Valium and Cattle Farms
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Hidden microwaves, false dreams, and the tradwife movement. In this week’s episode, Alice takes the girls on a journey into Caro Claire Burke’s psychological thriller Yesteryear (2024) alongside Betty Friedan’s seminal second-wave feminist text, The Feminine Mystique (1963) to see what each of them reveal about the not-so-glamorous reality behind the lifestyle tradwives perform online. Both Yesteryear and The Feminine Mystique reveal the complexities behind a simple life and how the suburban housewives (of the 1950s and today) were impacted by living a life constrained to the white picket fence.
“The suburban housewife – she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife – freed by science and labour-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home.” - Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique, 1963)
Key Texts:
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)
- The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
- Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)
- Backlash: The undeclared war against American women by Susan Faludi (New York: Crown Publishers 1991)