After taking over social media and stirring up political discussion, the ‘trad wife’ aesthetic entered the public sphere with a force, and no one was leading that more than Nara Smith.
Nara Smith
Decked out in expensive and sometimes straight-off-the-runway pieces, the content creator showed millions of people how she prepared elaborate meals for her husband and children.
Nara Smith redefined what it meant to be a ‘Traditional Wife’ with great controversy and millions of views.
Lifestyle or Aesthetic
Strangely enough, despite becoming the face of the Trad wife community online, Nara Smith would not describe herself as such.
In an interview with Harper Brazzar, the model pushed back against the label, saying: “Being put into a certain box, just because people think that I’m slaving away, is so weird to me.
“I’m a working mom who gets to go about her day in a very different way than [someone with] a normal nine-to-five job would.”
And she has a point.
The ‘trad wife’ label has been thrown around too frequently.
Defined as a married woman who takes on traditional gender roles from the 1950s, Nara Smith is far from that.
A model, businesswoman and social media personality, Smith is anything but traditional.
The South African-German model has, however, adapted a housewife aesthetic online – some true and most, probably, exaggerated. I mean, no one is making chewing gum from scratch.
Nara Smith has positioned herself, whether she likes to admit it, as the face for the ‘trad wife’ aesthetic with a modern twist.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Cara Delevingne celebrates reopening of TopShop but can the store go against big brands
Lean into criticism
Like millions of others, I first came across the influencer on TikTok.
Draped in a red Club L London dress, narrating about her husband wanting a burger and her making it from scratch, I was immediately hooked by the soothing voiceover.
Soon after, commentaries and parodies followed with criticism.
First, there were comments on how unrealistic Smith’s lifestyle was, with many pointing out that buying cereal is cheaper than the ingredients needed to make your own Fruit Loops.
Then it turned political.
When discussion around the ‘role of women’ in society began to garner traction online, Nara Smith became a punching bag for supposedly promoting regressive ideas about women’s place in a marriage.
To be fair to the content creator, she never attempted to say that her lifestyle was in any way attainable.
With a single cooking video taking hours to make, it is ridiculous to assume that Nara Smith is actually making Oreo cookies by hand everyday.
And the suggestion that Smith’s videos are regressive to women’s rights is overstressing the matter.
A model dressed up in couture, making sourdough bread, is not going to reverse decades of women’s rights.
In actuality, Smith’s ability to create a brand for herself and become self-employed is empowering and an example of what women have always fought for – choice.
Brilliant Marketing
It is said that “there is no such thing as bad publicity”, and despite criticism about her lifestyle, Nara Smith has become a household name.
Leaning into the criticism, the subsequent videos that Nara Smith posted after her viral videos became more over the top.
Wearing more elaborate dresses to cook and making more unnecessary snacks from scratch, Smith heard the criticism and, rather than ignore it, gave them something to talk about.
Whether you liked her or not, at one point in time, everyone was talking about Nara Smith, and that is brilliant marketing.
Nara Smith did not create the ‘trad wife aesthetic’; instead, she took her lifestyle, mixed it with the growing niche, to curate a personal brand that 4.7 million people on Instagram subscribe to.
MORE FROM VANELY BARUMIRE: Julia Roberts, Alicia Silverstone and Angela Bassett – Meet the Queens of the 1990s film industry
