Nara Smith pushes back against the ‘tradwife’ label.(Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images for Valentino)
Getty Images for Valentino
Nara Smith is often seen as the face of TikTok’s “tradwife” trend, but the 24-year-old influencer has rejected the label, sparking pushback from fans.
What Is A ‘Tradwife’?
A “tradwife” refers to a happily married woman who embodies a romanticized vision of traditional gender roles, looking after the home while her husband works.
She cooks, cleans and cares for her children with a gentle smile and perfectly applied lipstick—she’s Mad Men’s Betty Draper, without the crippling loneliness and depression.
The modern tradwife is just as unreal as the glamorous models from those 50s aspirational ads, but these days, she’s a TikToker.
1954: Advertisement for Coca-Cola showing a family taking a break from decorating for refreshments. Original Publication: Picture Post Ad – Vol 63 No 05 P Back Cover – pub. 1st May 1954. (Photo by Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Tradwife content started gaining traction during the pandemic in 2020, mainly on TikTok and Instagram, with content creators embodying a dreamy vision of domestic bliss, seemingly the opposite of the ambitious “girlboss.”
The great irony, of course, is that tradwife content creators are incredibly entrepreneurial, working a highly skilled, demanding job that requires them to appear unemployed.
Who Is Nara Smith?
Nara Smith is famous for her lifestyle content on TikTok, her channel boasting more than 12 million followers.
Smith went viral due to her elaborate cooking videos, which she narrates with a soothing monotone.
Standing in front of a pristine kitchen counter, wearing glamorous (and amusingly impractical) outfits, Smith makes homemade recipes from scratch, without getting a single stain on her oversized sleeves.
Smith creates an idealized caricature of domestic life, and she is often cited as a well-known example of a tradwife creator.
However, Smith has begun to push back against the label.
In a recent interview with Alex Cooper on the podcast Call Her Daddy, Smith denied outright that she was ever a tradwife.
What Did Nara Smith Say On ‘Call Her Daddy’?
Smith told Cooper that she never fit the definition of a tradwife.
“They kind of used me as the poster child for the tradwife movement, which was very bizarre to me,” Smith said.
Smith googled the technical definition, reading, “a tradwife is a woman who embraces or promotes a traditional model of marriage and family life where she typically prioritizes being a homemaker and a primary caregiver for kids.”
Smith explained that the description didn’t fit her because she was never a homemaker, and that she splits the work of childcare with her husband, Lucky Blue Smith, who prefers to clean the house himself.
“I’m a working mom. I am out in LA. I travel a lot. Sure, do I love cooking … but that’s a passion of mine and a hobby—it’s not something I need to be doing,” Smith said.
Smith explained that she has pushed back on the tradwife narrative before, but the label still stuck.
“I realized that a lot of the people that are very, very stuck in this [tradwife] narrative do not want to be corrected,” Smith said.
Nara Smith Fans Debate The ‘Tradwife’ Label
On TikTok and X (Twitter), fans questioned her rejection of the tradwife label.
Other commentators stuck up for Smith, pointing out that her videos are so ridiculously exaggerated that they were never meant to be taken seriously.
As many pointed out, tradwife content creators promote a lifestyle that they do not actually live.
TikToker @Katwiia claimed that Smith is rejecting the tradwife label in response to the trend dying down.
“Your entire online brand revolved around making elaborate homemade meals from scratch and feeding them to your kids and husband … nobody looked at you and randomly came up with the Tradwife label,” Katwiia said.
“You leaned into it because it made you famous. Now that the label isn’t trendy anymore, suddenly it’s ‘Actually, you all misunderstood me.’ No, people understood exactly what you were trying to sell.”
On Smith’s TikTok page, several commentators accused Smith of attempting a “rebrand.”
Smith responded to one comment, writing, “It’s not even a rebrand I’ve said this for years on here and my other platforms and in press interviews. But also have shown me working and travelling.”
Smith’s online persona is just that—a persona, but it appears that for many fans, the line between her real self and her TikTok performance is too blurry to see the difference.
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