Nara Smith is not a tradwife—she wants you to know that. She’s not an ex-tradwife either, despite the New York Times including her in a feature about how ex-tradwives are now as popular as tradwives were in the first place. She wasn’t promoting a tradwife-adjacent lifestyle by marrying at 18, having four children by 24, and spending hours cooking and documenting it online. She’s also not Mormon, by the way. Her husband, model and former teen heartthrob Lucky Blue Smith, was raised Mormon, but we’ll get to that. She wasn’t sending hidden religious messages in her content: “There is no secret agenda.” She wasn’t abandoning her biracial heritage by wearing her hair in a sleek little bob. She wasn’t embracing a 1950s housewife archetype—even when dressed in a pink and red polka-dot minidress to batch-cook sourdough.
Smith wants you to forget everything you think you know about her and start over. She also doesn’t care if you don’t. As with her content: “Those that get it, get it. Those that don’t, don’t. And that’s totally fine. I tell people: ‘If you don’t like my content, I won’t see you scroll past me.’ ‘If you need to block me for your own sanity, please do. I promise I won’t know.’ And if you want to stick around, that is beautiful, I’m grateful, welcome.”
For those new to Nara Smith, she is a model and influencer with 12.5 million TikTok followers (plus 879 million likes) and 4.8 million on Instagram. She makes eccentric, seductive cooking videos where she narrates each step in a passive, hushed voice while recreating everyday supermarket products from scratch. Her videos start with the same routine: her husband or children make a request—for example, “Lucky leaned over, asking me whether I wanted to go grab some frozen yoghurt after the kids go to bed. I turned to him and told him it wouldn’t be as good as if I just made it. And, even though he was reluctant at first, he just went with it.” In a custom-made $900 white-satin corset dress—no apron—she strains the yoghurt starter, combines it with kefir, vanilla, sugar, and cork gum; juices apples and cherries to make gummy bears for the topping; whisks in gelatine and honey. Throughout, Smith stays expressionless. Throughout, her movements are mannequin smooth. Nothing splatters on her front, ever (luck, she insists, not because she exceeds all standards of perfection).
These clips blow people’s minds. Her grilled cheese video has been viewed 49.6 million times. Elsewhere she’s made Nutella, ketchup, Cheez-Its, Pop-Tarts, Skittles, and Snickers. She’s even made bubblegum. There’s the novelty of the recipes—she now has a cookbook of scratch-made ones, Homemade, coming out. Then there are the outfits. She wore a $5,000 cashmere Prada suit to make chicken drumsticks, a $10,000 Schiaparelli to grate tomatoes for a gnocchi sauce. Nigella, Gwyneth, your domestic goddessing has been out-luxed.
All of which brings me to Deborah Ann’s Sweet Shoppe in the white clapboard town of Ridgefield, Connecticut, where Smith is sitting opposite me in the narrow red booth, tapping her phone with acrylic nails. Around us is the loud hum of ice-cream refrigeration units, the smell of hot fudge and candy floss. There are sugar pourers and napkin dispensers, and Jay & the Americans sing Come a Little Bit Closer on the radio. Smith surely had a sense of humour when she chose this as the backdrop to talk about not being a 1950s homemaker? “They have the best soft serve,” she says, a hint of a smile. “And Lucky comes for the cotton-candy ice-cream.”
Today, a fortnight shy of her 25th birthday, Smith is in jeans, a white vest, Chanel flats, and a lot of flashing jewellery (“I love a diamond ring”). For the record, she drove here in her own car. And, while it is true that LuckyHe once said he drove “no matter what,” and that he was “bothered” by the sight of a woman driving a man. She loves driving. She listens to her favourite podcasts while doing it – Aspire With Emma Grede, founder of Skims, and for fun, The Girls Bathroom – “so entertaining. And I do love an audiobook also. I love fantasy. Are you into fantasy?” I ask if she made the gum she’s chewing. She laughs. “Not today.”
