Something I have noticed about conservative women with time
Warning, this post is probably not going to sit well with outsiders to my blog. Don't read if you consider yourself a feminist or an "ally" to women. Not because what I say is insulting. It's not. But I know how people lose their minds over any view point outside of their own.
I mean you could read it. But why would you if you disagree with me from the start?
I consider myself a traditionalist. But although I'm more traditional than most women, that does not mean I am the pinnacle of tradition. And here's how I'm not traditional:
Not in the way that I dress. I dress quite plainly, and on special occasions I may put a nice dress on to go out. But I do not dress "feminine". I dress in what is comfortable, loose, and affordable. I do my hair, I keep it long.
I don't wear makeup. Not because I think it's bad or something, I'm just not that into it. It's pricey, and I'm not very good at applying it. I also look at it from a health perspective. Makeup is full of ingredients and chemicals I don't know much about, and I'm sure using it every single day probably isn't great for you.
I can drive a car. That's not very traditionalist, is it? I have a degree, I have lots of pets, and lots of hobbies and projects. These things, I think, are not traditional.
And that's the thing. You cannot live the way people 100 years before lived. It's just not possible with everything we have now. Modern life encompasses everything in the west.
There is a sort of romanticism in doing so however. In living in the woods and trying to live some very old fashioned life. But it's not feasible to most people. I guess you could go out into the middle of the woods and try to pioneer a life there. But to be a completely authentic traditionalist, you would basically need no internet, no electricity, no modern plumbing, no modern transportation, etc.
And honestly, I come from a third world country. Fourth world, even. I'm not about to struggle for no reason.
With that said, I'm against the majority of the conservative women role models we are presented with on the right. The left is overt feminism. The right is covert. Or perhaps the right is simply...a different wave of feminism altogether. A new one masking as something it is not.
The left's view of women presents women as equal or above men, allows them all liberties and vices, and requires very little accountability of them. The right is much more subtle in its view of women, but it is still very modernist and ultimately as untraditional as the left in many ways.
There is very little accountability for women's past actions, and they are still afforded many of the same freedoms as women on the left, but with the caveat that they must produce children, follow God, wear a dress and call themselves traditional in most cases.
So is it really traditional?
Or are we just repackaging the same thing?
I'm not saying this because I'm a feminist. I am not. And I could honestly care less about the label. I'm a traditionalist in many ways, but not in all ways. That doesn't remove from what I'm voicing here.
The reality is, true conservative women role models are practically nonexistent on the right.
It's because what we are presented with as "conservative women" are often not actually conservative women. They are modern women thinly veiled in a label that they do not fully represent.
Just because you wear a cross necklace, put on a dress, and have seven children back to back does not automatically make you a traditionalist. To hold that title, you actually have to believe in what you represent and live by it. But if women kn the right actually lived by it, they would not be out girl bossing and earning more than their husbands.
They wouldn't be wearing tight, very short dresses and saying that they dress that way because their husbands like it. It's like the modern right promotes a mixture of first wave feminism with third wave and fourth wave, I don't know...it just seems odd and it spits in the face of true modesty and traditional values.
Think of the typical conservative female influencer. She has a ton of children, talks about traditional marriage, femininity and motherhood, but she's also running several businesses, traveling constantly, has a personal nanny, has a huge online following and may very well be the breadwinner of her household.
Is that really conservative? If you're still a boss babe?
And maybe that isn't the best example. There are plenty of others, but I don't feel like looking up their names.
Many of these women have pasts in pornography or OF and do not truly live the lifestyle that they are promoting. Some have affairs with other "conservative" figures. Things that apparently don't matter anymore as long as you put the right label on yourself afterward.
And I'm not saying a woman can't convert to a biblical life after years of not being biblical. That's not what I'm saying at all.
People can change. Obviously.
But if you are going to publicly promote a certain lifestyle, I think you should at least live it earnestly and not put yourself out there.
You can't be out and about owning three businesses, traveling constantly, leaving your babies behind, while telling other women that their purpose is to stay at home with their children.
Why do you promote that lifestyle to other women when you yourself won't do it?
And it's not about the fact that you own a business. Women have always worked. Everyone. Including children worked in the past. But You can own a business at home. You can work with your husband. You can have your children with you. Women throughout history worked alongside their husbands and children constantly. It was necessary and required.
