Tradwives have been around in the US for years. Now Spain has its own example: the RoRo

Rocío López Bueno’s, “Roro”, leap to TikTok stardom is as shocking as it is controversial. And that’s normal. After all, one cannot be explained without the other. Until recently, “Roro” was a twenty-year-old who uploaded hugely successful videos in which she showed how she trains and what she eats. In May, however, she posted a different piece, an 81-second video in which she shows her boyfriend Pablo how she prepares pappardelle with orange duck ragout.

Now this is one influential person It is growing…and is surrounded by controversies.

Do you like cooking? tradwife, With over 47 million views (and counting), the Pappardelle video has been followed by many others in which we see “Roro” knitting clothes, bookbinding, preparing her own makeup and cooking. Especially cooking. Always with stops for or with her boyfriend Pablo. Its content, aesthetics and proverbial time management skills have earned “Roro” immense fame, but they have also put it in the headlines. The reason? There are those who believe that this is the clearest example of it in Spain tradwivesA controversial trend famous in the United States.

What is tradwives, name, sum of Translation (traditional) and Wives (Handcuffs) doesn’t leave much to the imagination. A tradwife She is basically a woman who shares the values ​​and gender roles experienced in the mid-20th century. Tradition. Family. Submission. Elegance. A nice, obvious pinch of classism. Taking care of your home, your partner and your appearance too. No office work, no protests for equality. What Traditional Wife Show how to bake banana bread, make homemade betanint, or take care of kids.

All this while using the network as a speaker and highlighting how wonderful such a lifestyle is. tradwives There are nuances and perhaps no single, unanimous way to define them, but Cecil Simons, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, recently summarized it in a fairly simple way for the Euronews Culture Network. He Traditional Wife In her opinion, “it is an international movement of women who advocate a return to traditional gender norms through their devotion to their husbands and domestic work.”

But… where do they come from? It is often claimed that their bible is the 1960s book ‘Fascinating Womanhood’ by Helen Berry Andelin, which extols the virtues of “ideal womanhood” as the basis for a good marriage.

This may seem far-fetched, but it’s an important philosophy. tradwife has been enjoying some golden years, thanks largely to the showcases the network has offered, including popular icons like Estée Williams, Nara Aziza, Hannah Neeleman (Ballerina Farm) and most notably, Alaina K. Petit. influential person Behind The Darling Academy, “the home of traditional family values” that “celebrates the role of the housewife, traditional family dynamics, good housekeeping, and the beauty that makes ‘staying at home’ worth the grief”.

From America to the world. The phenomenon gained strength in the US, took root in British society thanks to figures like Elena Kate Petit, and is expanding at a good pace. There, in the United Kingdom, columnist Hadley Freeman describes it as Guardian till tradwife Idealized in a simple but graphic way: “A woman who doesn’t work to take care of her children, her husband, her home and then talks non-stop on social networks about how great it all is.”

However, the reality is somewhat more multifaceted. After gaining resonance on social networks, especially on Reddit, about six years ago, the phenomenon seemed to grow during the pandemic and with the help of media personalities such as Williams or Aziza. Its rise coincides with movements such as “Me Too” in favor of gender equality in 2017.

With the help of COVID-19. “Searches skyrocketed during the pandemic. Like other forms of ‘radicalisation’, they thrived because of people’s sense of isolation,” Simons told Euro News. tradwife A more or less clear ideological spectrum can be identified: conservatism and anti-feminism, although this label is not free from debate. “This movement can serve as a gateway to white nationalist and supremacist ideology,” says Simmons.

And suddenly… Roro! With that background, Spain has seen how Rocío López Bueno, “Roro”, gained tremendous popularity on TikTok with videos in which she shows how she prepares elaborate dishes in a pristine kitchen, creates her own costumes or makeup, and binds books.

which has given it amazing popularity, including live shows primetime However, television is not what he does, no matter how amazing his ability to prepare his version of ragout or hand-sewn pappardelle Prince By Niccolò Machiavelli. What has caught the attention is the context: how he does it, his speech, the staging… and above all who he does it for.

