Content Consumed: Tradwives, SNL, and Ryan Reynolds

Howdy! It’s a lovely, sunny Friday in Mexico’s cuisine capital and I’m sipping on a mezcalita as I type this. What a life.

In today’s Content Consumed, we’re talking about:
👗 Are you an aspiring “tradwife”?
📺 SNL may—or may not—return to glory
🌲 Ryan Reynolds invades Portland
💸 Robinhood’s gamified investing

The “tradwife” trend and Don’t Worry Darling

If you’ve been on the Internet for the past couple months, you may have observed the “tradwife” trend.

The girlboss gets up at 5 a.m. for Pilates, drinks her Nutribullet smoothie and matcha, works her 9–5 then her side hustle, goes on two dates, then meets the girls for drinks, then has time to do a 15-step skincare routine and somehow she’s asleep by 10 p.m. in her cute downtown studio apartment.

The tradwife gets up at 5 a.m. to do the laundry, make her family a full sit-down breakfast, pack lunches for her husband and three kids, drop everyone off at school, do the grocery shopping, clean the whole house top-to-bottom, garden, prepare stew for hours in her apron and modest clothing—then picks up the kids, plays with them until dinnertime, feeds everyone the perfect dinner, continues cleaning somehow, and makes sure everyone knows her domestic prowess.

The tradwife ideal, *as portrayed online*, often comes with disparagement of working women and feminist values. The trend asks young women: could working mainly as a housewife and having a man provide everything for you be empowering?

And what happens when a movie like Don’t Worry Darling shatters that trend? The image of 1950s domestic bliss is ripped apart in the movie. Gaslighting, male manipulation, and a lack of independence make the life of an All-American housewife seem less than ideal.

Movies often have quite a cultural impact on our society. Could Don’t Worry Darling impact the tradwife trend?

SNL’s big new moves

Will SNL ever return to glory? When I say glory, I mean the Bill-Hader-Kristin-Wigg-Chris-Parnell-Fred-Armisen-Seth-Meyers-Amy-Poehler era of the mid-aughts. Some may say the mid-90s or late 80s cast, which is also super fair.

Anyways, the big guy himself, Lorne Michaels, sat down with the New York Times to discuss the massive cast turnover — 8 cast members leaving and 4 newbies joining — and where Saturday Night Live goes from here.

Here are the most interesting takeaways I had:

• Lorne’s biggest goal is for more people to watch it live again. (I’m a YouTube clips kind of gal at the moment, like many young folks who have better plans on Saturday nights.)
• “Coming into a midterm election,” Lorne wants to keep Colin Jost and Michael Che’s Weekend Update “as solid as it is.”
• Lorne’s not planning on retiring anytime soon, even as SNL is hits its 50th year. And the 50th-anniversary show should be quite an event for SNL viewers of past and present: “We’ll bring everyone back from all 50 years and hosts and all of that.”

Ryan Reynolds and his new Portland distillery

Listen, listen: Ryan Reynolds has never actually done anything rotted (a term I have snagged from Shannon of @fluentyforward). He seems to be a decent human, much like his wife and Hollywood sweetheart Blake Lively.

Deadpool… I wasn’t a fan. Just not my type of humor. The Proposal? A top 5 movie of all time. The guy knows how to nail a rom-com.

So what’s the issue? Maybe I find it all a little fake, a little try-hard, a little cheesy. Anyways, this is all leading up to: Ryan Reynolds has opened an Aviation Gin distillery in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. He released this short video in celebration—and an appeal to get employees?

The premise of the video is that he’s tricking tour-goers into working at the distillery. Self-deprecating bits, gestures of vanity, and cheeky lines abound.

The Oregonian reports that a press release promises that the new experience will feature “an intimate tasting room, exceptional draft cocktail bar, gift shop, and full access to Reynolds’ office, which doubles as an escape room, inviting guests to solve a series of puzzles and identify various Easter eggs to exit.”

Hmmm. Shall I, as I present to you all, actually go on this tour? Probably not!

How Robinhood changed investing

I’m almost 25. I have a 401k and a CMA and an IRA.

I still feel like I don’t know shit about investing.

Robinhood has helped me understand stocks and the market more, I *think*. Plus, Slate reports, retail investing with commission-less apps like Robinhood will only get cheaper, easier, and more “democratized” over time. But… “we’ll have to live with the consequences.”

What consequences?

First, we’ve gotta understand what makes companies like Robinhood unique: their payment for order flow.

• Robinhood doesn’t actually hold stocks.
• Robinhood connects a person who wants to trade stocks with a market-maker who actually has the stock or can quickly get it.
• The market-maker makes its money by buying stocks for a bit less than it sells them and pocketing that spread millions of times on millions of trades.
• The market-makers need trades for this to work, and Robinhood provides them en masse.
• The companies pay Robinhood to fill those trades — for that order flow — and that makes up most of Robinhood’s revenue. Not commissions.

So, back to the consequences.

Robinhood wins when you trade more, which, to be fair, is also true under a commission structure.

But a commission is a “natural brake pedal” on what could be endless trading. Robinhood’s the opposite: no fees, a platform that the company designed to look almost like a video game, and a parade of features encouraging users to trade and trade and trade.

It’s a slippery slope. Read on at Slate.

Whew! And that’s a wrap for today. I’m headed back to Portland tomorrow after two beautiful weeks in Oaxaca. Expect a full Oaxaca piece on Monday along with your regular Content Consumed.

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Love,
Casey