Your 1950s housewife will not thank you for her hash tag

BBC News today featured a short film about the #TradWives movement: ‘Submitting to my husband like it's 1959': Why I became a #TradWife.’

The film features an extraordinarily tedious woman named Alena Kate Pettitt, who crows dreamily on about her life as a housewife, looking back with nostalgic fondness to a traditional England that once was, and explaining how, having grown up with a single mother herself, she rebelled and wanted a man to take care of her and to live as a housewife.

What makes this woman so completely insufferable, I should be clear, is not the fact that she is a traditional housewife – an important role that is disgustingly demeaned in this day and age. IT is precisely that she is anything but!

In the film, Mrs Pettitt tells us that she was “the typical career girl” in her early 20s, working long hours in London. Apparently, this was because the media advised her that this is what she should be doing, and nothing to do with being a responsible adult like every other young woman working stupid hours with precious little thanks and far too many bills to pay.

On her website The Darling Academy (yes really!), Mrs Pettitt goes further: “An early mid-life crisis of confidence left me shattered emotionally and wondering why the world, despite all its beauty and opportunity made me feel so unsatisfied with my life and how my lifestyle choices had destroyed my self-esteem.”

Well that’s very sad for her, of course. If she found redemption, confidence and renewed purpose in her life by being a housewife and taking care of her kids, that’s all fine and dandy. In the end, we all crave and deserve to find whatever it is that gives our lives meaning and fulfilment.

Unfortunately, though, Mrs Pettitt isn’t happy to pipe down and get on with her own life. Instead, she smugly tells us at the end of the film how “selfless” it is to invest in her family, her marriage and her home.

And yet, Mrs Pettitt is quite clearly one of the most self-centred people around. For one thing, everyone who enters the debate about family and lifestyle choices determined to shout to all who will listen that theirs is the only unselfish way, is themselves selfish: too self-righteous in the supposed greater good of their own existence to see the good of anyone else’s.

Of course, I would agree that parenting, loving a spouse and cultivating a happy home are not selfish things at all but profoundly beautiful things. But if you assume the right to sneer your nose up at anyone else, such as those poor creatures working silly hours in London like the lovely Alena once did, that makes you selfish.

And then there is this little gem from her guidance on traditional marriage: “When I was filming with the BBC last month, they raised an interesting question about whether I have put kids first ahead of my husband since we became parents - and the answer to that is a big fat NO. I love my child fiercely, as any Mother does, and kids are our greatest responsibility, but my husband comes first, and he ALWAYS will.”

Let’s be clear: ahead of her children who depend on their parents, Alena puts a grown man who can (or should be able to) dress himself, feed himself, earn his own money, and take his own responsibility for his physical and emotional needs. She’s living on another planet if she really thinks that makes her in any way a paragon of virtue rather than an ordinary, unremarkable woman.

It’s also clear that her motivation is principally about ensuring she still has a soul mate when the kids fly the nest – again fair enough, but nothing to brag about.

She’s also crackers (as if more proof is needed) if she thinks her idealistic notions reflect how it was in the 1950s.

In the 1950s, for most average men and women, life had a largely pre-determined trajectory. You grew up, probably surrounded by extended family. You courted young, you married, and you had kids. You may well have loved each other, but the heart’s desire probably wasn’t the only reason for your choices.

Neither, in all likelihood, was there a lot of money for hearts and flowers, or cute date nights. Sex, with less contraceptive choice and a medical profession unlikely to even talk candidly about the subject, was not the all-for-pleasure, romantic experience it is assumed to be today: it was for having kids.

Once said kids came along, she would probably give up work, whether this could be comfortably afforded or not. She, after all, couldn’t count on flexible working policies, state assistance for childcare or any such alien concept to help her juggle motherhood and working, and she would have been disapproved of for making any other choice anyway.

It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t Alena’s “fairytale love story.” Some 1950s women may have loved it, and others may have hated it, but it wasn’t the deliberate and wilful rejection of modernity trumpeted by the dreary Alena.

Alena has an entirely chosen, self-crafted life – hurrah for feminism. She had the choice to pursue then turn her back on her career, to have kids, and to have a marriage with a husband who equally chose to embrace her supposed #TradWife philosophy and can afford to keep her. Even today, many couples aren’t blessed with that level of luxury.

Finally, dear reader, you may have noticed something else about our friend Alena if you look at her website: Darling Academy flogs books. Yes, the traditional housewife writes books. You can buy them on Amazon if you want a lesson in good etiquette.

We could, therefore, describe Alena as a businesswoman, or a freelance writer, but that would be far too selfish and, crucially, far too ‘women’s lib’ for the 1950s housewife that the poor soul thinks she is. She might explode if we go for ‘entrepreneur.’

She explains that her background was in product development and marketing for the beauty industry. I can do nothing other than commend her on her marketing skills, since she seeks to garner publicity for attempting to capitalise on a golden era that never was, at least if you were poor and working-class in bygone days. The rigidity of social life and societal expectations means it’s unlikely anyone would even value your opinion enough to want to write books about it.

I would never criticise anyone for their lifestyle choices. If it doesn’t affect me, I couldn’t care less. However, when anything becomes marketed, it becomes fair game and it is right and proper to be held up to the lens of scrutiny.

Alena, darling, you’ve not done a good enough job hiding your own hypocrisy and inconsistency here, so I won’t be buying your books. Oh, and one more thing: your 1950s housewife will not thank you for her hash tag.