Martha Stewart Just Exposed The Internet’s Tradwife Hypocrisy

When Martha Stewart went on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast this week and casually declared, "I was the original f*cking tradwife," she wasn't trying to reclaim stolen territory. Stewart was acknowledging a lineage and validating a sorely misunderstood group of women. Even as each wave of feminism came and went, women never stopped tending to their homes. Sure, more graduate from college and put their career first now, but en masse, women never stopped baking bread, gardening, planning dinner parties, or romanticizing beauty inside their kitchens. What changed wasn't women's behavior, but the reaction to it. The internet has a short memory. It treats every aesthetic cycle like a resurrection, or an aberration from the narrative. But domestic aspiration never disappeared from American life. It simply stopped being fashionable in certain loud cultural circles, backed by billion-dollar industries, and started being reframed as backward-looking and anything but empowering. What changed wasn't women's behavior, but the reaction to it. Then TikTok arrived. Suddenly, women like Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm were milking cows in flowing dresses for millions of viewers. Nara Smith was crafting Pop-Tarts from scratch in luxurious silk gowns, giving an ASMR narrative as she cracks eggs into thoughtfully kneaded dough. And the response was anything but neutral. Celebrated Then, Criticized Now After President Trump's election in 2016, many have been quick to paint any woman with remotely "trad" behavior as being unequivocal Trump supporters and even slam them as wanting to turn the tables back to a time when women legally had fewer rights. So when Neeleman and Smith's content went viral, major outlets rushed to interpret what this cultural shift meant. The Guardian described tradwives as part of a broader "backlash against feminism." Other publications labeled the aesthetic as deeply regressive or suggested it romanticized submission and dependency. Many people, likely bored and doomscrolling on the internet, stirred up a storm about the tradwives on social media, calling it "Stepford cosplay" and accusing influencers like Smith of glamorizing unpaid labor. Suddenly, the women weren't just cooking, they became political symbols weaponized to push an ideological message. That reaction says more about our cultural anxiety than it does about whether or not someone should be baking bread, however, because America has seen this model before. Her name is Martha Stewart. Long before TikTok and Instagram, Martha Stewart amassed an empire around domestic excellence. She taught women how to roast a chicken perfectly. How to fold napkins. How to cultivate peonies. How to make a home feel intentional. She aestheticized domestic life before the word "aesthetic" even became internet shorthand. And the best part? She monetized it, unapologetically. She wasn't dismissed as regressive. No, she was praised as empowering. She became one of the most powerful and iconic businesswomen in America by turning homemaking into more than just a task. It all started with her catering business in the '70s, which grew to her first cookbook publishing in 1982. Then, Stewart's company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, was founded in 1997, went public in 1999, and briefly before the dotcom crash, Stewart became America's first self-made female billionaire. Her product lines spanned home goods, bedding, kitchenware, furniture, and even paint, and she secured retail partnerships with Kmart and Macy's. Her magazine, Martha Stewart Living , had millions of subscribers and was basically a blueprint for aspirational domestic media, just printed on glossy paper instead of posted to TikTok. No one framed her love of domestic rituals as political extremism. And I'll bet that if you haven't read one of her books or an article from her magazine, you've probably cooked with or decorated your house with one of her products sold at Macy's, JCPenney, and more. "I thought everybody really wants to learn everything about how to take care of your home and be a homemaker and elevate the art of homemaking instead of housekeeping. We don't want to be housekeepers. None of us want to be a housekeeper," Stewart told podcast co-hosts and husband-and-wife duo Lauryn Evarts Bosstick and Michael Bosstick. "But we do want to be homemakers." Where were the accusations of her undermining feminism because she valued table settings? Where were the suggestions that she was pushing women backwards because she celebrated home life? No one framed her love of domestic rituals as political extremism. It was aspiration, elegance, and ambition marketed to a very eager and receptive audience. So why does the same aspiration now trigger panic and fire off the Kill Bill sirens? The core difference between Stewart and Smith, for example, is not the labor on screen. It's the interpretation, and it's honestly unfair. The Double Standard Can't Be Ignored When Stewart perfected domesticity, she was framed as a savvy entrepreneur who elevated a simple home into a woman's empire. Yet, when younger women perfect domesticity today, especially while visibly prioritizing marriage and motherhood, and