Escaping first bad family into the arms of a 2nd bad family. Now trying to escape the 2nd bad family. Not the brightest bulb but hope she and her 6 kids can find some peace and stability.
What happens when a trad influencer leaves her husband, questions her beliefs, stops selling anti-feminism T-shirts — and still needs to make a living online?
www.nytimes.com
Her breakout post was in support of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. “It’s so ironic now,” she said ruefully. “That was my introduction to actually having a voice, or influence.” She branded herself Bernadine Bluntly and opened an online storefront selling $25 shirts that read “R.I.P. Feminism.” Though she rarely shared details of her family online, “my lifestyle — of having had so many kids — was speaking for itself,” she said. As tradwife influencers were fruitful and multiplied, she created a digital course for young women, Simply Smitten, in which she dangled the keys to courting godly men. Her husband posted his own content, advising men on how to become a “strong patriarch” who can mold a “sweet tradwife who happily ‘fills your gut and empties your balls,’ as the saying goes.”
Soon, Bluntly’s influence became the family business, and her modest and inconsistent online income — it brought in an average of $2,500 a month, she said — was stretched to meet the family’s needs. “Everything was configured to make it justifiable,” she said. “I’m leading people, but I’m doing it under my husband’s approval and headship, so it’s OK. I’m making money, I’m the breadwinner, but that’s OK because he’s acting as my C.E.O. I work for the family.” Meanwhile, she said, “I wasconstantly getting pregnant again.”
She felt trapped, she said, in a psychological and spiritual cage. Traditional wives who try to leave “are not just feeling that they’re disappointing their husbands,” Bluntly said, adding: “It’s worse than that. They are directly disobeying God.” And the expectation to have as many children as possible keeps them physically in the home, and the movement. “If you get pregnant, you’re less likely to leave, less likely to fight back,” she said. “You’re a lot more vulnerable.”
In time, she said, she hopes her social presence can “help bring awareness and education on abuse and coercion, specifically within religious or traditional circles.”
“I just have this weird kind of desire,” she said, “to make my life count for something.”
