does it take to make a grilled-cheese sandwich? The answer, for most, is about ten minutes. But for Hannah Neeleman, a housewife-turned-social-media-star, the process can take days. Ms Neeleman makes everything from scratch: milling her own flour and milking cows. Then she performs a fiddly routine of stirring and simmering. Finally, exhausted, she stuffs homemade cheese into freshly baked bread and tells her eight children to tuck in.
When she is not busy making sandwiches, Ms Neeleman posts videos of them on TikTok, a social-media app . She is part of a cohort of “traditional” housewives who show women how to look after their homes and husbands, make wild blueberry compotes, wear floral frocks and use words like “fresh” and “frolicking”. The hashtag #tradwife has been viewed more than 600m times on TikTok.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline"Honey, will you be home for dinner?"Alice Munro was the English language’s Chekhov