With every year that passes, my decorative and culinary standards slip further, while, paradoxically, I become more obsessed with the former billionaire, felon, fancy fowl enthusiast and Snoop Dogg best buddy Martha Stewart. Stewart is, of course, the original domestic goddess, but also, she’s now claiming, the template tradwife. “I really was that woman. I was the original fucking tradwife,” she told the Lipstick on the Rim podcast, embellishing later, in an interview for the New York Times (marking the reissue of her 1982 cookbook, Entertaining): “And I was just as pretty as those girls, and more organised.”
I suppose she’s not wrong – she was already combining the homemaking, empire-building and self-promotional elements that characterise tradwifery 40 years ago – but it’s not the most tactful or self-effacing way to put it, which is very on-brand.
