The Internet Really Loves a Pile-On

I'm BACK with so much to unpack! Blake Lively, Tradwives, & Demure Fall

At the end of this, you will understand me when I say: This is not very demure.

Hi, friends, and welcome back! We have so much to catch up on!

Since we last met three weeks ago, I attended a work summit, traveled to California for a wedding, and visited wine country, all while continuing to work full-time. Major pros: I got my first experience of a redwood forest, Napa and Sonoma, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Salt Lake City Temple, and Hamburger University! Slight cons: I couldn’t see the bridge because of fog, I couldn’t see the temple because of construction, and Grimace was not on staff at the McDonald’s campus.

If I’m being honest, the reason I haven’t written for three weeks is 90 percent because I was busy with all that work/life and 10 percent because I was wearing press-on nails. The little girl inside me who wants to play dress-up has been thriving, but the writer who likes to free-associate on a keypad became an illiterate peasant from the 1800s encountering her first typewriter.¹

The nails are finally off, and normal life is back, so let’s catch up on a few major pop culture topics that several of you have been texting me about constantly — before we dive back in next week to our regular reviews.

Far be it from me to spend an entire post discussing blonde women peddling lifestyle brands, but here we are!

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Sports Corner

👆🏼Last week for work (@TheAthletic), I had a fabulous time writing my second Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders review, which you can read by scrolling to the “What We’re Watching” section of this tremendous newsletter! [Y’all got my first-reaction review here.]

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“Brat Summer” is Transitioning to “Demure Fall.”

“Beth Summer”

I assume everyone knows about “Brat Summer” because even The Today Show did an explainer. It started as a pop album by Charlie XCX, upon which summer 2024 was declared “Brat Summer,” indicating a bold, self-loving, unapologetic attitude. Then Charlie XCX tweeted, “Kamala IS brat,” and BRAT was etched into the annals of American History. [Though now that I think about it, the Founding Fathers being all “no more taxes or kings” is quite brat?]

Now we’ve moved on from Brat Summer and are sliding into its equal but opposite female energy: Demure Fall.

ICYMI: The “demure” trend started with a beauty influencer and trans woman named Jools Lebron, who posted how to do makeup in a “very demure, very mindful” way for work. Demure is back! I just wish Emily Post was alive to see it! Other influencers have claimed they said demure first, but honey, if we’re really going to nitpick, we could say The Nanny did it first? Or go back to like, I don’t know, Queen Victoria!? Anyways, thank you, Jools, for bringing us such an old-timey staple in a non-toxic way!

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It’s Time to Discuss the #Tradwives

ballerinafarm

A post shared by @ballerinafarm

If anyone had the corner on “demure” before Jools Lebron thankfully wrested it from their floury grip, it was the Tradwives.

What is a “Tradwife”? A social media trend where women who are usually Mormon or Evangelical identify as “traditional wives” — taking on traditional gender/marriage roles, traditional beauty standards, and a (fantasy) version of Olden Times where you make things from scratch and have tons of kids while dressed like a pin-up model with a luxury skincare routine. You’re never tired and always sexy. Kind of like if Little House on the Prairie was a steamy romance novel but also on the Disney Channel?

What I don’t like about it: Listen, I get why people want something different from what the modern age promises. Approaching your life imaginatively and differently is beautiful. Tons of people live off the land and are crafty and plant gardens and want lots of children and have great relationships with their partners, gay straight queer etc., and it’s lovely.

But selling a very one-way-is-right, what-a-man-says-goes, “idyllic” lifestyle that, in reality, is just as messy as anything else — and often messier because it so easily covers up oppression — is at the very least dishonest?!

Just one woman who can’t make bread’s opinion!

Enter the TradWife Queen: Hannah Neeleman, the woman behind the Instagram account Ballerina Farm. She first appeared in my feed when she competed in a beauty contest only a week and a half after giving birth to her eighth child. She lives this gorgeous, curated, from-scratch, glowy farm life where she and her husband and their eight kids live off the land in a way that obviously requires a breathtaking amount of wealth.

[It should come as no surprise that her husband is the son of the founder of JetBlue Airways. They’re the level of rich that makes it fun to “live off the land.”]

She went viral in the exact way nobody wants to. And for that, I truly feel sad for her. Ballerina Farm hit the mainstream conversation because of an article in The Times of London that doesn’t paint them in the best light, including how Neeleman’s husband regularly talks over her, how she will spend days in bed because of exhaustion, how she “gave up” a career as a ballerina from Julliard to live out “his” dream. The backlash was instant and aggressive. People on social media were commenting on her posts with intrusive concern at best and vitriol at worst.²

Call me a Gemini, but I’m of two minds on this: I find the Tradwife movement scary and risky and built for men. But I don’t know Hannah Neeleman, and she’s allowed to choose her own dreams. All I can do is hope that there are people in her life taking care of her and that she is doing the same for her daughters and friends. All I can do is be that for my own friends and family.

Just one homeschooler’s opinion: The Tradwife thing is sort of what the homeschool moms were doing in the 1990s, but now airbrushed within an inch of its life and packaged for profit. I grew up around many families who adopted this sort of “homesteader” approach, and for many, I think(?), it was fine! But as an adult, too many of my friends and acquaintances in that world have come out with stories of abuse, neglect, control, oppression, or harm. All I can hope is that the Tradwives of 2024 will allow their kids to discover their own way of being in the world.

I’d love to hear your [respectful] thoughts on this. My friend Katie shared something really nuanced and kind that I LOVED:

“I find it demeaning that people demote women that are moms to ‘just a mom’ or ‘trad wife,’ when they see motherhood as a priority in their lives. [Hannah Neeleman] has a business empire named after her ballerina life. If she was those things and NOT a devoted mom of eight, I don’t think there would be a critical angle. But because marriage and motherhood are part of her dream, somehow it is suspicious or means less or is perceived as less of an accomplishment.

All of that said, I don’t think the article was especially offensive. I thought it was a good read and more objective than other readers found it. There was a lot of important truth in that last line about all women giving things up to get where we want to go — I think that was a great point and misinterpreted by a lot of readers.”

Thank you, Katie!!

The kind of trend I prefer? Demure husbands. Lol.

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What on EARTH is Going on With Blake Lively?

Well, a billion of you have texted me about this, so HERE WE GO!

Background: Blake Lively is starring in “It Ends With Us,” a new movie based on a wildly popular book of the same name by Colleen Hoover.³ It’s about a woman who falls in love with a physically abusive man and how she finds her way out. Really serious, really dark, really important subject matter for us to talk about in safe ways and build a culture of safety around.

Where it went sideways: Lively is both a star in and producer of the film. The director, Justin Baldoni, owns the film rights and stars as the husband. People noticed a rift between Baldoni and the rest of the cast: Unfollows on Instagram, separate press engagements, etc. It seemed to center around Lively and Baldoni disagreeing about the artistic direction of the film, but all kinds of rumors were flying: Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds wrote a scene without permission, nobody likes Baldoni, Baldoni body-shamed Lively, Lively didn’t want to focus on domestic violence, yada yada.

I cannot emphasize enough that WE DON’T KNOW what went down. It got bad enough, though, that Baldoni hired a crisis PR firm.

Then people started noticing something about Lively: Baldoni’s interviews about the movie exhibit a depth of care, nuance, and activism for domestic violence survivors. Lively, meanwhile, has used the film as an opportunity to debut a hair-care line, joked through serious questions about abuse, featured a cocktail called “It Ends with Buzz” for her alcohol brand Betty Buzz, and promoted the film with the phrase “Grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see it!”

Yes, Blake Lively is a lifestyle brand more than she is an actress, but seriously, what are we doing here? “Girls’ night out” to see intimate partner abuse?!? Her vibe on the press tour comes across, at best, as an utter lack of emotional intelligence. So then the internet dredged up all kinds of past interviews and facts that show her in varying shades of bad light, with her plantation wedding, old “antebellum” website, and just kind of bullying vibe in interviews. It’s not great, folks!

My takeaway: I don’t know what Lively’s life experience is or if she has a personal connection to domestic violence, but she fumbled the ball on approaching this with the right tone and care, which seems wild for someone who took on a project like this and I assume takes it seriously.

But I also feel like this kind of Internet pile-on is usually toxic in itself, and we don’t know the whole story. And there’s an element where we’re just yelling at each other while Blake Lively cashes her well-earned checks.

Let’s not forget: The movie is crushing at the box office, and all the hype at this point is just making a TON of money for Lively, Baldoni, Sony, et al. I will probably not be seeing it, but I am curious to hear y’all’s thoughts.

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That’s all for this week, folks! That felt like a DOOZY! Three footnotes! I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions in the comments, or drop a heart if you liked reading. Thank you SO much for joining me. :)

1. [FingerSuit and Olive & June both have great non-glue press-ons for when you want to feel oh-so-pretty and all your texts to be typos.]

2. [OK, but maybe my favorite thing out of all of this is finding out that Jon Batiste loves Ballerina Farm??? He commented “♥️🙏🏾” on her post after the article.]

3. [I have not read it and don’t want to. The main character works in a flower shop, and her name is Lily Blossom Bloom? No! Also the storyline seems like an abuse plot played for the sake of a love triangle, which is !?!]