Nara Smith: Why Is Everyone So Obsessed With Her?

The hottest news on the internet right now is that Nara Smith and her husband, Lucky Blue Smith, have welcomed their third child, named Whimsy Lou Smith.

If that sentence makes absolutely no sense to you, then you haven’t been one of the many people online who have become positively obsessed with the model/actor (Lucky Blue) and what they call his “tradwife” (Nara) over the past few months.

You may also not recognize Nara by name, but likely have seen videos on your feed of a young, beautiful, impeccably dressed woman making things like “lemon glazed donuts” from scratch.

Since she started posting in earnest on social media last year, Nara has become the object of fascination for some, annoyance by others, and has launched a thousand think pieces.

But why? If you’re confused, I’m here to help, in the latest edition of TL;DR.

Give me the tl;dr.Nara Smith, the beautiful, glamorous, Gen Z tradwife, has become the face of what many are calling the regressive movement of young women who are seeking to return to more “traditional” roles.

Wait, I need more. What’s the background here?Nara is the wife of Lucky Blue Smith, an actor and model who was called the “male model of the moment” by Teen Vogue at just 16. Lucky Blue was raised Mormon, but it’s unclear if he still belongs to the church. The couple got married right before COVID lockdown, and Nara became the stepmother to Lucky Blue’s daughter with fellow model Stormi Bree (some random fun facts: he was 18 when his daughter, Gravity Blue, was born and Bree is now dating Joe Jonas following his split from Sophie Turner).

Another random fact is that no one seems to know how old Zara is; her Wikipedia says 22, but the People article about their wedding said she was 24 in 2020. So, who knows! The couple now has three children of their own: Rumble Honey, Slim Easy, and now baby Whimsy. Nara is also a model with IMG and blogs about her life on Substack.

On her Instagram and TikTok accounts, where she has nearly 8 million followers combined, Nara shares snippets of her life with a focus on the elaborate meals she makes. She says online that she loves to cook and considers it her “love language.”

Nara broke through into the public discourse in a big way when a video of her cooking Oreos from scratch in a black dress and full glam went viral. After this video, many people began to label her a “tradwife,” although Nara doesn’t say if that’s something she considers herself.

What does the internet think?People had a lot to say about Nara’s Oreo video. They ridiculed her for “glamoriz[ing] a lifestyle” of a rich stay-at-home-mom, which, they noted, is something that is unrealistic for most people.

Since then, Nara has become an object of fascination for many. Some people stan her.

Others are just obsessed with her.

But no one can stop talking about her.

Why do people care?Mainly, Nara has been swept into the bigger fascination with and opposition to women who have been labeled as “tradwives” online. These usually religious influencers have gained fame and notoriety by presenting an idealized and sanitized portrait of motherhood online, and either covertly implying or overtly saying that young women should pursue more “traditional” pursuits like homemaking and motherhood.

Before Nara, probably the most well-known tradwife was Hannah Neeleman aka Ballerina Farm, a mother of eight who lives with her family on a ranch in Utah and spends her days (according to her social media) milking cows and baking sourdough bread. But the trend is much larger than a few women. Tradwives or aspiring tradwives are all over TikTok and Instagram, talking about how much better all women’s lives would be if we just stopped working and went back to the kitchen or just presenting their lives in a very aspirational way.

Obviously, this is problematic. Tradwives now occupy an interesting place on the internet though. While many women abhor the values that some of them put forward, many are obsessed with tradwife content: watching it, pontificating on it, thinking about it. And of course there are a worrying amount of women who are actually buying into the whole “let’s marry rich and bake bread all day” dream, which isn’t great..

Have the Smiths responded to all this?Notably, neither Smith has ever responded to allegations of “tradwifery.” We don’t really know if Nara considers herself as such, or if even considers herself a stay-at-home mom. As with many influencers, a lot of what has been said about her and analyzed about her has been without her weighing in at all.

She just keeps making her homemade meals, wearing dresses, and staying unbothered.

What should I tell my friends about this?That they should only start watching her videos if they are ready to be sucked into a multi-hour rabbit hole.

Stephanie McNeal is a senior editor at Glamour and the author of Swipe Up for More! Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers