Latest news with #TradWife
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The stark reality of ‘The Handmaid's Tale' in Trump's America
Margaret Atwood is often asked where she got the inspiration for her magnum opus, 'The Handmaid's Tale.' In interviews, she tends to answer the same way: 'The Handmaid's Tale' comes from real events. Everything in the novel, she'll say, looking straight into the camera or squarely into the face of a fan, has already occurred. History repeats itself; that much we know. Everything in the novel is still occurring. It happened on the MSNBC franchise I write and produce: the Velshi Banned Book Club. Atwood sat down for an interview with host Ali Velshi and clearly elucidated that she was far more worried today than when she wrote the novel in 1985. Just one day later, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Her worry, it seemed, was correctly placed. It's hard not to think about that prescience, that condemning foresight, when watching the sixth and final season of the 15 Emmy award-winning Hulu adaptation of Atwood's novel. While it's hard to say enough about Elizabeth Moss' stunning portrayal of June in Hulu's 'The Handmaid's Tale,' in this final season, which concluded Monday, what — or who — rings the truest to me in our present political moment is the character of Serena Joy, played by Yvonne Strahovski. When the series debuted in 2017, there was no meaningful Trad Wife movement or any other so publicized return to traditionalism. We saw glimmers of an uptick in women-led conservatism, in the 52% of white women who voted for Donald Trump the first time he ran for office, for example. But Serena still felt paradoxical to me. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the book, television, stage or film adaptation, 'The Handmaid's Tale' takes place in a near-future America called the Republic of Gilead, now governed by a theocratic dictatorship. With much of the population left infertile from environmental disasters, Gilead has implemented forced surrogacy and sexual slavery. (Indeed, the environmental component of the book has become alarmingly more relevant, but that is best left explored for another column.) Fertile 'handmaids,' a term and concept taken directly from the Book of Gensis in the Old Testament, are enslaved, raped by high-ranking officials, impregnated and then forced to surrender their children to their rapists and their complicit wives. Our hero, June, is one such handmaid. Strahovski's Serena, one of the show's most callous and complex antagonists, is the wife of Commander Waterford, to whom June is enslaved. The first season of the show follows the novel very closely, but the subsequent seasons are the creation of Bruce Miller with input from Atwood. A true believer in Gilead, Serena is not a woman carried by the tide of a regressive Puritanical movement out of her control. Serena herself helped make the waves. It was her Cult of Domesticity-type polemic, her written work and public-facing persona, that helped create Gilead. Season six opens with June and Serena, joined once again by fate, on a train with other women seeking refuge from Gilead. As the two women speak about the horrors they have experienced in Gilead with other refugees, someone exposes Serena by calling her by her notorious married name: Mrs. Waterford. The refugees want revenge, and Serena, now a war criminal for the role she played in Gilead, doesn't back down. 'Before Gilead, America was full of whores,' she tells them, with indignant eyes and gritted teeth. 'Women were getting raped and killed every day, and nobody cared, and that was your country. You were unfit. I am not responsible for your tragedies; your children were not taken from you, they weren't stolen, they were saved. God hated America because America turned their back on God, and God took your country away. God bless, America.' Serena is always both an oppressor and a victim. This consistent duality, up until the very end when Serena marries another Gilead Commander under the false pretense that he is one of the good and progressive ones, is one of the most compelling aspects of the show. Why? Because Serena, as a phenomenon and as a woman, is real. Many American women perpetuate and then ultimately suffer under patriarchal structures. Their reasons for aligning themselves with an oppressor may be varied, but the outcome will always be the same. There is no room for women in a world like that. Serena proves that to us. Like the increasingly popular conservative influencers who substantially profit from advocating a return to biblical subservience, Serena is incongruous. Crucially, 'The Handmaid's Tale' doesn't demand we view her in any one way. Serena is nuanced, willing to bend the rules of the society she created to meet her own needs and sometimes sympathetic. She, too, has suffered physical and emotional abuse. In the final episode, Serena apologizes to June while boarding a bus bound for a U.N. refugee camp. Tearfully, holding her son, Noah, wrapped in blankets, she says, 'When I recall some of the things that were done to you and the things that I did and that I forced you to do, I'm ashamed.' June forgives her, the two women embrace, and Serena gets on the bus. After, a U.S. Commander commends June's 'generous' forgiveness. June demurs and says, 'You have to start somewhere.' Like so much of this show and the source material, that small moment is thought-provoking. Is forgiveness the place to start? Serena no longer feels improbable to me. Atwood warned us, in the pages and in the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale,' that women like Serena have existed and will continue to exist. I don't know why I didn't believe her. This article was originally published on
Daily Mirror
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm fans must read this new twisted tradwife thriller
The Tradwife's Secret is a twisty thriller perfect for adding to your summer reading list Love it or hate it, tradwife content is a big deal on TikTok right now, with influencers like Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman just some of those gathering large followings by sharing their tradwife lifestyles. Think videos of beautifully-dressed women making homemade cereal or toothpaste for their families in their enviable kitchens, surrounded by angelic children. The tradwife trend emerged on social media all the way back in 2018, gaining momentum during the pandemic as people isolating at home looked to find excitement and comfort in day-to-day household tasks. Celebrating the 'traditional' parts of homemaking, it has proved to be controversial, sparking fierce debates. Fast-forward to today, and the tradwife trend has reached the fictional world too, with several forthcoming novels, including Sarah Langan's Trad Wife and Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear, exploring the darker side of the social media sensation. Leading the pack is The Tradwife's Secret by Liane Child, a twisted domestic thriller. In it, we meet Madison March, the perfect wife with the perfect family and life who spends her days at her Montana homestead, sharing her lifestyle online with her millions of followers. Whether she's cooking sourdough from scratch or teaching her children about proper gender roles, her fans can't get enough. But when new tutor Callie turns up to help educate the March children, she soon notices the cracks in Madison's image. The book is written from several points of view, with Madison, Callie and aspiring tradwife Brianna all providing very different perspectives throughout. If you've ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes of a tradwife account, this book is for you. It's addictive, with lots of drama, some memorable side characters and a huge twist I for one did not see coming.
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
British Trad Wife Charlie Gray says women thank her for giving them 'permission to be at home'
A British Trad Wife says that people have thanked her for 'giving them permission' to be a stay-at-home parent. Charlie Gray, 42, who lives in a large house in the West Sussex countryside, regularly posts her tips on homemaking on her @ askcharliehow Instagram and YouTube pages and says she is proud to be a traditional housewife. A growing number of women particularly in the US and increasingly the UK, are calling themselves Trad Wives - rejecting the feminist plight in the hopes of championing traditional feminine roles of looking after the home and keeping out of work. Speaking to Woman's Hour presenter Nuala McGovern on Tuesday, Charlie, who runs cookery courses on making dishes such as sourdough and foraged wild nettle pasta, says she hasn't encountered any negativity about not having a formal job. When McGovern suggested to the mother of three teenagers that the content she makes might be 'setting women back', Gray responded: 'I've just had people saying "thank you for giving me permission to be able to stay at home and not feel the pressure to go back to work"'. The influencer, who has more than 34,000 followers on Instagram, is married to husband Simon, 18 years her senior, whom she met while working as a secretary - she described him in an interview with The Telegraph last month as 'the most wonderful man I've ever met'. His career, running a successful seafood business has meant she is able to stay at home and care for the couple's children, Archie, Coco and Gus. Gray told Woman's Hour that she spotted the need for her housewifery tips after realising that homemaking skills hadn't been passed down - after she ended up teaching the family au pair basic cooking skills. She said: 'We had au pairs for our children. We had three children under the age of two, and it was crazy so we enlisted an au pair to come and help, and she couldn't even boil an egg. 'So then I found myself with an extra child to teach how to do these things. 'And that's when I realised that practical skills haven't been passed down through the generations like they used to be.' The Trad Wife added: 'Running a home and being a housewife is a very, very busy important role if a wife or husband chooses to do that, and I'm sharing these tips to make life easier.' Reactions to the YouTuber's appearance on the BBC Radio 4 show were mixed, with many suggesting that her social media work is a job, saying: 'All power to her and she looks really interesting and with a clear style but she isn't a "trad wife", she's a successful businesswomen with an interesting premise.' Others agreed that vital practical skills have been lost, with one writing: 'Learning to cook for yourself and run a house is a skill every adult should have housewife or not, I don't think this is controversial. Why are people upset she's teaching people how to bake bread?' Another recounted how she'd cared for her children but faced criticism for the decision, saying: 'I stayed at home with my three children and honestly loved every minute; the backlash from other parents however was not pleasant, but it mostly stemmed from they thought I was rich enough not to work, which wasn't true.' Last week, the most famous Trad Wife of them all, Nara Smith, was criticised by some for glamourising teen pregnancy after posting a controversial TikTok. The 23-year-old, who shares three children with husband Lucky Blue, posted a video celebrating being a young mother. The clip, which showed her hugging her young child in a paddock, was captioned: 'POV: You decided to have kids at 18 and this is your fifth Mother's Day.' Nara rose to fame through TikTok, where she flaunts her 'tradwife' (traditional housewife) lifestyle, baking extravagant meals for her family while seeming to effortlessly care for her young children. While her social media shows a lavish lifestyle, where she wears designer clothing in a beautiful home, many have pointed out very few teen moms can afford the same lifestyle. 'Nara please don't glamorize this. Happy for you but your life at 18 is not most teens realities…,' one response read. 'Reminder to all the 18-year-olds, you do not have Nara Smith money,' read another. 'Girlies at 18 you don't have Nara Smith money so this ain't your sign,' someone else shared. 'No. DO NOT GET INFLUENCED PLEASE. Finish your college. Get a job. Become financially stable,' agreed another.
