From raw milk to tradwifery to queerphobia: what are the 'crunchy' lifestyle reels you're seeing all over Instagram?
It's a weird blend of evangelicalism, hypernationalism, and bigotry.
It seems that a lot of people are getting “crunchy” Reels on Instagram.
I send several to my friends on a daily basis in what I call a “post-ironic” fashion. But the algorithm doesn’t recognise post-irony, so I guess it thinks I’m a fan of this stuff.
The “crunchy” lifestyle emphasises natural and holistic approaches to food and homemaking (think: trail mix over Red Frogs). Once a niche among left-leaning hippies, it’s been co-opted on Instagram by those who want to lead their lives and raise their kids not in the pursuit of freedom or health, but in retaliation to the radical and unbiblical attack that is... social progress?
Weirdly, crunchy living on Instagram Reels inclines toward conservative, anti-establishment thinking (because, of course, the “establishment” in question is woke to its core). I’ve seen takes ranging from processed-oatmeal-is-bad to we-should-all-submit-to-our-husbands, to the Biden regime actually being a satanic cabal, feeding off the blood of hormone-pumped kids.
This lifestyle seems to be premised on the belief that only some atavistic return to pre-industrial homesteading – raw milk and all – will save us from the throes of contemporary society that wants to “feminise” men, lead women astray from their baby-making instincts, and turn children gay.
I was curious about this pipeline of innocent homemaking to queerphobic conspiracy. So, join me in venturing down the crunchy rabbit hole.
Crunchy Level One
We’ll start with the first level of crunchiness.
When I first entered this corner of Instagram, it all seemed pretty innocuous: apron-clad mothers making sourdough as toddlers pull at their (very long) skirts. There’s an emphasis on non-toxic kitchen products, no screen time for kids, and bread (like, an insane focus on sourdough).
In the Instagram bio of these accounts is invariably “Lowtox Living”, some affiliate link to essential oils, or an invitation to buy their new Biblical Homeschooling Course! But, apart from their attempts to sell that stupid makeup tin (that was laterexposed to be an MLM!), there doesn’t seem to be an overt agenda in sharing their organic lifestyles.
Level two crunchy
Ok, level two.
Further down the rabbit hole, we see crunchiness infiltrating the domestic scene. “Trad wives” – women who choose to be homemakers and adhere to traditional femininity – are particularly visible voices, proudly sharing how they practise modesty and “submission” and raise their children accordingly.
One creator captions a mirror selfie with “2024 is the year of the dependent woman”, while another praises her “masculine provider” as the reason she can stay home and make bread. There seems to be a pride in these creators from diverging from the hard-fought liberties of feminism in the name of denouncing “decadence and consumerism, sexual depravity and promiscuity, and ‘unnatural’ ways of living”.
Take this creator who walked away from the “party girl” world to become a crunchy homemaker. Don’t ask me why they all drink raw milk, it’s just a thing (but don’t be mistaken - they’re better than everyone because of it).
So, what’s the harm in this?
I’ve noticed that these creators and their families are almost exclusively home-schooled. With education and parenting too being subjected to a crunchy “return to nature” mentality – one that erases the past half-century of advancements (Think: darning lessons for girls; hunting lessons with dad for boys; scripture studies after lunch) – we fall further into restrictive gender expectations and heteronormativity.
When these roles of the uber-manly breadwinner and the submissive trad-wife are presented as “natural” human dispositions in a complete state of nature, it implies that any identity outside this extreme binary is unnatural, or the product of some corruptive outside influence on an individual.
This sentiment just gets dialled-up in level three of the crunchy madness.
Level three crunchy
In this level, there’s an anti-establishment tone that frames this ‘indoctrination’ crisis of children (sound a bit hypocritical?). Often, queer people, and queer-inclusive policies, are used as evidence of a radicalisation of society and portrayed as something we need to “shield” our families from with conservative homeschooling models.
The tamer examples of this express a general distrust in the government, without spelling out what exactly it’s trying to push:
In a much-blunter Reel, a crunchy creator lambasts the idea of Pride month in light of mothers, fathers, and veterans getting only a day of recognition a year. Inserting a photo of a real trans person, she complains that “These beautiful little gems of society, who are so intensely protected, get a whole month”.
The Reel is captioned,
“If you’re into:
Exposing corruption
Protecting kids
Spreading truth’
Don’t forget to follow me.”
Yep - the good-old conflation of trans visibility with a need to “protect kids”.