doing both with beauty in mind, critics treat it as ideological messaging. The assumption shifted. Domestic skill is respectable, I suppose, when it's clearly subordinated to corporate ambition. But when it appears wholehearted, or when it looks romantic and even serene, today it becomes suspicious. The message beneath the backlash is subtle, but clear to me: you may monetize domesticity, brand it, and teach it, but go no further. Don't desire it too fully, lest you discourage young women from learning how to code. The message beneath the backlash is subtle, but clear to me: you may monetize domesticity, brand it, and teach it, but go no further. And this is where Stewart's response really matters, because she didn't reject the comparison. She didn't roll her eyes at the girls in flowing linen dresses, or insist that her golden era was more legitimate. She didn't gatekeep the aesthetic she helped pioneer. Stewart said, plainly, "I really was that woman," with no defensiveness, praised Smith and Neeleman, and gave about as much of a verbal endorsement of their continuity of her model. "I love the tradwives," Stewart admitted, applauding Smith and Neeleman's entrepreneurial endeavors, Smith selling fashion and Neeleman selling beef. There's a particular kind of insecurity that could follow pioneers, and it's called successor envy. It's the instinct to resent the next generation for harvesting attention in a field you once cultivated under harsher conditions. As Stewart put it in the podcast interview, she had to do everything through PR; there was no quick and easy way to reach audiences. "I'm the original trad wife [...] I had pigs. I made my own prosciuttoes on the back steps and the great big crock. I had goats. I had goats. I milked my goats. I made cheese. You know, I did all that," she said. "I had to get all these newspapers to write articles […] I was very proud when I first started the magazine that I had never spent one cent on advertising and I still got a giant contract with Kmart." Stewart continued: "Kmart spent $25 million the first year on my products. And guess how much merchandise we sold? A billion dollars. That's how good it was." "I'm the original trad wife." - Martha Stewart She could have taken a bitter route. She built her empire without ring lights, without the ease of a quickly-created Reel, and without the algorithm-boosting comment section. And yet, she didn't sound threatened at all. She sounded secure. Stewart, now 84, recognized that she built something foundational, something she obviously holds near and dear to her heart, as she still lives it today, and that younger women are simply building on it in a different medium. That absence of bitterness stands out in a culture that claims to be pro-woman, yet constantly pits women against each other in battles of old versus young, career versus home, or power versus softness. By refusing the rivalry, she elegantly dismantled the argument that aspiring to traditional domestic activities is inherently regressive. And she's so real for that. The cultural discomfort about tradwives isn't really about sourdough starters at all. It's entirely about politics and agency, and it's exhausting. If a woman appears pressured into domestic life, as many are in nations like Iran, we condemn it and rightly so. But if a woman appears to choose certain homemaking hobbies and to cultivate them beautifully and publicly, critics seethe. Because that choice complicates the narrative that progress has a singular appearance. The truth is much more nuanced. Many women yearn for careers and children, myself included. Many want entrepreneurial ventures that challenge their abilities, and a garden bed to go back to and ease their minds after a long day. Many want to see beauty in their homes, not because they're oppressed, but because they find it meaningful. Stewart embodied that truth before it carried such a cultural weight. She was never "just" a quaint homemaker, she was a businesswoman who understood how domestic life could be an arena to master with grace. And when she mused on today's internet homemakers and recognized herself in them, she validated something very important: domestic aspiration was never inherently backward. It wasn't at the start of her career, and it certainly isn't now. Many want to see beauty in their homes, not because they're oppressed, but because they find it meaningful. What we're witnessing with the rise of the tradwife isn't actually a revival of lost traditions. We're entering into an era of heightened visibility. The camera now entered the kitchen in millions of homes, not just Stewart's, and the aesthetic became shareable. But once it became visible, it unfortunately became politicized. Stewart understands that better than most. She knows what it means to turn private domestic ritual into a cultural statement and build a ridiculously successful brand in the public eye. Her refusal to mock, diminish, or disavow today's viral tradwives went beyond generosity. Stewart was being honest. Women never stopped valuing home life, even as the critics refuse to admit it. We just stopped talking about it without embarrassment. And perhaps that's what unsettles people most. Domestic aspirations are valid, and no hit piece can make that instinct disappear.