Portrait: Mary Rozzi/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Portrait: Mary Rozzi/The Guardian Social media Interview ‘There is no secret agenda’: Nara Smith on home-making absolutely everything, raising four kids at 25 – and why she’s definitely not a tradwife Charlotte Edwardes The model, actor and influencer is known for making her own frozen yoghurt, bubblegum or even toothpaste while dressed in immaculate haute couture. But she insists she is not who the internet thinks she is
Prefer the Guardian on Google N ara Smith is not a tradwife, she wants you to know that. Nor is she an ex-tradwife – pace the New York Times who included her in a feature on how ex-tradwives are as popular a movement now as the tradwives were in the first place. Nor was she peddling a tradwife-adjacent lifestyle choice by marrying at 18, having four children by 24, and devoting hours to cooking and documenting it online. Nor is she Mormon, by the way. Although, yes, her husband, the model and former teen heart‑throb Lucky Blue Smith, was raised Mormon, but we’ll get to that. Nor was she telegraphing subliminal religious messages in her content: “There is no secret agenda.” Nor was she abandoning her biracial heritage by wearing her hair in a sleek little bob. Nor was she leaning into a 1950s housewife archetype – even when dressed in a pink and red polka-dot minidress to batch-cook sourdough.
Smith wants you to scrap everything you think you know about her and start again. 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 12.5m TikTok followers (plus 879m likes) and 4.8m on Instagram, who makes eccentric, seductive cooking videos in which she narrates each step in a passive hushed voice while making dupes of everyday supermarket products from scratch. Her videos start with the same shtick: her husband or children have a request – eg “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’s straining the yoghurt starter, combining it with kefir, vanilla, sugar, cork gum; juicing apples and cherries to make gummy bears for the topping, whisking 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).
View image in fullscreen These clips blow people’s minds. Her grilled cheese video has been viewed 49.6m 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’s 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…