It's the contradiction that bothers me.
You cannot promote female independence while simultaneously telling women that their role is nurturing and caring for their little ones and their husband. You can't promote that lifestyle, relabel yourself, and expect everyone else to follow a standard you don't even follow yourself.
Another thing is dressing provocatively. Or having a previous lifestyle in pornography and then immediately becoming an authority on traditional womanhood. You're preaching something you just changed about your life! Whose to say you won't go back to prostituting yourself later? Are you leading all of those women astray if you decide to do that again?
I know, you're probably thinking that because I'm Christian I'm not supposed to judge. But I honestly believe that our Bibles are constantly being mistranslated and misrepresented when it comes to that anyway. It's like Christians are supposed to be docile in modern life. But we are not meant to be docile. We are not meant to be accepting of atrocities and sins we do not agree with. Because then we wouldn't have a religion and a common goal. We wouldn't be Christians if we accepted everyones actions. If we blindly defended sins and vices. If we took libertarian views...
But. Not everyone's Christian. And that's fine. This is my personal take. But I want to just point something out:
I'm not really talking about judging somebody's soul. I'm calling out hypocrisy.
Jesus led the stray sheep to him. The stray sheep. But he did so with the idea that they would then follow him.
You cannot promote biblical values with a speakerphone and then follow those values only when they are convenient. Or...follow them but not completely.
There's also a reason prostitution historically destroyed women's reputations. Prostituting women in the past often had no way of living a normal life afterward unless they moved towns, hid their past, or married someone who simply did not care.
Prostitution was not empowering. It's still not.
For most women it was a way to put food on the table. It was poverty, desperation and survival. Women, and even children, were born into circumstances where they had very few options.
So when modern people try to rewrite prostitution as some kind of empowering female choice, I think it's insulting to the women who actually suffered through it. But it's more egregious when modern "conservative women" move on from their past as voluntary prostitutes... And say that it's not accepting to mention it or that it should be left in the past.. ok. But your actions still have consequences, no matter your age or your new religion.
We as Christians are supposed to be kind. And we can be kind. But being kind does not mean pretending obvious contradictions don't exist. Jesus... Had a lot of misfit followers. Thieves, beggars, prostitutes, murderers. But they repented from their sins and stopped doing them! Jesus himself was clean, too! The whole point is that he washed away their previous sins when they began to follow him. But
I'm not preaching here. I'm just pointing stuff out.
Again, I'm not saying you can't convert to a biblical life after years of not being biblical. I'm saying be careful who you wish to watch or follow. Or who your husband may look up to as an "ideal woman" for you to become.
Because many of the women being pushed in conservative circles are wolves in sheep's clothing. They love the validation, the attention they receive largely from single men and sometimes even married men in those circles, and then present themselves as examples of modesty and traditional femininity.
That should at least make you question things.
And another thing. The 50s housewife is not an ideal look into traditionalism either. It was, and is, propaganda in its own way.
We as women aren't supposed to be completely alone with our kids all day. We aren't supposed to be purely identified as a house maker while being isolated from everybody else.
That's not feasible, it's not supportive, and we have no need to struggle like this if we simply lived in tight knit communities and support systems. That would probably be much closer to our natural environment as men and women.
The completely isolated housewife is also a very American identity.
This country has always had a pioneering obsession with independence. And that independence was never seen as a male-only trait. Strong women were expected to be capable and independent long before modern feminism existed.
Before the 50s, women in America who lived on farms had to tend to the farm alone or with the help of their children. They worked alongside their husbands. They raised children, tended animals, grew food, cooked, preserved food, made things, sold things, helped run farms and households.
That identity forged itself a century before.
But we have to recognize something now. About today and the present viel we are being sold by both sides.
We are sold performance on a daily basis. We are sold thinly veiled lies ON BOTH SIDES.
We are sold feminism. We are sold "traditionalism". We are sold the boss babe and then we are sold the tradwife, and sometimes they're almost the exact same woman wearing different clothes. All performative.
I'm not expecting people to be perfect. I myself have my own qualities that are not biblical. That's not the point. I accidentally made my point religious but it was really this:
The point is that we need to realize that what we are being sold is very often not what it claims to be. To be your authentic self. A natural human being, do not give into every single claim that you are sold by one person or the other.