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From John Ray's shorter notes
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13 August, 2024
British 'tradwife' who submits to her husband like it's the 1950s reveals she's deleted social media and moved to Australia for a more private life
This idea of the woman "submitting" to her husband seems dubious to me. When I had a tradwife we just came to unforced agreements about things and during my childhood it was definitely my father who submitted to my non-working mother.
I think you can have a traditional marriage as long is there is broad agreement in favour of traditional roles, but after that the detailed arrangements are whatever suits the individual personalities involved. "Submitting" sounds a very unhappy thing to me and and a husband who kept making his wife unhappy would either be a fool or out of love with her
A British woman who became famous as one of the UK's first 'trad wives' has revealed she's moved to Australia after the 1950s-inspired movement 'became a monster'.
The tradwife movement, which blew up in the UK in 2020, says that wives should not work, and rather spend their days cooking, cleaning, wearing modest and feminine dress, and practice traditional etiquette, being submissive to their husbands and 'always put them first'.
Alena Kate Pettitt, 38, originally from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, who is a self-proclaimed tradwife, tried to showcase the idea in Britain.
But she has since revealed how she's stepped away from the limelight, deleting her Instagram account and moving to Australia to live a more private life, because it's become 'politicised' and due to receiving 'unwanted attention from men'.
She 'stepped away' from her social media page last year, despite it boasting nearly 40,000 followers, and said on her blog that she is 'embarrassed' that she used to take part in the social media fad.
Alena, who started up a 'femininity finishing school' called The Darling Academy, also felt that the tradwife movement had lost its way, becoming more of a superficial trend which had lost control of it's core values.
Speaking to the New Yorker she said: 'It's become an aesthetic, and then it's become politicized. And then it's become its own monster.'
She worried new generations of tradwives are getting 'younger and younger, and more polished than realistic.'
Another reason she ditched her account was because of the 'vile messages, the hatred, the passive-aggressive comments and unwanted attention from men.'
This all fed into the reason why Alena decided to delete her Instagram, however she revealed on her blog that she still upholds her traditional values, only more privately this time around.
Writing on The Darling Academy, she said: 'I tried. I thought that speaking to the media and using a platform with so many users would be a wonderful way to promote the brilliant work of the housewife.
'But as with all kinds of positive activism, good message, or wholesome idea, it will in time become hijacked by the opposite of what you stand for and believe in.'
It appears Alena also decided to take a hiatus from her blog for nearly a year to create 'certain boundaries' which she said were put in place by her husband, Carl, and members of her family.
However the former Marketing Manager recently returned to the platform saying she 'sought permission' from her husband to announce that they are now living in Australia.
Alena explained that the big move across the pond was always on the cards for them, however it came a little bit sooner then they had anticipated after their home address in England was shared online which made her feel 'unsafe.'
Writing on her blog she said their 'hearts were no longer in England', even though they almost bought a 'doer upper' house back in Gloucestershire.
She revealed the house would of been 'too much work' and with her husband working full time the renovations would of been 'painfully slow'.
The mother-of-one added that their privacy and safety was also 'ultimately violated' on a gossip forum when their previous address was shared and the new home was just down the road, saying it didn't have 'enough distance' for her to feel safe.
Describing 2023 as an Annus Horribilis, Latin phrase that means a horrible year, she revealed that she also lost friends after stepping back from social media.
She said it was 'disappointing to feel used', but a 'relief to be free of taking pictures ''for the gram''. '
Sticking to her true traditional values, Alena revealed she is going to blog and write like it was in the 'early days' before social media.
She claimed her content will still be centred around homemaking but with 'healthy boundaries' this time around.
Alena was one of the earliest and best known in the movement of women who spend their days taking care of their homes and families and documenting their activities on social media.
She wrote two books, where she set out her Christian beliefs and principles of womanhood, which her husband helped her to self-publish.
In 2016, she published what turned out to be something between a guidebook to traditional womanhood and a memoir of self-transformation through faith. Pettitt called the book Ladies Like Us. Her next book, English Etiquette, followed in 2019.
Speaking to the BBC in 2020, she explained of her blog: 'I talk about etiquette, feminine lifestyle, homemaking, and being a traditional housewife.
'I wouldn't expect my husband to come home after a long day at work and cook for me. My job is essentially being a housewife.'
Alena gets a monthly allowance for the food shop, along with a buffer for her to 'spend something on myself' so she's not always 'asking him for money'.
Admitting that she didn't enjoy growing up in the nineties era where the emphasis was on breaking glass ceilings, Alena says she was 'born to be a wife and mother'.
Alena enjoyed shows from the 1950s and 1960s, and remembered how her single mother worked full-time, with the house becoming a 'huge burden', which became the turning point for her when she realised she 'didn't want the same life'.
Revealing that her husband also believed in the same traditional values and offered to 'look after her', she admitted meeting him was the moment she felt complete. 'It's almost like the fairytale came true', she said.
Alena says she was a 'career girl' in her twenties and followed messages from hit show Sex and The City, which she interpreted as telling women working was 'liberating and they should follow their sexual desires'.
Not identifying with this persona, she then turned to shows like the Real Housewives, but found the wives were 'too rich to do their own cleaning and everyone was cheating on each other'.
She then went online and discovered an underground movement of other women who felt the same, explaining they craved the sense of 'belonging, home quaintness and tradition'.
Alena, who strongly believes your husband should 'always come first and should know this', said some feminists believe her movement is throwing their work for equality back in their faces.
Revealing her take on feminism, she explained: 'My view on feminism is that it's about choices. To say you can go into the working world and compete with men and you're not allowed to stay at home - to me is taking a choice away'.
Distancing herself from the movement's right-wing links, she argued: 'Being a tradwife is investing in your family and being selfless. So I would say the opposite of that is someone who is selfish and just takes'.
Along with blogs and vlogs dedicated to the movement, which is also taking Brazil, Germany and Japan, by storm, an array of books from the fifties and sixties 'teaching' women how to be the perfect housewives become popular again.
One of the movement's pin-up girls is Helen Andelin, the American author of the 1963 'Fascinating Womanhood' book, which teaches women that subordination is the 'key to a happy marriage' and has regained popularity.
And, a century after the first wave of feminism ended, and sixty years after the women's liberation movement, Helen Andelin's daughter Dixie Andelin Forsyth has launched a worldwide 'femininity class' with 100,000 followers.
Speaking to Stylist, she claimed: 'The movement's rising because women have had enough of feminism in the UK and elsewhere. We say to feminists: thanks for the trousers, but we see life a different way'.
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