Smith’s content attracts millions from advertising (among others, she works with Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu and YSL). As well as her cookbook, she acts, and has two films in post-production. One is an indie film she can’t talk about. The other is Tyrant, “a culinary thriller” starring Charlize Theron, Demi Moore and Paapa Essiedu. Then there’s a “consumer goods brand.” I ask what. “We’ll talk about that later. We’re still figuring it all out.”
Does she make more money than her husband? “That’s a loaded question. How do I even answer that?” She can answer it with a broad smile? “Yes, I will do that.” She has excellent teeth.
What is staggering about Smith is that as well as devising and researching the recipes herself, she does all her own styling, makeup, art direction, video editing, voiceover and mixing, spending upwards of eight hours a day on one 90-second clip. Her agents and managers beg her to take on help. “I always say no. I am very type A.” Type A? “Very rigid, very scheduled.” Her meticulous attention to detail and devotion to her “art” mean “I’m still figuring out where to relinquish control,” she says.
I ask if she’s like The Princess and the Pea when something is not quite right. “That’s literally me. That should be the title. I can’t sleep. I’ll be tossing and turning, bruised.” The cookbook is a sumptuous, high-production volume, but the recipes are down-to-earth in a homely way. They include some from her German childhood: milchreis, schnitzel, rouladen. She doesn’t shy away from refined sugar. There’s meat, there’s chicken in cream, there’s roast potatoes in duck fat. “Do I have sugar and duck fat all day every day? Absolutely not. But roast potatoes occasionally? Absolutely. A little dessert once in a while? Absolutely.”
What I try to keep in mind while she’s telling me all this is that Smith has four children: Rumble Honey, Slim Easy, Whimsy Lou and Fawnie Golden. (“Unusual names build character; Lucky had an unusual name and it helped him in ways.”) The book photoshoot took place three weeks after the youngest was born. So, as well as organising and slipping into, for instance, the Rodarte custom-made gingham dress on the cover, she was breastfeeding a newborn and overseeing renovations to the family home they had just moved into here in Connecticut.
Then not long after, while the cookbook was still being edited, her daughter Whimsy Lou was diagnosed with cancer. It was Lucky’s mother who first noticed “this thing on her body” (for her daughter’s privacy, Smith doesn’t want to go into specifics) while they were all together on a family photoshoot for the holiday season late last year. “My mother-in-law was, like, ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but maybe you should go to the ER.’ Long story short, the doctors did a bunch of tests, from biopsies to ultrasounds, and then called us back and said: ‘She has cancer. She needs to start treatment immediately.’”
Smith’s world “flipped”. Until that point, the couple didn’t even have childcare. Suddenly they were juggling work, kids, chemotherapy appointments, “while also making sure that we weren’t falling apart for her”. Five days out of every fortnight or so, depending on her blood count, Lucky stayed with Whimsy in hospital when she wShe went through treatment while Smith was at home breastfeeding. They couldn’t explain to Whimsy what was happening to her. “She was under two years, so there wasn’t a lot she’d understand.” But they explained it to the older two, “and we got children’s books about cancer that would explain the hair loss and different parts of this journey through stories.” They found “a community” of mutually supportive parents – the reason Smith publicly disclosed Whimsy’s condition once she was in remission. “You don’t realise how many parents or children go through similar experiences until you’re in that situation in the hospital,” she says. “People speaking about it makes you feel less alone.” The shellshock is palpable. She sounds dazed as she runs through the litany of family upheaval that preceded diagnosis – new house, new book, new baby, big dose of postpartum anxiety. “I was still in the thick of dealing with all of it mentally, being pulled multiple different directions [when it happened]. Then all I wanted was to be present for Whimsy. It was hard.” Smith’s mother, Joyce, a nurse, not long free of her own treatment for breast cancer, flew in from Germany to help. “Everyone rallied in my family, and it was beautiful to see.”