Telegraph
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Last of Us, season 3, episode 2 review: can Bella Ramsey carry the show alone?
The Last of Us video game has always been in touch with its feelings. From Joel's acoustic guitar-strumming and sultry crooning, to Ellie's emo-phase tattoos and the pair's 'father-daughter' bonding trips, the franchise leavened its many, many moments of austere violence and near-constant sense of dread with enough flashes of soul and beauty to stop you switching off your console. It was necessary. Playing as Joel, Ellie or Abby you dispatch countless humans – undead or otherwise – while some scenes are downright disturbing (lose to one particular giant foe and you are treated to a cut scene of your character having their head torn in two). The creators of The Last of Us (Sky Atlantic) TV series, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, were aware that such levels of baroque gore could not fly in a prestige drama and set about trying to make the show with as few acts of violence as possible, something we can all be grateful for. Yet what they have left in place is the sensitive, soulful side, which results in a third episode like this one – an hour of TV in which before our heroes can enact bloody revenge they must first have therapy, seek permission of their peers, disentangle town-hall bureaucracy and cry meaningfully in a cupboard full of plaid shirts. This is a zombie show that moodily gazes at its own navel before it rips its intestines out. After the thrills of episode two, we returned to the curiously paced, golden-hour drenched, folksy atmosphere of the opener, as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) tentatively began her hunt for those who killed Joel (Pedro Pascal). Which meant we spent a lot more time in Jackson, Wyoming, a sort of model village for the Trad Wife movement, in which all the men have luxurious beards and luxurious plaid shirts and enjoy nothing more than healthy, wholesome, communal manual labour. The only thing they like nearly as much is town hall meetings, and we got another one here, as Ellie beseeched the townsfolk to sanction her revenge mission. 'Forgive and be forgiven,' said one wise old owl. We thought the zombies had done for these Gap-model villagers last week, but no such luck. Stylishly, wisely, they live on. There was near-universal acclaim when it was announced that the great Catherine O'Hara would be joining the cast, yet her character, alcoholic psychotherapist Gail, is a drain on viewers' resources. O'Hara does a nice enough job, but Ellie and Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Joel's brother, are introspective enough without having to sit down with a shrink and justify red-hot murder. The intended effect, presumably, is to humanise the pair, but there's little more human than revenge and this week's soul-searching brought no more than some Monty Python-esque feelings of 'Get on with it!'. Things improved immeasurably when Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) finally mounted a horse and set off through endless verdant National Parks for Seattle, where they hope to find Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her Washington Liberation Front. Along the way, they saw apparent evidence of WLF savagery – dead members of the Seraphite cult, shaven-headed Hare Krishna types who speak softly and carry a hammer and sickle. Seattle itself – broken and reclaimed by nature – was a thrill to witness, albeit briefly. As for last week's big question – can Ramsey carry the show with Pascal gone? – the jury is still out. Her performance as a petulant, hotheaded, immature 19-year-old is on the money, but her Ellie is hard to sympathise with and even harder to love. Indeed, she's this adaptation's ideal Ellie – moody, folksy, prone to soundbites, a bit frustrating. The sooner she catches up with Abby, the better.
