Is This #Tradwife Trolling Us?
Is she an opportunist, a satirist or a believer?
Welcome to Tradwife Week here at Over the Influence and our podcast Under the Influence. It’s a little like Shark Week except with homeschooling instead of hammerheads.
On Monday we have a riveting interview with Anne Helen Petersen of Culture Study about #tradwives where we do a deep dive into this genre of social media influencer and start to touch on what it all means. To prep you should definitely read the Culture Study newsletter about tradwives and Anne Helen’s piece on being assigned to try out tradwife life for Elle.
Now onto today’s topic. I have gotten nearly 100 messages from all of you asking me about one particular tradwife Instagram account. All of them are some version of, “Is this real?” “She’s faking right?” “This is a satire, I think.”
The account belongs to Alexia Delarosa, or rather Lex.Delarosa.
Her profile reads: Sharing moments from daily life, motherhood, and baking.
In her videos she flounces about in princess-inspired puffy sleeves while preparing pumpkin pie dip and homemade vanilla maple syrup. She wears rollers in her hair as she prepares to “homeschool” her two children.
When I first looked at her page I said, “yes, of course, this is satire…..clearly.” But it’s tricky. It could be real. It could be satire. She could be a momfluencing chameleon who is going where the money is. It could be a brilliant commentary on what the Instagram algorithm wants from women! I promised you all in many a DM that I would try to get to the bottom of it. So here goes!
After doing a Google search I wasn’t entirely sure what we were dealing with. If it is all a joke then Lex is taking it as far as she can and she has tried to dupe a couple of reporters already, including one from the Daily Mail which wrote a whole story about her #tradwife life.
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