On Thursday after President Biden’s State of the Union Address, Alabama Senator Katie Britt delivered the GOP’s response.
In the opening to her 17 minute salvo, even though Britt is “the youngest Republican woman elected to the US Senate,” she was quick downplay her role as a powerful legislator.
“I have the honor of serving the people of the great state of Alabama in the United States Senate. However, that’s not the job that matters most. I’m a proud wife and mom of two school-aged kids,” said Britt from her kitchen.
Despite never being a stay-at-home mom in a full time capacity, “Britt seemed to want viewers to imagine her in an apron, gazing lovingly upon her family and realizing she must sacrifice some measure of domesticity for ‘the future of children,’” Salon notes.
Even Britt’s fellow Republican Senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, couldn’t appear to look beyond the imagery of a woman at a kitchen table.
“She was picked as a housewife, not just a senator, somebody who sees it from a different perspective…I mean, she did what she was asked to do. I thought she did a good job. And it’s hard when you’ve never done anything like that,” said Tuberville.
With Alabama recently making negative headlines over access to IVF, the GOP lawmaker doubled down during an appearance on Newsmax the following day, professing that Britt was the best choice for the pro-life party since “she’s a mom” and “housewife.”
Britt’s speech coincided with the fact that trad wives are currently trending. As NPR host Ayesha Rascoe defined, “Trad wife – shorthand for traditional wife – doesn’t refer to your ordinary stay-at-home mom. The trad wife is eerily perfect. Her home is spotless. Her makeup is on point. She makes nearly everything from scratch, usually in a perfect dress. In short, she’s straight out of a 1950s sitcom.”
As such, the Republican’s newest female base appears to be trad wives, and Trump’s presidency and subsequent reelection campaign is trying to capitalize on this trend.
As activist and co-founder of Campaign Zero Brittany N. Packnett Cunningham wrote on Threads, “Let Katie Britt’s response be a reminder that plenty of Black women tried to warn you that the innocent looking ‘trad wife’ content was ushering in right wing ideologies ahead of an election year.”
“It wasn’t a random trend. They were making more trad wives so they could organize them. It’s a playbook,” Cunningham continued.
“During this primary the GOP got clear that while they wage culture wars, the nasty DeSantis style approach will turn off voters they need,” said Cunningham. “So to contrast Trump’s ugliness, they turned their other voices from mean man without compassion to white woman tearfully begging for righteous patriotic saviors to come to her and her children’s defense.”
Cunningham also made sure to point out, that the “harkening back to a ‘40s and ‘50’s” erased a key demographic, “of course they relied on Black domestic help to make it all look perfect, but they don’t mention that part.”