'Kyunki' Reboot, Tradwives and the Privilege to Choose 'Oppression'

Earlier this week, the Cambridge Dictionary decided to officially recognise the term ‘tradwife’ that has been part of the zeitgeist — globally and controversially — for a while now. Rather than just another linguistic update, the inclusion of the term serves as a confirmation that what started as a niche, obscure subculture has now become mainstream. In India, though, the biggest evidence of the tradwife entering mainstream consciousness is, perhaps, the return of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi to our television screens in July. Short for ‘traditional wife’, the dictionary defines a tradwife as, “a married woman, especially one who posts on social media, who stays at home doing cooking, cleaning, etc., and has children that she takes care of”.For anyone on social media, the tradwife aesthetic is impossible to miss. It shows up in reels of women wearing colour-coordinated sarees, nurturing thalis plated just so with steel katoris as they talk about serving their husbands and in-laws with love, and provide endless tips on how to manage a home with grace. These are usually accompanied by background scores of bhajans or lo-fi Bollywood tracks, with terms like ‘embracing sanskaar’, ‘slowing down’, and ‘honouring my feminine energy’, showing up in the captions. The tradwife ideal isn’t new, though. It’s rooted in a fantasy of the 1950s housewife — the obedient homemaker with lipstick on, roast in the oven, and an apron tied just so. In the West, the modern tradwife movement has strong ties to conservative politics, where nostalgia for ‘simpler times’ overlaps with reactionary pushes to reassert rigid gender roles. But like most trends, it didn’t remain limited to the West. Instagram and YouTube helped it seep into India with the same romanticisation of submission.The Caste and Class Politics Behind Mocking Chikankari KurtasIronically, tradwife influencers love the word ‘choice.’ “I’m not oppressed”, they insist, adding, “I choose to stay home. I choose to prioritise my husband. I choose to slow down”.The message behind it all is that liberation isn’t about rejecting patriarchy, but about leaning into it willingly, and on one’s own terms, creating an illusion of agency. This is the backbone of what’s called ‘choice feminism’ — a feel-good idea suggesting that as long as women are making decisions for themselves, all their choices are inherently empowering.Firstly, it glosses over the fact that not all choices are made on an equal playing field. In India, where women’s workforce participation is among the lowest in the world, ‘choosing’ not to work is often not a choice at all; it’s the default. And even when it is voluntary, the freedom to opt out of paid work and still live comfortably is itself a marker of privilege.Secondly, no choice is ever made in isolation. Every ‘choice’ we make is shaped by social expectations, class location, caste hierarchies, and years of patriarchal conditioning. A woman saying she ‘chooses’ to stay home and submit to her husband is not the same as that choice being neutral or free because it remains a choice constrained by what society rewards, romanticises, and normalises. When the very model of a good Indian woman is still someone who marries young, cooks well, and puts family above all else, is being a tradwife really a radical choice, or just the most convenient one? Sure, it might feel empowering for a woman to choose to conform to gender roles. But if it’s indeed a matter of ‘choice,’ then why is the choice to not conform met with so much resistance?It would be unfair, though, to simply fault women for choosing convenience in a society that constantly overburdens them, does its best to run them ragged and burn them out. The instinctive desire to seek relief from relentless expectations is a survival strategy one shouldn’t be faulted for resorting to. Also, to dismiss the appeal of tradwife content outright would be to miss why it resonates with so many women.For one, there’s exhaustion with the ‘lean in’- feminism of the 2010s, which preached that if women simply pushed harder by taking more risks at work, demanding more at home, and leaning further into the grind, they could rise to the top. Basically, it placed the burden of smashing glass ceilings squarely on individual women’s shoulders, while the ceilings themselves remained intact and unquestioned.In the process, it glorified capitalism as the path to liberation, while demanding that women do twice the labour, both paid and unpaid, just to prove their worth.Naturally, women got tired of being told their emancipation lies in outworking everyone else within a rigged system. And for many women, there is a genuine longing for a kind of life where they are not perpetually stretched thin between paid labour, unpaid care work, and family expectations. Against this backdrop, the tradwife culture taps into that longing, and sells patriarchy back as