“For breakfast the first thing I had was raw steak, I woke up craving this,” croons a soothing female voice, joining a faint chorus of birdsong to soundtrack a montage of bare feet strolling through grass and bright red meat glowing in the sun. “I had a second breakfast of raw cow’s milk and dates with coconut oil, these were so refreshing” (Ashley English, 2024).
The video, posted on Instagram’s Reels, is the latest in user @byashleyenglish’s “What I Eat in a Day” series, in which the creator showcases her daily consumption habits to an audience of 122k followers with the help of lush visuals, glowy selfies, and captions about “listening to your intuition.” Other posts on English’s account warn against the dangers of artificial fabric (“your polyester leggings are poisoning you”), offer health-related affirmations (“I am a high vibrational being”), and advertise her exclusive training program designed for the “female physiology” (subscription required, link in bio). The dictate “live as nature intended” sits atop English’s page, in between a profile photo of her dewy face and a link to her “non-toxic skincare” brand.
English’s account exists within a broader Internet-based milieu that has developed in the post-Covid era and stretched to encompass a range of ideological beliefs, content practices, and political associations, all underpinned by varying degrees of seriousness. The labels attached to this scene are almost as prolific as the discourse surrounding their application. You have the “dirtbag left,” led by anti-woke podcasters with a penchant for casually-hurled slurs; you have the “intellectual” pedagogy of Jordan Peterson, a YouTube prophet battling “cultural Marxism”; you have Joe Rogan and his ever-growing Internet man cave, where health, politics, science, and comedy coalesce under an amorphous philosophy of anti-establishment libertarianism and masculine bluster; you have Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and #MAHA, weaving the woo-hoo into the everyday with the support of increasingly cozy far left and right fringes.
And then you have the softer side of this anti-mainstream mainstream—a seemingly bottomless well of lifestyle content in which charismatic creators present an “alternative” vision of what it means to thrive and care for oneself. Depictions range from gym inspiration videos of bearded muscle men to tranquil scenes of apron-clad women feeding their children, to the sunny how-tos on “cycle syncing” and herbal medicine populating the pages of creators like English.
Within this realm, of course, is the “tradwife,” a term coined to describe the idealized depictions of nostalgic femininity and agrarian domesticity that have proliferated online and spilled into the mainstream with surprising velocity (see Nara Smith, the maybe-Mormon model and mother of three responsible for several of the year’s biggest TikTok trends). Also present is English’s cohort of younger, crunchier female creators, who exchange the tradwife’s traditionalism and religiosity for an earthy spirituality focused on physical health and intentional consumption. The two share a passion for homesteading, a profound skepticism regarding corporate “girlboss” feminism, and a preoccupation with “fertility.” When they are explicit in their messaging, they echo similar refrains: live how humans were “meant” to live; avoid interaction with Big Tech and Big Pharma; escape the stress-inducing lifestyle of the urban professional; shun the artificial for the natural whenever possible.
Much attention has been paid to the financial and political motivations behind this world of alternative lifestyle content. Investigative efforts have tied conservative investors like tech billionaire Peter Thiel to “independent-thinking” creators; exposés, like a viral deep dive on “tradwife” Hannah Neeleman (@ballerinafarm), have revealed the extreme wealth of influencers promoting self-sufficient lifestyles.
This commentary aligns with a prevailing analysis of the raw-milk-and-maxi-skirts Internet as an example of “far-right media manipulation” (Marwick and Lewis, 2017, p. 4). Under this view, the popularity of anti-establishment content illustrates the alt-right’s talent for radicalizing online subcultures, circulating conspiracy theories, and “exploiting media vulnerabilities” to amplify messaging (p. 34).
Marwick and Lewis point to several key tactics of this manipulation. The unification of “networked and agile groups” is a necessary element, first showcased in 2014’s “Gamergate” and present throughout the anti-woke Internet today (p. 9). In the online corners where talk of raw milk is most prolific, one can witness apparent agreement between hippies, “men’s rights” activists, #MAGA Republicans, and more. The alliance between these groups is likely tenuous, but its implications are far from nonexistent; this year’s election results prove that the far right has gained appeal outside its traditional audiences, uniting disparate groups under an anti-establishment “Big Tent.”