“I want people to feel like a grandma lives in my house, not a 24-year-old. Grandma chic with an English twist.” Portrait: Mary Rozzi/The Guardian. Without doubt she’s been changed by the experience. “When you come that close to a life-changing thing, you view the world a little differently.” On the one hand, she appreciates the beauty of “mundane moments”; on the other, she’s tougher. A lot of thought now goes into what her job means in terms of exposure of her children online. “But I’ve always had a boundary around my kids. I show as little of them as possible while acknowledging that they are part of my life.” When people come up to ask for her photograph, her children automatically turn their backs, or stand behind her, or move to a corner of whatever store they are in. “I try to avoid certain places if I can during peak hours.” Will she keep them off screens? “Like phone screens?” Her face is a picture of horror. “Oh, I’m not going to get them phones! No, I’m going to get them a little – I don’t know what they’re called, a Firefly? A Brick? I want them to be able to communicate with me and get a hold of me. I’ll get them a camera because my kids love taking pictures. But I don’t see the need in having them be on social media, or playing video games, or any of that. I deliberately moved to an area where there’s nature, stuff they can do and explore outside; not be on screens.” Until what age? “I don’t know, 18? I mean, if I could have my time again, I would have done it so different.” Does she ever wonder what her life would look like if she hadn’t done all these videos? “All the time. All. The. Time.” Later, she says: “The landscape on social media has changed so much. I had to learn the hard way and reconsider what I put on the internet.” Most nights, Smith takes her computer to bed. Her bedtime routine is specific. “I need clean sheets, that’s non-negotiable. I love freshly washed sheets.” Every night? She stalls. “Twice a week, probably. Linen sheets. I need a shower every night, take my makeup off, do my skincare, brush my teeth, have water on my bedside table, and then I just work in bed until my eyes are rolling.” Often, she’ll look over and Lucky is already asleep. “Sometimes, he’s, like, ‘You can go to bed, and I promise the email is still going to be there in the morning.'” She gets up around six after one nighttime interruption (she insists on doing nights with Fawnie: a, because of the guilt of travelling a lot,And, b, because this baby is her “last”). First, she takes their dog Archie out back. He’s a Pyrenees-pitbull mix (he’s adopted. Lucky wanted a puppy, but she said no). It’s something of a relief to learn she doesn’t exercise. “I wish I could. That just feels … too much.”
A common theme in her stories is her willingness to start from scratch with great care. Three months after her kitchen was finished here in Connecticut, it flooded because of an ice dam on the roof. Ripping the whole thing out wasn’t the headache you’d imagine because, she says, “I hated every decision the designers made. I trusted them instead of my gut. So we redid it the way I wanted, and now it’s beautiful and totally different.
“I feel like an adult now, having bought a home and furnished it for the first time.” The vibe: “I want people to feel like a grandma lives here, not a 24-year-old. Grandma chic with an English twist” – because Ridgefield reminds her of the Cotswolds, she says, where she would have moved “in a heartbeat.”
I ask what makes her lose her shit. “Mess,” she shoots back. “I get very stressed out by mess. I don’t like a messy house. I don’t like a messy kitchen. I don’t like a messy closet. Messes are overstimulating. On top of everything else going on in the home, four kids running around, screaming and everything, messes push me over the edge. So I don’t necessarily lose my shit. I’m like, ‘Let’s just tidy it up, OK? Everyone, start picking up your stuff.'”
Do the children tidy? “I make the kids do their stuff. Anything they may need help with, like putting socks together – sometimes they can’t do that – I’ll help. But usually the kids do their messes, I do our messes, and we get it whipped super quick.”
Twice a month she has a cleaner who comes to “deep clean.” Everything else, she and Lucky do themselves. Laundry? “I do it.” Ironing? “I steam.” If I opened her cupboards, would they be neat and ordered? “They would. Because it just makes everything more efficient. I love a system when it comes to getting dressed or doing laundry or schedules or routines or the kitchen. It makes life so much easier if you don’t have to think about all these small things.”