self-care. It reframes submission as serenity, offering the respite of stepping back, slowing down, and embracing roles that society already values.Through reels tagged with #cottagecore and #slowliving, the aesthetic promises a safe retreat from hustle culture through a return to softness, order, and predictability. It’s hardly surprising, then, that in a world riddled with hustle and chaos, there’s rising demand for comfort and convenience. Smriti Irani’s Tulsi Returns, with Hindutva’s Stamp of WomanhoodHowever, in India, this ‘convenience’ of choosing an easier life involves outsourcing the hardest, dirtiest parts of domesticity to underpaid domestic workers while broadcasting an aestheticised version of it that downplays the rigours of homemaking, which the patriarchal society is already used to dismissing as “just a housewife’s job”. Meanwhile, the domestic workers performing the actual labour while the tradwives in question film their reels, are rarely afforded nearly the same privilege of choice. Social media algorithms reward content that edit out the sweat and strain of homemaking, and offer a curated fantasy in its place. It’s also worth noting that women who don’t have access to multiple helpers ar rarely on these platforms.So, what looks like a graceful retreat into tradition for one woman often means back-breaking work for another, making the tradwife aesthetic all about packaging privilege built on someone else’s exhaustion, consciously or unconsciously. There’s also another significant caste-class divide at play here because a vast majority of women in India don’t have an army of staff at their beck and call. For them, domesticity is relentless, unpaid, and unending, and many times, they have no choice but to juggle homemaking in addition to earning a livelihood to make ends meet, in this current economy. They rarely have the time or resources to document their reality online, and as a result, many of the most visible influencers in India come from upper-caste, affluent families, where inherited privilege makes it possible to turn homemaking into aspirational content.To sell this labour as a lifestyle upgrade, then, is not just tone-deaf, but very actively insulting.More importantly, framing submission as a feminist act risks confusing younger audiences into thinking equality includes the right to choose oppression, sanitising patriarchal control and branding subservience as ‘empowering’. In doing so, it risks becoming a tool to excuse behaviours that — even if ‘chosen’ — continue to perpetuate harmful norms.Not only that, but globally, the emergence of the tradwife aesthetic is also extremely political, with the movement itself having ties to far-right ideologies that push women back into the home as a way to preserve ‘traditional’ values. In countries like the US, these aesthetics often overlap with anti-abortion rhetoric, anti-feminist movements, and white nationalist nostalgia for a mythical golden past. In India, too, the implications are equally concerning, given that marriage is still framed as a woman’s ultimate goal and unpaid domestic labour forms the invisible backbone of the economy. “In an era of deep political and cultural polarisation, the return of Kyunki [which almost epitomises tradwife culture] feels like a project of re-education… The show’s refusal to adapt suggests that for many, these ideals are not just entertainment but instruction.”Farnaz FatimaIn this context, social media glamourising a return to submissive roles risks cementing already existing inequalities even further.Domesticity itself isn’t a crime, and there’s nothing wrong with women who genuinely find fulfilment in homemaking. But there’s a world of difference between valuing care work and marketing subservience as empowerment. One honours women’s labour; the other exploits their longing for relief and dresses it up as choice. It’s not wrong to aspire for comfort and stability, but the problem begins when that desire is turned into a spectacle that markets submission as empowerment, while ignoring the inequalities propping it up. If tradwife aesthetics continue to spread uncritically, they risk normalising a world where women’s worth is tied, once again, to their ability to serve, smile, and stay silent.In short, tradwife content does more than romanticise the past… it threatens to drag us right back into it.(DevRupa Rakshit is a queer, autistic individual, ARTivist and independent multimedia journalist based in Bangalore. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)Angry Young Men Aside, the Women of Indian Cinema Are Starting to Get Angrier

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The Tradwife Uprising and Privilege of 'Choosing' Oppression

Tradwife culture sells submission as empowerment, masking privilege, patriarchy, and unequal domestic realities.

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Topics: Patriarchy Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi Feminism in India