Nara Smith Rejects the “Trad Wife” Label: “Why Can’t Women Choose Their Own Roles?”

Nara Smith, known for her vintage-style homemade cooking videos, has rejected the “trad wife” label in a candid interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, describing herself as a full-time working mom in a 50/50 parenting and provider partnership with her husband. She noted that her spouse handles most cleaning while she cooks out of genuine enjoyment, emphasising that short social media clips created a narrow identity not reflective of her real life.

Smith argued that women should freely choose their roles without society boxing them in for embracing femininity.

“They kind of used me as the poster child for the tradwife movement, which was very bizarre to me… With that definition and those points, I’m none of that.”

“I don’t prioritize being a homemaker. I’m a working mom. I am out in L.A. I travel a lot.”

“My husband and I split it 50/50. When he works, I watch them. When I work, he watches them.”

“I don’t think a tradwife would be cooking in Schiaparelli or a Moschino straight off the runway.”

Call Her Daddy Interview

Nara Smith’s Tradwife Image Is More Complicated Than the Label Suggests

The debate around Nara Smith exposes how loosely people now use the term “tradwife.” Cooking from scratch, marrying young or dressing glamorously in a kitchen does not automatically make someone part of a political movement. The traditional-wife ideology is usually built around male authority, female financial dependence and rigid gender roles. Nara’s public life appears far more complicated than that label allows. She works, models, travels, earns substantial income and has repeatedly said that she and her husband divide childcare and domestic responsibilities around their careers.

That does not mean the criticism is entirely invented. Nara carefully built an online image around hyper-femininity, elaborate homemaking and the fantasy of producing everything for her family by hand. Viewers made a reasonable connection between that aesthetic and the broader tradwife trend, especially because the same imagery often romanticises submission and women’s unpaid labour. Creators cannot profit from a highly specific image and then act surprised when audiences interpret the message behind it.

At the same time, her videos are clearly exaggerated entertainment. Making chewing gum, sunscreen or a meal requiring 24 hours of preparation while dressed in couture is closer to performance art than a realistic domestic routine. The absurdity is part of the appeal. Her content sells fantasy, humour, fashion and aspiration, not a practical guide to household management.

Fina Thoughts

The most useful distinction is between a tradwife aesthetic and an actual tradwife arrangement. Nara may borrow the visual language of traditional domesticity, but her career, income and shared parenting structure do not neatly fit the ideology. Her lifestyle is not traditional in any meaningful economic sense. It depends on modelling contracts, sponsorships, brand partnerships and millions of online viewers.

Her content raises legitimate questions, particularly when it glamorises domestic labour as effortless or promotes potentially unsafe lifestyle claims. But criticism should focus on what she has actually said and done, not assumptions that a woman cooking in a dress must oppose women voting. Reducing every young mother or homemaking influencer to “tradwife” weakens the term and makes it harder to identify the genuinely troubling movement built around female dependence and male control.