By Emily Rawle (she/her)
This article contains discussions of misogyny.
There is a pattern emerging among Hollywood’s popular women: those known primarily for acting or music skills are exploring a new way to engage with their audiences and expand their business empires -- cooking content.
The latest iteration of this concept comes from Meghan Markle, who has partnered with Netflix to produce: With Love, Meghan. Premiering in early 2025, the program centres around wholesome homemaking, and the goodness of homemade treats, with the help of Meghan's celebrity friends.
The Modern ‘Traditional Wife’
However, the timing of this program coincides with a changing social media landscape where ‘tradwives’ capitalise on the idealism of feminine domesticity and conservatives' nostalgia.
Tradwives, short for ‘traditional wives’ are women who choose to stay home and focus on homemaking and child-rearing, whilst the husband earns the income. In this structure, all domestic and childcare duties fall to the wife, including an expectation of servitude towards the husband. The lifestyle is often linked to conservative and alt-right groups, because of the emphasis on traditional gender roles (Dictionary.com, n.d).
It is important to firstly clear up a common misconception; a tradwife is not the same thing as a stay-at-home-mother. According to Parents.com; ‘Unlike stay-at-home moms, who may choose to stay home for practical reasons, such as childcare or they simply enjoy household management, tradwives adhere strictly to traditional gender roles, driven by a distinct belief in their necessity and virtue’, (Parents, 2024).
Domesticity as Escapism
The modern renaissance of cooking shows kicked off in 2020, when Selena Gomez premiered Selena + Chef. At the time, Covid-19 lockdowns provided a boost to the home-cooking genre, because celebrities (who followed health guidelines) could not leave their homes, just like the rest of us (US Weekly, 2024). This glimpse into the celebrity home that otherwise would never be granted served as the dose of escapism many needed at the time. Some of the most notable stars who welcomed cameras into the kitchen include Paris Hilton, Hailey Bieber, and Florence Pugh. Then, as the world moved on from the pandemic so too did the trend of celebrity kitchen content, except for Meghan Markle.
The announcement of Meghan Markle’s program was met with scepticism, with British media outlets announcing that fans were ‘divided’ (The Independent UK, 2025).
However, many forgot that the Duchess was not new to the lifestyle genre. Her lifestyle and confessional blog, the TIG, connected her to fans during her pre-Prince Harry life from 2014 to 2017 (New York Post, 2023). More recently, she launched the home goods brand As Ever (Formally American Riviera Orchard), which produces fruit preserves and treats. So, homemaking has always been part of the branding mission of Meghan Markle.
Domesticity as Conservatism
Tradwives only show the most aesthetic and easy parts of their lives. Their goal is to make being a ‘domestic goddess’ look easy. By acting this way at home, they are homogenous within their communities, wherein women are likely already expected to hold conservative values and take pride in their homemaking skills.
Of course, for the non-influencer the viability of living as a tradwife depends on the family having a husband who makes more than enough income to support a family, which is increasingly rare given the cost-of-living crisis. While some may find fulfillment in the role of a traditional homemaker, the lifestyle comes with the caveat of limited financial autonomy and missed opportunities to generate individual wealth (Start Doing Well, 2025). The escapism into a world of domestic simplicity and wholesomeness is like watching an influencers getaway on the Amalfi coast from a second-hand couch in a crowded rental. The capitalistic economy has made it impossible for most households to exist on one income, especially while the non-working one broods a herd of children (Teheux, 2025).
Statistics show women are working outside, as well as inside, the home more than ever before. CNBC social media forecaster, Casey Lewis, reported that social media tradwives present ‘a curated look at women embracing domesticity as the antithesis of what other young women are experiencing’. The ‘other young women’ are working harder than ever but are still financially struggling. Seemingly anti-capitalist tradwives can be ‘an escape from a lot of people’s reality.’ (CNBC, 2024)
The difference between now and the early 2020’s is that the social climate around traditional homemaking content has changed. This content was formerly linked with feel-good casual viewing, now tradwives have quietly linked their content to anti-feminist conservative values, under the guise of promoting a lifestyle that is holistic and idyllic compared to the hustle of modern women's working lives.
The line between empowered domestic queendom and tradwife domestic servitude is about as thin as a spread of homemade organic strawberry jam on homemade sourdough bread as they’re drawing the same audiences and the same profit.
Performing Domesticity for Profit
The existence of social media famous tradwives is ironic themselves; they produce income by promoting the lifestyle of being a career-less woman, which is, some may argue, a career. When popular enough, social media accounts can make a few hundred for a sponsored post, or thousands if they gain a large enough following, tradwives are no different.
The most successful accounts are likely making more than the ‘breadwinner’ husbands they’re supposedly subservient to.
The financial power of tradwives on social media, contradicts traditional gender roles. Like ‘alpha male’ and ‘rage bait’ content, touting misogyny proves to be a profitable path for content creators, not matter the genre.
Meghan: Escapism or Conservatism?
Following the announcement of her series, Meghan Markle was quickly accused of becoming a tradwife. Headlines branded her as a traitor to feminism, calling her a ‘trad-wife queen’ and questioning her previous activism, citing; ‘she who once railed against societal expectations for women, now finds fulfillment in the role of homemaker’ (Daily Mail, 2025), as though taking an interest in homemaking revokes her feminist ethics.
So, is Meghan Markle a tradwife now? -- No.
If Meghan Markle is a tradwife, then what about Martha Stewart, Nigella Lawson or Australia's own Julie Goodwin? Or any female TV Chef?
Meghan Markle and other famous women who make homemaking content are not doing so with conservative and anti-feminist intent. They have already established backgrounds beyond being homemakers - they have their own riches and empires around their image. On the contrary, their existence in these content spaces threatens the domesticated traditionalist existence that far-right idealists and their tradwives peddle.
Domestic bliss is something most people would love to have, and it can be easy to fall into a rabbit hole of content about escaping to a customised kitchen and live an existence of aesthetically pleasing obedience, where a man works the 9-5, and you get to stay home and not worry about how hard it is to work against a gender-pay gap and cost-of-living crisis.
While both tradwives and Meghan Markle profit from domestic lifestyle content, they’re inherently on different sides of the political scale.
Season 2 of With Love, Meghan premiered on Netflix in late August 2025, and has been met with a similar reaction to the first one, showing the unending cycle of judgment, comparison and speculation women in media battle, no matter what they produce from their homesteads.
Sources:
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