While she talks, Smith is miming tidying on the laminate-top table between us. She is funny on the potential hazards of her daughter choosing her own outfits. “My eldest is very opinionated. She’s got good taste, so usually I don’t have an issue with it.” If she had bad taste, would she? “I would.” She laughs. “Sometimes it’s the craziest combinations. I have to intervene and kind of bargain a little bit. I’m like, ‘Tights and socks over pants? That’s crazy.'”
Elsewhere, the need for this level of control can be “stressful.” “A lot has changed over the last six years. Being very type A makes it hard when things happen that I can’t control,” she says. Any “wildcard” causes excessive anxiety. “When it came on, I didn’t know what it was.” She read self-help books, had individual therapy, and she and Lucky went to couples counselling.
She’s laughing when she says she’d been convinced she was a “brilliant” communicator until she got to couples therapy. They go in person, when they need it. “We married so young and have so much life ahead, so it’s more prevention than cure, if that makes sense.
“I grew up in Germany. He’s American. Sometimes we kind of miss each other a little bit. One time I said ‘I don’t care’ about something, and he was,“Like, ‘You don’t care?’ It was just, like, ‘I don’t care about talking about it anymore.’ Because I speak German, and the language is different, when I translate it into English, it comes across as harsh and blunt to an American. He was, like, ‘Whoa, that’s a little crazy, honey.’ But it’s small things.”
Nara Aziza Smith was born in South Africa to a German father, a history and biology teacher, and a Mosotho mother who grew up under apartheid (“She saw things no person should ever see or go through or have to deal with”). After Smith was born, the family moved to Frankfurt, and two younger siblings followed. As a child, Smith had many allergies, including to eggs, and was hospitalized twice at a young age for eczema (she also remembers a later operation on her “janky” toes). She describes herself as a child who wanted to hang out with adults and saw the kids’ table as a punishment: “Like, what am I going to do with these kids my age? Play tag?” She was fascinated by figures from history and mythology: Marie Antoinette, Medusa, Athena. She could recite Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.”
Banned from Facebook by her parents, she signed up for Instagram, which they had never heard of, and used it as a way into modeling. She was scouted at 14 by IMG Models through an online program, and her parents took her to castings. In many ways, it was a great experience. “But it was also taxing on my 14-year-old mind: the pressure to look a certain way; the focus being only on how you look.” Back then, measurements were very particular, she says. “Getting older, your body changes. So it was hard on me at times to maintain the standard [weight].” She wouldn’t “necessarily” want her children to go into the business, but if they did, she would support them. “But would I recommend it over other interests they may have? No.”
“Obviously” she knew who Lucky Blue Smith was before she met him. “He was a crush of mine at 15. I watched his Ellen interview and I remember thinking, ‘That guy is really fit.’ Then when he DM’d me on Instagram years later, I was, like” — dramatic intake of breath — “it’s him!” In that first message, Lucky asked her where she was from. He didn’t text back after her reply. Sometime later he messaged: “I’m going camping with a friend so I’ll be off grid for a little bit. But when I’m back, I would love to hop on a phone call.” He was in Los Angeles; it was nighttime in Frankfurt. They spoke all night, and she watched the sun come up. Over seven hours, they covered family, hobbies, interests, teen stuff. “After that, there wasn’t a day that we didn’t spend time on the phone, whether it was two hours or seven hours. We would fall asleep on the phone.”
She was attracted by his calmness. How mature he seemed. “Also, he’s beautiful, which was a bonus.” They decided to marry not long after their first meeting. They posted it all online — photos of them in bath towels, the ring. It was cute, until you looked at the comments. How did she deal with the racism? “Race has been something that I’ve always talked about with my parents. I’ve always been aware of it, growing up in Germany and not looking like the other blond girls. I remember this specific time: I left the school bathroom with my hair out of a ponytail for the first time, and as I walked out, one of my friends burst out laughing. I was mortified. I never wore my hair out in school again.
