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JJ's avatar

I got distracted at the top by that Ballerina Farm account. I would LOVE for someone to publish 10,000 words on the rise of what I call “Performative Farm.” I grew up on a farm in Iowa and I cannot abide the Farmhouse aesthetic trend or the rise of people with means setting up shop on a ranch or farm that they clearly do not rely upon as a livelihood and how this new cultural rural turn intersects with country music, evangelicalism, late-stage capitalism, white identity and conservative/libertarian politics.

When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there were a few former hippies who lived around our farm in older farmhouses who mostly worked in town but liked being out in the country. Other than that, it was all families who were farming to make a living. This meant raising crops to sell at market to earn money, mostly. However, the rise of corporate farming has mostly eradicated the family farm, so the Performative Farm is as much of a facade as the Momfluencer who is performing a sort of domesticity and motherhood that they imagine a bygone era to be like. It is not based in reality and plays heavily to a nostalgia that also isn’t based in reality. The reality is, since at least the 1970’s, family farming has been barely sustainable and the “rustic” charm manufactured by Pottery Barn or Magnolia is nothing more than a fantasy that never was.

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Edie Spencer's avatar

I have stayed well and clear of the mamasphere, although it does pop up from time to time. The posed photos, the bible quotes, the weird visual screechiness of the too well scrubbed settings, the bad decorative taste- no thanks.

Motherhood- especially White Motherhood(tm) has always been performative in this country- and has always had a price to it and come AT a price. That social media is the newest version of this does not surprise me one bit.

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