Performance Isn't the Problem
On tradwives, Instagram, and why wanting to be witnessed isn't the same as being fake.
Natalie is the perfect tradwife. She has a large family, a homestead in Idaho, a curated Christian “aesthetic” (because that’s what is being portrayed here), and millions of followers watching her live the rural housewives dream. Raw milk, fresh farm eggs, but behind the scenes, a production staff and multiple industrial grade ovens help make the perfect life, perfectly manufactured.
The problem isn’t that Natalie is performing and idolized by millions of people and she’s sharing parts of her life. The problem is that her performance is a lie. Social media amplifies what we allow it to see. My problem with Natalie is that she’s creating a fake life of herself, one she paid for, rather than actually working for it. I’d call her a con artist.
“The goal of an influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addiction.”
Natalie isn’t performing for herself. She’s performing an idea of a tradwife, one she thought she could sell.
“[…] The trend performance of womanhood.”
Now she’s a mask fused with a face, unable to separate who she is from what she performs.
But at what cost? What about when the addiction is based on lies? I feel like this relates to my social media presence, because I post daily if not frequently too. I want people to like what I have to say and share — not to the point of addiction, but enough for people to come back and follow for more book recommendations, outfit inspiration, and just a silly good time.
I challenged myself in May to post every single day on Instagram. The goal was for me to get outside of my comfort zone and learn how to be creative and post whatever I want to — break through the barrier between my worries and embarrassment. We’ll get into the positives and what I learned, but I also found myself constantly refreshing my notifications to see how many people liked my post, if I had new followers, and what they were saying about what I was sharing.
So what’s the difference between Natalie and me?
I noticed that on the days I posted something I genuinely loved — a book I couldn’t stop thinking about, an outfit that made me feel like myself, sharing my journal ecosystems — the notifications didn’t matter as much. I still checked them, but the post already felt complete before anyone responded to it! The difference between what I should post and what I wanted to post taught me just how much nothing matters except how I feel.
Posting every day taught me that creativity is a muscle and consistency is how you build it, but ultimately it taught me that in order for me to want others to praise my work, I first need to be proud of myself. By the end of May I was reaching for my camera differently, not to perform a moment but to capture one. The barrier between what I wanted to share and being afraid of sharing was still there (and it still is), but it got smaller. It’s not because I stopped caring what other people thought, but because I started caring more about what I thought.
I still wanted the attention and it’s silly for me to pretend otherwise. But I was refreshing my notifications on something that was actually mine, for myself.
That’s the difference between Natalie and me. Not that I don’t perform. I do. I think we all do if we’re posting on social media on some level. You can disagree with me, and that’s fine.
The problem was never performance. The problem is performing a lie. Building an audience on a version of yourself you had to manufacture and maintain, a self you don’t actually go home to at the end of the day. Natalie’s performance is the mask that fused with her face.
What I posted in May didn’t require industrial grade ovens or a production staff. It required me to show up as myself (awkward, goofy, and quietly sometimes confident), but alway honest. Wanting people to respond to that isn’t vanity. I think it’s just being human. I believe that we have always wanted to be witnessed. The question is whether what we’re asking people to witness is real or not.
I’m going to keep posting. I’m going to want people to like it. There’s a version of sharing that comes from a full place, and a version that comes from an empty one. Natalie’s version of herself hollowed her out. I want mine to keep filling me up.
The performance isn’t the problem. It never was. It’s what you’re performing, and whether at the end of the day, you can still find yourself underneath it all.
