Weekly Rumination16

TRAD LIFE: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

This week, I’m ruminating about misplaced nostalgia.

I’ve always had a hankering for the simple life. A life less complicated, where there’s fresh air, ruddy-cheeked children, dogs, and happy sheep and donkeys playing in the field. Yet, in reality, I bear the translucent skin of people who dwell in caves. So, it’s no wonder I’ve become rather fascinated by the traditional life movement known in Twitterland as #tradlife.

It seems mostly youngish, white women are tweeting about their traditional lifestyle with its homespun ethos, littered with home-schooled projects. As a child I was quite taken with the back-to-nature movement of the 70’s and I was quite a fan, in theory, of the homesteading rage of the 90’s, but the #tradlife proponents tend to also be proponents of #whiteculture, whatever that means. Peppering their posts with advertising tropes from the good old days, ranging from Victorian images of cozy homes filled with wall-to-wall bric-a-brac to Dick and Jane era depictions of middle-class, two-parent, one-income families improbably dressed in hats – they’re perpetuating the myth that life was much better…then.

It’s seductive to think that the world would be a better place if people understood their role and place within it and acted accordingly. The over-reliance on the importance of epidermal pigmentation and strict gender norms is a dangerous obsession that has historically led to misery, bondage of the non-recreational sort, and the erosion of personal, familial, and communal liberties. However, history is typically written from the winner’s point of view and by those in power who are desperate to keep it and perpetuate it. Confirmation bias cements their worldview and the striving for a mythical place and time begins in earnest. Obviously, I have my own biases, and to put it in terms I think these advocates would understand, I think #tradlife is a load of preposterous poppycock

The people who advocate for #tradlife do acknowledge and admit that all families and relationships are imperfect and have challenges, but they’re just so darn smug about it all. But hey, they’re free to espouse their rigid vision of a life less colorful and variegated, and I’m free to take umbrage and react. So, I tweeted my unsolicited take of this phenomenon and summed it up in a Storify post entitled, Trad Life: Be Careful What You Wish For. You’ll be relieved to know there are no references to banjos, mandolins, or tin whistles.

~ Emery Lamb