Yesteryear

This book didn't fully live up to the hype for me, but I really appreciated what it was trying to say.

At its core, it's about the gap between performance and reality on social media, told through a tradwife persona. What was really interesting to read was the feminism commentary, using the pioneer era and how women were actually treated back then to show how hollow the romanticised "tradwife" version really is. It's one thing to fake living a simple, traditional life for followers, it's another thing to actually have lived it. And the book uses that contrast to say something real about how much has been erased or glossed over when we romanticise the past. Women's lives back then weren't a peaceful, wholesome fantasy. They were exhausting, restrictive, and often brutal, and the book puts that reality right in front of you.

I also came away feeling that the tradwife persona was one example of a much bigger phenomenon. I am not sure if the author intended this in any way, but that was my reading as well. The same dynamic exists with the "clean girl," the "girlboss," and probably every other social media persona. They all manufacture a fantasy and build parasocial communities around the gap between performance and reality.

For me, the book wasn't just about tradwives, but the social media dystopia.