Latest news with #YoungWomen'sLeadershipSummit
IOL News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Is a floral dress a political statement?
Rachel Tashjian When the conservative youth group Turning Point USA was planning its recent Young Women's Leadership Summit in Texas, organizers sent out a Pinterest mood board of suggested looks. Amid a few images of sleeveless vests, skirt suits and pleated skirts were a number of floral dresses: some with puffed princess sleeves, others with a more casual, backyard-barnyard fit and a few that looked like vintage nightgowns. The attendees either took note of the mood board or didn't need it: reporting from the summit, Washington Post reporter Kara Voght described the attendees' looks as 'a smear of pastels and florals - ruffles on their dresses, cowboy boots on their feet, bows on their curls. The aesthetic could be summed up as Laura Ingalls Wilder-core, as if the little house on the prairie had been down the street from a Sephora.' Is the floral dress now the uniform of the conservative 'it' girl? Maybe as conservatives, especially millennials and Gen Z, become a cultural force rallying for women to take on more conventional roles of motherhood and homemaking, they are looking for the clothes that express, or align with, their worldview. A look at the recent fashion history of prairie and sundress styles makes this notion head spinning. The first wave came almost a decade ago, when Batsheva Hay began producing clothes inspired by her childhood obsession with Laura Ashley's Victoriana calico and floral printed dresses. Hay's upbringing in Queens was far from Ashley's very sincere life in the British countryside - the designer recalls reading that Ashley would bring fresh fruit from her farm into the office - but her printed prairie dresses, with puffed shoulders and ruffles on the cuffs and hems, became an unexpected hit, with celebrities like Chloë Sevigny, Natalie Portman and Erykah Badu wearing them out and about in New York and Los Angeles. 'The idea was that they were like a treat for me - these feminine, girly dresses that contrasted with my very corporate career as a lawyer, or that gave me something 'modest' or traditional to wear for Shabbat dinner that still allowed me to express myself,' Hay said. 'It was very much winking at this old-fashioned femininity.' Both Hay and her customers often wear the dresses with something unexpected: combat boots, or a baseball cap, or an outrageous lip color or hairstyle that make it clear the wearer is playing with these old-fashioned ideas about domesticity and womanhood. 'A lot of women feel like they need to f--- it up somehow.' Batsheva's dresses became a symbol of female empowerment - a statement that you could embrace traditional femininity without looking the part of the oppressed housewife. Other brands launched in the years following that also seemed to celebrate a more 'classic' concept of femininity with varying degrees of irony. New Yorker Sandy Liang has a cult following of Gen Z fans who love her ballerina-inspired sportswear. Then there is Doen, a line featuring simple nightgown-inspired dresses started by two sisters in California, as well as Loveshackfancy, a New York-based label that makes Laura Ashley-esque florals in much sexier cuts, often with bare midriffs or exposed hips. Hay's dresses continued in popularity as trends like cottagecore, a pandemic-era frenzy that romanticized country life, and modest fashion began permeating women's wardrobes. But increasingly, Hay says, she has seen dresses on conservative women - women like Hannah Neeleman, also known as Ballerina Farm on social media, who is often considered the beacon of the tradwife movement - that very much resemble hers. 'It's really fascinating to see,' Hay said. 'They take the idea of these dresses, this romanticized idea of living in the country, and interpret it very earnestly.' Cottagecore practitioners were just fantasizing that they wanted to move to the country and become a stay-at-home moms - until something shifted and a lot of women suddenly, sincerely, wanted to. Last year, Evie Magazine, which is often called Cosmo for new conservatives, released what it calls the 'Raw Milkmaid Dress,' a fitted frock with puffed sleeves and a plunging neckline that emphasizes the décolletage and hugs the waist. It recalls the simple white dresses Marie Antoinette had made for her respites at the Petit Trianon, where (in a presaging of the cottagecore movement, perhaps) she played house and pet barnyard animals to escape the complex voyeurism of Versailles. Brittany Hugoboom, Evie's founder, said in an email interview that her team designed the dress for a cover story with Neeleman when they couldn't find the perfect milkmaid dress for their photo shoot. Hugoboom pointed to shows like 'Bridgerton' as the reason behind the revival of milkmaid styles. 'We took all our favorite elements from 18th-century French 'peasant' dresses, Regency era bodices, pieces worn in iconic films, and made it modern enough that supermodels would wear it to brunch,' she said. Evie has also introduced 'The Perfect Sundress,' a style with a built-in bra, which Hugoboom says sold out in 48 hours. 