“When Lucky and I got together … I don’t know, I kind of just brushed it off because it said more about the other person and how they choose to treat people. Did I talk to Lucky about it? Sure. Did I sometimes get sad about it? Yes. But I just tried to ignore it.”
When she relocated to the US to beWhen she was with Lucky, old health problems began to flare up again. She started reading the labels on the food she ate. “I didn’t realize how many ingredients were in things. Bread had more than 20 ingredients, some of which didn’t really belong there. I realized it would be easier and healthier if I made things myself.” So cooking from scratch became “a necessity … I wasn’t just inventing crazy recipes.”
“I’m very ambitious. But it’s about outdoing myself. I couldn’t care less about outdoing other people.”
Like other Gen Zs, Smith’s early content was “fit checks” and get-ready-with-me videos. And she wasn’t that different from other “mommy” influencers when she started propping her phone on a tripod to film herself making copycat versions of things like Oreo ice cream or ranch dressing. But something about the whole package—the beautiful face, the heartthrob husband who grabbed her at the stove, the fashion, the breathy monotone she used because she was recording during nap time and didn’t want to wake the kids, which everyone compared to ASMR—set her apart from the rest.
Then there was her willingness to keep pushing things further. She made cough drops. She made sunscreen. She made Coca-Cola. She matched outfits to recipes, so she made Capri-Sun in a yellow gown with balloon sleeves. Fellow chef Ruby Tandoh wrote about Smith’s content: “It’s addictive. The low-stakes suspense of seeing just how much Too Much she’s going to do this time.” In less than a year, Smith went from under 1 million to 9 million followers. Among them were Bella Hadid, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, SZA, and Doja Cat.
All this happened alongside a new and toxic online movement: tradwives. They were a domestic version of the rightward shift in American politics. Religion often played a role in their commitment to maintaining patriarchal structures. Women who claimed their only ambition was to serve men were suddenly everywhere on the internet, packing their husbands’ lunchboxes. What Smith did seemed to fit right in. Internet sleuths spotted The Book of Mormon behind her in one clip. It’s a backstage prop, they argued, an attempt at mass conversion.
It didn’t help that Smith was friendly with Hannah Neeleman, the 36-year-old Juilliard graduate and mother of nine who makes home-cooking videos in vintage prairie dresses at Ballerina Farm in Mormon Utah. The internet ecosystem encourages influencers to cross-pollinate. Smith and Neeleman milked cows together. They posed on the farm porch, babies on their hips, husbands looking cocky in jeans and cowboy boots. Smith was accused of promoting regressive gender roles, encouraging teenage pregnancy, and “culturally appropriating” Mormon life while distancing herself from her Black heritage. Thinkpieces followed. Memes. Endless Reddit threads.
Smith sighs when I bring all this up. “At first, I didn’t think too deeply about what I was doing. Cooking was something I did for my health and because I enjoy it, and I also enjoy fashion. I was having fun. I put it on the internet. People started reading into things, decoding outfits, deciding I was saying things that would never even cross my mind.”
