Before Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm, there was American influencer and author Alena Kate Pettitt, one of the internet's first 'trad wives'.
She was championing this lifestyle, where a woman focuses solely on being a homemaker, long before it became trendy, thanks to her blog, Mrs. Stepford.
In the late 2000s, Alena started posting about her experience as a stay-at-home girlfriend, and in 2016, she even published a guidebook titled Ladies Like Us after getting married, welcoming her first child with husband Carl and turning to the Pentecostal religion.
The book became a kind of manifesto for other young women hoping to exit modern relationship structures and hark back to a more 1950's style 'man as the provider' family life.
The former marketing executive loved living traditionally and used her book to show other women how to dress modestly, cook, and 'embrace their femininity'. She quickly became the poster woman for those who wanted to adopt the same lifestyle.
Despite the tome making her a household name, Alena recently told The New Yorker that she has left that life behind, moving halfway across the world to start again in Australia.
Alena's big move wasn't due to her completely giving up her love for a traditional life. As a fan of all things 'Kate Middleton' and 'proper etiquette', she wasn't ready to give up her ideals entirely.
However, she didn't like what being a 'tradwife' had become, because as the movement picked up, so did the criticisms.
Per The New Yorker, Alena had been called a "frilly version of facism" online and linked to alt-right politics, despite emphasising that the traditional lifestyle was open to women from all walks of life. She had women from the ultra traditional side criticise her 'non-working' status given she had written two books, and modern-minded women criticising her for dismantling feminism.
Soon, she had women from all walks of life messaging her saying that they were homemakers but didn't feel like they fit in with what that was supposed to look like.
"I was, like, 'Oh, my goodness, it's not about what you look like. It's about your lifestyle and how you are happiest and how you serve your family,'" she said.
In the end, being a 'tradwife' came to mean something much darker.
"It’s become an aesthetic, and then it's become politicised. And then it's become its own monster," she told the publication.
Alena, who has 40,000 followers on Instagram, said she feels "embarrassed" by the movement's current direction, believing it has lost sight of its main objective.
The 38-year-old also pointed out how young the new generation of trad wives are—like 22-year-old Nara Smith—saying that the lifestyle now seems "more polished than realistic."
"It’s not a true representation of the human experience, or a housewife for that matter! What place does a tripod and camera have in our kitchens?" she wrote on her website, The Darling Academy.
Eventually, the online noise got so loud, with vitriolic comments and unwanted male gaze. Alena and her family picked up and moved halfway across the world, starting a new life.
"I tried. I thought that speaking to the media and using a platform with so many users would be a wonderful way to promote the brilliant work of the housewife," she said.
"But as with all kinds of positive activism, good message, or wholesome idea, it will in time become hijacked by the opposite of what you stand for and believe in."
Although she no longer sees herself as a face of the tradwife movement, Alena still enjoys being a housewife. She continues to share household tips, like laundry advice, but now prefers the term "old-fashioned homemaker."
"There is nothing wrong with the dream you had as a six-year-old...wanting to be wooed, to wear girlish and feminine things, marry your true love, bake pies, raise babies and live happily ever after," she wrote.
Feature Image: Instagram @thedarlingacademy.
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