Embrace the Vibe With Me: Jam Girl Summer

You Don’t Have to Be a Tradwife to Want a Slow, Beautiful Life

I've been thinking about the aesthetics that come with politics these days. My feed is full of tradwife-pipeline pink pill content. Including one that gets my goat every time: “Imagine how much propaganda it took to convince an entire generation that this (mothering a baby) is oppressive.” (No one did that girlies.)

thedelightfuldaughter

A post shared by @thedelightfuldaughter

I’ve talked a lot about how there is an organized political movement that is bringing tradwives and soft life to our digital doorstep. Women who present traditional homemaking as the ultimate feminine calling, complete with pretty dresses, homemade bread, and total submission to their husbands. What looks like innocent lifestyle content is actually part of an organized political movement designed to make patriarchy look cozy and appealing. Because politics is downstream from culture. The vibes that influence how we act and live.

But there's also a reason women are drawn to slow living right now, there’s a reason they are falling down the rabbit hole of chicken coops and homesteading and home cooked meals. And I get it because I am too!!

It looks so damn pretty and nourishing. And we are tired.

The world is falling apart. The internet is unhinged. The government is keening towards authoritarianism. Childcare costs are draining us. The village feels like a foreign concept. And so many of us, especially women, are reaching for something soft and simple. Something that feels like home.

Prairie-core. Domestic bliss. Big sleeves. Bigger sourdough starters. And beneath it all, the subtle (or not-so-subtle) message: a woman's place is in the kitchen. But not because she wants to be there, because that's where God or her husband or some TikTok algorithm put her.

The tradwife aesthetic promises comfort, but it delivers control.

It's softness as a strategy. It's anti-feminism with a floral filter. It's nostalgia for a time when women were property, romanticized by influencers who want brand deals from butter. (jk, everyone wants on that Kerrygold brand trip)

But we don’t have to let them own this.

So let me offer you an alternative. A counterspell. A new archetype, a way for us to take back soft living from the right because we deserve nice things too.

Jam Girl Summer.

Because if I'm being honest, I'm tired. Tired of how every inch of our lives has been turned into something to optimize, monetize or defend. Tired of hustle-as-identity. Tired of the pressure to prove we're worthy through constant motion.

Somewhere along the way, even rest became a task to perform.

So yeah, I want jam. I want the jars. I want the slow heat of fruit on the stove. I want chipped ceramic dishes and linen aprons and a kitchen that smells like strawberries.

This could be slow living at its finest, because anyone can do it without spending a fortune on an AGA stove.

You wait until the fruit is ready. You sit with it. You let it get messy and sticky and hot. You take what's in season, and only what's in season, and you preserve it.

That's the energy I want for this summer.

Jam Girl is domestic, but not domesticated.

Because here's what the tradwife aesthetic gets wrong about women wanting soft, slow, nourishing lives: it assumes we want them because we're tired of having control of our own lives.

The reality is the opposite. We are actually tired of being controlled.

The tradwife says: give up your autonomy and someone else will take care of everything.

Jam Girl says my softness has nothing to do with surrender and everything to do with soothing my soul.

Jam Girl Summer says I don't need to be palatable to be powerful. I am allowed to take up space, even if that space is quiet. Even if that space is mine alone. Even if that space is sticky with jam.

This isn't just about jam, obviously. Jam Girl Summer is inherently political because it refuses to let the right monopolize comfort, domesticity, and the dream of a slower life. The tradwife pipeline wants us to believe we can only have soft, nourishing lives if we give up our power. But every time a woman chooses preservation over productivity, autonomy over submission, her own timeline over capitalism's demands, that's a push against the systems trying to control her.

And jam, by its nature, is shareable. You give them to neighbors, bring them to potlucks, drop them off when someone's having a hard time. The tradwife movement sells individual domestic perfection as the answer to collective problems, but Jam Girl Summer knows that real nourishment happens in community. It's the friend who picks up groceries when you're sick, the policies that actually support families, the networks of care that catches us when we fall.

Maybe this summer you do make jam. Maybe you go to the farmer's market, pick up some overripe strawberries, and watch them collapse into sweetness. Maybe you eat it straight from the jar with your fingers.

Or maybe the jam is metaphorical, maybe it's a nap you take without guilt. A conversation you finally have. A chapter you write, not because you're on deadline, but because something in you is ready. There is no one way to be a Jam Girl.

But if the culture is telling you to speed up, I hope you'll slow down. If it's telling you to produce, I hope you'll preserve.

Let this be the summer you don't apologize for being in process.

Let this be the summer you let yourself ripen.

I'll meet you there. With a spoon.

Over the weekend I made a quick strawberry rhubarb jam-ish compote. Here are a few resources for proper jam making that are gonna make you rush to the farmer’s market: Serious Eats, Kitchen Stories.

I saw this post from

Mariam

and immediatly thought - GET IN MY BELLY!

saweeeties

A post shared by @saweeeties

I love making homemade challah, I’ve always used this recipe from

the smitten kitchen digest

but with a few changes: I cut it in half, add 2 more egg yolks (sometimes the whole egg if I’m lazy), only do 1 coat of egg wash (crust too thick otherwise) and 1/8ish extra cup sugar (sometimes more if i’m gluttonous).

—> I’m headed to Maine shortly to live out my Jam Girl Summer dreams. Tell me yours in the comments.