'Evie was always envisioned as a 'one-stop shop for femininity,'' said Hugoboom, whose publication is perhaps best-known for its Instagram account, with over 220,000 followers double-tapping posts that celebrate a traditional brand of femininity: the hottest guys of all time, 'how to stay madly in love with your husband' and clips of tradwives like Nara Smith speaking about the challenges of motherhood. She plans to introduce more clothes in the future. 'Instead of competing with men, many of us want to lean into our feminine traits like beauty, sensuality, softness, and charm,' she said. 'In recent years, trends have shifted toward women dressing for other women. We'll clock a Row handbag or a Khaite top and nod. But a lot of trends, like mom jeans or oversize blazers, aren't looks men love. So our goal was simple: dresses that women love to wear and men love to see women wearing. We love men, and we love being women. To me, it's a sign that the gender wars may finally be cooling off.' Biz Sherbert, a brand consultant and writer who often covers beauty standards and style in the second Trump era, describes conservative style not through a garment, per se. 'A lot of people are trying to define it because so much value is placed on it,' she said. 'Like, 'these are the women we're fighting for,' or 'this is what we need to preserve.'' Melania Trump may be the face of American conservative womanhood, but she most often wears highly tailored, almost armor-like styles that seem to protect her like a shell, along with tall spiked heels. It's far from the romantic styles of cottagecore. Sherbert also sees women on the right making tweaks to more traditional styles, but they are in the name of sex appeal instead of eccentricity - a high neck top with a very short skirt, or pearls with a minidress. 'There's an implicit sense of how a man would see this,' she said. 'A woman might say, 'Oh, that dress is cute.' But the real deciding factor would be a man saying, 'Oh, that's not a vibe.'' For Sherbert, the turning point when ultrafeminine styles moved from cheeky to sincere was the mania around tiny little bows in late 2023. 'On the TikTok shop, I would see Trump 2024 merchandise that was super coquette,' she said, referring to the TikTok aesthetic that emphasized ultra girly femininity. 'It was using this visual language that I had seen come up through Sandy Liang and people inspired by her,' said Sherbert. 'It was this brand of pastiche femininity that was so strong, and people [described as] reclaiming girlhood, but no one could ever substantiate why that was radical. It was vaguely feminist but ill-defined.' So how could so many women see different things in the same dress? 'People are consuming a lot of the same content, and then they go down different ideological rabbit holes,' she said. 'Maybe in this case, Republicans or conservatives are better at walking the walk of these lifestyles: They're actually going to go homestead. I'm not just going to live in Brooklyn and have this cottagecore fantasy.' Many of those in the new conservative movement, Sherbert pointed out, have been influenced by the culture and politics of an over-scrutinized New York neighborhood called Dimes Square, a pandemic party zone that nurtured a sense of skepticism around the left. Incidentally, Sandy Liang's shop is right in the middle, and Batsheva is just a few blocks away.
Axios
7 days ago
- Health
- Axios
Gen Z influencers give RFK Jr.'s movement new edge
A new wave of teen influencers is gaining followers by touting ideas central to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s public health movement, adding a Gen Z edge to a following that's trended toward wellness entrepreneurs and so-called MAHA moms. Why it matters: The distrust of Big Pharma and antiestablishment health messaging may create a convenient gateway into conservative politics for adolescents and young adults. The big picture: Youth influencers are driven in part by concerns about chronic disease they see in their parents. The New York Times has even dubbed them "crunchy teens" for their embrace of natural living. Case in point: Adolescents who've gained big followings on TikTok and Instagram include 17-year-old Ava Noe — a Make America Healthy Again supporter with the handle @cleanlivingwithava who has more than 27,200 followers— and 16-year-old Annika Zude, known online as @thatcrunchygirlannika, who has more than 38,600 followers. They're joined by peers like 19-year-olds Lexi Vrachalus and Grace Price, known as the MAHA Girls, who extol followers to "detox your life" and enumerate what they claim are harmful ingredients in consumer products. "Girls our age are looking for answers," Price told CNN. "They have this opportunity to take ownership of their health, or they're going to fall victim to Big Pharma and Big Food." Between the line: The messaging syncs with Kennedy's agenda, down to advocacy of beef tallow and criticism of refined sugar. And the often female influencers offer a younger twist on "MAHA moms," who push health content around raising children in homes that are free of highly processed foods and, in some cases, vaccines and other pharmaceutical interventions. The convergence of wellness and politics was apparent at last month's Young Women's Leadership Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA, which featured influencers like Alex Clark, a millennial known for her podcast "Culture Apothecary" who testified at a Senate hearing on chronic illness, the Times reported. "What dipped my toe into all of this was the MAHA movement," Rhaelynn Zito, a nurse, told the Times, recounting her embrace of conservative ideals, as well as skepticism of vaccines and abortions. Health communications experts warn much of the content contains misinformation and, in some cases, comes from minors passing themselves off as experts. "The teen MAHA influencers like Lexi and Grace do not have the expertise and training to discuss health topics online," Katrine Wallace, epidemiologist at the University of Illinois Chicago, who debunks questionable health claims, told Axios. She pointed to their criticism of fluoride and seed oils based on research they'd done online when scientifically validated studies don't support those positions. Health providers also worry about the unhealthy promotion of disordered eating wrapped in a veneer of health and wellness. "It's also important to recognize that the line between empowerment and misinformation can get blurry on platforms like TikTok, where personal anecdotes often substitute for evidence," A. Susana Ramírez, associate professor of public health communication at the University of California, Merced told the publication Parents about the trend. What to watch: Whether these teen influencers start mobilizing young voters toward Kennedy and like-minded figures.
Boston Globe
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Is a floral dress a political statement?
Advertisement Is the floral dress now the uniform of the conservative 'it' girl? Maybe as conservatives, especially millennials and Gen Z, become a cultural force rallying for women to take on more conventional roles of motherhood and homemaking, they are looking for the clothes that express, or align with, their worldview. Alex Clark, (second from left) a wellness influencer and podcaster, at the Young Women's Leadership Summit on June 14. Organizers sent out a Pinterest mood board of suggested looks ahead of the summit. JAKE DOCKINS/NYT A look at the recent fashion history of prairie and sundress styles makes this notion head spinning. The first wave came almost a decade ago, when Batsheva Hay began producing clothes inspired by her childhood obsession with Laura Ashley's Victoriana calico and floral printed dresses. Hay's upbringing in Queens was far from Ashley's very sincere life in the British countryside — the designer recalls reading that Ashley would bring fresh fruit from her farm into the office — but her printed prairie dresses, with puffed shoulders and ruffles on the cuffs and hems, became an unexpected hit, with celebrities like Chloë Sevigny, Natalie Portman and Erykah Badu wearing them out and about in New York and Los Angeles. Related : Advertisement 'The idea was that they were like a treat for me — these feminine, girly dresses that contrasted with my very corporate career as a lawyer, or that gave me something 'modest' or traditional to wear for Shabbat dinner that still allowed me to express myself,' Hay said. 'It was very much winking at this old-fashioned femininity.' Both Hay and her customers often wear the dresses with something unexpected: combat boots, or a baseball cap, or an outrageous lip color or hairstyle that make it clear the wearer is playing with these old-fashioned ideas about domesticity and womanhood. 'A lot of women feel like they need to f*** it up somehow.' Batsheva's dresses became a symbol of female empowerment — a statement that you could embrace traditional femininity without looking the part of the oppressed housewife. Other brands launched in the years following that also seemed to celebrate a more 'classic' concept of femininity with varying degrees of irony. New Yorker Sandy Liang has a cult following of Gen Z fans who love her ballerina-inspired sportswear. Then there is Doen, a line featuring simple nightgown-inspired dresses started by two sisters in California, as well as Loveshackfancy, a New York-based label that makes Laura Ashley-esque florals in much sexier cuts, often with bare midriffs or exposed hips. Hay's dresses continued in popularity as trends like cottagecore, a pandemic-era frenzy that romanticized country life, and modest fashion began permeating women's wardrobes. But increasingly, Hay says, she has seen dresses on conservative women — women like Hannah Neeleman, also known as Ballerina Farm on social media, who is often considered the beacon of the tradwife movement — that very much resemble hers. Advertisement 'It's really fascinating to see,' Hay said. 