no one else in my family shared my aspiration to welcome a shaggy three-foot bovine into my home, or claimed to understand it. After all, we live in a suburban semi and I’d said “no” to my daughter’s request for a guinea pig.
Then came the terrifying realisation. This midlife itch to mother a mini Highland is much more than a daft fantasy. I’ve been hoodwinked by the avalanche of #tradwife content on social media, conned into seeking salvation via the promise of the pastoral idyll.
Tradwives, a so-called trend for leading a “traditional” wifely existence, in which submission and subjugation to one’s husband and the patriarchy are key, is often dressed up in 1950s frocks, tea from a pot and homemade scones. What’s not to like? Everything.
Yet here I am dreaming of keeping farm animals in my tiny garden. The faux saccharine tradwife content itself makes my every cell gag. I hate everything these women stand for, and thought I could see right through infamous influencers such as cow-milking, butter-churning mother-of-eight Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm, who doesn’t use the term “tradwife” herself, but is somewhat the doyenne of the species.
However, I’ve been subliminally influenced nonetheless.
The tradwives know that buying the cow - or a goat or an alpaca - is the first precipitous stumble towards the quicksandstyle manure they’re peddling. This movement’s only purpose is to further female subjugation into the 21st century, across so-called progressive and democratic nations, by making it look desirable and fun and oh-so-lifestyle.
Let’s call it what it is: a conspiracy designed to dissuade mostly white women away from feminism, and convince them a yard-full of long-lashed beautiful beasts is worth more than their financial and bodily freedoms. It’s nothing to do with being house-proud or enjoying childcare.
Crafting was a dirty word when I was growing up. The focus was on education, because my family had earned its way out of the mill. It’s funny how 50 per cent of my female friends are now making their own clothes, while the other half are soothing their mini-cow itches with a turn at the potter’s wheel. Are we all tradwives now? Hardly. We can have these pleasures of the hand and the heart and the soul without executing them in service of a man.
Thanks to a strange mash-up of conservative family values delivered via consumerist social media channels, I want that cow. What might I “choose” to give up to get it? Not my bank account or birth control. So I’m trying out some new habits. Fewer cow clips, more time spent outdoors with my actual pet. Less time focusing on the dream of open country, more time working to free myself from the mystique of owning my own mini farm animals. But those algorithms are pervasive and persistent.
Feminism is said to be about choice. But choice isn’t cut and dried like regular crops. I will never, ever believe that women choose to be tradwives. Sorry ladies, you’ve been duped in the ultimate switcheroo.
Women might elect to raise children instead of going to a workplace in exchange for money, but it’s rarely about choice, most likely necessity, the best of a few crappy options. Sometimes that choice is between the twin purgatories of a job where you are consistently undervalued, undermined and underpaid, and a home where you are everyone’s skivvy round the clock and obedient spreadsheets take on dreamlike appeal.
Plenty of my friends have given up work because no allowance was made for their growth as women and mothers. Corporate life needs tradwives to support its own inhumane culture. No wonder Ernst & Young named Neeleman an “Entrepreneur of the Year” finalist.