I don’t want to be a motherfucking trad wife.
I recently read a piece by writer and mother , who dissected the messaging behind two different female pop stars. Her main thesis was she’s not worried for the daughter who loves Sabrina Carpenter. She’s scared for the one who loves Gracie Abrams.
In her piece Davis explains that the internet wants to panic about the influence of Sabrina’s sexually provocative songs, and how, on the surface, Gracie Abrams looks like a much better pop star for young girls. However Davis flips this narrative, explaining the loud girl who owns her sexuality and is in on her own jokes isnt the one we should be nervous about. The real worry is the quiet one, whose every song is an apology for needing anything at all. Davis says she fears the Madonna more than she fears the whore, and I agree.
Taking up space
I was raised by loud women. Who took up space, said the wrong thing, and did not apologize for their volume. I am so grateful for that.
So it can be freaky when my social feed is full of the soft, clean, sweet-voiced versions of womanhood that’s trending right now. Trad wifes and clean girls, both are blueprints for tiny little molds that women are allowed to fit in.
This is not an accident of taste and trending aesthetics, it’s politics.
We are living through a hard right wing turn in this country, and these aesthetics are just the soft front of it. The same movement that overturned Roe v Wade is selling you a cottage-core apron on Instagram. And both are telling women to go back inside.
At the root of it all is the Madonna-whore complex. The age old notion that a woman gets to be one of two things. Pure, maternal, sexless, good (Madonna). Or fallen, sexual, dangerous, bad (Whore). You can be respected or wanted, never both. Every conservative movement in history has run on policing that one line.
I always think back to this Laura Dern Monologue
As it goes, every generation drags out its loudest and most provocative women to crucify them in public and meanwhile the good girls, the Madonnas, get praised. But as history tells us, the Madonna is not safe, she does everything right and still loses. Her self-sacrifices are a trap, as she is celebrated for the exact qualities that make her small.
Making it sexy
I just finished the latest season of Euphoria and so many of the overtly sexual scenes gave me the ick. Not because I’m a prude, but because the women’s bodies on screen felt objectified. I dont have time to get into my thoughts on Sam Levinson and his portrayal of women’s stories, but I think the way our TV shows and podcasts continually relate sex with violence has impacted the way our generation views sex.
It feels every TV show starts with an innocent woman getting raped or murdered, and there are so few shows I can think of that portray genuine sexual relationships where the woman is consenting and in the drivers seat. Sex in the city is one of the few, and I think that’s why many girls my age still go back and binge the show. I see this too when going back and watching old movies. The 80s didnt get it totally right either, but at least in the 80s we could have sex on screen and see examples of people enjoying themselves.
Anyways, I think there’s two ways one can be slutty.
There is commanding the gaze.
And there is the gaze commanding you.
They can look almost identical but they are total opposites.
Conservatives want you to believe there’s no difference, because if all sex is exploitation then the only safe woman is the covered, quiet, married one. But being empowered and being used are not the same thing. They want to control your fire, but that fire needs to burn baby!
I have a friend who works at a really cool, big trendy ad agency, and her Creative Director is, in her words, obsessed with sex. Everything they make, he wants it sexier. I’m sure HR hates him, but I keep thinking about this mindset and I think it's a reason for their success. I think he’s right about something many of the designers in my generation are missing.
We have all heard it, sex sells. Calvin Klein built an empire on it. But I think the deeper truth is sex sells because sex is a point of view, and that evokes a human reaction, and human reactions move us.
Sexy design makes a person stop and want, sexy designs have a pulse that your boring beige brand refresh never will. Looking back at vintage ads, there’s so much more emphasis on sexual innuendos and relations.
The problem though is Gen Z is edgy. Gen Z is not sexy.
Despite our baggy jeans and laid back attitudes, much of my generation is not as liberated as you’d think. While we are busy policing right and wrong, obsessed with others perception of us, we are loosing a freedom of self.
There is so many statistics about Gen Z having less sex than any generation before us. Reporters blame Covid, growing up on the internet, AI, Ozempic, body standards, there are a thousand reasons for it. Regardless, I think you can see the lack of sex in todays trends. We design things that are cute and handmade. We design things that are cool. We design things that are throwbacks. We almost never design things that are provocative.
I recently read pop star Madonna’s Sex book. And yes, I love that Madonna the artist spent a whole career blowing up the Madonna-whore binary. What makes me sad though, is that it’s still doing the same work thirty years later, this book still gets referenced, and still starts a dialogue.
But I believe that’s what a real point of view does. It challenges the status quo and endures the controversy. We are not making things built like that right now, because we are too afraid to be uncomfortable. We are too focused on creating things that are safe, marketable, profitable, and inoffensive, that we are reverting back to same old design solutions without pushing the envelope.
Confessions of a tradwife influencer?
I’ll say the honest part too. We know I love a Ballerina Farm recipe. I have shared her stuff on this very blog. I too am a victim to the tradwife influencer. The woman is talented and her commitment to the aesthetic is unmatched. BUT, I am not going to wear an apron all day, pop out nine children, submit to a man, and call that liberation. That’s the trick of this genre of content. It packages submission as wellness and making yourself smaller has been rebranded as grace.
So here’s my hot take, and it’s a design take, because this is a design newsletter lol. The standout artists of this next decade are not going to be the clean girls. They’re going to be the sluts. The loud ones who take up too much space and refuse to reduce themselves down into something palatable. Because being polite is not a requirement for good taste, but a point of view is.
What happened to all the sluts?
So the question in the title is a real one. Where did all the sluts go? Lately, it feels like the Madonnas got the megaphone, the sluts gotta grab it back.
The artists who break through the noise will be the ones with a point of view, who are confident enough to express themselves.
When I think of the artists I look up to, I think of Cher, Tina Turner, Frida Kahlo, Dolly Parton, Grace Jones, Joan of Arc, Barbara Kruger, Beyonce. I don’t look back at the women who fit quietly in a nice little box, I look back and admire the ones who broke out of it.
Charli XCX is an great modern example of this. It’s not just about being empowered, but about being unapologetically yourself and commanding the room.
So ladies I encourage you to go take up the whole room and then take up a little more! The Madonna was never the goal. Be the slut who’s in charge. Be loud on purpose. Make something that it’s still gonna be talked about in thirty years, long after this little conservative moment moves on I hope.
The future belongs to the loud ones. I plan to be unbearable about it.
