The Rise of Tradwives and Gabby Barrett Won't Do Duets. Who? Exactly.

I read a rather pathetic story about country singer Gabby Barrett and her marriage a few weeks ago that made me want to hunt her down and slap some sense into her silly head. I know she is a supporter of the orange menace, which shows a penchant for delusion, but her relationship sounds more like a fundie nightmare than a loving marriage. This could also be said about those idiotic, misogynistic Tradwives who consider themselves infinitely superior because they aren't those "horrible" feminists who "ruined" society. 

These fascistic women choose to obey and serve their men like what they imagine a 1950s housewife would have done happily without complaint. They single-handedly are going to save families and make oppression and imbalance brand new so women can get back to being baby-making machines and domestic slaves. Some of these twisted equal rights deniers are creating brands for themselves to monetize their fundie fantasies and inspire others to join the movement and to dream a whitewashed dream along with them. 

The UK is also home to these "Trad" wives.

A true-to-the-bone Tradwife even dresses like a housewife straight out of a 1950s family show, but it is more a signal, brand, and uniform, less an interesting ironic retro fashion choice. It is their armor against progress, their shield against career women and social ideals they just can't support, and darker, much darker, it is sometimes what wives of white extremists wear. The movements are linked no matter what they say. 

One of the big differences between the average homemaker who stays home as part of her freedom to choose is that these women are radical, and many of them wildly double or triple down so they can get as much attention as possible to grift on social media. Make no mistake, the ones who have given themselves a platform are making plenty of money spreading their hatred for women and are receiving encouragement and support from incels, super fundamentalists, fellow misogynists, and the manosphere.

Gabby Barrett and Texan Cade

So, you ask, and rightfully so, Fleur, how does Gabby Barrett play into this? Well, I will tell you how. She is a budding Tradwife with a backward belief system that has cost her money and possibly her entire career. Gabby has lost opportunities because she won't do duets with men out of some misguided show of respect for her husband and their marriage because, as is well known, every singer who has sung a duet ends up falling into bed with their duet partner. Right? Kenny and Dolly were definitely shagging. Islands in The Stream is a euphemism for the hot, sweaty, sordid sexual encounters the two of them engaged in. Sure, and Sam Smith and Mary J. Blige? Everyone has heard they were sneaking into closets for smoking hot boot-knocking sessions. Yes, folks, all of this must be true, right? Unless Gabby and her pitiful husband are way off base, but that can't possibly be. The fundies are the moral authority, so they know these things; in fact, according to them, they know everything. 

From People: "When you accept a song, there’s obligations that go along with it. What does that dynamic look like if I’m singing with another man? Is that gonna make my husband uncomfortable? Probably," she said. "I respect [Foehner] and love him so much that I am not going to jeopardize my marriage to do a duet with somebody."

You would think this Gabby was a superstar living in the stratosphere of fame, throwing around rules and demands like she is somebody. Barrett is kind of famous in that American Idol not the winner kind of way, married to another American Idol loser from Texas, Cade(because, of course, that would be his name) Foehner, who is a super Fundamentalist Christian, ex-rodeo rider, supposed preacher, total stereotype, and a man who firmly believes women are born to procreate and serve their husbands without questioning their husband's authority. 

Gabby making cute face explaining her role

Mrs. Foehner, as Texan Cade calls her, is already pregnant with their third child and is fulfilling her duties as an Evangelical Wifey Supreme. She doesn't even have a million followers on Instagram, which nowadays is an indicator of how many people are interested in a celebrity. Her "team" hasn't even done the basic work to promote her, and if I were her, this would concern me. This means her label isn't invested in her enough to get her good people to push her forward, or maybe they tried, and she ignored their advice.

From People: The singer said she and Foehner have sought counseling, and that in those sessions, they’ve been told they’re both “strong-willed people,” something she says she believes helps her remain strong in her convictions.

"I have tons of people say that say to me, or have texted me, or have commented about me and said, 'She's ruining her career by talking about these things, and by X, Y and Z," Barrett said. "Because I treasure a Godly marriage over anything the world could offer….” 

This is said in a way only a young person without wisdom, experience, or profound regrets and disappointments can say. When we are young, we think we will always be young and don't know how lucky we are and how much our choices will frame the rest of our lives. And we have no earthly idea how cruel living can be. Not yet. That lesson comes with age and experience. What she has now will never come back without a fluke of luck; she has already been extremely lucky, and there are scores of more talented, prettier, smarter, younger people who are readily available to take her spot. The world will go on like she never existed, and honestly, reading about her maybe it would be for the best.

On the flip side,  I could be wrong, and maybe Gabby won't regret a thing. Maybe when they have to live off of Texan Cade's meager earnings, material things, fame, stardom, country music, money, singing, financial security, shelter, and food won't mean much to her. Maybe her fundamentalist Christianity, 15 squalling babies, and Texan Cade are all she needs. Hold up, though, there is a problem with their Traditionalism; it kind of falls apart a bit because, in these marriages, the men are supposed to be the breadwinners. Texan Cade plays guitar on tours with his wife, a job centered around her and not him. Barrett, I mean Mrs.Texan Cade, is bringing home the bank. How does he reconcile this? 

Why should I even wonder? These extremists always twist things to fit their narrative anyway. In an effort to try to understand Texan Cade and Trad husbands in general, I went into the belly of the beast folks. All for you, I watched some of his "preaching" on YouTube for research. His crazy eyes were ablaze with the burning energy of a zealot. His accent is so thick and twangy it almost sounds like an actor's idea of what Texans speak like. Furthermore, he is also mind-numbingly ignorant and reminds me of a street preacher from the days of old standing on a milk crate yelling at passersby, pounding on his bible, heaving with righteousness and rage at the sinners who won't heed his word.  

Ewwww. I don't think my dad ever thought about my
fertility, like never ever, and he certainly wouldn't be
so stupid as to take to social media to show how bizarre
 he is.

It kind of made more sense after I read a post about him on the Fundie Reddit, and the things he believes and says are wacky, bizarre, and shockingly regressive; it is like he has no other life but fundamentalism and his wife. He even made a creepy post on his IG about his toddler daughter playing with dolls, preparing her for her eventual life as a mother as if he owned her future. Heaven help him if she becomes "they," and they shave off their hair and run away to evil Sodom and Gommorha, a.k.a New York City or, worse, way worse, San Francisco. Texan Cade would just pretend they don't exist, blame the feminists, Hollywood, and the mainstream media, or whoever, not him or his views, never that. Texan Cade is not a man. He's a prototype of the Trad husband and the B side to Andrew Tate's bloviating, hateful misogyny. 

Nonetheless, I don't pity her or other Tradwives. They are grown women with free will and agency to be whoever they want to be, and they choose to live like they do and choose men from the fringes of society to serve and obey. This trend can be traced back to a 2013 forum called...wait for it, Red Pill Women. I can't even...So far, science hasn't found a cure for stupid and ridiculous, so they might just remain as basic as they are, or one day, they will understand being traditional doesn't have to mean servitude and subjectification. Nor does it mean skipping around looking like extras from Little House on the Prairie or bootleg June Cleavers.

Or they won't change at all and will continue to parade themselves on TikTok and YouTube with their smug faces extolling their backward belief system and how happy they are. Do yourself a solid and skip listening to them pontificate on being treated like a mindless child, why they are better women than you, and why their men are better than yours for too long. It is dangerous to your health. Brain cells will flee at an alarming speed, and you might collapse, broken and without the will to be in this world for one more moment. Or, like me, you can just hope that these people lose their voices and access to social media, and their "alpha" tiny be-dicked males run off with a prostitute to live a life of total and complete debauchery. 

Why do they think feminism accelerated after the 50s and early 60s? Many of those happy homemakers were quietly suffering, guzzling cocktails and popping Miltowns and various other pills for their "nerves"(anxiety) or malaise(depression) and passing through their passionless lives stuck and immobile. Or darker. Their husbands were unkind or indifferent to their feelings or thoughts and treated their wives like imbecilic children. Just as scores of women had done before them, they endured it all in silence, trying hard not to let the cracks show. There was nothing great or magical about the past: social issues and ugly truths were slowly burning and growing into an eventual inferno for a reason. 

I do have a gift for the intrepid souls who can take repeated assaults on their precious and vital neurotransmitters. Behold this numbskull. Be near seating; I don't want to be responsible for Traumatic Brain Injuries when you listen to this explanation. I won't say her name. I don't want to conjure it to life.

If you survived the inanity, then welcome back; for those who didn't-pour one out for them, cross our hearts and RIP. 

Some are so extreme that even the moderate of the extreme find them over the top. Case in point the grifter extrordinaire Hannah Pearl Davis. She is the Candace Owens of misogyny. She is the female Andrew Tate who gets attention for tripling down and acting like a cheerleader for the manosphere. Hannah Pearl has loads of hateful things to say about women, such as we shouldn't be allowed to vote and how we should be as wives and mothers. You think she's a wife and mother since she has so much to say, right? No. Not at all. But she's full of opinions and diatribes. This vulgarian is 26, has no man, no children, no prospects, and limited intelligence, yet she acts as though she is an authority on all of these matters. And she body shames larger women with particular venom.

What will we find out about these social media Tradwife grifters in a decade? For one, if they aren't supposed to work, what is the big social media presence even about then? These judgy basics are making money by announcing to the world that they are fools. Like Texan Cade, Andrew Tate, Hannah Pearl Go Fuck Yourself, the manosphere, and Fundies, they all smooth over any common sense pushback, critical thinking, science, or logic.  

However, the delicious good news is that the Tradwives are fighting amongst themselves, and they have sharpened their claws and are going for jugulars. The really real radicals hate the further radicalized and feel they hijacked the whole thing and lost the plot. I am so on board with this pitting woman against woman (usually I am not), and I look forward to it culminating in a street fight where one Tradwife rips off the apron of the opposing Tradwife, throwing down the gauntlet. Bloody battles break out all over the US (the UK has some of this, too, so a slug it out in some Northern village could totally happen), and they all simply cancel each other out through alarming levels of violence. 

This needs to happen soon so we can get back to progress and forget that laughably titled "high-value male", self-haters like Hannah Pearl Davis, the lobotomized flaxen-haired con artist in the video, and these other twisted Betty Crockers ever existed, or that we ever endured this moment in time. One can hope this happens soon because I am already investing in popcorn shares and printing tickets to the Battle of the Trads, and I hope you will join me when this implodes. Because it will. It always does. 

(photos: Getty, Instagram)