Unholy Union: Tradwives & Social Media in Horror Fiction
Author Saratoga Schaefer shares how the idea of tradwives and social media (and an egg apron) inspired their recent horror novel.
It started with that damn egg apron.
In 2024, a video of Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman went viral. In the video, the proclaimed “tradwife” opens a package (not a gift, mind you—a cardboard box fresh from the mailbag Neeleman has to open with a kitchen knife) for her birthday. She hopes on camera more than once that her incredibly wealthy husband got her tickets to Greece. Instead, she unearths an egg apron, her husband passive aggressively muttering, “You’re welcome,” as she tries her hardest to act pleased.
After that, there was the tradwife influencer who went viral for making folic acid-free bread, which happened right around the time my sister texted me, “What’s a trad wife?” My ensuing explanation sparked a horror novel idea so intense, I started writing it a week later. If you are unaware, or not as chronically online, tradwives are women who believe in and practice traditional gender roles and marriages, taking on a homesteading and child-rearing role, often showcasing the lifestyle online.
My latest novel, Trad Wife, is about a burgeoning tradwife influencer named Camille Deming, desperate to have a baby to save her stagnanting marriage and boost her presence online. Camille enlists the help of a creature she convinces herself is angelic in nature, but the resulting baby is far hungrier and more advanced than any newborn has a right to be.
The rise of tradwives is ripe for the kind of exploration that makes successful horror. You have young women who are actively choosing a lifestyle rooted in sexist, racist, and capitalist tendencies, entrenched in problematic religious ideals, and packaging it all up into a bite-sized, consumable aesthetic for social media. It confused me, so I wanted to see what would happen if one of these tradwives was forced to confront her life in a very real way. Such as actively choosing to procreate with a creature found in a well and then having a demonic, ravenous baby instead of the picture-perfect child she initially dreamed of.
Camille isn’t an evil person. But she is a purposefully frustrating character; she’s willfully naive, makes herself smaller for men, and dumbs down her own intellect to appear demure and affable. She’s a young woman who was brainwashed first by her traditional father, then by her toxic husband, and finally by social media—a trajectory not uncommon in our society. While there is plenty of graphic body horror in Trad Wife, I posit that the true horror is inflicted upon Camille by the men in her life, yes, but also by herself. She chooses this. She wants this. And that is scary. What does it say about the power of social media or the state of our society that young women are so readily adopting these values? Are they attempting to recreate nostalgic vibes they are too young to fully remember? Are they falling prey to religious traps and financially abusive men posing as caretakers? Why is this lifestyle so popular, and what kind of person falls into it?
As Camille begins to transform throughout the book, she struggles with the lifestyle she’s adopted, the persona she embraces for her husband, and that addictive beast, social media. As with any online creator or influencer, it’s often hard to tell if someone is fully bought-in or if they’re selling you something—very aware of what they’re doing and what they’re marketing. No tradwife horror exploration would be complete without an examination of these women’s relationships with social media. Behind the pretty photos and captions about prioritizing family, the oppressive, unsettling tones of the tradwife lifestyle aren’t hard to miss. Social horror has always been a way to mirror our current state, a chance to pick apart the aspects of our culture that frighten us, and books about tradwives are no different.
My work is usually inspired by experiences I am personally afraid of. My debut novel, Serial Killer Support Group, deals with the loss of a loved one and being sucked into an untenable situation with dangerous men. Trad Wife explores a lifestyle and value system that not only frightens but actively repels me. As a non-binary person, I find Camille’s version of femininity terrifying; pregnancy would cause me all kinds of gender dysphoria. Camille’s situation isn’t horror to her, but it is to me, even if you remove the creature in the well and the bloodthirsty baby.
Yet it’s not as simple as saying all tradwives are “bad.” Part of what makes this topic so unnerving is the gray space. Who needs help and who is acting insidiously? Who is dangerous and who is making content and monetizing their hobbies? Is there a difference? Where is the line, and what happens when it’s crossed?Sometimes the scariest things are the ones that aren’t fully defined yet.
The tradwife trend may be that—a trend. It’s only been in the mainstream zeitgeist for a few years. But what if it’s more than a trend? We don’t know where this cultural phenomenon is going yet or what consequences may come from it, and that, to me, is far more horrifying than a baby who craves human flesh.
Check out Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife here:
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