Por 
Roro, a Spanish content creator who makes cooking recipes “from scratch”, narrated with a sweet voice and always to satisfy the cravings of her boyfriend, Pablo, has gone viral on social media. Her content is part of a trend that glorifies traditional gender roles, with the movement of Tradwives, white women who make content like that of the Spaniard but adding a religious and politically conservative message, with the discourse of the “woman of value” who must cultivate “her feminine energy”; or the supposed “advantages” of having a “sugar daddy”, or being a “stay at home girlfriend”.
Roro began to generate controversy because the red piling incels of the internet, the manosphere, began to celebrate her as the ideal model of a woman, and this had a critical response from many women, warning that they didn’t want a girlfriend but a mom, or a cook. The problem is not doing things coded as feminine as caring, cooking, or housework. Above all, the problem is not that she is doing it, Roro, who is working as an influencer, that is, billing. What we see in networks of her relationship with Pablo is a very lucrative performance, which does not necessarily imply that within the relationship there is an inequality of power, because that content gives her economic autonomy.
The fantasy they present connects so well with “male” instincts that it is necessary to clarify that it is a fantasy: “C’est n’est pas une pipe!”. Suppose one becomes aware of the work behind what she shows, the dirty dishes, the planning, the purchase of supplies, the writing of the scripts, and the editing of the videos. In that case, you will see that the accounts do not add up, that if you made cornflakes from scratch you will have breakfast after half a day, and if you spent all day binding a book you don’t have time to make dinner.
Roro has said that her content is a performance and that she identifies as a feminist because she believes in equity, it could be that she identifies with white, liberal feminism that believes that the ultimate goal of the struggle is only to be able to choose. Fighting for freedom of choice for all women is feminist, and yes, the fight is even for women who choose to follow traditional roles to be able to do so safely (and if they are caregivers, to be recognized), but from there to saying that choosing to embody or perform the role of submission imposed on us by patriarchy, to decide to abandon our autonomy to prioritize, focus and serve the pleasure and well-being of men, above ourselves, is in itself a feminist action just because you chose it, is an absurd rhetorical pirouette, a somersault.
In reality, being able to choose is simply a symptom of that woman having enough power in the world. What feminism wants is for power to be equally distributed, so that everyone and everything can always choose, and not just the white heterocised middle and upper class women who boast of having chosen a traditional role. What feminism wants is not that women stop caring and cooking, it is that no one forces us to do it, that the measure of our humanity is not whether we do it or not, and that if we do choose to do it, it does not leave us vulnerable and unprotected. That we can leave or divorce if it goes wrong. If we are housewives, for whatever reason, and that husband or boyfriend one day decides to leave us we have a fair recognition for all the work we have invested in taking care of him, in supporting his career, that allows us to have security in his absence.
If feminists gnash our teeth over the promotion of a feminine role that takes us out of the public sphere and returns us to the private sphere to do domestic and care work without direct remuneration, it is because we know that in today’s world, and unless you are a rich heiress, this creates an economic dependence and a loss of autonomy that leaves us vulnerable to control and violence. Because we know (from feminists, and old women) that we live in patriarchy, where women still have a relationship of subalternity to men, and that this inequality has facilitated atrocities such as harassment, exploitation and femicide.
Betty Friedan had already said it. That in the fifties, women were sold the idea that it was wonderful to be suburban housewives. To middle-class white women, it should be made clear, because racialized and working-class women never stopped going out to be part of the wage-earning force. Friedan spoke of “the malaise that has no name”, to refer to a great existential void, a loss of meaning in life experienced by housewives when the whole family went on with their lives, and which often turned into chronic ailments or depression. In the U.S. there was an antidepressant advertisement with the slogan “How to do the dishes and like it.” Maybe it’s time to sit down with our grandmothers and ask them why, despite so much domestic bliss, women jumped the white picket fence in the garden and fought for rights like voting, owning property, getting divorced or working. The idea of returning to traditional roles where men are providers and women are caregivers is appealing in this crisis of late capitalism. Delightful not to have to think about money and have everything solved for you! But that’s a fantasy of returning to minority. Maybe it works for some young girls, but if it were such a good idea, where the fuck are the trad wifes over 40?
