The Tradwife Preparation Academy

RushTok at University of Alabama became “an Internet thing” in 2021, and it’s only gained steam since then, including a HBO documentary (which oddly had a lot of scenes involving a wig), billions of views on TikTok, probably hundreds of millions of views on Instagram (the kids just don’t like it as much), and 4,000+ thought pieces on different websites about what it all means and why people are obsessed with it.

It’s not a very complicated discussion.

At the highest levels, people are obsessed with Bama Rush because:

1. The women involved are attractive.
2. It harkens people back to their college existence and what they deemed important.
3. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion many times.
4. It allows us to feel better about ourselves as parents, i.e. “My Emily would never do this. Wait, would she?”

The real reason it’s become so popular, though, is because it’s the ultimate in traditional gender norms at a time when those feel “threatened” to many. Basically, you have well-toned blond girls from the American South essentially competing to be in houses with other girls under the guise of “friendship” or “sisterhood,” but in reality the houses prime them for social stratification in a way that a “Mrs” may surely follow.

Essentially, you’re watching the prequel to the Tradwife Movement , at a time when a lot of high school girls are saying they’re not even sure they’re girls. Seeing traditional gender explode in a barrage of dance moves, pink tops, and jewelry is comforting to many.

The two best external takes I’ve seen recently on Bama Rush are these:

1. One from The New York Times
2. One from Substack

Both make similar points. It is very easy to get into the diversity argument here, i.e. “Why are all these ladies white?” That’s the first hammer you grab from the bag. The second hammer might be something about patriarchy and looking up Alabama rape / assault statistics.

Those are absolutely valid hammers to grab to attempt to smash this Internet phenom, but it’s precisely the fact that people want to grab those hammers that makes this so interesting to people. A lot of people, i.e. almost exclusively white middle-aged men and their country club wives, recoil from diversity efforts and think the country is back-sliding because we’ve given so much to the progressives. In reality, we’ve given almost nothing to either side, because all we do is argue about semantics and nothing really gets done except in private sector.

But still, there’s a deep fear of the existing world vs. the encroaching world.

Bama Rush is the antidote to that fear. Here’s a bunch of hot blond girls who will eventually be good little wives and PTA moms while daddy goes off and slays dragons in the financial sector. This is what life is supposed to be like, say many. This is what college is: the biggest experiences, the biggest football games, the best sisterhoods, etc.

The whole concept keeps us tethered to a past that’s comforting for many, which is where some of the popularity comes from. Some, of course, comes from wanting to see a train wreck unfurl. And some comes from wanting to question the parents of these girls and why they allow their daughters to believe this stuff even matters an iota.

Gender discussions have increasingly become confusing in the last decade, as we obviously know.

This is a form of nostalgia kink with a side of hard-body girls dancing in front of a plantation-style home. It’s like a Jane Fonda video with affluence trappings. Who wouldn’t want to take a hit off that pipe instead of debating a new series of letters in the LBGTQIA+ world? TikTok, or at least American TikTok, was always designed as the ultimate distraction. Instagram even isn’t that — it has moments of profound sadness, acknowledgment of friend suicide, etc. TikTok is all about get in, get lost, come out dumber. (Chinese TikTok is about coming out smarter, but that’s a different post.) Bama Rush perfectly aligns with that too. In, out, that felt comforting, I can ignore the bigger societal picture around it.

What’s your take on Bama Rush?