this whole world of mom influencers where their lives that you're seeing on social media are very much

smoke and mirrors and they are created to sell you something. And so if you think about it as if

someone's creating entertainment for you, that they're creating a business and they want to keep you

engaged and they want to keep you coming back, they're not going to show you their

reality. I don't let social media make me feel bad about my own life anymore because I kind of

recognize that duality of it. A lot of influencers are not shooting their lives in real time. They're

hiring professional videographers, professional photographers to come to their house either once a week or

once a month

and shoot an entire week's content or entire month's content all at one time.

When we look at influencer content and always looks so easy and beautiful and we don't see

that labor. We don't see the work that goes into it. These women are entrepreneurs.

They are working their butts off. I think that moms are burnt out.

We're burnt out whether we are working in the home, whether we are working outside the home.

And when you're burnt out, it looks really nice to look at a beautiful farm and think, wow,

that life could be maybe better because the grass is always greener. We were never meant

to have this much access in other people's lives, and yet I love having access into some people's

lives, and then some of it doesn't work for me. Hello and welcome to the minimalist moms podcast.

Joining me today is best-selling author and journalist Joe Piazza to discuss her latest fictional

thriller, Everyone is Lying to You.

Although this is a perfect read for the beach or pool this summer, it's also a commentary

on the world of social media influencers and the rise of the Tradwife movement.

So in our conversation, we talk about Joe's reporting and podcasting work that gave her a front row seat to influence her culture, why the Trad Wave aesthetic is so polarizing and why it's resonating so powerfully across the internet, the tension between empowerment and performance and online portrayals of womanhood and so much more.

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