The Times has just published an in-depthprofile of Hannah Neeleman, a 34-year-old Mormon, one of YouTube’s most famous Tradwifes. Neeleman is married to billionaire JetBlue airline heir Daniel Neeleman. They met in New York when she was an aspiring professional dancer studying at Julliard, no less. They met and in no time they were engaged, married, and then she was the first pregnant woman in her school’s program. She wanted to get married after she finished her degree, but he wouldn’t allow it. Of course, she had to give up ballet, something that, she confesses in the interview, was very painful for her. Daniel wanted to live on a farm with everything organic and natural, he proposed and she accepted. Today they have 8 children! The guy, despite being covered in money, does not let her have a nanny, except of course when it suits him, and he wants to have a “date night” (which happens once a week) and in the profile he says that sometimes she is so exhausted that she has to sleep for a whole week.
Neelema, who had just given birth, participated in and won the Mrs. American contest, getting up early to do weights before her children got up and taking “ice baths” and iron supplements to recover quickly during the postpartum period. The journalist wonders, “empowerment or oppression?” The Neelemans acknowledge that this is a family business, they are co-CEOs, and say their relationship is egalitarian, but she cannot tell, in front of her husband, that with one of her daughters, she had an epidural and loved it. The journalist notes that Neeleman can’t answer a single question without being corrected by her husband or interrupted by her children. She asks if they are going to have more children, and he immediately answers that they want to fill their 15-seat minivan. She instead hesitates and replies, “let’s see, we’re exhausted and getting old…”
Roro says she doesn’t understand why people get upset with her cooking videos, but behind that little voice is a smart and competent girl, of course she understands. She says she doesn’t promote anything and that she only makes recipes because she loves to cook, and it’s how she shows love to her boyfriend. But she doesn’t do that in a vacuum, she does it in a context where women have been historically exploited through those caretaking jobs. As Kamala would say, Roro didn’t fall out of a coconut. Her life and style content is not innocent, it has political implications and a cultural influence. For example, Mexican tiktoker Alejandro Flores, writes: “Why are feminists upset? Envious! Because this girl came to raise the bar for all of them.
It is showing a lot of men in Spain and in the world, things that they can expect from a relationship and that they would like to have in a relationship, and obviously many feminists who give less than the minimum in a relationship don’t like this because men say wey, I don’t have to settle for the bad treatment that all these women here give me, because there are women who are willing to treat me well. […] I invite more women to make content where they show that they are happy in their relationship, that they like to treat their boyfriend well, so that more girls say, oh look, it turns out that I don’t necessarily have to hate men. […] When all these young girls swallow the discourse that they have to treat men like garbage and a worthwhile man comes along, they don’t know how to treat him and that’s why they get peeled off. […] So many feminists criticizing these girls from their spiteful bachelorhood, it’s because they want to have you just as spiteful keeping them company.”
Ramos claims that feminists hate men, but what his speech shows is that there are men like him who hate feminists. Ramos equates treating well with doing unpaid care work. Many women are nurturing to their partners. Others are not. Others more or less. Because, as humans, we have personal desires, moral range, different personalities. For centuries, men have demanded care work from us, which they are not willing to recognize or pay for, from all women. They have called this love and good treatment. This fantasy that we take care of them like their mothers is also an immature fantasy of returning to minority. If we equate loving with providing a service, and at some point we don’t want to provide that service, love becomes a form of compulsion. Ramos delivers the usual threat: if you don’t assume this traditional role you will be left alone, “nobody will love you”. It is an excellent blackmail because we all want and need to be loved, and the punishment for women who do not embrace the patriarchy seems to be loneliness. That, in the first place, is a lie, because feminism teaches you to de-center your life from your bond with a man. To find love in other ways and in other bonds. To express it as each one feels more comfortable. To not have to give up autonomy and power to have love. To not let love become a form of control.
Misogyny punishes. That is why Kate Manne says it is the policing arm of the patriarchy. It punishes all women who do not perform the paradigm that Roro promotes. It will punish Roro herself when one day she is tired, colicky, and doesn’t want to look at her boyfriend with absolute adoration. Not all those who decide to be housewives will be working and earning money as influencers. Some are just going to be exploited, by guys less nice than Pablito. And those who don’t embrace that model will be punished. Because it looks like a choice, but it’s not. When you can choose freely, no one threatens you with the punishment of dislike, contempt, or violence.
