Queen Tradwife is “missing.”
In case you haven’t heard, the Princess of Wales is “missing“. Or at least countless people online, recently dubbed “Kate Middleton truthers,” want you to think the future queen is missing. Kensington Palace, on the other hand, wants you to think everything is completely and utterly fine; Middleton is simply taking some time away from the spotlight to recover from abdominal surgery. To further prove their point, a few days ago the palace released a photo of the princess with her kids. When the internet noticed it was doctored (which was very obvious) and conspiracy theories continued to spin out, they then released an even more suspicious “admission of guilt” from Kate, in which she claimed to take responsibility for editing the photo herself. Suffice it to say, this did not land well — no one believes Kate edits her own photos.
If anything, this weird royal flub only spurred rumors.
Now, it’s been well over two months since we’ve gotten a good look at Middleton. This is, simultaneously, a complete non-story and the biggest social media event of the year, if not the decade.
This raises an obvious question: Why? Why have we become so obsessed with this apparent mystery, when there are so many completely normal explanations to be found for Middleton’s absence — including the one the palace has offered us? Why can’t we do as some people want us so badly to do, and let her recover in peace?
My theory is twofold. First and foremost, I think this obsession has reached a fever pitch because of a series of over-the-top, completely avoidable blunders made by whoever runs public relations for the royal family (at this point, my best guess is that this person is either an over-caffeinated and under-qualified college intern or eight corgis stuffed into in a trench coat). The second factor that has fueled this conversation has flown largely under the radar: Over the last few months, millions of people have become obsessed with the world of tradwives, and now, Queen Tradwife is missing.
If you spend much time online, then you’ve likely noticed the recent flurry of tradwife thinkpieces, not to mention the viral explosion of tradwife critiques on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. (I’ve done my fair share of critiquing on these platforms.) Countless Americans have spent their free time this winter learning about the strange, addictive world of tradwife influencers, women who capitalize on consumer interests by performing some idealized image of domestic labor. These women are immaculate mothers and even more exemplary wives — or at least they curate the appearance of perfection on their social media platforms. In doing so, either intentionally or unintentionally, they work to uphold patriarchal and white supremacist structures that insist a woman’s place is in the home.
Now, this perfect mother, and perfect wife, is suddenly missing. No wonder we’re so obsessed.
If you’re the kind of person who feels immediately triggered by the word “tradwife,” or assumes the phrase is inherently an insult, then you might feel furious right now. Kate Middleton, a tradwife? But she’s royal! She serves on committees and works with philanthropies! She’s never once shared a cooking video online!
Sorry, folks. She’s just an elevated tradwife.
Consider the definition of a tradwife, from Dictionary.com: “A married woman who chooses to be a homemaker as a primary occupation and adheres to or embodies traditional femininity and female gender roles, often associated with conservative or alt-right political values.”
Middleton is a homemaker of the upper-class variety, meaning that she takes care of her home the way that wealthy women do, not via the work of domestic labor or intensive child-rearing, but through the management of affairs. She may not wear an apron or film herself baking a sourdough boule from scratch, but every aspect of her public-facing identity is coded in the same archetypal ideals of a 1950s homemaker, just on a different level because, well, she lives on a different level. Because of her royal status, her tradwife characteristics have been adapted to fit her lifestyle and are therefore a little less obvious. Still, all the major pieces are there, hidden in plain sight: She is completely dutiful, shockingly immaculate, and virtually silent. (Seriously: Think about how many times you’ve heard Kate speak over the years.) When you think of the term “homemaker” in the most literal terms, it makes sense. It’s Middleton, and Middleton alone, who “makes” the home — by which I mean, her effortless performance of motherhood and wifehood has been essential in buoying the public’s perception of her family overall.
OK, so homemaker, check. What about embodying traditional femininity?
Oh, yeah. Big time. How else do you describe the indelible images of Middleton posing for cameras with a newborn mere hours after delivery, wearing heels and a full face of makeup?
As for the conservative or alt-right political values, the royal family certainly doesn’t publicly espouse far-right ideologies these days, but the institution itself is grounded in a historical lineage of colonialism and white supremacy.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Middleton is a duck. And by that I mean, she’s a model tradwife. The grandmaster of tradwives. The final boss in the tradwife video game.
This tradwife positioning is not accidental, either. It’s less of a bug than a feature of the system Middleton exists within. If you’re not convinced, you can consider it from this other angle: There’s a reason why Middleton has been so roundly supported by “the firm,” as some people like to call it, and Meghan Markle was so comprehensively chewed up and spit out by it. This reason has to do with the inherent racism of white supremacy, absolutely, but it also has to do with the fact that Markle was very, very bad at being a tradwife. For one thing, she had her own identity outside of her role as a wife, mother, and member of the royal family. For another thing, she had opinions and shared them. If you think this is too limited of a sample size, consider Princess Diana. Consider Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson.
Middleton, in contrast to those three women, has excelled at the role she was required to take on. She has been, for many years now, the ultimate support system for the intended star of the show: Her husband.
I’m not suggesting that this cultural obsession with Middleton’s whereabouts wouldn’t have happened if not for the tradwife discourse that preceded it. What I am suggesting, however, is that one obsession can fuel another. The tradwife discourse, which has been growing for years but reached new heights in the last few months has positioned us perfectly for the Kate Middleton discourse. Culturally speaking, we were already foaming at the mouth over the notion that old-fashioned housewives were cropping up all over the internet when the woman who’d been playing the part perfectly for years suddenly ceased her performance.
Writers spend their whole lives struggling to concoct a storyline as inherently compelling and perfectly timed as the storyline playing out in the minds of Kate Middleton truthers at this very moment. Academics spend their entire careers trying to simplify the concepts of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy into something visual and engaging. What’s happening now, with the mystery of Kate’s location, is what happens when you boil all of these societal and cultural fixations into a single moment in time. It proves that the conversation over tradwives isn’t simply a moment of discourse over a social media trend, but a recurring theme that will continue to pop up in different places until we address the profoundly destructive ideologies at the root of it, and rip them out.
That, or I’ve just triggered the rise of a thousand tradwife sympathizers.