“My boyfriend Pablo…” If the young woman makes a cheesecake it is to celebrate the birthday of her boyfriend Pablo, if she makes some pappardelle with orange duck ragout it is because Pablo wants to eat pasta for dinner, if she makes chicken gyros it is because she has never tried Greek food, if she makes her own dress or makeup it is to meet Pablo and that is when she sets out to prepare a personalized and handmade version Prince The book written by Machiavelli was perfect! Because Pablo wanted to read it and he decided to give him a self-bound edition.

That is all? No, if there are people who haven’t taken long to add Roro to the background tradwife It is also due to the staging. Unlike her videos from the beginning of the year on TikTok, in which she does pull-ups, runs in the park, lifts weights or shows what she eats, in her latest pieces Roro follows a series of guidelines: in performances that take place in the kitchen or in the rest of the house, almost all the pieces, she always appears well-groomed, well-dressed, with her hair straightened and without any hair. When she speaks, she speaks in a sweet, soft, almost childlike tone, in which some have recognized eye gestures insert child’s voice,

The result is material and staging in which, whether intentional or not, it is not unreasonable to find more or less obvious parallels with other influencer of the movement tradwiveslike Estee Williams or Aziza. Aesthetics is not a minor issue, nor a free one. Aurora Gómez, a psychologist specialized in digital behavior, recalls in Infobae that the choice of form is as relevant as the substance: aesthetics “is the entry point of the movement.”

“I’m not there for Pablo”. Roro, 22 years old and who has just finished the translation, is not immune to these comments. In June he gave an interview HuffPost In which he shared his motivations beyond his videos. “I’m obviously not there to serve Pablo. If I’m doing it it’s because I like to cook and I joke that Pablo asks me for things so he can have an excuse to cook them and then we both enjoy them.” commented: “I say ‘the one Pablo wanted you’, but the reality is that I like to give him more than he wants to ask for.”

From the gym to the kitchen (and so on). “I find the housewife thing weird because we don’t live together, I don’t have kids and I don’t clean. Pablo cleans because he’s good at it and I’m good at cooking,” says Roro . Regarding the content he shares on TikTok, he admits that until recently he basically uploaded videos in which he did pull-ups and weights at the gym.

“I loved going out there every day and I wanted brands to give me clothes, but that didn’t work out much. And one day Pablo said to me: ‘Why don’t you upload cooking videos? Just like the things you do, it takes so long.'” That worked. Wow, it worked. “And suddenly I woke up the next day and saw that the first video reached 35 million views, while my average was 2,000. Crazy.”

The great underlying debate.RoRo is not the first influential person which gains remarkable visibility in record time. If your case has sparked controversy and extensive analysis such as this one published by Maria Serrano Article 14 Or this other one by Elena L. Villalvilla Information This is due to its apparent more or less deliberate tuning with the movement Traditional Wife And the questions he leaves on the table.

makes a speech of Traditional Wife With feminism? Isn’t every woman free to choose how she wants to focus her life and share it on the networks? Does promoting this type of content promote reactionary discourse and sexist roles? Do they sweeten influencer Are unequal gender roles like those of Esty Williams or Alina Kate Petit oppressive for women? To what extent do they not have the right to express the life philosophy they choose?

“Modern and Empowered”. The paradigmatic case is perhaps that of Elena K. Petit, who explains in The Darling Academy that years ago she suffered a “crisis of self-confidence” that made her think: “It made me question why the world, despite all its opportunities, made me feel so dissatisfied with my existence and why my so-called ‘modern and empowered’ decisions had destroyed my self-esteem.

in his book Ladies like us, Petit explains how she “learned to love” her “feminine identity” and in her works praises the values ​​of what she defends as “traditional life”. It is not the only one. In the movement tradwives There are frequent cases of women who “dream” of home and “women’s leave.”

The big question: Who are they addressing? Monika Hesse also talks about the solid debate on this issue Washington Post or in the novelist Jessica Gross the new York Timeson whose pages it maintains at least part of the content Traditional Wife What it seeks is a deliberate “provocation”, an “incongruity” that ultimately translates into influence… and money for its creators.

One of the great melons opened by Monika Hesse is the one for whom recordings like Petit or Aziza are directed: “I often wonder: who is this content really for? Certainly a part of their followers are like-minded women, but a new media case study made me wonder if the main audience tradwife “They are actually right-wing men.” The same study shows, after consuming the content tradwives TikTok’s algorithm recommends videos associated with the far right.

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