By Maisie Jennings
First, a confession: I’m probably chronically online. I’d like to think that this is a result of some novice cultural observation instead of a routine frying of my dopamine receptors, but I also believe I can extract something discursively valuable from my endless scrolling. The internet, particularly social media, has become the largest bureau for cultural exchange and political discourse. For third-wave feminism, it is its digital beating heart – providing the framework for social movements of global magnitude and significance. In 2017, MeToo, spearheading the largest campaign against sexual violence and harassment, propelled awareness of rape culture into collective consciousness – on and offline. It seemed to solidify – despite its many hazards – that the mainstream internet is largely progressive, and can function as an empowering and expressive space for women and girls.
There are, however, several new trends that resist the forward-thinking, liberal ideology of contemporary internet culture. A few weeks ago, I liked a video about historical fashion – it appeared, to me, totally benign. Moments later, my feed became a tirade of videos about using beef tallow as sunscreen, the dangers of seed oils, the benefits of unpasteurised milk, and the overarching importance of submitting to one’s husband. What I’d stumbled across was the content created by members of the ‘tradwife’ online subculture – a large, and growing, community of women who believe in traditional conceptions of femininity and gender roles within marriage. Of course, this may sound like a bizarre fringe movement – situated at the internet’s peripheries – but videos under #tradwife have amassed 266.3 million views on TikTok. At its most sinister, traditional homesteading and lifestyle content quite clearly advocates for the political alt-right. However, it is the more ostensibly innocuous aesthetics surrounding the movement that disperse broader ideological implications regarding feminism online. I’m not suggesting that every video of a woman endorsing the benefits of raw liver is some sort of insidious far right dog whistle, but the recent surge in women adopting ‘carnivore diets’ is part of a growing scepticism towards the nature of modern life – manifesting in new age dietary fads and holistic lifestyle changes.
The shift to an idealised hearkening back to an earlier time is, surprisingly, not inherently right wing, but is also a viewpoint shared by some of those associated with the political left. Vegan wellness influencers are eschewing chickpeas for chicken – attempting to seek a lifestyle uncorrupted by the inorganic mechanisms of modern day capitalism. We might see this represented on social media as ‘cottagecore’ – a kitschy imagining of rural life through photos of women in floaty dresses wandering through fields and dappled sunlight. A digitised nostalgia for pre-industrial society is one that appeals to women regardless of their individual political stances, rather, it suggests a broader disenchantment with conspicuously modern ways of life. For third-wave feminism, it reveals a dissonance between corporate ‘girlboss’ culture and its potentially unsustainable, dissatisfying reality. This is due, in part, to a reevaluation of how we should live and work after the pandemic. COVID-19 ignited a reactionary desire for escapism; a pastoral fantasy of slow-paced, bucolic simplicity. In the fragile post-pandemic landscape we currently inhabit, locating ‘alternative’ wellness and dietary practices in the mainstream media is, perhaps, an exacerbation of the anti-vaxx movement that garnered support across the political spectrum. Connecting tradwives, carnivore influencers, and cottagecore enthusiasts is an aesthetic objection to modern life; it’s this aesthetic quality, overriding any background ideology, that makes reactionary womanhood so pervasive on social media.
There is also a significant religious element to a lot of the content that advocates for a return to ‘natural’ or ‘ancestral’ rhythms of life through heavily aestheticised, mock subsistence farming – most videos are overwrought with Christian hashtags and captions that vehemently promote Evangelical purity culture. Female Christian influencers are certainly popular, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers, but they surely aren’t at the cutting edge of whatever’s trending online. However, Catholicism has become an unlikely, transgressively chic fashion statement. In Instagram bios, where there once was an astrological symbol, the internet’s cool girls are now adorning their profiles with crucifixes. Brandy Melville, the controversial ‘size zero’ clothing brand, has released a series of t-shirts depicting Jesus Christ, and Praying, a smaller label that cultivates grungy pop culture references, sells ecclesiastical motifs on bikinis and crop tops. Fashion, particularly fashion on the internet, has always been subversive – perhaps the edgy photos of scapulars and rosary beads are merely pastiching the cheekily iconoclastic Catholic schoolgirl aesthetics seen in the 1990s. I think this is largely the case; Catholicism is a natural counter-cultural symbol, it has been since the emergence of goth subcultures in the ‘80s.
Arguably, there is somewhat of an ideological background to the rise of this subversive aesthetic. Dasha Nekrasova, a co-host of the Red Scare podcast, is a Catholic revert and a dryly critical voice against liberal feminism and ‘woke’ political culture. She is credited with leading a coolly cynical, post-ironic discursive vanguard – flirting between shrewd criticism of neoliberalism, arch academic discussion of Camille Paglia, and a close proximity to the new right. Nekrasova’s world-weary vocal fry attracted significant criticism and admiration after she denounced MeToo as a superficial liberal performance; ‘this seems’, she said, ‘like bullshit’. Since then, her personal coquettish style of babydoll dresses and obliquely ironic American flags (reminiscent of the hyper-feminine tradwife uniform) have made her a Pinterest board staple for the vaguely alternative. It’s easy to dismiss this kind of frisky, reactionary rhetoric as simple provocation, but Red Scare’s popularity and online cultural impact do reflect the new perspectives towards feminism in the digital age. There are debates, on the left and right, about hookup culture, the empowerment and objectification in online sex work, and the effectiveness of social media based feminist activism.
I don’t think the rise of reactionary behaviours on the internet signify some kind of cataclysmic tectonic shift, across an online political landscape, towards an anti-feminist new right. Women on social media aren’t slowly rejecting feminism. Rather, the increase of tradwife content, the popularity of carnivore diets, and the aesthetic appropriation of an ancient religion reflect natural, anxious responses to the confusion of 21st century life. The trends themselves, like most things on the internet, may have a fleetingly short lifespan – however, the interrogation of modern cultural and political conditions will surely remain.