“Retrograde populism” is at the heart of this strategy (p. 9). The online anti-woke aesthetic revolves around a “cult of tradition,” idealizing a “primordial past” (p. 12). Conspiracy theories have achieved great traction, invoking anxieties around shifting cultural norms to push sensationalist rhetoric and drive unfounded claims (p. 18). Pseudo-scientific talking points are thus woven into lifestyle content; between sourdough recipes, creators advocate against vaccines, claim that restrictions on raw milk are a plot to keep Americans unhealthy, and denounce birth control as an effort to destroy femininity.
Crucially, the anti-woke Internet has allowed for a rebrand of alt-right values, playing on the “media’s fascination with novelty” to give radical ideas mass exposure (p. 5). Under the veil of ambiguity afforded by online platforms, creators successfully shift the Overton window into ever more extreme territory, their true motives shielded all the while.
Yet while we have every reason to denounce the Raw Milk Internet as right-wing media manipulation, the rhetoric and popularity of its creators, in particular among female audiences, points to something slightly different.
As Vaidya and Lingel (2024) write, the “popular feminism” that became ubiquitous online in the 2010s provided a vague, temporary sense of empowerment, “sidestepping structural oppression for a palatable and marketable version of feminism.” According to Sarah Benet-Weiser (2015), while popular feminism did afford women mainstream cultural access, it in many ways wrote its own demise. As she was already observing a decade ago, “the dynamic of popular feminism... is mirrored in popular misogyny,” paving the way for anti-feminist hostilities while failing to offer any structural response.
It is within this context that the popularity of anti-establishment female lifestyle creators gains an alternative hue. While “tradwife” content often represents nothing more than an idealization of patriarchal gender roles, plenty of creators on this side of the Internet offer a less black-and-white rhetoric, focusing on intuitive self-care and rejecting popular feminism’s pro-work, pro-consumption ideals.
By most metrics, English’s cohort are “fringe” creators. And perhaps they are not and never were serious; perhaps they are bankrolled by anti-vaccine angel investors, or simply enjoy meme-ing for irony’s sake. But their accounts continue to appear in my algorithm. I have “mutuals” with creators like English, all of whom are young women like me. In analyzing the rise of the Raw Milk Internet, we must thus not discount its distinctly female side, the popularity of which points to a serious dissatisfaction with consumerist feminism and technological domination and a desire to repair the sense of alienation felt by many women today.
Works Cited
Ashley English [byashleyenglish]. (2024, October 14). “These are my favorite foods that make
me feel so healthy, happy, beautiful, and strong...” [Video]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DBGpFZpJsrU/
Banet-Weiser, S. (2015, January 21). Popular misogyny: a zeitgeist. Culture Digitally.
https://culturedigitally.org/2015/01/popular-misogyny-a-zeitgeist/
Marwick, A. & Lewis, R. (2017). Media manipulation and disinformation online. Data & Society
Research Institute, 4-37.
Vaidya, A., & Lingel, J. (2024). #Freebritney: strategies of counternarratives and self-regulation
in digital feminist counterpublics. Feminist Media Studies, 1-17.
Maia, I found your analysis fascinating. It offers a lens into how apparently anti-establishment content can paradoxically reinforce consumer culture. Reading your piece reminded me of Adorno and Horkheimer's discussion of how the culture industry operates. Just as they observed that even apparent resistance gets absorbed into the system of mass culture, these wellness influencers who position themselves against mainstream consumerism end up creating their own form of it.
ReplyDeleteWhat's particularly interesting is how creators like Ashley English package "natural living" into highly produced, aesthetically pleasing content while claiming to reject modern consumer culture. This seems to exemplify what Adorno and Horkheimer identify as the culture industry's ability to commodify even the rejection of commodification. The "high vibrational being" affirmations and exclusive training programs become products themselves, just repackaged with an "authentic" aesthetic.
Your observation about the gendered dimension adds an important layer to this analysis. While these accounts offer an apparent escape from corporate "girlboss" feminism, they do so through what is essentially another form of consumption and self-optimization, just with a different visual language.
As someone who has found herself drawn to these aesthetically pleasing "natural living" accounts, your piece helps explain their simultaneous appeal and underlying contradictions. Their promise of authenticity and escape from consumer culture ultimately operates within the very system they claim to reject.
Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1944). Dialectic of Enlightenment. pp. 1-12
-Lucy Sopher