"Tradwives" offer an alluring vision of right-wing Christianity -- online warriors are fighting back

[marmar]

"Tradwives" offer an alluring vision of right-wing Christianity — online warriors are fighting back
The #FundieSnark movement battles to "deconstruct" those picture-perfect images of Christian social media

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED MARCH 8, 2024 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) As social media stunts go, it's hard to top this one: Give birth to your eighth child at age 33. Then, just two weeks later, compete in a beauty pageant, complete with a swimsuit competition. Hannah Neeleman, a "momfluencer" who has nearly 9 million followers for her Instagram account "Ballerina Farm," did just that in January, strutting in the Mrs. World pageant after winning the Mrs. America pageant last year. "I don’t think there’s any shame in showing I just had a baby," Neeleman told the New York Times. "Like, I’m not going to have a perfectly flat stomach."

....(snip)....

Neeleman, with her bucolic images of grazing cattle and her sourdough recipes, is an especially successful example of the growing industry of social media influencers often described as "trad" (for "traditional" ), or as "momfluencers" and "beige moms," for the minimalist aesthetic that dominates this online universe. Some of these influencers are married couples and some are just women, but they all sell variations of the same fantasy: a simple-but-luxurious life with a loving husband and charming children, all for the low, low price of abandoning one's ambitions of a career outside the home.

Feminist critics like Sara Petersen, Anne Helen Petersen (no relation) and Anna North have built an impressive body of social criticism unveiling the cynical blend of capitalism, gender politics and plain old dishonesty of the "momfluencer" enterprise. (Neeleman's feed, for example, never shows us her farm workers, her kids' full-time teacher, her babysitters or her personal assistant.) What is less often discussed in these critiques is the ways many of these online influencers also function as propaganda outlets for the Christian right.

There's another group of whistleblowers, however, who are working to confront what they see as a deeply misleading portrayal of life inside right-wing religion. It's an amorphous but devoted collection of former evangelicals, former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka the Mormons) and other critics of the Christian right. What unites them is the desire to call B.S. on the idyllic self-portrayal of conservative Christian influencers. And they're fighting on the same turf as their adversaries: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/03/08/tradwives-offer-an-alluring-vision-of-right-wing-christianity--online-warriors-are-fighting-back/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Bookmarked for later, but I have like 20 Salon/Atlantic articles bookmarked.