'They take the idea of these dresses, this romanticized idea of living in the country, and interpret it very earnestly.' Cottagecore practitioners were just fantasizing that they wanted to move to the country and become a stay-at-home moms — until something shifted and a lot of women suddenly, sincerely, wanted to. Attendees at the Young Women's Leadership Summit in Grapevine. Many women often pair their prairie and sundress styles with something unexpected: combat boots, or a baseball cap, or an outrageous lip color or hairstyle. JAKE DOCKINS/NYT Last year, Evie Magazine, which is often called Cosmo for new conservatives, released what it calls the 'Raw Milkmaid Dress,' a fitted frock with puffed sleeves and a plunging neckline that emphasizes the décolletage and hugs the waist. It recalls the simple white dresses Marie Antoinette had made for her respites at the Petit Trianon, where (in a presaging of the cottagecore movement, perhaps) she played house and pet barnyard animals to escape the complex voyeurism of Versailles. Brittany Hugoboom, Evie's founder, said in an email interview that her team designed the dress for a cover story with Neeleman when they couldn't find the perfect milkmaid dress for their photo shoot. Hugoboom pointed to shows like 'Bridgerton' as the reason behind the revival of milkmaid styles. 'We took all our favorite elements from 18th-century French 'peasant' dresses, Regency era bodices, pieces worn in iconic films, and made it modern enough that supermodels would wear it to brunch,' she said. Related : Evie has also introduced 'The Perfect Sundress,' a style with a built-in bra, which Hugoboom says sold out in 48 hours. 'Evie was always envisioned as a 'one-stop shop for femininity,'' said Hugoboom, whose publication is perhaps best-known for its Instagram account, with over 220,000 followers double-tapping posts that celebrate a traditional brand of femininity: the hottest guys of all time, 'how to stay madly in love with your husband' and clips of tradwives like Nara Smith speaking about the challenges of motherhood. She plans to introduce more clothes in the future. Advertisement 'Instead of competing with men, many of us want to lean into our feminine traits like beauty, sensuality, softness, and charm,' she said. 'In recent years, trends have shifted toward women dressing for other women. We'll clock a Row handbag or a Khaite top and nod. But a lot of trends, like mom jeans or oversize blazers, aren't looks men love. So our goal was simple: dresses that women love to wear and men love to see women wearing. We love men, and we love being women. To me, it's a sign that the gender wars may finally be cooling off.' Biz Sherbert, a brand consultant and writer who often covers beauty standards and style in the second Trump era, describes conservative style not through a garment, per se. 'A lot of people are trying to define it because so much value is placed on it,' she said. 'Like, 'these are the women we're fighting for,' or 'this is what we need to preserve.'' Melania Trump may be the face of American conservative womanhood, but she most often wears highly tailored, almost armor-like styles that seem to protect her like a shell, along with tall spiked heels. It's far from the romantic styles of cottagecore. Related : Advertisement Sherbert also sees women on the right making tweaks to more traditional styles, but they are in the name of sex appeal instead of eccentricity — a high neck top with a very short skirt, or pearls with a minidress. 'There's an implicit sense of how a man would see this,' she said. 'A woman might say, ' Oh, that dress is cute.' But the real deciding factor would be a man saying, 'Oh, that's not a vibe.'" Attendees at the Young Women's Leadership Summit in Grapevine. Brittany Hugoboom, founder of the conservative magazine Evie, said that "many" of her customers "want to lean into our feminine traits like beauty, sensuality, softness, and charm." JAKE DOCKINS/NYT For Sherbert, the turning point when ultrafeminine styles moved from cheeky to sincere was the mania around tiny little bows in late 2023. 'On the TikTok shop, I would see Trump 2024 merchandise that was super coquette,' she said, referring to the TikTok aesthetic that emphasized ultra girly femininity. 'It was using this visual language that I had seen come up through Sandy Liang and people inspired by her,' said Sherbert. 'It was this brand of pastiche femininity that was so strong, and people [described as] reclaiming girlhood, but no one could ever substantiate why that was radical. It was vaguely feminist but ill-defined.' So how could so many women see different things in the same dress? 'People are consuming a lot of the same content, and then they go down different ideological rabbit holes,' she said. 'Maybe in this case, Republicans or conservatives are better at walking the walk of these lifestyles: They're actually going to go homestead. I'm not just going to live in Brooklyn and have this cottagecore fantasy.' Many of those in the new conservative movement, Sherbert pointed out, have been influenced by the culture and politics of an over-scrutinized New York neighborhood called Dimes Square, a pandemic party zone that nurtured a sense of skepticism around the left. Incidentally, Sandy Liang's shop is right in the middle, and Batsheva is just a few blocks away. Advertisement
Gulf Today
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Oh please, the right is reviving a tired trope about women
