Nara Smith — the 24-year-old soft-spoken influencer, model, and mother of four who has been held up as the epitome of a “tradwife” — rocked the worlds of many of her 12.6 million TikTok and 4.9 million Instagram followers last week by rejecting that label altogether.

A tradwife, short for “traditional wife,” is married woman and part of a social media subculture who embraces old-fashioned gender roles (and often conservative politics). Examples include Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm, the protagonist in Caro Clare Burke’s best-selling novel Yesteryear, and, one would’ve said a few days ago, Smith.  

But during her recent appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Smith told host Alex Cooper that being held up as the “poster child for the tradwife movement” was “very bizarre” to her. She then Googled the qualities of a tradwife — such as cooking, cleaning, managing the house, and supporting her breadwinning husband — and explained, point by point, why this did not describe her reality.

“I find it very concerning that we need to put women in very specific, very narrow boxes in order to make sense of them,” she said.

Plenty of people defended her statements, saying they loved her and supported her, especially after her 2-year-old’s recent cancer diagnosis. But critics also came for her immediately.

Prozac Princess took to TikTok to say, “the mass gaslighting efforts will not work on us.”

“She might not be a tradwife but she was def cos playing one,” noted a commenter on one of the Call Her Daddy TikTok posts.

Others said, “Now look up the definition of gaslighting,” and “Y’all must think we’re idiots,” and called out Cooper for not challenging Smith over the fact that there are “literally videos of her tagging ‘trad wife.’” Another commenter had a simple explanation: “She’s pivoting to save face.”

That was the hot take of best-selling author and journalist Jo Piazza, who asked, “Has Nara Smith been lying to us all along?” in a weekend Instagram post.

Piazza called Smith “a brilliant marketer who took advantage of a very particular moment in American culture to gain a massive following by projecting a ridiculous fantasy and a false nostalgia on social media.” That fantasy, she believes, “was toxic and damaging to a lot of young women.”

Still, she has a great idea for how the young mom can make it right — or how her husband Lucky Blue, rather, can do so.

It’s great that Smith talks about how her husband shares parenting duties, cleans the house, and suggested she turn her lifestyle into a business, Piazza says in a follow-up post on the controversy.

“You know what I would love to see right now? I would love to see Lucky Blue saying those things to men,” she notes.

“I have been dying for that kind of influencer,” she says, to help “young men to be better partners, better husbands, better fathers, and to be better citizens of the world.”

She concludes, “So if Nara really wants a rebrand, it’s time for Lucky Blue to step up.”