From Homemaker to Influencer: Tradwife Aesthetics, Digital Femininity, and the Commodification of Domestic Labor in Turkish Food Reels

Abstract

Instagram Reels transform cooking from ordinary domestic labor into visible, affective, and potentially monetizable media performance. This study examines how four prominent Turkish female content creators construct digital femininity and convert culinary work into symbolic and commercial value. Rather than assigning creators a fixed tradwife identity, the article treats tradwife aesthetics as a visual-discursive repertoire that idealizes domestic space, associates feminine competence with care and attractiveness, and presents labor-intensive homemaking as pleasurable lifestyle content. A purposive comparative multimodal case study analyzed four user-supplied Instagram Reels by Melisa Özkan, Havva Hacıfazlıoğlu, Ezgi Köse/Peppycooky, and Merve Avan Topak. Video sequences, profile screenshots, visible captions, and interface cues were coded for domestic labor, femininity, care, authenticity, aestheticization, self-branding, and commercial visibility. The cases produced four contrasting formations: aspirational-sensual culinary femininity, playful everyday authenticity, maternal entrepreneurship, and spouse-oriented aesthetic care. Across cases, editing compressed effort into fluent competence, while kitchens operated simultaneously as homes, studios, and branded interfaces. The findings suggest that Turkish food Reels hybridize gendered domestic service with public authorship, bodily display, humor, motherhood, and entrepreneurship, turning domestic competence into platform value without necessarily restoring a fixed traditional feminine identity.