Robin Abcarian, Tribune News Service Here we go again. A bunch of successful, conservative professional women are telling young women they don't need careers to have fulfilling lives. All they need to do is avoid college (or better yet, just use it to find a husband), get married, have babies, stay home and live happily ever after. Perhaps you've noticed the proliferation of "tradwife" (i.e. traditional wife) influencers on various forms of social media, or the coverage of conferences like the woefully misnamed Young Women's Leadership Summit that recently took place in Dallas. A project of Charlie Kirk's conservative student organisation, Turning Point USA, the summit promised to focus on "foundational aspects of womanhood" such as "faith, femininity and well-being." The conference drew 3,000 women who, according to reports, were mostly college students or young professionals. They sported pins that read "My favourite season is the fall of feminism" and "Dump your socialist boyfriend," and they were told by Kirk, "We should bring back the celebration of the Mrs. degree." "The left wants women to feel angry and like victims, and like your rights are being taken away," a 31-year-old influencer named Arynne Wexler told a reporter for New York magazine. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in fact her rights are being taken away. Perhaps she has forgotten that the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in 2022? Anyway, there is absolutely nothing new here. A certain subset ofwomen — straight, white, conservative, religious — has always fought against gender equality for their own reasons, but mostly I'd say because it threatens their own privileged status and proximity to male power. Nearly half a century before Wexler bemoaned "the left," Phyllis Schlafly, lawyer, author and anti-feminist crusader, said basically the same thing: "The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy. Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness." Hmmm. I'm pretty sure it was the oppressive patriarchy that prevented women from owning property, having their own credit cards and bank accounts, from earning equal pay, accessing legal birth control and abortion, serving on juries and holding public office. Until second wave feminism came along in the 1960s and 1970s, I'm pretty sure, too, that oppressive patriarchy allowed employers to fire women once they married or got pregnant, and that domestic violence, marital rape and sexual harassment were not treated as crimes. Oh, and it was feminists who pushed for Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which addressed gender inequality in education, including, crucially, in sports. Attacking feminism because you've never experienced a time when women were not, for the most part, legally equal to men springs from the same ignorant well as believing measles vaccines are unnecessary because you've never experienced the (largely vaccine-eliminated) disease for yourself. Indeed, reciting the accomplishments of feminism reminds me of that classic scene in the 1979 black comedy "Monty Python's Life of Brian." You may recall it: What have the Romans ever given us? (Just sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health.) A consistent thread in the argument against gender equality is that feminism makes women feel bad for staying home with their kids and not pursuing careers. In Dallas last month, young conference-goers told the New York Times "that it was feminism and career ambition making them unhappy, not the broader stress of puzzle-piecing together the responsibilities of modern life." In 1994, former First Lady Barbara Bush said she had experienced a period of depression and partly attributed it to "the women's movement," which, as she told NPR, "sort of made women who stayed home feel inadequate." I get that. But in response, I would paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt: No one can make you feel inadequate without your consent. If you are lucky enough to be able to stay home with your children and do not feel compelled to carve out a career, more power to you. Alex Clark, a popular podcaster and influencer who headlined the Young Women's Leadership Conference, offered the crowd her Make America Healthy Again formula: "Less Prozac and more protein. Less burnout, more babies, less feminism, more femininity." But having lots of babies is stressful — having one baby is stressful — and can certainly lead to its own kind of burnout. One of the most popular tradwives in the country, Hannah Neeleman, is a Mormon mother of eight young children. She is married to a rancher who is the son of the founder of Jet Blue, has more than 9 million social media followers and, as a former professional ballerina, posts under the handle Ballerina Farm. Last summer, in a profile published by the Times of London, she was dubbed the "queen of tradwives." We learned that she does all the food shopping, makes all the meals and has no help with childcare. I would submit that she is a career woman as well, since she runs popular social media accounts that generate millions of dollars a year in income. In a stunning admission, her husband told the London Times reporter that his wife "sometimes gets so ill from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week."