A quick look at her bio reveals she’s a “Home-schooler/steader/birther/business owner” and her pronouns are “ne/ver”; illustrating the politicised overlap of crunchy homesteading with bigoted views.
In another Reel on this person’s account, she’s “sitting here thinking about the fact that there are crazy ass people out there who are raising “genderless” babies called ‘they’”. Yes, because that definitely happens.
Another creator shares a Reel “3 things I don’t do as a homeschool mom”. She lists some run-of-the-mill crunchy stuff in the top 2 slots, just to get to the crux of the matter : “I don’t teach woke ideology….sorry if you are ‘offended’. We teach biblical truths here.”
I did notice that it’s nearly all – subliminally or overtly – religious, and the ugly parts of religion too. Ideas like the “demonic influences” (of television, school curricula, and pronouns) are so commonplace in these Reels it’s easy to forget we’re a stone’s throw away from a cult, if that.
But, religiosity seems suspiciously self-serving to the circumstances and opinions of these creators. There’s no inconvenient “God’s plan” to explain away – poverty, family separation, social exclusion on the basis of identity, – but there’s plenty opportunity to proselytise to millions on Instagram.
Like this “humbly awake” creator sharing how she homeschools her children: “The primary responsibility of a parent is to disciple and train [your children] for the Kingdom of God. If you won’t fight for your children, the enemy will”, where again the enemy is some abstract monolith of evil seeking to confuse and lead astray children.
Flicking though her other posts, she’s flaunting transphobic and conspiratorial views, including the insane belief that every celebrity in Hollywood is transgender. Oh, so that’s the “evil”. You can only guess the standard of education her disciples (I mean, kids) are getting.
Or one of my favourites (I’m pretty sure she’s whistle-syncing to The Hunger Games soundtrack??): “Calling all homeschool moms who have decided to raise and protect their own children instead of sending them to the public schools to be indoctrinated”.
In the comment section, she clarifies that the woke ideology in question is “alphabet soup and CRT” (referring to the LGBTQ acronym and Critical Race Theory). Who would have guessed?
This Crunchy Balanced Mama, who thinks there’s some orchestrated effort from “the people worried about pronouns all day long” to misgender her kid.
Or, in a more overt display of misinformation, this crunchy creator joking about hitting her child if they start “identifying as an animal or any other fur sh!t”.
These creators’ depiction of the government’s “radical queer agenda” further stigmatises even the slightest of policy steps toward social tolerance. The phenomenal reach of these Reels - racking up tens of millions of views by virtue of their (a) outright illogicality, or (b) rage bait-y messaging aimed at getting maximum exposure - implicates viewers in the mass conspiracy that this is how we should be living (homeschooled, conservative, Christian), and any attempt at modernity is a plot to ruin this platonic ideal of family and identity by turning our kids gay.
When mixed in with conspiratorial views of the government and public health, and with a healthy dose of religious revelation, you get a really potent and dangerous melting pot of bigotry where adherents believe that it’s their God-ordained responsibility to defend all children everywhere by opposing ‘evil’ forces in our language; in public schools; in progressive policies elevating the rights of LGBTQ+ people. In reality, this does nothing but encourage paranoia toward queer or gender-divergent people, spread misinformation (no, students are not using litter boxes), and reinforce these delusional echo-chambers.
We do live in a time of immense confusion, polarisation, and “post-truth”. But proposing that the only way to confront our discomfort with these problems is to retreat to some old-timey world of homesteading, unpasteurised milk, and bible studies in place of contemporary education, is just ridiculous. More, that there’s some need to shelter kids from the big, bad world is a mentality harmful to both the children, and the all too often queer people, scapegoated because they choose to present as their authentic selves.
This burgeoning crunchy corner of Instagram has brought about some good stuff, though. The @ReallyVeryCrunchy account very-subtly satirises crunchy creators, and it’s hilarious. I recommend @christian__nightmares if you’re in the mood to laugh your religious trauma away, while queer and ally creators like Chad Chad and Shanspeare on YouTube have made some brilliant content on particularly the second level of crunchiness explored here, Tradwives.
Lucy is an 18-year-old writer, uni student, and Wikipedia rabbit-hole connoisseur from Gadigal country, Sydney. In her spare time, she promises she touches grass.
Further Reading / Watching
- Far-right ‘tradwives’ see feminism as evil. Their lifestyles push back against ‘the lie of equality’ - The Conversation
- Why are influencers promoting raw milk? - Esquire
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