What The Hell America!

These “tips” are ostensibly helpful but only loosely related to budgeting. All of Victoria’s suggestions cost some amount of money—which is not disclosed—and are at times less economically efficient. (A streaming service is certainly worth more than buying each individual DVD.) And on a broader scale, the nature of her job is paradoxically consumerist, as she still earns money from views.

Influencers like Victoria might not be selling products—but they’re still selling a lifestyle for viewers to consume. Underconsumption has become code for having a romanticized, perfectly “natural” life achieved by baking homemade banana bread instead of buying a loaf at the store.

If this kind of domestic fantasy sounds familiar, look to another trend that’s consumed the internet in the past year: tradwives. The emphasis on making things from scratch, focusing on domestic duties for fulfillment, and living naturally crosses both internet communities. You can’t say Ballerina Farm and Victoria wouldn’t be seated at the same table, sharing tips on how to raise their sourdough starter.

The connection is uncanny and based on true patterns. If you look up #underconsumptioncore, women make up the majority of the influencers. Most of the targeted consumption habits revolve around stereotypically female shopping habits: things like clothes, makeup, skincare products.

Colva Weissenstein, an American studies professor at Georgetown University who teaches a class called “Advertising and Social Change,” explained that women are often positioned at the center of consumption culture because they tend to “buy more stuff.” A study by Capital One in November of 2024 found that 38.9 percent of American women shop on any given day, as compared to 33.1 percent of men. As a result, women are more likely to be molded by consumer culture and the political climate surrounding it. 

Along with a rise in right-wing ideology, especially after Trump’s election, women are now being marketed a fantasy of underconsumption that aims to reinforce traditional female roles, similar to tradwives. “The idea of the natural woman,” as Weissenstein described these underconsumption influencers, “is also a woman who is not burdened by labor—which makes sense, because Republicans don’t want us in the workforce.” 

The alternate lifestyle underconsumption-core pitches is nothing a working woman could feasibly do. How can someone with a 9 to 5 be expected to frolic in a field, bake her own bread and make all-natural toothpaste? She can’t, unless she doesn’t work. And she is, by the terms of underconsumption-core, more fulfilled for it. 

“It is this sort of vision of what the perfect woman [is]—she’s almost a girl—who doesn’t think about money like that. She doesn’t need stuff,” Weissenstein said. Instead, she looks to other places for value: nature, motherhood, domestic living. 

There’s nothing wrong with underconsumption-core on its face: People should want to save money, and cutting down on waste is good for the planet and our wallets. But the trend is dishonest in its marketing, placing absurd moral expectations on women to domesticate under the guise of fighting capitalist oppression. 

When influencers deem spending money as a “temptation,” portray anything they’ve bought as an admission of weakness, or even go so far as one underconsumption influencer, Hannah Siegal, did to call themselves “replaceable” in every area of life except the home, that’s not budgeting. It’s the kind of gendered moral policing that the average woman does not have the time or energy to do. 

As Weissenstein admitted, “I might not have time to go and walk through the woods for three hours connecting with nature. I might need to go in CVS, and I might have 15 minutes to find something in late capitalism to keep my spark going.”