How I got sucked into Latina trad wife TikTok

Months after deleting TikTok off my phone, the nerves around the 2024 presidential election got the best of me and I re-downloaded the app for some much needed distraction.

The first video the algorithm served up to me was of a woman, seemingly in her 20s, with impossibly shiny hair, approaching her kitchen stove with the title card “make breakfast with me for my man 4:30 a.m., construction worker emoji.”

The next handful of videos were variations of this first one, women claiming to wake up as early as 3 a.m. to make “lonche,” or lunch, for their husbands, many of whom they described as blue collar. I instantly recognized the videos as “trad wife” content — social media that romanticizes traditional gender roles, in which the woman takes care of the household tasks while the man provides financially for the home. Much of the content I had seen before was from Christian, often Mormon, women who seemed wealthy in their pristine kitchens or expansive homesteads. I had seen neither Latina women, nor explicitly working class families represented in this genre before.

The comments on these videos ranged from vociferous praise to sharp critiques — mostly about waking up that early for a man. The next day I woke up to the news that Donald Trump was elected president and for the week that followed there would be a deluge of analysis and one of the prevailing narratives was that Latino voters had taken a major shift to the right. I was processing this information while being submerged in this, new to me, online subgenre of the Latina trad wives and realized that I did not know what these women cared about, what her politics were and what led her to this lifestyle.

Being fascinated by this subculture, I reached out to several of these women and almost immediately heard back from Lupita Duarte, who goes by @luuva1l and has more than 500,000 followers on TikTok. Duarte’s most popular videos are of her cooking, sometimes in her outdoor rustic kitchen or indoors when she cooks lunch for her husband at 3 a.m.

I was very excited when Duarte invited me to come visit her for a day at her home in Fresno.

Lupita’s world

After driving nearly four hours from Los Angeles, I arrived to the suburban Bullard neighborhood of Fresno. Duarte is 33. She lives with her husband, who is a contractor, and their two kids. She greeted me at the door, extremely welcoming but also seemingly anxious. She said she rarely had guests over.

Duarte gave me a tour of her ranch-style home, including the outdoor kitchen her husband built for her. The outdoor kitchen has a large Mexican flag hanging in the back and animal skulls collected from her husband’s hunting trips hanging on the side. Duarte says she likes to role model the traditional Mexican woman who makes fresh homemade food in her videos.

“I think it's a fantasy for a woman to be out here in the fogon [fireplace] making tortillas,” Duarte tells me.

I ask Duarte why she wakes up sometimes as early as 3 a.m. to cook for her husband.

“He wakes up every day to work 5 in the morning, and we know that it's not easy to work, everything's expensive now," Duarte said. "So I said if I can do something nice to show him that he's worthy of my time and that I could also sacrifice, why not?”

Duarte thinks that men especially like her videos, that they like seeing an attractive young woman playing that traditional role for her husband. For Duarte, the goal is not just views, she says she’s trying to course correct the dynamic between women and men, advocating for a traditional lifestyle “so it doesn’t die down.”

“You can be a business woman, but also be very feminine and still take care of your kids,” Duarte said. “Still be that old school woman, but still be empowered to yourself.”

Duarte estimates that she makes $3,000 a month off TikTok. The platform pays creators based on how many views their videos get. She says she normally makes an additional $500 on Instagram and if she has a sponsorship she can make up to $4,000 a month.

The path to traditional values 

Duarte was born and raised in Fresno. Her parents still run a merchandise business selling items like hats for acts like Julion Alvarez or Peso Pluma. Duarte’s mother takes the lead on the business and growing up Duarte felt her mother was stretched thin.

“I saw that sometimes making all the decisions yourself is very stressful," she said. "I saw my mom very stressed. I don't think she got to enjoy a lot.”

Duarte knew that she didn’t want a lifestyle similar to her mother’s, but it was only once she got married at the age of 20 in 2014 that she realized what kind of wife and eventually mother she wanted to be.

“At first, it was like a tug of war. [My husband and I] were fighting," she said. "I saw growing up that my mother had all the pants and all this power. So I said, ‘I have to administer the money. I have to do this. I have to do that.’ It was very clashing. And then, I don't know if it was meant to be, I saw a TikTok.”

Duarte said the TikTok video was of a Mexican woman suggesting that women take on more traditional roles. As Duarte remembers it, “She said, ‘Why are you trying to take on the role of a man? You already have the role of being a mother, taking care of kids, and you wanna add on to be doing what the man does. Relax, let him lead.’”

Duarte said that after watching the video she decided she wanted to take on a more submissive position in her relationship.

“ I'm in peace because when you're a woman, you already have enough… And then telling him how to run the house… Just let him be a man. Let him lead you," she said. "The more I shut up — I know it sounds bad — but the more that I shut up and stop whining, I see that it works.”

Lupita’s politics and world view

I had a difficult time parsing Duarte's political position. On the one hand, she was very concerned about the immigration system in the United States.

“I think ICE should really try to help the Mexican community. Criminals, obviously, they should be deported. But I think everyone has the right to have an opportunity to better their life,” Duarte said.

She also told me that she’s really worried about children being killed in Gaza and even posted about it on her TikTok.

But when I asked her what was the issue she most cared about, she brought up an issue that's basically become a bellwether for MAGA women — child trafficking.

In 2020, the #SavetheChildren became viral as a part of a QAnon conspiracy that liberal politicians and celebrities like Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, Hillary Clinton and others were part of a cabal of elites who are pedophiles and child killers. Since then, there's been sustained panic about child trafficking, especially online.

Duarte told me that she had voted in the 2020 election for Joe Biden, but was quickly disillusioned by how expensive everything was during his term. She then did not vote in the 2024 elections.

“I think either way, both of the presidents are going to do whatever's best for them," she said. "I think we've seen that. They really haven't done anything to help the people.”

Leaving Fresno, I had a belly full of delicious cheese soup made by Duarte. I was grateful for her hospitality. And I felt I understood what led to Duarte’s traditional lifestyle. Her personal narrative goes with the larger theory that the popularity of trad wife content is a reaction to second-wave feminism which emphasized equal rights at the workplace. Women made many professional gains, but not necessarily gains in the domestic sphere — often creating a double work day for women with families. The trad wife is a rejection of that, an attempt to create more labor equity in the relationship. In some ways, it seems like it’s working for Duarte.

But spending so much time alone is isolating and means that one of the primary ways she interacts with the world is through her phone. And I got the sense after spending multiple hours with her, that her political beliefs don’t appear rooted in Democratic or Republican ideology, but instead, seem like a new concoction, curated by the algorithm that feeds the content on her For You page.

Listen • 28:25

Listen • 28:25

Getting lost in Latina trad wife TikTok

During a flurry of election-related anxiety,Imperfect Paradisehost Antonia Cereijido re-downloaded TikTok and fell down a very specific rabbit hole: Latina trad wife content. Videos of women waking up at three in the morning, making “lonche” for their husbands and espousing traditional lifestyles – have become popular and gone viral on social media. In the first episode of a three-part collaboration with Latino USA,Imperfect Paradise goes behind the scenes with one particular so-called trad wife, Lupita Duarte, to understand what her motivations, politics and aspirations can tell us about the cultural moment.