Los Angeles Times
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Oh please, the right is reviving a tired trope about women
Here we go again. A bunch of successful, conservative professional women are telling young women they don't need careers to have fulfilling lives. All they need to do is avoid college (or better yet, just use it to find a husband), get married, have babies, stay home and live happily ever after. Perhaps you've noticed the proliferation of 'tradwife' (i.e. traditional wife) influencers on various forms of social media, or the coverage of conferences like the woefully misnamed Young Women's Leadership Summit that recently took place in Dallas. A project of Charlie Kirk's conservative student organization, Turning Point USA, the summit promised to focus on 'foundational aspects of womanhood' such as 'faith, femininity and well-being.' The conference drew 3,000 women who, according to reports, were mostly college students or young professionals. They sported pins that read 'My favorite season is the fall of feminism' and 'Dump your socialist boyfriend,' and they were told by Kirk, 'We should bring back the celebration of the Mrs. degree.' 'The left wants women to feel angry and like victims, and like your rights are being taken away,' a 31-year-old influencer named Arynne Wexler told a reporter for New York magazine. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in fact her rights are being taken away. Perhaps she has forgotten that the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in 2022? Anyway, there is absolutely nothing new here. A certain subset of women — straight, white, conservative, religious — has always fought against gender equality for their own reasons, but mostly I'd say because it threatens their own privileged status and proximity to male power. Nearly half a century before Wexler bemoaned 'the left,' Phyllis Schlafly, lawyer, author and anti-feminist crusader, said basically the same thing: 'The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy. Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.' Hmmm. I'm pretty sure it was oppressive patriarchy that prevented women from owning property, having their own credit cards and bank accounts, from earning equal pay, accessing legal birth control and abortion, serving on juries and holding public office. Until second wave feminism came along in the 1960s and 1970s, I'm pretty sure, too, that oppressive patriarchy allowed employers to fire women once they married or got pregnant, and that domestic violence, marital rape and sexual harassment were not treated as crimes. Oh, and it was feminists who pushed for Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which addressed gender inequality in education, including, crucially, in sports. Attacking feminism because you've never experienced a time when women were not, for the most part, legally equal to men springs from the same ignorant well as believing measles vaccines are unnecessary because you've never experienced the (largely vaccine-eliminated) disease for yourself. Indeed, reciting the accomplishments of feminism reminds me of that classic scene in the 1979 black comedy 'Monty Python's Life of Brian.' You may recall it: What have the Romans ever given us? (Just sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health.) A consistent thread in the argument against gender equality is that feminism makes women feel bad for staying home with their kids and not pursuing careers. In Dallas last month, young conference-goers told the New York Times 'that it was feminism and career ambition making them unhappy, not the broader stress of puzzle-piecing together the responsibilities of modern life.' In 1994, then-First Lady Barbara Bush said she had experienced a period of depression and partly attributed it to 'the women's movement,' which, as she told NPR, 'sort of made women who stayed home feel inadequate.' I get that. But in response, I would paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt: No one can make you feel inadequate without your consent. If you are lucky enough to be able to stay home with your children and do not feel compelled to carve out a career, more power to you. Alex Clark, a popular podcaster and influencer who headlined the Young Women's Leadership Conference, offered the crowd her Make America Healthy Again formula: 'Less Prozac and more protein. Less burnout, more babies, less feminism, more femininity.' But having lots of babies is stressful — having one baby is stressful — and can certainly lead to its own kind of burnout. One of the most popular tradwives in the country, Hannah Neeleman, is a Mormon mother of eight young children. She is married to a rancher who is the son of the founder of Jet Blue, has more than 9 million social media followers and, as a former professional ballerina, posts under the handle Ballerina Farm. Last summer, in a profile published by the Times of London, she was dubbed the 'queen of tradwives.' We learned that she does all the food shopping, makes all the meals and has no help with childcare. I would submit that she is a career woman as well, since she runs popular social media accounts that generate millions of dollars a year in income. In a stunning admission, her husband told the London Times reporter that his wife 'sometimes gets so ill from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week.' I could not help but think of Mormon housewives in the state of Utah, which has led the nation in antidepressant prescriptions for decades. 'Most men here would just as soon their wives take pills than bother to delve into the problems, and maybe find out they might have something to do with the problems,' a Mormon mom told the Los Angeles Times in 2002, the year the prescription study was released. Dana Loesch, a conservative commentator, radio host and author who once shilled for the National Rifle Assn., was one of the speakers in Dallas whose reality contradicts her rhetoric. 'I'll tell you this, ladies,' she told the crowd. 'You cannot have it all, at the same time. Something will suffer.' Oh please. Loesch has it all — a career, marriage and kids. So why can't they? @ @rabcarian.