Now she thinks that making a living in the kitchen will always be political. “It just is,” she says. “I feel like people always want to put women in boxes, to try to explain them, to read into what they do. This is me expressing myself through food and fashion. People tune in for the v—”“Voice, fashion, recipes, or all of it.” Does she see herself as a feminist? “Yes, absolutely. A woman should have the right to do it all, to do whatever she needs to do.” Does she vote? “I would vote in the United States, but I’m not an American citizen, so I’m not allowed.” Still, she worries about politics. “It’s scary everywhere right now.” She talks about the rise of the AfD in Germany with family, friends, and Lucky, but deliberately keeps it offline. “People who see me know what I stand for. I have four kids. I’m a mum. I’m a woman. I’d hope people can put the pieces together. I don’t feel the need to talk about it on my socials because that’s for my artistic expression.” What about the Mormon thing? She admits she was curious. It was her husband’s background, and she was open to learning about it and seeing if she identified with any of it. “If you marry someone who grew up that way, and you’re building a family, you’re figuring things out. That was happening when my social following exploded.” Are her children Mormon? “No. Our family isn’t. It’s a perception people have, but I’m not a Mormon, I was never a Mormon. I never got baptised. I never did anything that would make me Mormon. We figured out what we’re doing for our family, and it’s not being part of the church.” Every Wednesday and Thursday, Smith does three hours of acting class over Zoom with a teacher in Los Angeles, and adds individual in-person sessions when she’s in the city. She caught the acting “bug” on the set of Tyrant. She watched big Hollywood names make mistakes, try again, and interpret lines in different ways, and realised you didn’t have to be perfect the first time. Somehow, that blew her mind. She realised acting was an extension of what she was already doing. “I called my team after. Like, ‘We need an acting manager.’” She signed with a big agent and has started auditioning. Can she imagine a time when she’s not doing her cooking videos anymore, or at least when there’s less emphasis on them? “Yeah. I could see a time when my content evolves. I’ll never not be on social media because it’s such a pillar of my work, my business, and the way I connect with people.” Is she competitive? She hmms and tilts her head to the side. “I wouldn’t say competitive. I’d say, what’s the word?” She snaps her fingers in the air. “Ambitious. That’s the word I was looking for. I’m very ambitious. But it’s about one-upping myself. I couldn’t care less about one-upping other people. I’m in my own lane, and I have a goal I want to reach.” We’re ready to leave. As we rise from our chairs, a sea of teenage girls I hadn’t noticed converges. They look tiny next to Smith’s towering 6ft frame. They’ve been waiting, phone cameras at the ready. “You’ve, like, inspired me. I’ve been making stuff from scratch,” one says, grinning in train-track braces. “I love that,” says Smith. “What have you been making?” “I’m trying to make bread. It hasn’t gone well…” “You know what? That takes a hot minute. It took me a hot minute. But you’re going to get there.” She gives them a little hug. Homemade by Nara Aziza Smith is published by 4th Estate on 13 October. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the article about Nara Smith
Who is Nara Smith
She is a popular social media influencer known for making everyday itemslike toothpaste sunscreen and mealscompletely from scratch She is 25 years old and a mother to four children
What does from scratch mean in her videos
It means she creates things using basic raw ingredients rather than buying premade versions For example instead of buying a loaf of bread she grinds the wheat into flour and bakes it herself
Why is she famous
She went viral for her tradwife aestheticdressing in vintage styles and performing traditional homemaking tasksbut the extreme level of effort in her cooking and DIY projects is what captured peoples attention
What is a tradwife
Short for traditional wife it refers to a woman who embraces traditional gender roles focusing on domestic duties like cooking cleaning and raising children rather than having a career
Is Nara Smith a tradwife
No She has explicitly stated she is not a tradwife While she enjoys homemaking she also runs a business creates content and does not subscribe to the political or submissive aspects often associated with the tradwife movement
Why does she say she has no hidden agenda
She means she isnt trying to push a political message or convince other women to live like her She is simply sharing her life and hobbies because she enjoys them
How does she manage making everything from scratch with four kids
She says she involves her children in the process and treats these activities as family time She also likely has help though she emphasizes that she genuinely enjoys the work and finds it grounding
What are some common criticisms she faces
Critics argue that her lifestyle is unrealistic for most people because it requires immense time money and resources Some also worry that her content glamorizes an unattainable standard of motherhood
How does she respond to criticism
She generally remains calm and clarifies that she is not judging others She often points out that she is just doing what works for her family and that she doesnt expect everyone to make things from scratch
Is making everything from scratch cheaper
Not always While raw ingredients can be cheaper in bulk the time cost is high Additionally specialty equipment
