The Tulipped Girl

Yesteryear Ranch is perfect, and the life that Natalie Heller Mills lives is every woman’s wet dream. With the perfect doting husband (a way of showcasing her sexuality), and a beautiful set of children (showcasing her fertility) and a grandiose home (showcasing the family’s wealth). It’s the life that every woman dreams to live, or at least that’s what Natalie Heller Mills and her production crew want you to dream of. Whether acting as a spectacle or a deity Natalie; a god-fearing child bearer who lives a low-tox family oriented life has created a life for herself straight off a pinterest mood board and no one can bring her or it down.

Trad-wives and “traditional” living has become an internet buzzword over the last few years and depending on what you believe in you can chalk it up to a bunch of different reasons. Whether to “Make America Great Again” or to “Return to Traditional Values” or like me can see its direct ties to white supremacy and the rise in fascism in the U.S. traditional living and the “Mormon Wives” lifestyle has become increasingly popular. Minute long clips explaining how to make sourdough muffins, tend to chickens and protect your family from processed food, pesticides and people is the best “new” way to live.

Though how traditional is too traditional? Is it too traditional to homeschool your children, leading them to mirror the literacy rates of kids from the 1800s. Or, is it too traditional to drink raw unpasteurized milk or to beat your wife and kids? Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke drops Natalie Heller Mills into 1855 where our Trad-wife influencer is trying to figure out if she is stuck in a tv show designed for her torment or genuine living nightmare. With no laptops, stand-mixers or running water she finds herself way out of her depth and it begs to question the validity of the life she influences others to strive for to live. It’s where Natalie Heller Mills runs into her own moral dilemma: When life gives you lemons (without a juice press and electricity) can you really make lemonade?

This book gives an insight to the mind of an obviously fictional trad-wife but I doubt that true trad-wives’ cognitive dissonance unless they are truly diluted is far off from the author’s portrayal. It’s the mental gymnastics and hoops that you read Natalie push and mold herself into throughout the book that leads me to believe that Natalie’s thinking is a lot more common amongst these traditional women than we’d think. They label “modern” women whores for not settling down or using men for dates in an unchristian fashion to turn around and pimp themselves out for a home that’s not in their name and leave behind meaningful careers to bear children who will never truly be theirs. They talk about the need to “return to traditional values” meanwhile they monetize on their content and post from accounts that are typically their own instead of going the “traditional” route and having their husbands post and speak for them. I had to take notes while reading to keep up with my own thoughts because there is so much nuance when it comes to the story and topics covered in a book like “Yesteryear”. I do think it is deeply important to the conversations that we are having today as much as a nonfiction or sociological book has to say, because these ideas don’t exist in a vacuum in some far away universe; there are realities just like that of Natalie Heller Mills’ being lived around the world.

So, to any modern or traditional woman out there I think this book is worth the read. I didn’t think myself to be able to be empathetic to a character like Natalie but here I am with a softer…perspective but ultimately coming to the same conclusion that I usually do which is ultimately the fad of “trad-wives” and “traditional” living is a product of white supremacy and capitalism which I know we all hate to look at and talk about but if you want to understand the ties from a more sociological perspective I suggest another book for you, Pink-pilled: Women and the Far Right by Lois Shearing. So, let me know what you think if you have read this book or after you do. I’m curious to hear your thoughts!

ttyl! -Imani